THEORY

As I’ve worked through this translation, I continuously find myself thinking back towards Walter Benjamin’s quote regarding the “task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his recreation of that work. For the sake of pure language he breaks through decayed barriers of his own language” (4). There is no greater or more humbling experience than working with a translation and rapidly realizing that any sort of direct, one-to-one translation is a doomed act. Not in the sense that it cannot be done, but in the sense that it is almost impossible to weave from one language to another and not drag the conventions of each language into an invariable path of knotwork. For every person demanding an exact, barely-changed translation of language, I give them the brutal example that sprung forth from my attempt to translate large-sum numbers from Japanese into English:

A direct "unaltered" translation of “ Go jū roku oku nana sen man” would look something like " Five Tens, Six Hundred Million, Seven Thousand Ten Thousand."

It is fundamentally impossible not to change into English, unless I want my English audience thoroughly baffled by a seemingly impassable line of integers and tens-modifiers.But even in the evolution of these terms, I am still required, fundamentally, to think about the weight and feel of these numbers. I could simply say Oh, 5.67 Million Years. But that shortens the effect of time unwinding back so far you almost forgot how you got there in the first place. So, I take the longer route, and draw out the number to match the sprawl of the Japanese counting format.

Beyond numbers, there’s also Benjamin’s argument against fidelity. Benjamin states that “it is self-evident how greatly fidelity in reproducing the form impedes the rendering of the sense. Thus no case for literalness can be based on a desire to retain the meaning.” (3). This is unshakeably true when considering the ways in which one could translate the word “yotaka” at the end of the first verse in Dunwich Horror. Yotaka is, directly, a word that translates into “Nighthawk”. Those who are very concerned with fidelity towards Lovecraft were adamant that the word should be Whipoorwhill. This, of course, de-prioritizes the works of Suzuki and Wajima as Japanese lyricists, writing in a distinctly Japanese voice, where Whipoorwhills are non-native. Nighthawks however, are native to Japan. Even more pertinent is the fact that yotaka or Nighthawk is also an Edo-era euphemism for a sex worker. Literalness in translation, or concern for fidelity in regards to Lovecraft, ultimately derails the context of this version of the text and the purposeful applications of wordplay.

As this project continued, I found myself thoroughly enamoured with Emmerich’s concept of prismatic modes of translation and reading, most certainly building from the foundations set forth by Benjamin. So much so, that I couldn’t help but consider the realities of prismatic listening, as well. Emmerich leads her argument with the claim that “Textual instability is the rule rather than the exception. ” (20), and nowhere else could I think of something more unstable than a song that is so bound up in the prism of global culture and distinct subcultures.

The very chorus of this song situates us with an example of prismatic listening. Reading, not so much, as being able to visualize the kanji would clear up any entendres created by homophones and clarify the meaning immediately. But, when listening phonetically to the song, the verse “tobira yo ake” can sound very similar to “tobira yoake.” In the first one, the appropriate reading as determined by the kanji, the translation is approximately: Door [Emphatic], Open!” In the second, the reading may sound like “Door, Dawn Breaks!”. Of course, one of these makes sense from a narrative and grammatical standpoint. But yoake is a term that is frequently used as an idiom for the changing of ages or time, which is something the song is very concerned with, given Yog-Sothoth’s role as an apocalyptic arbiter. One of these readings is grammatically correct, and one of them notes an incredibly slight play on words. To discount one over the other fails to address the nuances of the Japanese language at that moment.

One of the greatest frustrations when it came to working with Duunwich Horror was not, in fact, any prevalence of a Tsugaru-Ben accent, or even the intermittent application of archaic, Edo-era Japanese. Rather, it was seeing what few prior English translations exist online (done of course, by hobbyists and fans like myself) thoroughly inundated with references to Lovecraft that seemed to consume the entire song. The song is, of course, a retelling of Lovecraft’s narrative, but the only terms it ever seeks to consistently draw from Lovecraft isYog-Sothoth. Not even the famous “Necronomicon” makes an appearance. All other invocations of allegory are much less direct. This does not disparage the work of other translations who were much more fixated on the name of the song or the retelling, but it does indicate that listening (and translation) are not universal, single track experiences. My interpretations of the texts are not privileged amongst others, but simply highlight a different set of interests and philosophies in interpretation.

Which is to say, like Emmerich, I am not particularly interested in modes of “channel thinking”, or the idea that “faithfulness, accuracy, and equivalence, as well as the idea that translation can fail” (7). As I belabored in my language notes, translating Dunwich Horror is a project that has several moving parts that will inevitably draw differing degrees of attention between translators. “Faithful to what, exactly?” remains an ever-productive question. In translating, do we stay faithful to H.P Lovecraft’s original text, the 1970 film by Daniel Haller, or do we take Dunwich Horror as a new story in its entirety? When we translate the language, do we care about Tsugaru-Ben translated into another dialect of English against the “Academic” standard? Do we belabor the use of archaic language? Do we abandon or invent rhyme schemes or meter? All of these hypotheticals run parallel to one another, forcing translators to bound to-and-fro between the elements that they most prefer.

Consider all of the nuances that Standard Japanese carries on its own, brought into the song. The prevalence of hierarchical pronouns cannot be understated as a tonal device that has no true correlation in English. For my translation, I was much more concerned with the transference of tone– academic, apocalyptic, slightly sneering in its conception of doom and the invocation of the end of the world. In terms of the hierarchical pronouns, this song heavily utilizes Ore and Omae. Ore is a masculine, generally informal first person pronoun that conveys self-assuredness, but may frequently be misconstrued as cockiness and self-obsession given the situation. Omae is a second person pronoun that emphasizes the listeners subordination to you, and is generally regarded as masculine at best and fairly hostile at worst. As this song situates itself from the point of view of the Dunwich Horror itself, the sneering, masculine, self-assured tone makes sense. It is a fundamental element to the tone, but not directly translatable in English, requiring other tonal measures to be taken.

When Emmerich discusses prismatic translation, she invites the idea of a “new model [that] recognizes that the world of work as first composed in one language is far smaller than the world opened up by its cumulative translations into others”(9). I believe that this is fundamentally the most productive way to engage with the ideas of “debt” in translation set forth by Derrida. The exchange between languages is, after all, a great capacity for sharing ideas and allowing stories to evolve across time and space. In the case of my project, it wouldn’t remotely exist without all of the translation and open-access, digital archival efforts set forth by those who make up the bulk of my references. I like to think that I attend to my “debts” in translation by paying such behaviors forward, in making this project publicly accessible.