Clippings

Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature—or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city’s moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.

Probably the most widely known passivized translation from Japanese is one that has been made from the inscription engraved on the monument in Hiroshima to those who were killed by the atomic bomb. The original inscription, which contains what may be the most broadly inclusive zero pronoun, is a sobering one, with far greater impact in the Japanese original than in its weakened English translation:

安らかに眠って下さい。過ちは繰返しませぬから。
“Rest in peace, for X will not repeat the mistake.”

This has been rendered, “Rest in peace, for the mistake will not be repeated,” which is far less problematical than the original. “Who will not repeat the mistake?” people wanted to know when the monument was unveiled. “And who made the mistake in the first place — the Americans when they dropped the bomb, or the Japanese when they started the war?” The transitive Japanese verb in the active voice calls for a subject — a responsible actor. The passivized translation makes far less stringent demands. With its unnamed subject, the Japanese sentence seems discreetly to avoid placing the blame on anyone, but it is far more thought-provoking than the English translation would suggest …