Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words - InDaily - Dictionary

“In 1901, the word bondmaid was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.”

Pip Williams’ meticulously researched debut novel follows the story of Esme Nicoll, a young lexicographer-to-be who devotes her life to an alternative dictionary. Esme spends her childhood under the sorting table in the Scriptorium, the shed in editor James Murray’s Oxford backyard where he and his assistants are assembling the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, falling in love with words and collecting the occasional slips that float down unnoticed.

Each misplaced, discarded or neglected word is dotingly placed by Esme into an old wooden trunk, and as she enters her teens, she becomes more obsessed with which words make it into the dictionary and which don’t.

The novel is set as the Great War looms and the women’s suffrage movement is gathering momentum, with this illicit collection of words becoming the theme as Esme crosses into womanhood and learns that “all words are not equal”. The history of English is often told through the lens of white men, and in 19^th and 20^th-century England, they were the people in charge of the words. Williams’ book gently highlights that the lack of representation of women in this respected tome was due to structural biases rather than deliberate omission.

Based on the true events of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Dictionary of Lost Words is a deeply engaging novel that combines a love of language with a cast of richly realised characters and relationships. Esme is a relatable character, intelligent yet imperfect; fighting to give women’s words their proper place in the English language while navigating friendship, love and loss. Esme’s relationship with her father, a companionable relationship of equals, is one of the novel’s greatest elements.

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At its heart, The Dictionary of Lost Words is about unspoken words, forgotten meanings and the tragedy of words that are left behind. Williams’ exquisite storytelling will keep you hooked, and lovers of language will get a kick out of the historical provenance of various words.

The Dictionary of Lost Words has received a multitude of well-deserved accolades in recent months, catapulting it to one of the most successful books to come out during lockdown. Experience this novel for yourself rather than getting swept away by the hype. Take the time to savour the breathtaking detail and lose yourself in words, one lost word at a time.

The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams, is published by Affirm Press.

Sumudu Narayana is a freelance editor and beta reader based in Adelaide.

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A Year in Review  is an initiative by  Writers SA, with assistance from the Australia Council of the Arts, to produce a series of book reviews published in InDaily  over 12 months.

The reviews will focus on titles published during the pandemic, highlighting the work of Australian authors and publishers during this difficult time for the sector, and giving literary critics an outlet for their work that supports a strong culture of reading.

See previously published reviews  here.

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Google translation AI botches legal terms 'enjoin,' 'garnish' -research - Yahoo Finance - Translation

Bloomberg

A $1 Trillion Liquidity Surge Is Morphing Into a Leverage Boom

(Bloomberg) -- It was supposed to be a temporary buffer -- more than $1 trillion of debt taken on by U.S. companies last year to ride out the economic devastation caused by Covid-19.But with the economy rebounding and interest rates still near all-time lows, it’s becoming increasingly tempting for corporations including Home Depot Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to spend those cash cushions on acquisitions and dividend hikes. In many cases, they’re now borrowing more.The risk is that unfettered access to cheap debt -- even for less creditworthy companies -- will ease the pressure on executives to pay down their liabilities. That could extend a decade-long trend of swelling corporate debt levels, increasing the chances of a greater reckoning once interest rates rise or the next time capital markets seize up.“Today’s liquidity becoming tomorrow’s leverage is going to be the story of 2021 for at least some companies,” said David Brown, co-head of global investment grade fixed income at Neuberger Berman, which has $405 billion in assets.Rising CashTotal debt loads for U.S. companies outside the financial industry rose 10% in 2020 to $11.1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve, in part because lower interest rates have made it less burdensome for many companies to shoulder more debt. So far, corporations have largely been hoarding the money rather than spending it. Non-financial companies in the S&P 500 index that reported results before March 31 had about $2.13 trillion of cash and marketable securities on their books in the most recent quarter, up more than 25% from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.But that’s likely to change, according to strategists at Barclays Plc. With the U.S. giving Covid-19 jabs to more than 3 million people a day now, and the economy showing signs of a resurgence as more consumers feel safe to go out and spend, companies are likely to be more aggressive in deploying cash.That’s likely to show up in the form of dividends, share buybacks, acquisitions, capital expenditure, and debt repayments, Barclays strategists led by Shobhit Gupta wrote in a report on Friday. Their analysis of comments on company conference calls shows that more management teams have been talking about making one-time dividend payments in recent months, and have been discussing buying back shares. The volume of acquisitions has also been growing.Generally, companies with higher credit ratings, in particular those at least four steps above junk, are likely to feel comfortable maintaining higher debt levels, the strategists said. Those with lower grades are more likely to pay down obligations.Home Depot sold $5 billion of bonds in March 2020, saying soon after that it wanted to make sure it had enough cash to tide it over during the pandemic. Then in January it borrowed $3 billion more for its acquisition of HD Supply Holdings Inc., its former subsidiary serving professional contractors. In February, the retailer said it was increasing its quarterly dividend by 10%. Meanwhile, total debt jumped by about $5.8 billion over the company’s fiscal year.Higher EarningsInvestors don’t always get hurt when a company boosts its borrowings. In the case of Home Depot, its earnings have risen alongside its liabilities, as the pandemic has spurred house-bound people to fix up their properties.The retailer prepaid $1.35 billion of bonds in March, and credit-rating firms aren’t looking at downgrading the company, which is ranked five steps above junk by Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings. But analysts have said the boom in home improvement may fade in the coming year as people finish their projects and spend more time outside the home as the pandemic eases.Most money managers viewed companies’ extra debt as being short-term. Verizon said in April 2020 that it was issuing notes to boost its cash levels, describing the move on a call with investors as a step to help it “manage through the impacts of the Covid pandemic.”Then last month it sold more than $30 billion of bonds in multiple currencies, swelling its total debt to a record high in the process, to help finance purchases of 5G spectrum. The company views the rise in leverage as a temporary move to fund a strategic asset that positions the company for growth, according to an emailed statement from Treasurer Scott Krohn in response to an inquiry from Bloomberg.“For many industries, this liquidity was supposed to be temporary,” said Terence Wheat, senior portfolio manager of investment-grade corporate bonds at PGIM Fixed Income, who declined to comment on any specific corporation. “Now some companies may use it for acquisitions rather than paying down debt.”Lower PenaltiesCorporations are borrowing more now for the same reason they’ve been boosting debt levels for years: because they can. The average yield on an investment-grade corporate bond was just 2.2% as of Monday, far below the mean of the last decade of around 3.17%, according to Bloomberg Barclays index data.And companies are finding that adding on more debt doesn’t necessarily hurt them much. The penalty for a ratings downgrade is generally minimal. A corporation in the BBB tier, or between one and three steps above junk, pays about 0.47 percentage points more yield than companies in the A tier, or four to six steps above speculative grade, according to Bloomberg Barclays index data. That’s close to the lowest difference in a decade, and according to Barclays strategists, reflects the fact that insurance companies have been buying more BBB debt.That shrinking penalty may be why more than half of investment-grade corporate bonds by market value are in the BBB tier, versus just 27% in the early 1990s. Typically, most investment-grade companies can choose to pay down debt and merit higher ratings if they wish.“Companies have chosen to lever up,” said Richard Hunter, global head of corporate ratings at Fitch Ratings. “The wild card is going to be companies’ choices now.”Acquisition Time?For some North American companies, buying competitors looks like a good use of cash, as it can allow them to boost future earnings. Canada’s Rogers Communications Inc. said last month that it plans to acquire Shaw Communications Inc. for $16 billion. Its debt levels are expected to rise to more than five times a measure of earnings, a leverage ratio commonly associated with junk credit ratings. But the company said it plans to delever to a ratio of 3.5 times over the next three years.Rising profits for companies have helped make their debt levels look less worrisome by at least one measure. The ratio of corporations’ earnings to their interest costs has been climbing for the last few quarters, signaling they have more income available to pay their debt. For investment-grade firms in aggregate, that ratio is now better than it was pre-Covid-19, while the metric for junk-rated companies has almost returned to levels before the pandemic, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.High cash levels at companies make indebtedness look lower now by some measures. Net leverage, which subtracts cash from debt and compares that net debt level to a measure of earnings, is near pre-Covid-19 levels for both blue chip companies and riskier speculative grade corporations on average. Total leverage, which doesn’t subtract out cash, remains significantly higher that it was pre-pandemic, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis of the investment-grade and high-yield corporate bond Bloomberg Barclays indexes.If companies keep spending their money instead of paying down debt, net leverage will rise, said Noel Hebert, director of credit research at Bloomberg Intelligence.“Ratings agencies have become comfortable with higher and higher leverage, thus companies are more and more happy to take advantage of it,” Hebert said. “There’s an incentive to hold leverage at elevated levels because there’s no real mechanism that’s punishing you.”(Updates with detail on insurance company demand in paragraph 16)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Translating Amanda Gorman, The Absurdity Of Identity Profiling - Worldcrunch - Translation

Efforts to translate the celebrated poem that Amanda Gorman, the young Black American poet, recited at the U.S. Presidential inauguration have sparked controversy. Some believe her works should not be translated by white, non-women translators. Suzanne Dracius, a writer from Martinique and member of the Parliament of Francophone Women Writers, writes about how this type of racial assignment undermines the entire point of translation.

-OpEd-

The uproar over the translation of Amanda Gorman's poem The Hill We Climb should not rattle us nor keep us from climbing the mountain that stands above prejudice, nor cause us to regress and reduce our progress against racism to naught.

And that's why we, at the Parliament of Francophone Women Writers, demand the right to be translated by a competent person chosen for their expertise, not their identity.

The Face Of Beauty

Excessive zeal should not divert us from the steep slope we have so carefully ascended, cast us off the proud peak overlooking the ravines of racism.

In Creole, the word used for "hill" is "mòn" and refers to morne, an old French word for a promontory, or a small landmass that juts out over the coast or a plateau. That word goes for everyone, be they white or black, the descendants of béké colonialists or slaves.

And yet, no French translator — even if that person is black and a Creole speaker — would translate Gorman's "hill" as "morne." That's because the translator must take into account the particular circumstances with as much exactitude as possible. Its mastery depends on the ability to reconstitute a text according to the text's own esthetic.

Regarding poetry — a word itself originating from the Greek ποιεῖν or poiein, "to create" — translation becomes an endeavor to convey the creative power of the poem, its musicality, internal rhymes, assonance, alliterations. It must recreate the poem's atmosphere, images, symbols, anaphoras and chiasmi, all of which are rife in Gorman's work.

Literary devices have no color. Or rather, they have every color. They are the face of beauty, in all its shades and nuances.

A Rainbow

Intersectionality, a dreadful word used to designate an even more appalling reality, caused no shortage of problems for the young Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld who, under pressure, backed down from translating Gorman's poem. It boded the same fate for the Catalan translator Victor Obiols, who was considered "inadequate" and eventually disqualified by his publishing house: "They were looking for a different profile."

Critics refused to allow a "Black girl" to be translated by a "white, non-binary" person, as Rijneveld — who purposely uses two first names, female then male — is considered. Mixed in among the thousand racist heads of this atrocious hydra, there is also a kind of sub-adjacent homophobia to be wary of here.

To claim, on the contrary, that any "young, female and unapologetically Black" translator would be apt to translate this African American is to insult Gorman, as if anyone can write like she does as long as they are "successors of a country and a time // where a skinny Black girl // descended from slaves and raised by a single mother // can dream of becoming president // only to find herself reciting for one."

Is anyone offended that Aimé Césaire's translator was white?

Our translators are every color, ever gender, every sexual preference; in a word, a rainbow! We insist on keeping it this way.

Insulting Praise

Is anyone offended that Aimé Césaire's translator was white? What color is the négritude movement? It is an absurd, even surrealist question reminiscent of French writer André Breton, who was dazzled yet baffled when he discovered this "great black poet." Why "black," for that matter? Has anyone ever heard of a "great white poet?" Breton's rhetoric veered toward the stereotype of "the learned monkey" when he added: "And it's a Black who manipulates the French language in a way that no White today can achieve." It's praise that can ring like an insult.

Conversely, what about St-John Perse — born Alexis Léger — a Nobel-prize winner from an old, white colonial family in Martinique and later Guadeloupe? Has anyone ever demanded that the translator of this béké poet come from a white, Creole-speaking ethno-caste?

An author isn't a color.

French author Suzanne Dracius at a book fair in France, in 2015. — Photo: Le Parlement des Ecrivaines Francophones

What is imperative is that the translator possesses a contextual understanding of cultural particularities, regional dialects and different levels of language in order to be as faithful to the original text as possible. Translation — mestizo, mixed by definition — is, de facto, queer, transgender.

Racial assignment (which is racist) misses the very point of translation. Tied up in identity politics, it is always absurd, but now it's burst out into the open — monstrous, criminal, promoting a delirious connection between authoritarian Kultur and DNA.

Prejudice Exacerbated

Instead of "forging a union," preconceived categorization distances us from one another and exacerbates prejudices around color and gender. But writing is universal, a rallying force, unifying without uniforming, the supreme exaltation of freedom of speech.

Racial assignment (which is racist) misses the very point of translation.

We must therefore stand up against these dangerous strains of thought that annihilate the humanist breadth contained in the art of translation, which scorns its capacity to build a bridge between two shores, two languages, two worlds.

In "The Hill We Climb," Gorman herself uses the word "bridge" — metaphorically, and in the plural. "If we're to live up to our own time // then victory won't lie in the blade // But in all the bridges we've made."

The aim of translation is to bring out the work's fundamental meaning, is it not?

"We are striving to forge a union with purpose // to compose a country committed to all cultures // colors, characters and // conditions of man."

Universality And Diversity

It's tempting to paraphrase Amanda Gorman, replacing "country" with "world" — which we cross thanks to the bridges provided by translation.

The words are there, shimmering at the heart of the poem, anticipating controversy.

If we can't translate this Black poet because we are white and non-binary, we risk the next step of forbidding people to read it, as they wouldn't be able to understand.

Martinican and light-skinned — calazaza, as they say — I contain four-and-a-half continents within me, as does the Parliament of Francophone Women Writers, which unites women authors of all colors and countries. We champion the universality and diversity of literature.

---

See more from Opinion / Analysis here

Words With Friends Adds “Orbisculate” to In-Game Dictionary - Player.One - Dictionary

Words With Friends revealed that the word “orbisculate” has been added to the game’s dictionary. The word was coined by language enthusiast Neil Krieger, who passed away due to COVID–19. The move is Zynga’s way of supporting the Krieger family’s mission of getting the word into the official English language dictionary.

Besides adding the word, Words With Friends also featured it as the “Word of the Day.” Players can now even learn both the definition and full etymology of the word.

According to a press release, Neil came up with the word as part of an assignment when he was studying at Cornell University. So what does the word actually mean? It’s defined as “to accidentally squirt juice and/or pulp into one's eye, as from a grapefruit, when eating.” The word Neil created is something that everyone can experience, however, this same word also reflects Neil’s very own humor and creativity.

It seems that since creating the word, Neil had been using it so casually that even his two children, Hilary and Jonathan, thought it was an actual word. Both children learned later that it wasn’t a real word, especially when they couldn’t find it in the dictionary.

Sadly, Neil was one of at least 555,000 Americans who succumbed to the coronavirus disease. Neil’s children wanted to immortalize and honor the memory of their father by having it become part of the official English language dictionary.

Hilary shared that while the word itself may be whimsical, its story is something that people can easily relate to. She added that her dad would have truly been happy to know that the word is now part of the game. By being part of the game, Jonathan added that he hopes the word becomes part of the vernacular and eventually enters the English language dictionary.

Meanwhile, Zynga President of Publishing Bernard Kim revealed that during the pandemic, there have been a lot of initiatives in the gaming community, which helped support gamers and members. He added that they want to help the Kriegers reach their goal.

For those who want to support and help the Krieger’s, you can visit their website here.

OPINION: 'Sourdough' finally gets its own entry in online dictionary - Arkansas Online - Dictionary

I'm always a bit puzzled when I learn that a certain dictionary is adding words that I don't know.

Dictionary.com recently did its regular update of words and phrases. I always zoom in first on the ones I don't know.

First was bio break. This is a trip to a restroom or bathroom, especially a pause for this during a meeting or other group activity.

The phrase came from the world of gambling, which I hear involves hours of unbroken concentration. Still, nature calls. Bio is short for biology.

You might have heard it because this year of the pandemic required numerous Zoom meetings and other video calls for work. Still, are the people in meetings so delicate that they can't handle the phrase “bathroom break”?

Next was deepfake. I am familiar with the concept, but I didn't know what it was called: a fake, digitally manipulated video or audio file produced by using deep learning, an advanced type of machine learning, and typically featuring a person's likeness and voice in a situation that did not actually occur.

I found a disturbing deepfake story recently in The Washington Post. Here's the ominous lead:

"An anonymous cyberbully in Pennsylvania seemed to have one goal in mind: Force a trio of cheerleaders off their formidable local team, the Victory Vipers."

Later in the story:

"The bizarre saga of cyber harassment is notable for the use of deepfake technology and for what Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub called the 'unlevel playing field.'"

(Spoiler alert: A woman whose daughter was on the team was charged with misdemeanor counts of cyber harassment.)

I think something that's deepfake could just as easily be called fake. Maybe manipulated would be more clear, even though it's a longer word.

And then I learned about "twice exceptional." The entry defines this as relating to or noting a person, especially a child or student, who is considered gifted and also has a diagnosed disability, such as a learner with a high IQ and dyslexia.

I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's jargon. If someone said it, I'd just have to ask for a clarification. Does using the term save time? Will it really become something that's in widespread usage? Am I just being grumpy?

But enough about things I didn't know.

The additions included more timely coronavirus terms. One was "acute respiratory distress syndrome," or ARDS. This is medical jargon, to be sure. Maybe it was added because people hear the initialism and wonder what it means. Also added were variants and strains, names for the variations on covid-19 cases.

The editors added at least two words based on Black vernacular.

This first is finna (fin-uh).

Finna is a phonetic spelling representing the African American Vernacular English variant of "fixing to," a phrase commonly used in Southern U.S. dialects to mark the immediate future while indicating preparation or planning already in progress.

"Oh, no, she finna break his heart!"

Well, I guess I wasn't done with things I didn't know. I had never heard this word before.

But I have heard chile. This isn't a word from the pepper world. This one is pronounced "chahyl." It's a phonetic spelling of child, representing dialectal speech of the Southern United States or African American Vernacular English.

"Oh, chile, you do not want to test me!"

John Kelly, managing editor at Dictionary.com, said this update included a significant change involving the word slave:

"[One] significant decision was to remove the noun slave when referring to people, instead using the adjective enslaved or referring to the institution of slavery. This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity."

This dictionary's website elaborates on this decision:

"It is painfully clear that referring to enslaved people as slaves has the effect of dehumanizing those subjected to chattel slavery. Use of the noun slave in this way also obscures the responsibility of those who upheld and benefited from such an institution."

Another addition is BIPOC, which stands for "Black, indigenous (and) people of color." Before this, POC was a common initialism for "people of color." The Dictionary.com definition explains the distinction: "Used as a unifying identity label for people of color that also emphasizes the unique racial experiences of Black people and indigenous people."

A couple of entries apply to marginalized communities, the editors said. They define marginalized as placed in a position of little or no importance, influence or power.

An enby is a person who doesn't identify as either male or female. The site says it's a person whose gender identity is nonbinary. The n and b become enby.

Do not confuse this with NB, an abbreviation for the Latin phrase nota bene, or note well.

And neurodivergent means showing atypical neurological behavior and development, as in autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia.

I usually find a word whose mention in the new entries make me laugh.

Dictionary.com decided to add an entry for sourdough.

It's fermented dough retained from one baking and used as leaven, rather than fresh yeast, to start the next.

Baking sourdough bread has become almost a cliché for a hobby that people have been taking up during the pandemic. I can't know whether sourdough has already been in this dictionary. But doesn't it seem like it should have been?

I also learned that sourdough is a nickname for a prospector or pioneer, especially in Alaska or Canada. Supposedly, those people would make and eat sourdough. I wonder whether the Pillsbury Doughboy (whose name is Poppin' Fresh, by the way) had a Canadian cousin named Sourdoughboy.

Sources include Dictionary.com, CNN, Merriam-Webster, The American Heritage Dictionary, Pillsbury. Reach Bernadette at

bkwordmonger@gmail.com

How Kaoru Takamura's epic "Lady Joker" finally reached U.S. - Los Angeles Times - Translation

On the Shelf

Lady Joker, Volume 1

By Kaoru Takamura
Soho Crime: 600 pages, $29

If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Imagine yourself, over a 30-year career, being considered a modern master of both crime and literary fiction. You’ve sold millions of copies, won every major mystery award, seen several books adapted for the screen and earned the sobriquet “Queen of Mysteries.” But here’s the catch: Your work has never been translated outside your home country.

That’s what happened to Kaoru Takamura, born in Osaka, Japan, who worked as a stock trader before turning to writing. Her celebrated mystery career culminated in 1997’s “Lady Joker,” a sweeping, nuanced trilogy whose plot kicks into gear in 1947 with a letter to the Hinode Beer Co. from a dismissed employee and takes a dramatic turn with the kidnapping, some five decades later, of the conglomerate’s chief executive. Based on the unsolved Glico-Morinaga case that terrorized Japan in the mid-1980s, the series’ uncompromising dissection of post-WWII Japan was a cultural sensation, sold more than a million copies there and garnered praise for Takamura’s astonishing “eye for detail and storytelling prowess.” But still, no translation.

Enter Juliet Grames, senior vice president and associate publisher at Soho Press. Since 2010, Grames has been editor of the press’ Soho Crime imprint, whose mandate is to publish atmospheric crime fiction from all over the world. A polymath editor and author in her own right, Grames curates a list including Britain’s Peter Lovesey, L.A.-based Ghanian American Kwei Quartey and the Paris-set mysteries of the Bay Area’s Cara Black. Grames’ particular interest in Japanese culture dates to her immersion in the language in Simsbury, Conn.’s public schools, followed by her study of the language at Columbia University.

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“I knew I wanted to publish ‘Lady Joker’ as soon as I heard about it,” says Grames, who had already released Fuminori Nakamura’s crime fiction at Soho, including the 2012 novel “The Thief,” shortlisted for an L.A. Times Book Prize. “After reading the reviews, stories about its adaptation into both film and television as well as Takamura’s background, her advocacy, her stubbornness in presenting her unique vision in defiance of gender or genre expectations, I knew the ‘about line’” — the real-life backstory — “would appeal to not only to people looking for a good story, but something more.”

Juliet Grames of Soho Press leaped multiple hurdles to bring the Japanese sensation “Lady Joker” to American readers.

(Nina Subin)

Yet Grames knew even award-winning cultural touchstones are difficult to acquire from Japan. Among the barriers is a complicated net of author-publisher relationships peculiar to the country: Authors sell individual works to separate publishers, making it surpassingly difficult to acquire an author’s entire oeuvre. And since they rarely use agents, there’s no strategic partner to guide the process of minting an international career. So when Soho acquired world English rights to “Lady Joker” in 2014, it did so without the benefit of a translation or even sample materials.

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The challenges didn’t end there. Grames had to determine the best translator for Takamura’s demanding magnum opus, which weighed in at the equivalent of some 400,000 English words and had a literary style and sweep that recalls maximalists like James Ellroy, Caleb Carr or even David Foster Wallace. She turned to Allison Markin Powell, the esteemed translator of several notable Japanese writers, including Nakamura’s novels for Soho Crime.

With her industry connections and advocacy for works in translation, Powell knew of the novel and the acquisition. “She’s like the CIA,” Grames says admiringly. “She knew almost before I did!” Cognizant of the book’s literary impact in Japan and Grames’ passion for the project, Powell asked for some time to consider how to approach the intricacies of the text. In addition to the usual challenges of translating Japanese, a tough language to parse with nuance, the trilogy’s wide-ranging subjects and social milieus would test any translator’s lexicon.

Powell came back a few weeks later with a novel approach — bringing on a second translator, Marie Iida. American-born and Los Angeles-based, the natively bilingual Iida is best known as the self-effacing interpreter who brought nuance to bestselling author Marie Kondo’s Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series, “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.”

Marie Iida, left, and Allison Markin Powell are the translators on Kaoru Takamura’s “Lady Joker, Volume 1.”

(Dennis Liu / from Allison Markin Powell )

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Her team in place, Grames and her colleagues dedicated the next four years to a meticulous translation of Takamura’s text: Iida usually made the first pass and Powell the second, followed by a collaboration on refinements with Grames, whose work as a combination literary midwife and line editor was guided by her mission to “arrive at the most accurate, faithful and energetic English interpretation for each word and sentence.”

The next challenge: How to package the book for an American audience. Soho considered one 1,000-plus-page volume but abandoned the idea. “We also thought three books was a lot to ask readers to sign up for, year after year,” Grames explains. “And four is an unlucky number in Japanese culture.” So they settled on two.

Volume 1, released last week, demands a reader’s careful attention. Like Ellroy’s “American Tabloid” and Carr’s “The Alienist,” the book uses crime as a prism to examine dynamic periods of social history — a history that, in this case, most American readers didn’t live through or learn about in school. Takamura paints a broad landscape but also dives deep into every aspect of her story, lavishing attention on topics as varied as the details of performing a root canal and the entanglements of corporate Japan and organized crime. There are trenchant observations on Japan’s shameful treatment of ethnic minorities and those considered to be of lower caste. “Using the relationship between individuals and institutions as its axis,” one Japanese critic observes, “’Lady Joker’ attempts to depict the contemporary era in its entirety.”

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(Soho Crime)

Even if a reader has never visited the country, reading “Lady Joker” is like being transported in a time machine to 20th century Japan, bracketed by commonly known events like postwar reconstruction and the Tokyo sarin gas attack of 1995. And though these incidents took place decades ago and thousands of miles away, Takamura’s blistering indictment of capitalism, corporate corruption and the alienation felt by characters on both sides of the law from institutions they once believed would protect them resonates surprisingly with American culture.

There’s a lot to digest in “Lady Joker,” but I finished Volume 1 feeling I got full value for my effort. So did Grames and her translators, who are completing the translation for Volume 2, which will be published in summer 2022. “My colleagues at Soho Press were very understanding,” she says with a laugh. But for Grames, publishing a writer she calls an “unrelenting world-builder” has been time well spent. “When Soho commissioned this challenging literary novel in translation,” she says, “we went into the venture imagining it would be a labor of love.”

Grames will measure the success of this expensive and long-gestating project not in units sold, but “by critical recognition and, if we’re lucky, awards consideration.” That said, “I’m thrilled to say that our first print run for ‘Lady Joker’ vastly exceeded any of our expectations. Based on the early demand we’ve seen among readers and gatekeepers alike, I am hopeful that it has the makings of a modern classic.”

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Woods is a book critic, editor of anthologies and author of the Detective Charlotte Justice procedurals.

Mother 3 Fan Translation gets a new update, adds three years worth of bugfixes and improvements - GBAtemp.net - Translation

Awesome! I really wish I could play it on GBA… but I never learned Japanese and still don't have a GBA flashcart.

Closest thing I can get to playing on GBA is using the 3DS. And that's what I'm going to do right now. *Sets avatar to Kumatora*

Thanks, for this article @Chary !