Greetings, readers!
A short update from me thus to assuage any fears or my being buried in books or succumbing to the total consumption of reading ancient tomes, which - mind you - is a superfluous repetition.
I am currently at work with a comparison of new fewer than 14 Japanese translations of The Emperor's New Clothes (Kejserens Nye Klæder) by Hans Christian Andersen, these range from 1888 right up to 1982, thus covering a considerable duration of time and consequently also linguistic styles. The story concerns as most probably know, a poignant political satire of a dandy-emperor who fancies any manner of clothes and also a means of ascertaining the competency of his courtiers to the point of being utterly cocksure in his own competency - as when two fraudulent tailors fabricate a magical cloth that only those worthy of their own position can see, suffice to say all of the Emperor's courtiers are fooled, his subjects and none the least His Majesty himself.
How then, would they adapt the story, translate the actual title of the imperial monarch himself? Considering the historical climate that the time and so on. Suffice to say the results are quite interesting and varying. There are also copious amounts of archaic Japanese court terms and keigo (polite speech) to go through, so look forward to that sometime either this week or the next.
The Christmas Carol project has stagnated somewhat due to a case of Yuletide stress -at that specific writing hour - and as such I have put in on hold, for the time being. It is nevertheless being worked on, so rest assured that there will come some manner of update within either this or the next month, taking the sheer amount of characters and details into consideration.
There will also be all manner of smaller articles on the way, as well, covering stuff ranging from random linguistic ruminations to character speech analysis.
Thus I humbly ask for a measure of your patience as I prepare the content as well as research for it for the eventual blog-articles!
どうか、ご信望下さいませ
Douka goshinbou kudasaimase