Translating Dogen demands a philosophy of translation. Many of those translating Dogen are not professional translators, which perhaps is why we so often fail to see coherent philosophies being applied.

The simplistic choice is between “literal” and “paraphrased” translations. These styles have names: formal and dynamic equivalence, or “form equivalence” and “functional equivalence”. Sometimes the terms “word for word” and “thought for thought” are seen as well.

The debate between the two schools is heated and often uninformed. The literalists accuse the paraphrasers of inserting their own opinions into the translation. The paraphrasers respond that the literalists create wooden translations that no one wants to or can read.

There are problems with both sides of course. No translation can be completely literal, since it must use the vocabulary and syntax of the target language. And if the objective of the paraphrasers is to “create the same effect in the mind of the reader of the translation as the original did in the mind of its,” clearly this is impossible given that the readers exist in different cultural and historical contexts.

Of course, which style to use depends on the goals of the translation and the target audience. A wider, more general audience would call for a more dynamic style, a narrower, more expert audience a more formal one. When the source and target languages are distant linguistically, a more dynamic style may be the only choice.

Dynamic equivalence was developed by the linguist Eugene Nida for Bible translation. He insisted that only this approach could create an approachable, meaningful Bible for the masses. Bible translations are clearly a useful analogy for translating Dogen. An interesting approach developed for the God’s Word translation is called closest natural equivalence translation.

Closest natural equivalence claims to achieve the following:

• provide readers with a meaning equivalent to the source language in the target language
• express that meaning naturally in a way that a native English speaker would have spoken or written
• express the meaning in a way that is as close as possible to the way the source language expressed the meaning

CNE asserts that an awkward translation by definition is not faithful to the original, while at the same time natural-sounding language in and of itself never suffices to make a translation good.

The obvious objection is that it may not be possible to convey meaning accurately in natural sounding language. I would assert, however, that it is simply a matter of time and effort on the part of the translator. It should not be out of the question to spend an hour, or even a day, on a single sentence. Naturally, this reduces translator throughput dramatically. It is striking, however, how in many cases, once the effort is made, the resulting natural English undeniably conveys the meaning of the original in a way much more compact and compelling that a mechanical translation might.

The web page quoted above ends with a caveat:

Translation can never be completely objective. Even when operating under the assumptions of closest natural equivalence, translators cannot produce a perfect translation. Translators use cautious judgment and maintain a keen awareness of all the factors needed for a full understanding of the source text. Among other things, translators need to understand the original language’s grammar and syntax, appreciate and understand literary devices used by the original authors, understand what kind of audience the original author had in mind when writing, and understand the modern target audience and its language. Because these factors call for balance and judgment, every translation (even those produced using closest natural equivalence) can be improved.

Zen-Brain Reflections is James Austin’s follow-up to “Zen and the Brain.”

Austin’s work and study has led him to a deep understanding of what it means to translate ancient philosophical texts. Below I quote at length from his discussion of translating the Sandokai by Sekito (Shih T’ou) (p. 330; my emphasis, slightly edited for clarity):

Can any translation today have the same meaning as did the original, a work composed of only 220 Chinese characters? Suppose you were to insist on having only a direct, literal translation of each original Sino-Japanese ideogram. It would be a crude version in broken pidgin English. Professional translators can only be humbled by all the major compromises they have had to make. Beyond the basic problem, the casual Western reader may not suspect how many other major semantic compromises can enter in.

Begin with the title itself. One soon discovers that this same Sino-Japanese title has been translated into English in diffferent ways. Some options from our own era are

• coincidence of difference and sameness
• merging of difference and unity [Loori]
• inquiry into matching halves
• realizing unity [Cleary]
• the coincidence of opposites
• the harmony of difference and equality [Shunryu Suzuki]
• the identity of relative and absolute [Glassman]

and so on.

The above examples suggest that different translators…might have chosen to insert aspects of either their own private experience, or earlier personal opinions, or even some doctrinal belief system into a given phrase. Moreover, each translator can have several other subjective needs…

Let us be more specific, citing only a few potential conflicts that a contemporary translator might need to resolve. Must I adhere rigidly to literal interpretations, to traditional doctrinal formulas (and often multiple footnotes) to remain within acceptable scholarly traditions? Or can I remain true to what experience tells me is the direct, immediate flash of Zen insight itself? Because surely this deepest experiential truth entails letting go of my own tendencies…to attach arcane, dated references that overburden a line and blur the central message.

Nor do the translator’s conflicts and compromises end there. Can I still be true to those few old original ideograms, yet express their flowing spirit and intent in a readable contemporary literary style? Furthermore, must I conspire with the original author in old mystifications, thereby perpetuating the notion that everything about Zen is forever mysterious, if not unknowable?

Austin then proceeds to give his own translation of the Sandokai, which, although I know little Chinese and have never studied this poem in detail, appears to be a major improvement over existing translations in terms of both fidelity and readability.

Here is an aspect of translation that often goes unnoticed, whether the document in question is a philosophical tract or a computer manual: the fluent translation is often actually more accurate. In other words, sloppiness on the part of the translator in understanding the original text tends to be correlated with sloppiness in rendering that understanding into the target language.

I’ll have more on Austin’s new book in the coming weeks.

“You always try to fit the original word to your understanding, instead of the other way round. But a good translator cannot be like that.”

I disagree profoundly (previous post) with these words of Mike Cross (website) addressing his teacher Gudo Nishijima in a comment (now deleted) on the latter’s blog. (Cross is perhaps best known as the co-translator of Dōgen’s Shōbō Genzō.)

Actually Mike, translators should neither “fit the original word to [their] understanding” nor the other way around. Instead, the original word(s) and the translator’s understanding should inform and resonate with each other.

Complaining about Nishijima’s rendering of the Sanskrit nirodha as “self-regulation” and proposing instead that it “means” “stopping, checking, inhibiting”, Cross goes on to say, “First you should say what the original word literally means; and then you should explain your interpretation of it”.

Now I know nothing about either Sanskrit or Buddhist theology. But I do know something about language and meaning, and this statement reveals an abysmal lack of understanding of the nature of both. The “original word” does not “literally mean” anything other than itself in its own language. Words are mere linguistic force fields; wet, squishy semantic blobs; kaleidoscopic mappings onto realities which themselves vary among both writers and readers.

Cross continues, “It is necessary to respect the original word more than one’s own opinion”.

Hmmm. I can “respect” the word(s) Genjō Kōan in its own language, but what does it mean to “respect” them when I am translating? The “literal meaning”, taking the “meaning” of “literal meaning” “literally”, is something like appear-become-public-notice. But in the Nishijima-Cross translation this is glossed, instead, as “The Realized Universe”. How does that translation “respect” the “literal meaning” of the “original word” Genjō Kōan? In the translator’s notes, Cross claims that genjō “means” realized. Who’s fitting words to his own understanding now? (Personally, I think “unfolding”, my translation, is a far better translation of genjo than “realized” (past tense), but then again, I do not claim to be “respecting” the original Japanese nor to be conveying its “literal meaning” as Cross does.)

Cross continues his criticism of Nishijima, saying “If people saw your own original translation of Shobogenzo, they would be astonished, because it is so interpretative”. It’s interesting to learn that Nishijima did an original translation into English. I’d love to see it. Interpretive? Well, I hope so. Every linguistic act—writing, translating, reading—is by definition an act of interpretation. And that’s the only way it could be.

What can we learn about translating Dogen from the problem of translating medieval Japanese poetry? Carl Kay (website, pictured), Harvard-trained Japan scholar, entrepreneur, and author, recently shared with me his senior thesis from nearly 30 years ago, entitled “The Translation of Classical Japanese Poetry.”

Kay lavishes praise on Kenneth Rexroth (Wikipedia entry), a critic, essayist, and translator of poetry. Says Kay, “…a reader of Rexroth’s translations experiences the freshness and intensity of the work…[Rexroth] concentrates on conveying the poetic experience.” Compared to scholars who are “concerned exclusively…with the meanings of the words [and whose translations] are as limited in their own way as translations that focus on other levels of the poetry”, Rexroth’s versions “capture the ‘meaning’ as clearly as the scholars but preserves the poetic intensity, the glow of the language, the force of syntax and rhythm that scholars often fail to bring over.”

Although poetry is clearly a different genre than Dogen’s writings, the two have more in common than you might think. Dogen brought a strong poem-like sensibility to his essays, in diction, cadence, word choice, and sentence structure. I would assert that the aspects of Rexroth’s translations praised by Kay are every bit as relevant when it comes to Dogen.

Kay takes issue with the translations of Brower and Miner, who were active in translating classical Japanese poetry in the mid 20th century, accusing them of “using” translation of Japanese poetry as a “vehicle” for their own analysis—for answering the question of what the poems “say”. “Considerations of the poetic experience are subordinated to an understanding of what the poem refers to outside of itself. The emphasis is not on the poem, but on cultural information. [Their] translations often blur into analysis…Their translation seems to be written to be appreciated by other scholars.”

Carl’s entire analysis applies as is to nearly all current translations of Dogen. The translators are not conveying the Dogen experience to us, but rather seem almost to be preaching at us, using Dogen as a weapon.

I will present more of Carl’s insights about translation in future posts.

We’ll take a look at the first line of Genjo Koan to explore some aspects of the translator’s assumptions and tasks.

The first phrase is:

諸法の仏法なる時節

Got that? Or not? Maybe it’s because you cannot read Japanese. Note—I’m assuming that. I’m assuming the reader cannot read Japanese characters and that therefore I need to do something about it. If I did not make that assumption, there would be no translation task. We want to provide something you can understand, at some level, and clearly given its unfamiliar script the original Japanese is not that, for you the Western reader. We’ve now made our first assumption. I’m highlighting this obvious point to emphasize that assumptions run throughout the translation process. They are assumptions about our readership, their capabilities, their interests.

To address this first problem, we’ll perform “transliteration”: converting one writing system to another. A standard transliteration would then give us:

shohou no buppou naru jisetsu

Got that? Or not? Maybe it’s because you cannot understand the words. There’s another assumption—that the reader cannot understand Japanese words and that therefore I need to do something about it. This is the second assumption necessary to provide something usable to the Western reader, another assumption about their capabilities.

To address this second problem, we’ll perform “translexicalization”—converting one set of words to another. That would yield:

all-law subject-particle Buddha-law be time

Got that? Or not? Maybe it’s because you cannot understand the grammar (syntax). Again, I’m assuming the reader cannot understand Japanese syntax and that therefore I need to do something about it. This is our third assumption. To address this third problem, we’ll perform “transsyntaxification”—converting one grammar to another. That gives us:

When all-law be Buddha-law

Aha, we now see something that resembles English. Some people would already call this a “translation”, although perhaps Nabokov’s term “transposition” would be more appropriate. We could actually publish this and plausibly claim it was English, and that we had “translated” it. But do you really get this? Or not? I’ll assume that you cannot understand the terms “all-law” and “Buddha-law”, which we went to such trouble to “translate”.

To make this “understandable”, we need to do something with these words. Leaving aside “all” for the time being, the “law” is the translation of Japanese 法 (hou), which we know comes from the Chinese, which we know is a translation of the Sanskrit dharma. So we can translate this as “all dharmas”, and the Buddha-law part as “Buddha-dharma”. Now we get:

When all dharmas are Buddhadharma

which actually looks like real live English as written by a real Zen master and seems really deep too. It’s a translation. But do you get that? Or not? Maybe it’s because you still cannot understand the words. This is yet another, fifth assumption—that such words are meaningless to the typical English reader. I’m assuming the reader cannot understand “dharma” and that therefore I need to do something about it. This assumption should be no more controversial than the first four, but yet it’s one which many scholars refuse to make.

Of course, many knowledgeable Buddhists in the West will understand “dharma”, or at least think they do. So if I was translating for them, this might be an OK translation, Problem is, they represent about 0.001% of all the people in the world that are potentially interested in what this is saying. What about the other 99.999%? We don’t care about them? Or maybe they should just learn Buddhist terminology first? Dogen was writing for 99% of Japanese people. Is it OK that I should randomly decide that it’s OK to arbitrarily change Dogen’s assumption about his audience? No, I should also come up with an English translation that addressed 99% of people, like Dogen was.

To stop at this point and say that the “dharma” translation is “correct” or “loyal” or “strict” is a copout. It’s just being lazy. By doing so, I would be violating Dogen’s implicit audience assumption. Until I do something about “dharma”, I still don’t really have a “translation”, but a “trans-literal-posi-syntactico-lation”. Of course, if that’s all I’m trying to represent it as—fine. If I lack confidence in what Dogen might have been trying to say and am trying to cover my ass—fine. But do we really want “cover-your-ass” translations?

To make this into a true translation—an expression that maps to the mental images and behavioral impact of what Dogen said—we have to go deeper. This is where some people get cold feet, saying this is going beyond “translation” and entering the realm of “interpretation”. Come on. Every single person that reads Dogen’s words is interpreting them. It’s certainly not unreasonable to ask the translator, presumably well-informed, to participate in this interpretive process.

So to make “all-law” meaningful to Westerners, what should we do with the “law” (法 dharma)? Some Buddhist dictionaries list as many as several dozen meanings of the term. But it’s a fair guess that in this case the meaning is “phenomena” or “things”. So we have “many things”, which is indeed how Tanahashi translates this.

But what about “Buddha-dharma”? Tanahashi translates this as is—a major copout; he might as well have left it in the original Japanese characters. Cleary gives us “Buddha-teachings”, which seems to be going too far. Neither translation reflects the 法 common to 諸法• and 仏法. That would seem to be a major oversight. Whatever we want to do with Dogen, we should respect his style, and in this crucially important first phrase of the first sentence in the first chapter of his magnum opus Shobo Genzo he explicitly chose wordings which shared the word 法 (hou, dharma). Certainly this is something we should respect.

Are we there yet? Certainly, Dogen intended for his writings to “mean” something, even if only for himself, as one Dogen scholar I recently met indicated the possibility of. “Mean” for whom? For the people that read them. Dogen was certainly sophisticated enough that he knew that a wide range of people would read his works, and presumably wrote them so that all could “understand” them. It would not surprise me if Dogen intuited that people from the 21st century would read his essays, including people from other cultures—given his experience in China, he was certianly aware of cross-cultural issues. Our duty, then, in translating Dogen, is to realize his vision and produce a version of his thoughts which is meaningful across centuries and cultures. And translating literally using terms such as “buddha-dharma” clearly fails that test.

Here in the West, we have the concept of “God”. No-one knows exactly what it means, but in a way everyone does. It refers to something external, if you prefer, or something internal, if you prefer, an unknown essence. This is precisely the sense of the “buddha” in Dogen’s “buddha-dharma” phrase. In other words, “buddha-dharma” refers to God’s law, or things of God. As such, that is exactly how it should be “translated”. That is why I insist that “shohou no buppou naru jisetsu” should be translated exactly as

when all things are God’s things

That is what Dogen “meant”. It is not “interpretive”. It is the precise expression of Dogen’s intent, to the extent possible, in modern English.

There is one additional step which is possible and desirable: to fine-tune the English style. Again, Dogen’s Japanese was beautiful, flowing, almost poetic. Presumably he adopted this style for a reason—to give his writings greater impact and make them more memorable. By producing clunky English and trying to pass it off as a translation of Dogen, we are denying this prominent aspect of Dogen’s prose.

One aspect of English is that it makes verbs play a more central role in the overall semantics, preferring sentences with an active feeling. In that spirit, in our final, stylistic step, we will move to a verb-centric, English-like syntax, while also reading a bit more into what Dogen is trying to say with his use of “jisetsu” (when):

Sometimes, God shows us a world of things…

Or, perhaps evne

This world of things in godly terms…

Now, we just have to go through this process for the remaining 999 phrases of Genjo Koan.

Vladimir Nabokov is fond of literal translations—and he is certainly someone we should pay attention to.

The Nov. 7, 2005 issue of the New Yorker, in a great article by editor David Remnich entitled “The Translation Wars”, from which much of the content of this post is lifted, talks about Nabokov’s ideas on translating, from Russian to English in particular.

Personally, I concur wholeheartedly with Cervantes, who is quoted in the article:

Reading a translation is like looking at the Flanders tapestries from behind; you can see the basic shapes but they are so filled with threads that you canot fathom their original lustre.

I myself have viewed many such tapestries from the rear.

Now on to Nabokov. He says of all the sins of a translator

The third, and worst, degree of turpitude is reached when a masterpiece is planished and patted into such a shape, vilely beautified in such a fashion as to conform to the notions and prejudices of a given public. Ths is a crime, to be punished by the stocks as palgiarists were in the show-buckle days.

He goes on to say that when translating his intent is to provide the reader with a literal-minded “crib, a pony. And to the fidelity of transposal I have sacrificed everyhting: elegance, euphony, clarity, good taste, and even grammar.”

So he’s “transposing” now, instead of “translating”? He captured his philosophy of translation in a pithy poem, also published in the New Yorker, way back in 1955:

What is translation? On a platter / A poet’s pale and glaring head, / A parrot’s speech, a monkey’s chatter, / And profanation of the dead. / The parasites you were so hard on / Are pardoned if I have your pardon, / O Pushkin, for my strategem. / I travelled down your secret stem, / And reached the root, and fed upon it; / Then, in a language newly learned, / I grew another stalk and turned / Your stanza, patterned on a sonnet, / Into my honest roadside prose—/ All thorn, but cousin to your rose.

The noted critic Edmund Wilson (Wikipedia), Nabokov’s erstwhile friend, begged to differ. Reviewing Nabokov’s translation of Pushkin’s Onegin (Wikipedia), he accused him of “bald and awkward language”, a desire to “torture both the reader and himself”, “sado-masochism”, “actual errors in English”, an “unnecessarily clumsy style”, “vulgar” phrases, inaccurate transliteration, a “lack of common sense”, and “serious failures of interpretation”. Hmmm. Sounds like some Dogen translations I know. (Later Wilson admitted that these criticisms were “more damaging” than he had intended.)

This tension between literal and interpretive translations pervades the entire translation world as it applies not just to novels but even computer manuals. (I don’t think I’d like my Japanese digital camera to come with a manual translated by the Nobel laureate author of “Lolita”.) But one can’t help feeling that the people having this war of words are missing the point—or at least failing to clearly state, or more likely understand, the groundrules: the nature and intent of translation itself.

I’m deeply interested in this discussion because I’ve translated, and am still translating, the 13th-century Japanese Zen master Dogen. The more I work on Dogen, the more I move toward the interpretive side. In the next post, I will go through a specific passage from Dogen as a means to shed light on the true nature of the interpretive decisions the translator must make, across the entire lexical/syntactic/semantic spectrum, and how they relate to the purpose and meaning of the translation.

When I wrote in an earlier post about Japan’s “Batting God”, “God” was a direct translation of the Japanese kamisama. The nuances line up perfectly. Both Gods and kamisama are unrivaled, omniscient, and omnipotent entities—in their particular contexts, batting in this case.

So it’s not surprising that when Christianity reached Japan, the native word kamisama was immediately adopted as the translation for “God”. (African tribesmen also used native words for supernatural beings to refer to the new white God the missionaries introduced.)

“God” itself derives from the Proto-Indo-European “ghut”, meaning “that which is invoked”, “that which is called upon”, although some scholars think the origin is a word meaning “to sacrifice”. The alternative, deva/theos/deus/dios/dieu, derives from a different Indo-Germanic root meaning “to shine”.

Originally “god” and its etymological forebears indicated any spiritual force or influence present in a thing, a phenomenon, an animal, or a place. This nuance is extremely close to that of the Latin “numen” (whose original meaning, by the way, is “a nod of the head”).

Interestingly, this is also precisely the original nuance of the Japanese word kami. Kami are the gods or spirits worshipped at each Shinto shrine, and indeed the name “Shinto” means “Way of the Kami”. A kami could be the spirit of a well-known local figure, a more traditional historical/mythical god-type being, or, just as easily, a river, mountain, animal, or even rock. I remember visiting one shrine where the object of veneration, located on the back wall and symbolizing the kami being worshipped, was simply a hole in the wall—letting you gaze through at the mountain behind the shrine. The mountain was the kami.

[Note that many students assume that kami meaning God is the same word as, or shares an origin with, a different kami meaning “up”/”above”. But linguists tell us that this is not the case—the “mi” of the kami meaning God was originally a different sound than the “mi” of the word meaning “up”. So just as English “god” and “good” are not related (God is not necessarily good?), neither are Japanese kami/god and kami/up (God is not necessarily up?).]

We thus have the odd historical parallel that words which originally pointed to a diversity of spirits, immanent in objects and places, were borrowed to refer to a monotheistic entity in both hemispheres: the West (“god”) and, much later, the East (“kami”).

(Calligraphy by Kanjuro Shibata Sensei.)

Look up the word “think” in an English-Japanese dictionary and you’ll find two main alternatives: “kangaeru” and “omou”.

Often when Japanese splits a concept more narrowly than English, native English speakers have a horrible time learning to make the distinction. I’ve never known of anyone who had trouble with “kangaeru” vs. “omou”, though.

That’s because the difference is clear. “Kangaeru” refers to a higher-brain process, “omou” to a lower-brain one. “Kangaeru” is linear and deductive and rational, it figures and reckons, it is based on assumptions, reaches conclusions. “Omou”, on the other hand, is an attitude, a stance, a belief, almost a feeling.

Descartes famously asserted, “I think, therefore I am” (or, “Je pense, donc je suis”). Inexplicably, this has been translated into Japanese as ‘’ware omou, yue ni ware ari”. That’s right—”think” (or “cogito” in “cogito ergo sum”) has been rendered as “omou”, instead of the obviously correct “kangaeru”. I would like to track down the Japanese scholar responsible for this original mistranslation, which has certainly confused countless Japanese students of philosophy over the centuries.

Talking about my cat’s behavior in Japanese, I never use “kangaeru”—that’s simply not something cats do. But I use “omou” all the time: “gG [cat’s name] thinks he’s going to get fed.” So this mistake in translating Descartes’ phrase is by no means benign. The mistranslation has the effect of making Descartes’ proof of existence apply to my cat!

Full moon overhead
In the waning days of March.
Yes, dying in spring
Beneath a blossoming tree
That would be the choice I’d make.

This is my translation of a famed waka by Saigyo (see picture), the 12th-century Japanese poet/monk:

ねがわくば
花の下にて
春死なん
そのきさらぎの
もち月のころ

The knowledgeable reader will notice that I’ve completely reversed the order of the lines, although I’ve maintained the 5-7-5-7-7 meter. It turns out when translating from Japanese into English, reversing the order is often the key to a more compelling, readable, or understandable rendition—not only for poems, but computer manuals as well.

This technique applies to everything from two-word pairs, to clauses in a parallel construction, to phrases in sentences, to sentences within paragraphs. Even entire sections can often be usefully reconstructed by moving the last paragraph in the Japanese to the top, and vice versa. I haven’t yet experimented with reorganizing the chapters of a book along these lines, but it seems worth a try.

Perhaps we should try this with Dogen’s Shobo Genzo as well—moving Genjo Koan from the very front to the very back, where it would serve as a thundering conclusion to the masterpiece, rather than a mere introduction.

For extra credit, I’ll accept reader hypotheses, involving your favorite theories of evolutionary linguistics or neuropsychology, as to why Japanese should exhibit such a radically reversed order from English at all levels.

Saigyo’s wish was granted: he died on the 16th day of Kisaragi (translated as “March” above).

Foreign languages offer interesting, useful words, like gambari, with nuances and shades we sometimes cannot find in our own language, and it is not surprising that we end up borrowing them. Gambari has not entered English yet, but it should and probably will.

William Safire, our friendly NYT columnist whose ignorance of multilingual computing we pointed out in a recent post, recently took up this topic in his weekly column in the New York Times Magazine.

Introducing a Japanese example, he starts off with an astonishing assertion:

Many foreign languages are difficult for the Japanese to learn because their language is written vertically.

Now, I have heard many theories as to why Japanese should be so poor at learning foreign languages, but this one is brand new! For one thing, it’s based on a false assumption, that Japanese is written vertically. In fact, vertical Japanese is found only in novels, a few literary magazines, school textbooks, and station nameplates hanging vertically on pillars in train stations.

It’s true that Japanese was originally written vertically, as was Chinese of course, and I’ve been unable to find any information on why this might have been the case. What is known is that horizontal writing first appeared around the beginning of the Meiji period, and became widespread (in left-to-right form) after the war. The most common theory is that this is another example of the well-known Japanese inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West. Psychologists have found no evidence that either horizontal or vertical writing is superior from the cognitive standpoint.

Off topic, but there may be cognitive differences between left-to-right and right-to-left writing. One researcher points out that since most humans are right-handed, left-to-right is a more natural direction, but in that case, why were the first written languages apparently right-to-left? One possibility is that writing was originally localized in the right hemisphere of the brain, and the shift to left-to-right writing (around the time of Greeks) coincided with a shift in hemispheric dominance for the literacy task (which is a huge topic in itself).

This would be consistent with the timing of the emergence of Chinese characters and the fact that the vertical columns in which they were written also went from right to left. Of course, writing with a brush instead of a quill eliminated some of the logistical problems with right-to-left writing, like dragging your sleeve through the ink you just put down on the paper.

Returning to our friend William Safire, he seems to be getting more and confused as time goes on. The example he trots out for a Japanese word describing a concept not in English is:

They have come up with the phrase yoko (‘’horizontal’‘) meshi (‘’boiled rice’‘), meaning ‘’a meal eaten sideways.’’ Yoko meshi evokes the stress that comes from trying to make oneself understood in a foreign language.

Unfortunately, neither myself nor any native Japanese informant I consulted has ever heard of this word. It gets only 51 Google hits. From the references on the web, the tiny number of Japanese who have used this term do not themselves seem to agree on its meaning, and none of them think it means Safire’s “stress coming from trying to speak a foreign language”. The dominant nuance is of trying to talk with foreigners while eating, while another meaning is apparently simply “Western food”.

Where did you come up with this word anyway, Bill?