[Blog Post in Idleness] ゆるいブログ記事

「すこしずつ味わいに値します」
噛めば噛むほど味が出る、のことか？

I was going over the thought over poetry last week. I read some poems, and also wrote something. - I recalled I used to spend much time on reading and writing, and during my 20s I had a call from an editor of a publisher. We didn't meet just because over the telephone he mentioned "The Wild Geese" written by Ogai Mori and also because I had gained much weight and I was thinking I had to eat more greens (which doesn't make any sense...) I think that is how I spent my late 20s.... I don't remember most of the people I met around that time... I was using a TOSHIBA word processor and I didn't know anything about website or e-mails. Fifteen years have passed since then, I am currently using a TOSHIBA computer. It is funny when I start thinking about that. In my 20s, the world looked like the stories written by Rampo Edogawa. There were more secrets in both the society and individuals. Words coming from an individual’s mouth sounded differently. How differently did it sound to me? It is like a difference between LED lights and fluorescent lights. More things that have happened in society used to be unrevealed. More things that were covered up were not uncovered. Information did not spread this fast across the border. Communication with someone abroad was not common. Complaints and accusations against bad or nasty groups or individuals were not to be known, unless your message was sent to a newspaper company or a magazine editor and be published in the media. Only a few people made it happen. You could not give out your voices unless you already have power or influence over society. I wrote stories as my hobby and some appeared in magazines...

One of the editors who was located far away from where I had lived wanted my short story to be printed on their magazine. With his very polite letter I was advised to revise a couple of places in the original. He said some of the words and phrases were not appropriate to be read by the readers I didn’t know. He encouraged me to keep writing. Years later, I published one silly and weird book. Then I made a very little money by writing 2 more books. One was on the mental health for business people, and the other on preparation for natural disasters. - I don't think they helped someone out who had problems with mental conditions or had a hard time when a disaster happened. – Information technology is amazing. The speed of progress should be not normal if I jumped over here from 1980s.

I imagine innocent mistakes and errors must have been more tolerable than nowadays. They must have had less impact. – However in the 21^st century, with advanced technology and potential risks around us, things that might have been thought less of in the past (such as a poor translation of documents or miscommunications) now contain potential risks, and impacts can be huge and serious.

– As a supervisor of technical translation and bilingual system engineer (including CATIA operations), the importance and criticality of translation have become bigger than when I worked in Japan as a bilingual tech supporter. – If this situation is overlooked, I don’t have a clue what would happen next.