hello, everyone. i'm currently translating a novel by mishima yukio entitled "utsukushii hoshi" (the beautiful star), which was published in 1962. in the novel, the main character reads a book called "enban no furusato", which he says was published in london, and contains a description of the thomas mantell incident. the title would be translated something like "the origin of saucers" or "the birthplace of saucers" or "the native place of saucers", or perhaps even "where saucers come from".. the reason i'm posting this thread is because i'm trying to determine the actual title of this book, which i am assuming is an actual book and not something mishima made up. i've searched for the japanese title and various possible english titles but to no avail. if anyone has an idea of what this book might be (it must have been written between 1948 and 1962 and published in london, as aforementioned), please let me know. thanks very much.
All I can suggest is using babelfish.altavista.com to perhaps attempt to translate the original name (you'll have to type it into the site with the correct font), doing so might suggest what title is accurate and make it a little easier to search, although it's difficult to search because there are alot of third party books on some of the subject material. It especially doesn't help not knowing if it's a real book, who the publisher is or even what year it was published.... its a preverbial needle in haystack.
hmm.. for a few reasons, i suppose. firstly, because i love mishima. his writing is truly beautiful, although his extreme political views and misogyny aren't really something with which i can empathize. this was his only attempt at writing something science-fiction and it failed. he uses a family of aliens as the main characters of the novel in order to discuss his thoughts on the shortcomings of humankind and whether we're worthy of preservation. critics were harsh and the public found it too avant-garde for him. thus, forty-two years later, it still hasn't been translated into english. secondly, because i love translating japanese literature and it's what i want to do for the rest of my life.. so it's much fun for me, although extremely time-consuming. i've only done classical literature up until now, and i wanted to try something modern. i thought mishima might be a good place to start. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! thank you for asking. take care.
hahah i just tried that and it translated it as "home of disk". yikes. thanks for the suggestion though.
The information would not be easily obtained from the Internet. Consider - you are searching for a book published in London between 1948 and 1962 for which the Japanese translation has been "enban no furusato". Your three translations of enban no furusato works both ways. Obviously any number of books about Flying Saucers might have been translated as "enban no furusato", and there have been a very great number of such books. Carl Jung wrote a book called Flying Saucers, probably in the time frame you are thinking of - you may as well translate it as Jung's book. Good luck with your translation, I hope you can get it published (I cannot find The Beautiful Star in English - which btw would have been my other solution; for this one specific thing, find a previous translation and see what they put).
thank-you, silas. it is true that this information would not be easily obtained in this manner.. i thought perhaps i would get lucky on a message board like this Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! i know there have been numerous books about flying saucers.. i was hoping that perhaps only a few of them have written about the mantell incident and that may give people a hint as to what the book might be. i'll look into jung's book.. thanks for the suggestion. thank-you also for your words of good luck. i do distantly hope that it will get published, but i'm only 23 and i know my narrative style needs much work. serious editing will be mandatory before any hope of publishing. the only translation that currently exists is in italian ("stella meravigliosa"). although i don't know any italian, i should perhaps check that translation to see if it might give me a hint about this book. thanks again, and take care.
Delightful. It was a real pleasure to read a thread that doesn't consist of rude bitching and back-stabbing, in which people converse in an intelligent fashion and try to help each other. You have kick started my day with a really nice, positive boost. Thanks to you all. And Robotummy, I don't know where you live, but I would wander down Charing Cross Road in London, visiting every second hand bookshop until I found the guy who knows the names of every book on flying saucers ever written and has most of them in storage. There will be such a character and if he doesn't work in one of those shops one of the assistants will know who he is. Good luck. (If that ploy doesn't work you are still going to meet a bunch of bibliophiles, and probably one or two who are into translation, so the trip wont be a total waste.)
Hello there, Sorry to reinvigorate this thread but I have a question to robotummy? Any luck with the translation and the publishers? Huge Mishima and science fiction fan and when I read about him doing a science fiction novel I was amazed and instantly tried to find if it was in publication, alas it isn't, so any news? I'd certainly buy a copy. Regards
beautiful planet I believe that Mishima is referring to "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" by Edward J. Ruppelt, published in London in (I believe) 1955. The "Report" refers extensively to the Mantell case. I believe Mishima tarted up the title to make it more fun, and that you should probably translate his title more or less literally. He also toys with the "facts" of the Mantell case a bit. Oh wait. This thread was from 2004?
