It was another cloudy day in London. Maybe there would be sunny spells and patchy drizzle later in the day. I was sitting on the top deck of a London bus gazing at nothing in particular on my way back from the museum. Intense light sometimes poured through the clouds and illuminated the old buildings. In these moments, I peered into the changing, the unchanging, and into my own being.

I wasn’t good at studying at all

A few years had passed since I graduated from high school. While working at a gallery, I was toying with the idea of studying antiques and art, and a friend of mine introduced me to a place I could study in London, England. I had to study English, but I made up my mind because I wanted to learn about antiques and art in the best place. Well, I was kidding myself. Without the slightest enthusiasm, I moved into a student dorm in north London and began attending language school.
 
I don't know why I wasn’t reluctant about studying English then. I didn't like or was good at English (and I still feel the same way). I was quite a straightforward F-grade student in middle school. I was never able to understand how to use the perfect tense in grammar. For me, English was like being forced to do an everlasting complicated memory quiz without knowing how to find the correct answer.

A Melting Pot

But the English I studied in England was much more flexible than the English I was taught. There were no three "continuous," "experience," and "complete” present perfect tenses. There were only specific rules I had to follow that would convey the sense that the past events were connected to the present. My classmates included a bossy Turk, a Russian who hated men, a bunch of calm and relaxed German-speaking Swiss, an Italian-speaking Swiss who always gave them an unsympathetic look, an enthusiastic Colombian, and a skirt-chasing Korean. They spoke pretty unsophisticated English, which of course, included my Japanized English, but it seemed like they were expressing their ideas and culture freely within a grammar framework.
 
After learning a little English, I was able to enter college. However, it took me a while after that to become a translator. And so I moved from London to Canterbury.

My Canterbury Tale

Canterbury’s most famous landmark is Canterbury Cathedral. It is the head church of the Church of England and is registered as a World Heritage Site. I studied the history and philosophy of art on a hill that overlooked this beautiful Gothic building.

During my course, I encountered Western philosophy and Japanese literature. In addition to art history, I also studied ethics and aesthetics. I learned how to see things, visualize them, and reconstruct them into words. Japanese friends who were studying comparative literature also influenced me a lot. I kept reading their recommendations of Japanese literature from the Meiji era onward and was entirely captivated by the works' meticulously woven and delicately crafted words. But sadly, neither of the above seemed to be useful for my future work at that time.

A few years later, I was doing my first English-to-Japanese translation as a translator. I noticed that my experiences in England had been reflected in each step of the translation process, from scoping out the source language document to refining the wordings. Translators need to figure out what the author is trying to convey in the source English and then visualize the function of that meaning, that is, to visualize what kind of effect it intends to leave. The visualized image is then translated to the target Japanese.
 
The pieces of writing awaiting translation are structured upon a framework called the English language and are given function by the expressed words, manifesting a unique kind of beauty. If I hadn't restudied English in England, I wouldn't have understood it, at least not as well as I do now. If I hadn't studied philosophy and art history together, I don't know if I would have been able to visualize the thoughts and retranslate them into words as easily. And I suppose that had I not touched the words of Japan's literary masters while I was there, I might not have been able to translate the beauty of English into equally beautiful Japanese.

And my story continues

I’d like to end my attempt to slap together a meaning for my experiences in England. London was the metropolis where I encountered inspiration and freedom. Canterbury allowed me to study near the cathedral every day and absorb everything I wanted. I am lucky that I had the opportunity to experience both and still cobble together a living. I like to joke around and tell people that there's not much to see in England, but I become terribly grumpy if I hear anyone mocking the place. For a twisted person like me, England may be my home away from home.

#Writer Profile
Name (or pen name): Harumaki
Division: Product, Product Planning
Time at WOVN: Three years

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