Blog – Page 2 – Translation Networks

Cataloguing of Works in Japanese and Japanese-Related Languages in HathiTrust

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When I was searching through HathiTrust for Japanese works, I came across works that have different writing formats and sometimes contain rare, indigenous languages but are all categorized simply as ‘Japanese’. In this post, I would like to bring attention to these subtleties and make connections to collections that some of my other classmates have created with similar ideas in order to aid the effort to create a Translation Network with rich connections that artificial intelligence cannot recognize.

The screencast below is showing a work in HathiTrust that is categorized as written in Japanese. It is true that it is mostly in Japanese, but the work is about the Ainu culture and language – a indigenous group in northern Japan – and contains words from their language, albeit in katakana and romanji since Ainu does not have a written system. I would not go as far as saying it is miscatalogued, but I believe having a more granular approach to cataloguing works will make the HathiTrust experience richer. My classmate, Teddy Sweeney, had a similar experience which he outlined in his post, where he found a work that was catalogued as French but was not written in French, and a work that was in Slovak but was catalogued as an ‘Undetermined’ language.

In the Sawyer Seminar that the University of Michigan Department of Comparative Literature held, speaker Xiaoxi Zhang, during the ‘lightning talks of engagements with HathiTrust sources’, mentioned the transition of horizontal text in China from being written right to left to left to right after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. This can be seen in the work The Crescent Moon linked in Ali Bolcakan’s Translation Network, where the horizontal title in Chinese is written right to left. In Japan as well, horizontal text was mostly written right to left until after WWII (after WWII, they were all written in left-to-right format). Some great examples found in HathiTrust are from newspapers, and the pdf and image below are pages from newspapers in HathiTrust. Both pages have horizontal titles that are read from right to left. When looking at their catalog records in HathiTrust, there is no mention of the writing format and for those who are unable to read Japanese, it would be impossible to recognize that one horizontal text in Japanese is written right-to-left and another left-to-right. My classmate Claire Russell brought up a similar concern in her post. Her collection is about Korean works with mixed writing systems – specifically works containing Hangul and Hanja. They are very different writing systems, yet they are not differentiated in the catalog record. She and I both believe that categorizing works by the specific writing systems/formats they use, even within the same language, would be highly valuable to HathiTrust users.

mdp-39015067855737-13-1649303959Download

Cataloguing of Works in Japanese and Japanese-Related Languages in HathiTrust Read More »

Japanese American Experience in WWII

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Link to my HathiTrust collection: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=758227452

Title Page of “Nisei in Uniform”
Title Page of “The evacuation and relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II”
These two book titles represent the focus of my HathiTrust collection. My collection looks at the Japanese American experience during WWII including (but not limited to) Japanese American incarceration and Japanese Americans in the U.S. military.

Introduction

As a Japanese American, I have always been interested in the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II. That is why I decided to focus my collection on this topic. My collection looks at the treatment of Japanese Americans on the home front (mainly at Japanese Incarceration) and their service in the military. Before I started curating this collection, my knowledge on Japanese Americans service in the military was mainly on the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, since those were the units that my family members had fought in. Therefore the first text that really caught my eye was “Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during WWII”. It was interesting to read about how essential Japanese Americans were during WWII in Military Intelligence units.

Connections

A Page from “Nisei in Uniform”

I chose this image from the “Nisei in Uniform” book for a couple of reasons. First, the top half of the page is an attention grabbing photo showing the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The bottom half of the page features photos of three soldiers, all Americans, who volunteered for military service from incarceration camps. My translation network map connects some of my sources (such as this one) with the Library of Congress: Tagore on the lightning talks slide. The Library of Congress source shows the different ways that Rabindranath Tagore’s name is romanized and translated. I saw a connection since with Japanese American names such as the names of these men, the name must be romanized and there are multiple ways to romanize their names (with some variations being more common than others).

I think that Jacky’s collection on “Education in the 1900s in China” can be connected to my collection. There are multiple texts in my collection looking at the education system during World War II. For example, one of the texts in my collection is on Japanese language programs at the University of Michigan during the war, and another is on Army Japanese language schools. My collection also looks at the Japanese American experience in Internment Camps, which includes schools for the children that were incarcerated there. Jacky’s post mentions how people debated whether politics should be discussed about. This discussion about what should be included in the education curriculum is something that would have occurred in Japanese Internment Camps as well.

Sawyer Seminar

In the closing remarks of the Sawyer Seminar, my professor Christi Merrill said that human elements can change the way that we see the connection and histories between different texts. This is something that I experienced in class, since while looking for connections between my collection and my classmates’ collections, I had a difficult time finding a connection to Michael’s collection. However, since Michael is knowledgeable in Sufism (where I am not), Michael was able to find a connection between Sufism and Japanese Incarceration.

Category/Tags Name

I think that one category name that could connect my post with my classmates post is the category of “Historical Events”. Even if their collections are not truly focused on a historical event, there could be a certain event that affects their collection. For example, Kristen mentioned in her blog post that Japanese writing changed from traditionally being written right to left to be written left to right after World War II. Therefore, our collections could be connected in an even smaller category of “World War II”, but even more of our classmates collections could be included in the broader category of “Historical Events”

This screencast highlights a keyword of “Education” which can be connected both to Japanese Incarceration as well as the Military, and it shows three texts in my collection that can be connected to this keyword. As mentioned earlier, when connecting my collection to Jacky’s collection, there were schools in the Interment Camps for Incarcerated children as well as Japanese Language Schools for Military Intelligence at the University of Michigan. I also show how the catalog records of the three texts (The evacuation and relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II, The Army Japanese language school, and The Japanese language programs at the University of Michigan during World War II) are not tagged to be related to education at all. The second two texts do not have any tags, which can make it difficult for humans to make connections and impossible for bots to make connections between these texts

Important Links

Japanese American Experience in WWII Read More »

Hanzi? Kanji?

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My collection: http://: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=1122358922

This collection is based on works written by Tao, Qian and Su, Shi. They were both very famous authors one thousand years ago and their works are wide spread in East Asia. The screenshots shows the Chinese version and the Japanese version of Su, Shi’s Qian Chibi Fu. Even though they look very similar, how they sound are very different. Take the first sentense for example, the Chinese version is pronounced as “Ren xu zhi qiu” while the Japanese version is “jin jyutsu no aki.” They sound completely different from each other. It is interesting to see how Chinese and Japanese have similar writing system but very different speaking system one thousand years ago.

As you can see in the screenshots below, this book has Chinese on one page and Japanese on another page and their writing systems share so many similarities. I am able to establish a connection to The Baitál pachísí in the lightning talk mindmap. It is very similar to the books written in multiple languages during the colonial era. In addition, the Xin yue ji (The crescent moon) also connects to the example below since both are collections of poems. Both are written in non-simplified Chinese in a vertical order from right to left. However, as you read the actual content of them, you can find that their use of grammar and choice of words are completely different while the hanzi characters they use are the same. Xin yue ji is more colloquial and informal and my example is more serious and hard to understand.  

Catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102432966

Click on the screenshot to see the Hathitrust page.

Chinese

Japanese (starting from the second right most column)

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3628003&view=1up&seq=58&skin=202

From Xiaoxi Zhang’s presentation on a Chinese translation of Bengali prose poems via English, I learnt that Chinese has two different sets of characters and writing systems. To me, it is mind-blowing to see that written Chinese is completely different from today, and I am unable to read if I time traveled to China 100 years ago. Also, Zhang’s presentation is one of my major reasons to research deep into ancient Chinese literature in Asian297. During my research, I found a fun fact that at that time, translated books about math, science, and engineering were written from left to right horizontally at that time, since the translators found it annoying and hard to read if they tried to squeeze all the math formulas in the Chinese texts written horizontally.

In Kimberly’s blog, I really like how she compared two versions of Jing Ping Mei published in different times to show how the way of language is being used and the examples of the transformation of Chinese characters. Even though both literature and characters evolved a lot during centuries, from her example, I learned the change in the language itself. And the later part is a perfect example of how Chinese change in its form of writing, making connection to my discussion about the ancient writing system in China and Japan, as well as my connection to Xin Yue Ji.

Jing Ping Mei and Chinese Character Transformation

Highlighting translation

I managed to get access to the no-full-view book via the interlibrary loan, which is super cool. The book is a Chinese-English translation of the poems and the author made connection between Tao, Qian, the poet, and a British poet, David Watson since Tao, Qian work satifies Watson’s theory of poetry. This is a connection that can never be found by robots.

Category: translation

Under this category, I am able to connect my work with abschmit, tsween, huang, zhang and yan’s discussion on their collections

Link to network: http://www.translationnetworks.com/networks/341

Hanzi? Kanji? Read More »

Mulan

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Before starting college, I had never learned anything related to Asian history in high school. Although, I did grow up with Disney’s Mulan and other Chinese legends like the Moon Goddess. I also watched The Guardian Brothers, which was based on another Chinese folktale similarly changed as the Western version of Mulan was created. I never realized that these stories were based on other stories from Chinese culture and not something they created based on their culture. This is why when I got to college, I really wanted to go into Asian Studies, and from my classes here, I feel I am finally putting the histories together little by little. From my Asian 235 class, we learned about how Star Wars was inspired by a Japanese movie. Then in my Asian 263 class, we learned about how translations and how these texts came together. This is interesting because I remember hearing about these philosophers when I was younger, and it shows that each country or culture really influences each other. This is why I think Translation Networks are very important to us because they can tell us the histories behind how things came to be today, but also what things were like during that time, what ideas they held, events that influenced literature, and so much more. I wanted to focus on this idea of how everything is connected, and there is a starting point or origin to every story and idea, and this is why I decided to focus on Mulan, as it is just one representation of a whole group and how its history is much more than just what Disney made it out to be.

My collection: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis&c=1329525894

My Collection focuses on different variations of the original Poem Ballad of Mulan from different time periods or across different cultures and languages (mostly only Chinese and English). The Ballad of Mulan doesn’t tell a full story and leaves out certain parts that are prominent in the US or other Chinese retellings of the story, which is what makes these variations of the story open for interpretation. This collection aims to find these discrepancies and the background regarding why it is the way it is by finding how these stories are telling these messages through how it is told.

This is the English translated poem of Mulan within a book of other translated Chinese poems, and I never knew that Mulan was based on a poem that has survived many years. I couldn’t find the original one on HathiTrust, but I did find this translation and what I thought was interesting about it was that it lacks lots of details that were mentioned in the Disney version. There were no mentions of what happened during the war or what happened after the war. There are many fill-in-the-blanks needed to be done, and there were many adaptations in China that I was not able to find and understand, but I do know it is slightly different for each one. I think it would be very fascinating to see all of these differences and similarities.

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006763773

As it turns out, the other story that I originally thought was the same as my main source above is not the same as it turns out to be. Although they both include similar pictures (which is why I thought they were the same), I think that connections would be very cool to look into more if you had more knowledge on this subject. 

In addition to the similar photos, there are also ads included in the books. I wonder why this is because in the US we do not include ads within our books, and it only contains the writing. This might be something else to look into and how texts can tell us about the people of the past for what they like and how the ad is targeting them. Overall, I wish I could’ve found English translations of the text of Mulan and discovered what made these separate distinctions between the stories. I did, however, find a source that did tell me a little bit about how each story had a focus based on the cultural elements of each time, such as a focus on filial piety and then more on being a strong woman. Something I learned from a classmate is that there is also an effect of literature on people, for example, how people were against the stories she found because the topic was taboo. In addition, too many other students showed me that it could be both ways: from culture impacting literature and literature being important to history. It shows that history, culture, and the people all influence each other whether we acknowledge it or not. This is what makes literature so fascinating to me because for every story, there is a past, and for every story, it makes an impact on the people. This is something that I got from Xiaoxi’s lightning talk on how some Chinese texts have traditional and simplified Chinese characters written in them; that really helped me to see how “relationships are expressed in language.” 

Mulan Read More »

The Vietnamese Diaspora to America

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Have you ever searched yourself on the internet? Dig into every search result to see what is mentioned about you? Can you find social media pages? Pictures of yourself? In this project, I sought to do just that: research more about myself. But instead of starting from my name, I sought to start from who gave me my name, and that is my parents!

This is what I found what’s accessible on the internet for me…

Welcome!

My HathiTrust collection attempts to explore different parts of the Southeast Asian Diaspora to America with a focus on Vietnam. As a child of refugees from the Vietnam war, this project gave me the opportunity to investigate a more political and historical point of view of the United States in the 1900s. Pieces feature a local newspaper about a Vietnamese community in Virginia, the naturalization and immigration processes, a directory of public programs for Indochinese refugees, and more! I wanted to know the circumstances my parents and relatives were in that causes them to be a part of the diaspora to the United States, and understand from an academic perspectives the processes they went through to acclimate and assimilate to a new foreign world.

My sister was born in 1998, a year after the article below was published. My parents heavily relied on government programs and the community they resided in to provide support in their transition to the States and the piece details so the programs provided. Kentwood, Michigan is now a huge hub for immigrants. So much so, my high school was the 7th most diverse in the country when I graduated in 2018. Additionally, many of the Vietnamese students at the University of Michigan is from the Grand Rapids area similar to myself.

A newspaper article from 1997.

Sawyer Seminars Synergies

Barbara’s discussion the Sawyer talks detailing HaithTrust’s data and metadata search methodologies came full circle when I was curating my own collection. I wanted a diverse set of pieces that would be representative of the political climate at the time in regards to immigration pre and post Vietnam War. Using quotes, experimenting with different languages and terms, etc. I sometimes found myself struggling to find many pieces with a direct tie to my intended topic.

This reminded me of Ben from the Sawyer Seminar and our in class discussions with librarians about optical character recognition (OCR). Whenever I try to use the search feature to locate specific key works, most of the time I am not about to get results. Therefore, it required more manual efforts to dissect each piece in our class’ collections. As programs continue to be developed and improved to better recognize text and especially different languages, I hope in relation to our hopes to develop a game, this helps computers to capture more nuances while ensure the accuracy of pieces. As seen in Teddy’s collection, reputable databases can easily mislabel translations themselves. OCR also allows for archives, historical records, books, etc. to be more accessible opening infinite possibilities in terms of study, research, and translation.

Connections to other Collections

One of the more clear similarities I found across all collections in our class where how each individual came to choosing their own respective themes. Initial discussions in class led to Randy, Anuja, and I all choosing the focus of our pieces to be inspired from our childhood. Upon further exploration, Claire and Kimberly also based their findings on experiences that compelled them to more formerly engage with their native cultures. Through our collections, we were all able to divulge more intentionally about our own backgrounds.

Other clear connections include the geographic focus in Asia given by the class, variety of text in terms of date, medium (pictures, videos, poetry, art), and variety of dialects or languages found in each.

The Vietnamese Diaspora to America Read More »

Sufism through Space and Time

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My HathiTrust collection “Sufism through Space and Time” gathers a wide diversity of Sufi sources into one accessible place. I used my prior knowledge of important Sufi figures, Sufi movements, and Sufi art styles as a criteria to search for related sources. The Sawyer Seminar lightning talk by Heather Christensen of HathiTrust, inspired me to do more research about the upside-down book in the top right corner of the interactive map. Fixing errors within the system was a great added aspect of making my Sufi collection . I wanted to include different languages, ideologies, and time periods. While individuals disagree about who is considered a “Sufi,” I took an objective self-identifying approach. I let individuals decide who they deem authentic and instead focused on showcasing the complexity of Sufism.

I made sure gender representation was an active part of my collection making, especially given the rich history of Sufi women. The legend of Rabai for instance, describes a woman who outwits and outmatches the acclaimed Hasan Basri. Their interaction demonstrates the legacy of fierce women throughout Middle East history.

RabiaDownload

In this PDF we see Rabia laugh off Hasan’s marriage proposal by calling him worldly for even suggesting such a contract. She demonstrates her greater commitment to piety. Later she explains how ridiculous thinking about marriage is when cosmic existential debates are unsolved. Sufism lives on to the modern day. For instance, activist Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani was involved with recent pan-Islamic and neo-Sufi movements. A book about Afghani’s work was featured (upside-down) on the Keynote graphic. If the book had a “Sufi” tag it would be helpful for users to connect with other works. See how I made the connection in the video below! A classmate’s blog post that caught my attention was by Zara Fields. The intriguing collection focuses on “various love poems from famous Arab authors throughout time.” My personal collection is on Sufism and is rich with MENA Sufi poets. From Zara’s collection, I learn more about Arabic poetry fundamentals which influence Sufi poetry. You can discover her fascinating collection here.

Sufism through Space and Time Read More »

Seminar 5 on Building Translation Networks in the Midwest with HathiTrust (February 18, 2022, and Fall 2022)

/ / events

Seminar 5 coordinator: U-M Professor Christi Merrill (Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature)

Co-organized with: Barbara Alvarez (U-M Library), Jeremy York (U-M School of Information), Michael Furlough (Executive Director, HathiTrust), and Heather Christenson (Collections, HathiTrust), who will be speaking at the webinar on February 18, 2022).

Speakers will also include: Sayan Bhattacharyya (Singapore University of Technology and Design), Leigh Billings (UM Library), and Glen Layne-Worthey (HathiTrust Research Center), as well as partners from Google Books Ben Bunnell and Reeve Ingle who have been involved with the digitization project. 

The February 18th zoom event will also include lightning talks by researchers and instructors describing their engagements with specific examples in the HathiTrust repository written in non-roman writing systems, such as Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Ladino, Panjabi, Persian, Russian, and Urdu. 

Throughout the day we will get behind-the-scenes looks at what led to the development of the HathiTrust Digital Library, especially materials available in languages in HathiTrust taught at the University of Michigan and supported by the Language Resource Center. Presenters will focus especially on examples in Less Commonly Taught Languages, reflecting on the particular challenges of discovering and working with source texts and translations in non-roman writing systems which are difficult to catalog and to render searchable using OCR (optical character recognition).

A follow-up seminar in Fall 2022 will feature tools developed by Translation Networks (an interdisciplinary digital studies initiative funded by an MCube grant at the University of Michigan) and how they might be used with HathiTrust sources, in collaboration across three HathiTrust sites in the midwest (Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois at Champaign-Urbana). Together we aim to make these materials more accessible to a broader range of users and to encourage exploration of HathiTrust as another site of translation.

Program & Videos

11:00-11:15 Introductions, overview of the seminar by Christi Merrill

11:15-12:45 History of HathiTrust and the Google digitization project, followed by Q&A

Speakers during this section include:

Mike Furlough

Ben Bunnell, “Google Books, Past and Present”

Reeve Ingle, “OCR Developments in Google Books”

Heather Christenson

This video has been edited to protect Google’s proprietary information.

12:45-1:30 Lunch break

1:30-2:45 Lightning talks followed by Q&A

2:45 – 3:00 Break

3:00 – 4:30 Using HathiTrust for Research: Practicalities and Possibilities

Barbara Alvarez & Leigh Billings

Sayan Bhattacharyya

Glen Layne-Worthey

Jeremy York

4:30 Announcement of a virtual telephone game featuring HathiTrust sources

Seminar 5 on Building Translation Networks in the Midwest with HathiTrust (February 18, 2022, and Fall 2022) Read More »

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