Though most of the day is spent hunched over my Digital Signal Processing take-home "mindterm," as the professor misspelled it in his email letting us know that he'd posted the test, we take a quick, necessary trip to the coffee store and stop to check out a new bookstore, the Black Swan, on our way home. We'd peeked in the windows before when the store was closed, but this time we can go in. The Black Swan is a used and rare bookstore so it has that great, old book smell. Moreover, they seem to have plenty of start-up capital; it's like shopping in the living room of someone with great taste in books and lots of bookshelves.
Since I'd spent too much money on mass-market paperback fluff last night, I restrain myself from getting a beautifully bound and illustrated 1873 edition of The Innocents Abroad. The $35 price seems more than reasonable though, and I'm now kicking myself over my misplaced restraint. Oz manages not to drool on the $275 coffee table book about netsuke, but picks up small books on Maori art and Japanese ink painting technique. I wander over to the foreign language section and see some Japanese books, including a Japanese translation of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care, but what catches my eye is an English-Japanese dictionary of which I've never heard.
As a translator, I'm familiar with the titles of most well-respected or commonly used dictionaries and if I see a new one, I simply must investigate further. This dictionary is Fuzambo's Comprehensive English-Japanese Dictionary, the 1942 Harvard University Press edition, with 1855 pages of esoteric English words, because when they say "comprehensive" they aren't kidding around. It's two and seven-eighths inches thick (I just measured) and so heavy I can't tachi-yomi (stand and read). I seek out one of the bookstore couches and settle in.
I don't even know these words in English: lixiviate, aardwolf, parapodium, pettichaps, flanconnade. Because this is an older dictionary, the kanji (Chinese characters) are in the old, more complicated style and there are very few English loan words. I always suspected that the Japanese word for "jump" was not originally "jumpu" and now I have proof! I show Oz and he generously purchases Fuzambo's for my collection of browsing dictionaries.
My favorite pages of the moment are the 654-655 page spread. The guide words are these: get-at-able, ghoulishly, ghurrie, and gigot. The four illustrations are of the ghat at Benares, gherkins, a gibbet (including dangling corpses), and a giant's stride. Other words: gew-gaw, ghastly, ghost word, gibbous, and gigantomachy.
This copy of the dictionary also includes a little history. Inside the back cover is stamped:
I guess he didn't return the dictionary as charged. Judging by the wonderful condition of the dictionary, he didn't use it much either. But if you know this guy or you know any stories about the "Japanese course under Navy Auspices" in the 1940's, I'd love to hear from you.
570 words | April 10, 2004 09:05 PM | Lost in translation