Latest news with #Esperanto
Japan Times
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
A window into the mind of Esperantist and political activist Teru Hasegawa
Little predisposed Teru Hasegawa to a life of political resistance. Born in 1912 to a conservative middle class family, she grew up in comfortable circumstances during the Taisho Era (1912-26), a thrilling period of political liberalization and cultural experimentation. After completing her elementary and secondary studies in Tokyo, Hasegawa moved to the Kansai region to attend the Nara Higher Normal School for Girls, now Nara Women's University, where she trained to become a teacher. She was smart and witty; she was expected to breeze through. But internally, Hasegawa was burning. As a child, her older sister later recalled, she had been 'stubborn and staunchly rebellious.' Things got worse during her teenage years, when she grew distrustful of authority. Her sense of alienation became so acute that she briefly contemplated suicide. More trouble awaited in Nara, where Hasegawa made friends among leftwing groups. This led to her arrest, in 1932, for harboring 'dangerous thoughts,' a catch-all describing beliefs running counter to established political norms. The result was a week behind bars and expulsion from school. Suddenly, her future looked a lot darker. It was around that time, writes Adam Kuplowsky, the translator of Hasegawa's collection of essays, 'Whispers from a Storm,' that the young Japanese woman was introduced to Esperanto, a language created in 1887 by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, a Polish physician who dreamed of a neutral idiom that was untainted by nationalism and could unite people across borders. It was not a politically neutral tongue however. From the start, it attracted all manner of leftists, from progressives to communists, who saw the artificial lingua franca as an ideal vehicle to disseminate their ideas. Esperanto gave Hasegawa a new name, Verda Majo, and exposed her to a vast and 'politically charged transnational community.' It changed the course of her life. After her release from prison, Hasegawa joined the Japanese Union of Proletarian Esperantists and began publishing political essays, drama and translation from Japanese to Esperanto. 'Whispers from a Storm,' out this month, gathers 14 of these pieces, penned between 1937 and 1945. Whispers from a Storm: Fragments from a Japanese Esperantist in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, by Teru Hasegawa (Verda Majo). Translated by Adam Kuplowsky. 198 pages, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS, nonfiction. As Hasegawa's engagement with Esperanto deepened, she realized her country's drift toward fascism was not an isolated phenomenon. All over the world, people had begun to resist. In 1936, she met one of them, a Chinese exchange student and fellow Esperantist, Ren Liu, who hailed from Manchuria, then under Japanese control. Within a few months, they married, against the wishes of her family. Hasegawa's decision was a token of love, Kuplowsky writes, but also 'an act of international solidarity and antifascism.' In early 1937, the couple moved to Shanghai to join the anti-Japanese struggle. From day one, Hasegawa hated the city and its inequality. Their difficult personal circumstances made things worse. While Liu worked at a publishing house, Hasegawa had to stay home and hide. She spoke no Chinese, and only a smattering of English, and she feared that if her nationality were discovered, she would be sent back to Japan. In the longest essay in the book, 'Inside Fighting China,' she explains that to avoid detection when venturing out, she tried 'to imitate the bearing of a Shanghainese woman.' Money was short and they often had to make do with two meals a day, mostly 'cheap vegetables cooked in soybean oil and seasoned with salt.' At least there was Esperanto, which helped her integrate a small circle of kindred spirits. In November that same year, Shanghai fell to the Imperial Japanese Army, forcing the couple to hit the road. They spent the following months on the move, never settling anywhere for long. First Guangzhou, where Hasegawa was exposed and expelled, then Hong Kong, followed by Hankou, before finally settling in Chongqing, China's wartime capital, where Hasegawa joined the propaganda arm of the Chinese government. She spent the following years airing radio programs denouncing Japanese war crimes. To the Chinese, she became a hero. Hasegawa was 25 when she landed in Shanghai, her idealism red hot. The Chinese Esperantists she encountered were all 'comrades,' invariably 'youthful, earnest and progressive,' she writes, their ranks devoid of 'hypocrites' or 'chauvinists.' In the streets of the international concessions, she walked with them, shouting 'Freedom for China via Esperanto!' Her politics were lucid when informed by direct experience, but ingenuous otherwise: She denounced in graphic detail the 'living hell' unleashed by Imperial Japan upon China, but, in 'To all the Esperantists of the World," an essay from 1938, she praised the Soviet Union, where she never set foot, for 'showing the way to tomorrow for Esperantists everywhere.' Though her early writing from this essay collection is occasionally pompous, it gained nuance over time as her perspective grew more reflective. She was overjoyed when Tokyo surrendered, but worried the social class that profited from the war would remain in control. Sadly, she never saw Japan's remarkable transformation. In Harbin, in 1947, pregnant with a third child as China's civil war raged, she decided on an abortion. It did not go well: She contracted an infection and died shortly after. She was 35. What remains are her words, a rare window into the mind of a young Japanese woman who took enormous risks to follow through on her ideological commitment.
The Herald Scotland
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
A' Hobat: Professor translates The Hobbit into Gaelic
Now, after many phases of editing, the book is available to order, complete with an afterword explaining why Professor Watson alighted on the word hobat to translate 'hobbit' and why it has a' and not the more 'expected' an. 'Enjoyment of reading is of tremendous importance on many levels when it comes to the esteem and status of a language,' he said. 'Being able to select from a wide range of engaging texts is also extremely important when learning a language or when making the decision to dig in and make that long, sustained extra effort necessary to go from competence in a language to mastery. 'I've read the book in at least nine languages so far. Whenever I learn a new language now, I always check to see if there is a translation of The Hobbit. If there is, I buy it. "That way, I can read a novel early on in the learning process, because I already know the story very well at this point. 'Every single time I read it, in every single language, I get to experience the deep, rich joy of discovering Tolkien's world.' Photograph of Prof. J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Pictured in Oxford, 1972 (Image: NQ) The Gaelic translation, supported by the Gaelic Books Council, joins a growing list of languages allowing new engagement with the classic story the world over, including Hawaiian, Esperanto, Breton and Yiddish. Professor Watson is Director of Ionad Eòghainn MhicLachlainn: the National Centre for Gaelic Translation, which exists specifically to support the translation of literature into Gaelic. He also teaches on the MSc in Translation at the University of Aberdeen, which is currently the only institution worldwide which offers a translation degree in Gaelic to that level. READ MORE: The book includes all the drawings by the author and Professor Watson says it was a pleasure and privilege to delve deeply into the maps, runes and illustrations when triple-checking translations before publication. 'It's no wonder people fell in love with this book, and continue to do so nearly 90 years after it was first published,' he added. 'I'm very lucky to have had the chance to work with it and I hope that people enjoy it.' Professor Watson is also completing a Gaelic translation of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, which includes an academic essay on how elements of translation theory can help the translator work through some of the trickier parts of a text.
CBC
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Winnipeg director Matthew Rankin says next films will focus on Progressive Conservatives, Esperanto
Social Sharing Universal Language director Matthew Rankin says he's channelling his creative energy into two new films: one probing Canada's conservative legacy and another on the world's most famous made-up language. The Winnipeg native says he's working on an "experimental collage" that recounts the history of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada through archival footage, including old TV commercials, public service announcements and instructional films. Rankin says he wants to explore the party's evolution because he's been preoccupied by what he describes as Canada's "reckoning" with conservatism. Rankin says he and Universal Language co-writer Ila Firouzabadi are also working on a docu-fiction film called Congresso, which is centred on Esperanto, the world's most widely spoken constructed language. Rankin says Congresso builds on the themes in Universal Language, which imagined an absurdist vision of Winnipeg where the two official languages are Farsi and French, and ominous propaganda banners feature former real-life Progressive Conservative premier Brian Pallister. That Winnipeg-set dramedy, which was short-listed for an Academy Award, now leads all film contenders at next month's Canadian Screen Awards with 13 nominations, including for best film, best directing and best original screenplay. Rankin says he began filming Congresso at 2022's World Esperanto Congress convention, which took place in Montreal. "Esperanto and progressive conservatism, these are not guaranteed crowd pleasers. I don't know what kind of audience there exists for that," laughs Rankin, reached by phone in Montreal last month following word of the Canadian Screen Award nominations. "But we felt the same way about Universal Language. If these only play at the Oakville Creativity Festival, that's fine. I have no clue who will watch anything. I really just am following what thrills my soul." Rankin says he's similarly following his instinct in exploring the many shades of conservatism with a still-untitled film. "Conservatism is something we're kind of reckoning with at the moment, and it's something that I don't exactly understand the meaning of. Progressive conservatism, which is a very Canadian idea, is even more mysterious in a lot of ways, but it's very different from contemporary conservatism," he says. "[The film] explores what it means and its evolution." Timely topic amid trade tension Rankin says the film feels especially timely amid trade tensions with the United States and threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to make Canada the 51st state. He said it's healthy that Canadians are now thinking about what their citizenship means. "It's really good that people ask these questions because people don't even vote anymore, right? There's been a degree of collective withdrawal from the idea that we live in a society. I think we've been led down this terrible path of disposable culture and clientelism," he explains. "It's the idea of: Why should I pay for your chemotherapy, your employment insurance, your health care, your experimental animation? I don't use any of that. That's your problem. It's just every man for himself." He says the film is inspired by the works of U.S. documentary filmmakers Adam Curtis and Brett Morgen, who he calls masters of the experimental collage. He hopes to finish the movie next year. Rankin says he's glad to live in a country that funds universal health care and supports the arts, but worries more Canadians are adopting a mindset of "one-stop shopping and 'I don't care about my neighbour."'
