Japanese to English translation at the Tokyo National Museum: a guide to tombstones and other gallery labels

Abstract

"The Tokyo National Museum (TNM) is home to over a million Asian artworks and artifacts, including the world's most extensive Japanese collection. At any one time, approximately 3.000 of these objects are on view in the 'regular exhibition' galleries, most of which undergo complete rotations multiple times a year. With each rotation, International Relations at NM translates all gallery labels from the Japanese into English, Chinese, and Korean for our multinational visitors. About ten years ago, the English-language team at International Relations began compiling a Japanese/English glossary of art and archeology terms to streamline the translation process. A few years ago, we recognized the need to make our translations more consistent, concise, and accessible. This led us to revise and expand the glossary, and to clarify our style and translation guidelines. We consider this to be an ongoing project. This initial edition of the guide focuses on translating tombstone labels for objects in the TM collection in a way that serves the needs of our English-speaking visitors, most of whom have had little exposure to Japan and its cultural heritage. In the course of this project, we consulted with curators at our own institution and referred to writing guidelines and existing gallery labels at museums in English-speaking countries. We adopted practices we believed would be most appropriate for our galleries and created new guidelines and translations when necessary. This was a challenging process because of our diverse collection, the limited space on our multilingual labels, and the differences in curatorial practice between Japan and the English-speaking countries. Our work at TNM has culminated in this guide. While far from exhaustive, it has been expanded and revised to the point where we think it might be useful for translators, curators, and other professionals writing about Japan's cultural heritage."-- Foreword.