Master Translator Donald L. Philippi

Donald L. Philippi was a talented Japanese English translator and linguist who died in 1993 at the age of 62. Reading his background will inspire any student of Japanese, so dig in.

This information can be found on Fred’s website, another accomplished translator – he translated Astroboy vol 1-23! And Ghost in the Shell! A true translation rock star. From the looks of it, Fred has met Osamu Tezuka as well… fascinating.

Don was a linguist. He spoke fluent Japanese, and without visiting the Soviet Union developed a near-native command of Russian. He could read and write Slovak, and he could read and understand German, Spanish and French, as well as several other languages.

Don began learning Japanese on his own as a child in the late thirties in Los Angeles, and continued to do so during the war when it was regarded as an “enemy” language. After studying at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, he went to Japan in 1957 on a Fulbright scholarship, and wound up staying there until 1970. In Japan he studied at Kokugakuin University, a Shinto university in Tokyo, and on his own. He became an expert, not only in classical Japanese, but in the Ainu language (the nearly extinct language of the indigenous people of Japan). He also studied the Altaic languages of Siberia, such as Turkic.

Don was no ordinary linguist. He had an abiding interest in what he called the “archaic”– the pre-civilized, pre-agricultural state of being– and used his language skills to explore it. He became an expert in Ainu and other archaic cultures.

Another interesting tidbit…

In his more flamboyant moments, Don liked to claim that translating technical documents gave him a “translator’s high”– that if he had a fast computer, and some post-modern archaic music by heavy metal groups such as Motorhead to listen to, he could achieve a trance-like state. In reality, however, his true joy in translating technical documents probably came from the accomplishment of a more modest goal. As he once said, “…by imposing a tiny bit of order in a communication you are translating, you are carving out a little bit of order in the universe. You will never succeed. Everything will fail and come to an end finally. But you have a chance to carve a little bit of order and maybe even beauty out of the raw materials that surround you everywhere, and I think there is no greater meaning in life.”

I admit, I actually downloaded some Motorhead and tried listening to it while translating the other day.

Easier said than done.

Wow. If my translation resume ever looks like these guys, I’ll be quite satisfied with myself.

- Harvey