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Sample translations submitted: 5
English to Japanese: Outsourcing Agreement, Article 6 (Representation & Warranty) General field: Law/Patents Detailed field: Law: Contract(s)
Source text - English Article 6 (Representation & Warranty)
1. A and B represent and warrant to each other the following points as of the date this Agreement is executed. In the following the party that represents and warrants is referred to as "the party representing and warranting herein."
(1) The party representing and warranting herein have complete powers and authority which are deemed necessary to conclude this Agreement and perform the duties hereunder.
(2) The party representing and warranting herein has completed each and every procedure which is deemed to be required by law or (in the case of corporations and other organizations) under internal rules such as bylaws with respect to concluding and performing this Agreement as well as carrying out said transaction. Entering into this Agreement, performing the provisions hereunder, and carrying out the transaction intended hereunder by the party representing and warranting herein do not breach any law.
(3) The duties of the party representing and warranting herein hereunder are entirely lawful and effective and are binding to the party representing and warranting herein.
(4) The party representing and warranting herein has obtained all necessary consents, approvals, permissions, notifications, orders, etc., which are required in concluding and performing this Agreement from courts, government organizations and/or the third parties.
(5) There are no judgments or orders that could negatively affect the ability of the party representing and warranting herein to perform the duties hereunder. No litigations or legal proceedings are pending that might adversely affect the ability of the party representing and warranting herein to perform the duties hereunder, nor is there any possibility thereof to the best of the knowledge of the party representing and warranting herein.
(6) The party representing and warranting herein has no suspended payments, no liabilities in excess of assets, nor is insolvent, and no bankruptcy proceedings or other similar bankruptcy processes have been filed against the party representing and warranting herein. Furthermore, the party representing and warranting herein will not have suspended payments, nor will be insolvent or have liabilities in excess of assets by entering into and performing this Agreement, nor is there any cause which will prompt bankruptcy proceedings or other similar bankruptcy processes against the party representing and warranting herein. There has been no cause that could significantly impact the financial condition or credit worthiness of the party representing and warranting herein, including without limitation foreclosures, sequestrations and preservative seizures against the significant assets of the party representing and warranting herein.
2. In addition to the foregoing, A represents and warrants to B the following as of the date this Agreement is executed:
(1) B has obtained all statutory licenses, approvals, permissions and other approvals & permissions ("approvals/permissions, etc.") which are necessary to close and exercise this Agreement, and that said approvals/permissions, etc., are valid until the completion of exercise of this Agreement.
(2) B represents and warrants that B and B's directors do not constitute today any of such categories of persons or organizations as gangs, gang members, former gang members who have not been out of the organization for more than five years, affiliated members of a gang, gang-related corporations, corporate extortionist groups and the like, extortionists professing right-wing social causes or crime groups specialized in intellectual crimes and the like, and others that are similar to the foregoing ("gangs, etc.") and that none of the following descriptions apply to them; and further pledge and warrant that none of the following shall apply to them in the future as well:
(a) A relationship exists in which gang members, etc., are known to be in control of management;
(b) A relationship exists in which gang members, etc., are known to be substantially involved in management;
(c) A relationship exists in which gang members, etc., are known to be improperly used with the purpose of unlawfully profiting for oneself, one's company, or a third party, and causing harm to a third party, among others;
(d) A relationship exists in which involvement with a gang is known whereby financing and/or providing benefits thereto has been taking place;
(e) A relationship exists in which officers and/or individuals who are substantially involved in management are on socially censurable terms.
(3) B pledges and warrants that neither B nor any of B's officers shall ever engage in any of the activities listed below by using itself/themselves or a third party:
(a) Making demands with violence;
(b) Making unlawful demands that fall outside of legal obligations;
(c) Using threats or violence in transactions;
(d) Spreading rumors, using deceits and/or force to damage the other party's trust and credit, or to interfere with the other party's business operation;
(e) Engaging in activities similar to each of the foregoing.
3. In the event a fact comes to light that conflicts with Sections (2) and (3) of the foregoing Article, A can cancel this Agreement by notifying the other party in writing without the need to protest. In such case the party that receives the cancellation notice cannot demand any damages arising from said cancellation.
Even within warranty period, this warranty does not apply if any of the following is the case:
1) Inappropriate maintenance performed on covered product; use that is inconsistent with the instructions in Specifications or Product Manual or use whose manner differs from typical use; use in environments and conditions inconsistent with the instructions in Specifications or Product Manual;
2) When attributable to installation;
3) When attributable to inappropriate inspection, repair or modification (except if done by the Company or a service provider appointed by the Company);
4) When attributable to combination of covered product with any power generation equipment such as solar power module other than the covered product, gas engine, wind, fuel cell, and others, and with any other equipment and machinery (except for repaired/replacement products provided by the Company for the covered product);
5) When attributable to consumables, natural, mechanical wear and tear, rust, mold, change in properties, discoloration, change in color tone, noise, rattle, blemishes and scuff marks, contamination, deterioration in LCD output, and any other similar cause not affecting the performance and structure of equipment comprising the system and when system's power generation performance is not affect thereby;
6) When attributable to external causes including without limitation fire, explosion, collision, an object falling from above, vibration, impact, immersion in water and so on;
7) When attributable to natural disasters (lightening strike, hail, snow & ice, snow damage, etc.) and Acts of God (earthquake, lightning strike, typhoon, tornado, volcanic eruption, flood, tsunami, etc.);
8) When attributable to smoke damage, environmental pollution, salt damage, corrosive substance in the air, e.g., in spa regions, etc.;
9) When animals and insects are to blame, e.g., bird droppings, chewing by rats, insect damage, etc.;
10) When caused by change in the environment of the place of installation or its surroundings (e.g., shadow being cast due to a new structure being built or trees growing in neighboring areas);
11) When claims are made after warranty period has expired or when claims are not filed in a timely manner after a covered event has occurred;
12) When warranty document is not presented;
13) When warranty document is missing required information or modifications have been made to it which the Company has not agreed to;
14) When indemnity insurance payments and/or damages have been received due to product failure, injuries, etc.;
15) Failure and injuries caused by using the product in voltage rage other than provided by the Electricity Enterprises Act;
16) When caused by a third party's premeditation or negligence;
17) When ownership is transferred due to resale or equipment is moved from initial installation location;
18) When damages from failure and malfunctions occur due to the use of non-covered equipment (power conditioner, junction box, etc.);
Japanese to English: 医薬品インタビューフォーム ソルファ 25mg 錠・50mg 錠 General field: Medical Detailed field: Medical: Pharmaceuticals
Translation - English IV. PHARMACEUTICAL PROPERTIES
6. Elution Test
SOLFA has an elution rate of ≥80 % when tested with elution test liquid #2 900 mL at paddle speed of 50 rpm for 45 minutes. One SOLFA tablet is taken, and after a specified time following the commencement of the test 20 mL or more of the eluate is collected and filtered using a membrane filter ≤ 0.45 μm in pore diameter. Discarding the first 10 mL of the filtrate, the next V mL of eluate is accurately measured, to which elution test liquid #2 is added so that 1 mL of the mixture contains approximately 5.6 μg of amlexanox (C16H14N2O4) in accordance with dosage strength on the label, to make a sample solution V' mL. Separatey, standard amlexanox is dried at 105 °C for 2 hours, then 28 mg of it is precisely measured and dissolved in diluted sodium hydroxide 2 mL, to which elution test liquid #2 is added to make 50 mL. 1 mL of this solution is accurately measured and elution test liquid #2 is added to make 100 mL, which becomes standard solution. Both sample solution and standard solution are subjected to ultraviolet visible (UV/Vis) spectroscopy where the absorption rate A T and A S at 350 nm wavelength is measured.
7. Tests to Determine the Active Ingredients in Formula
(1) SOLFA is ground into powder and an amount corresponding to "amlexanox" 10 mg is taken from it, mixed into ethanol (99.5) 100 mL and the solution is vigorously shaken and filtered. 1 mL of the filtrate is taken and mixed into ethanol (99.5) to yield 25 mL, which is used as sample solution. When this liquid is subjected to UV/Vis spectroscopy, the absorption spectrum shows peaks at wavelengths of 240-244 nm, 285-289 nm and 341-352 nm.
(2) When ultraviolet light (dominant wavelength 365 nm) is shone on sample solution in (1) above, the solution fluoresces bluish-white.
(The Japanese Pharmacopoeia 15th Edition, Supplement I, "Annotations," 2008. C-50, Hirokawa Publishing Company)
V. THERAPEUTIC USE
3. Clinical Studies
3-1 Clinical Effects
1) Bronchial Asthma
Clinical studies involving 397 patients with bronchial asthma were conducted where a daily dosage of 75-150 mg (mostly 150 mg) (25-50 mg per dose three times daily) was administered for 4-8 weeks in general clinical studies, and a daily dosage of 150 mg (50 mg per dose three times daily) was administered for 6 weeks in double-blind comparison studies. The final general improvement was 31% (125/397 patients) for moderate or better improvement and 62% (248/397 patients) for light or better improvement. A double-blind comparison involving patients with bronchial asthma has demonstrated the efficacy of SOLFA.
2) Allergic Rhinitis
Clinical studies involving 626 patients with chronic allergic rhinitis were conducted where a daily dosage of 75-150 mg (mostly 150 mg) (25-50 mg per dose three times daily) was administered for 4-16 weeks in general clinical studies, and a daily dosage of 150 mg (50 mg per dose three times daily) was administered for 4 weeks in double-blind comparison studies. The final general improvement was 53% (330/626 patients) for moderate or better improvement and 83% (517/626 patients) for light or better improvement. A double-blind comparison involving patients with chronic allergic rhinitis has demonstrated the efficacy of SOLFA

3-2 Clinical Pharmacology: Tolerability Tests
Studies were conducted on healthy adults who were administered single doses of 12.5 mg (3 subjects), 25mg (3 subjects), 50mg (4 subjects), 100mg (3 subjects) in the fasted state and 50mg (4 subjects) after breakfast; repeated doses of 100 mg per dose 2.5 hours after meal twice daily (3 subjects); 100 mg per dose three times on the first day and another time the following morning (3 subjects); 100 mg per dose three times daily for the first two days and a 200 mg dose on the morning of the third day (3 subjects); 100 mg per dose in the morning of the 1st and the 6th day and three times daily 2nd-5th days. Mild stomach ache was observed in one subject who was administered a single-doze 100 mg, but in all other subjects nothing abnormal was observed in subjective symptoms, objective findings, physicochemical tests, blood- and urine tests, demonstrating excellent tolerability. 1
(Tadao Miyake, et al., Journal of Clinical Therapeutics & Medicine, 1986 2:23.)
3-3 Exploratory Studies: Dose Response Test
Therapeutic efficacy of SOLFA was studied on 88 patients with asthma whose severity was "mild" or "moderate" according to the Bronchial Asthma Severity Scale established by the Japanese Society of Allergology and whose symptoms over a two-week period of observation were relatively stable with at least one asthma attack per week. SOLFA 12.5mg per dose (L Group) and 50mg per dose (H Group) was orally administered three times daily (following breakfast and dinner, and at bed time) to determine the efficacy. The final general improvement per disease type and severity is as follows, with H Group showing a better improvement ratio in "modest or better" improvements. Adverse drug reactions were observed in 7.1 % of L Group (3/42 patients) and 15.2% of H Group (7/46 patients). From these results SOLFA's efficacy was suggested for administration of 50 mg per dose three times daily. 2
■ Ratio of Improvement in "modest or better" (Final General Improvement):
( ) : sample size
(Tadao Shida, et al., Journal of Clinical Therapeutics & Medicine, 1986 2:399.)
Therapeutic efficacy of SOLFA was studied on 126 patients with asthma whose severity was "mild" or "moderate" according to the Bronchial Asthma Severity Criteria established by the Japanese Society of Allergology and whose symptoms over a two-week period of observation were relatively stable with at least one asthma attack per week. SOLFA 12.5mg per dose (L Group) and 50mg per dose (H Group) was orally administered three times daily (following breakfast and dinner, and at bed time) to determine the efficacy. Therapeutic effects were differentially analyzed and the definitive general improvement reflecting significant difference between two groups is shown as below. Better than moderate improvement ratios were found with L Group for the stratum whose symptoms were considered to be light (no steroids, 40 points or less in therapy scores) and with H Group for the stratum whose symptoms were relatively severe (steroid use, therapy score "80 points or above", asthma score "100 points or above") (Mann-Whitney U-Test). Adverse drug reactions were found to occur in 13.8% of L Group (8/58 patients) and 14.7% of H Group (10/68 patients). From these results it was judged that SOLFA was desirable in that its efficacy could be expected when administered 50 mg a dose on the patient stratum with relatively revere symptoms. However, even with 25 mg per dose, SOLFA was still effective on patients with lighter symptoms, thus it was judged that normal dosage could well be set at 25-50 mg per dose. 3

■ Ratio of Improvement in "Modest or Better" (Final General Improvement):
( ) : sample size (Susumu Kishimoto, et al., Journal of Clinical Therapeutics & Medicine, 1986 14: 2895.)
Therapeutic efficacy of SOLFA was studied on 125 patients with chronic allergic rhinitis whose severity of symptoms during a two-week control observation was "moderate" or "severe," having at least two positives among intracutaneous reaction, nasal mucosa test, and eosinophilia in nasal secretion. SOLFA 25mg per dose (L Group) and 50mg per dose (H Group) was orally administered three times daily for 4 weeks to determine the efficacy. The final general improvement for "moderate or better improvements" was 52.1 % (25/48 patients) for H Group and 51.3 % (20/39 patients) for L Group, showing no difference between two groups. However, in "mild or better improvements," H Group 87.5 % (42/48 patients) was shown to have a slightly higher improvement score than L Group 79.5 % (31/39 patients). Adverse drug reactions were observed in both H Group 19.7 % (12/61 patients) and L Group 15.1 % (8/53 patients). From these results , SOLFA's efficacy on allergic rhinitis was suggested for administration of 25-50 mg per dose. 4
(Minoru Okuda, et al., Oto-Rhino-Laryngology Tokyo. 1988, 31 (Supplement 5): 521)
3-4 Verification Test
Double-Blind Comparison
Susumi Kishimoto, et. al.: Igaku no Ayumi ["Progress in Medicine"], 1986, 138:1005.
Minoru Okuda, et al., Oto-Rhino-Laryngology Tokyo. 1988, 31 (Supplement 3): 281.
3-5 Therapeutic Use
(1) Clinical Study/Special-Use Clinical Study/Post-marketing Clinical Study
Studies based on "Guidelines for Conducting Studies on New Drug Performance to Apply for Re-assessment" (Ministry of Health and Welfare Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau Safety Division Director Announcement #54, June 28, 1993) or "Guidelines for Conducting Usage Performance of Pharmaceutical Products" (same as above #34, March 227, 1997) have not been done.
(2) Outline of Studies Planned or Completed as a Condition for Approval:
None.
English to Japanese: LETTER FROM DIONIJS ADRIAANZEN WILHELMUS TO HIS BELOVED KIYOMI General field: Art/Literary Detailed field: Poetry & Literature
Source text - English LETTER FROM DIONIJS ADRIAANZEN WILHELMUS TO HIS BELOVED KIYOMI
My Dearest Kiyomi,
Once again I find myself standing on deck as the morning sun rises over your country. Now I am captain of my own ship, but not of my own heart. My heart reels still, as if on the swells of a storm, and I remain lost in a sea of longing. I long to see your face once more, if only my God or yours would allow it.
It is a cold sea today. The bitter spray stings my cheeks, and stirs in me a memory of so many years ago. I have only to close my eyes, and I am young again. A fool, hanging over the gunwales, as the water crashes against my youth, and the beauty of your country comes into view for the very first time. I stand beside my uncle as we sail into port, so proud on our tall ship. I peer from the deck, to see your people stare at us from the harbor, some prepared to welcome us, some prepared to turn us away. I step from the ship, and I am lost in the beauty of your lush fields, green mountains, elegant architecture. I see you for the first time, your laughter fills my head like the peal of some huge bell, and I learn what it is like to be struck through the heart.
It has been so many years now since I watched you from beyond the garden wall, trying to pass unseen, and making myself obvious through my clumsiness. So many lifetimes have passed since I heard your voice, alight with song, and first met your eyes across a bed of flowering ginger. I have dreamed so many thousand dreams since I last saw you, and yet they are all the same dream. A dream of your embrace; a dream of a vow to see you again. I have dreamed of no other women.
Last night, once more, I dreamt that I walked beside you with our daughter. And then I awoke this morning, alone in my cabin, on a raging sea. And my anger was equal to the sea’s; I wished to roar at the heavens and demand an end to my exile from you.
You are the only love of my heart, Kiyomi. I pray now, as always, that on this voyage, our perdition will end, and I will see you again. I pray now, as always, that I will have just one moment in which to tell you this thing that I was too young to understand, so may lifetimes ago.
I long for you still, as I did in the first moment my eyes found you.
With undying love,
Dionijs Adriaanzen Wilhelmus
Translation - Japanese ディオニース・アドリアーンゼン・ヴィルヘルムスから最愛の清見に宛てた手紙
English to Japanese: from Jeremy Rifkin, Age of Access General field: Social Sciences Detailed field: Philosophy
Source text - English Chapter Ten
A Postmodern Stage
A new human archetype is being born. Comfortable living a part of their lives in cyberspace in virtual worlds, familiar with the workings of a network economy, less interested in accumulating things and more interested in having exciting and entertaining experiences, able to interact in parallel worlds simultaneously, quick to change their own personas to match whatever new reality - simulated or real - is put before them, the new men and women of the twenty-first century are a breed apart from their bourgeois parents and grandparents of the industrial era.
Psychologist Robert J. Lifton calls this new generation "protean" human beings. They have grown up living inside of common-interest developments; their health care is administered through HMOs; they lease their automobiles; they buy things online; they expect to get their software for free but are willing to pay for services and upgrades. They live in a world of seven-second sound bites, are used to quick access to and retrieval of information, have short attention spans, and are less reflective and more spontaneous. They think of themselves as players rather than workers and prefer others to think of them as creative rather than industrious. They have grown up in a world of just-in-time employment and are used to being on temporary assignment. In fact, their lives are far more temporary and mobile and less grounded than their parents'. They are more therapeutic than ideological and think more in terms of images than words. While they are less able to compose a written sentence, they are better able to process electronic data. They are less analytical and more emotive. They think of Disney World and Club Med as the "real thing," regard the shopping mall as the public square, and equate consumer sovereignty with democracy. They spend as much time with fictional characters on television, film, and in cyberspace as they do with peers in real time, and even integrate the fictional characters and their experiences into social conversations, making them a part of their own personal stories. Their worlds are less boundaried and more fluid. They grew up with hypertext, Web site links, and feedback loops, and have a perception of reality that is more systemic and participatory than linear and objective. They are able to send e-mail to people's virtual addresses without ever having to know or even care about their geographic addresses. They think of the world as a stage and their own lives as a series of performances. They are continually remaking themselves as they try on new lifestyles with each new passage of life. These protean men and women are less interested in history but are obsessed with style and fashion. They are experimental and court innovation. Customs, conventions, and traditions, on the other hand, are virtually nonexistent in their fast-paced, ever changing environment.
These new men and women are only just beginning to leave ownership behind. Their world is increasingly of the hyper-real event and the momentary experience - a world of networks and gatekeepers and connectivity. For them, access is what counts. Being disconnected is death. They are the first to live in what the late British historian Arnold Toynbee called the Postmodern Age.1 This new age lies in sharp contrast to the Modern Age, in which private property relations and ownership informed virtually every economic transaction and colored most social interaction. Distinctions in the Postmodern Age are increasingly ones of access rather than ownership.
What makes the Postmodern Age so very different from the Modern Age? The simple but complex answer is to be found in the fact that the Postmodern Age is bound up in a new stage of capitalism based on commodifing time, culture, and lived experience, whereas the former age represents an earlier stage of capitalism grounded in commodifying land and resources, contracting human labor, manufacturing goods, and producing basic services.
-----
Postmodernity
The Postmodern Age, by contrast, is built on an entirely different set of assumptions about the nature of reality - assumptions that ultimately undermine modern ideas about property and give support to the restructuring of human relations around principles of access.
To begin with, postmodern scholars reject the very idea of a fixed and knowable reality. The first chink in the Enlightenment armor occurred in the twentieth century, when German scientist Werner Heisenberg introduced the idea of indeterminacy into the scientific debate. According to†Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle, the notion of a detached, impartial observer - the core assumption of Bacon's scientific method - recording nature's secrets in an objective fashion is an impossibility. The sheer act of making observations brings the observer into direct participation†with the object of his or her inquiry, therefore biasing the results. Heisenberg demonstrated that everything we do - even our observations - effects outcomes. Far from being detached, every human being is both player and participant, always affecting and being affected, by the world we attempt to manipulate and influence. After Heisenberg, it was difficult to continue to hold to the Baconian idea that the world is made up solely of knowing subjects acting on passive objects. Newton's notion of autonomous agents careening through the universe became equally suspect. If even the act of observation brings the observer into participation with the things he or she observes, then autonomy is more fiction than reality.
New theories about matter and energy did still more damage to the†Enlightenment metanarrative. Recall, classical physics defines matter as impenetrable physical substances. Newton's laws are based on the proposition that two particles can't possibly occupy the same place at the†same time because each is a discrete physical entity that takes up a certain amount of space. By the early years of the twentieth century, however, the orthodox view of physical phenomena was giving way to an†entirely new conception. As the physicists began to probe deeper into the world of atoms, they began to realize that their earlier ideas about solid matter existing in a fixed space were naÔve. What we call hard physical objects, said the physicists, are really just patterns of energy. The seeming physicality of things - their fixity and beingness - is merely an approximate notion.
Much to their surprise, physicists found that an atom is anything but still. In fact, it became apparent that the atom is not a thing, in the conventional material sense, but rather a set of forces operating in relationship to one another. Relationships, however, cannot exist independent of time. As the late historian and philosopher Robin G. Collingwood of Oxford University has pointed out, relationships can exist only in "a tract of time long enough for the rhythm of the movement to establish itself."5 The Nobel Laureate philosopher Henri Bergson once remarked, "A note of music is nothing at an instant."6 It requires notes preceding and following it in time. If each atom, then, is a set of relationships operating over time, then "at a certain instant of time the atom does not possess these qualities at all."7
Thus the old idea of structure, independent of process, is abandoned. The new physics contends that it is impossible to separate what something is from what it does. Nothing is static. Therefore, things no longer exist independent of time but rather through time.
According to the new physics, matter is a form of energy, and energy is pure activity. Gone forever is the quantitative notion of hard substances existing within a "static framework of spatial relations." Scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead delivered a devastating blow to the idea of space as the dominant feature of nature: "The notion of space with its passive, systematic, geometric relationship is entirely inappropriate...there is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration."8
What then of property? The physicists were beginning to deconstruct the hard physical reality of the modern world. How does one own a force, a pattern of activity, a relationship over time? How does one distinguish between what is mine and thine in a world in which boundaries are a mere social fiction? It's interesting to note that in cases where persons have lost their eyesight in early infancy and regained it later in life, the experience can be traumatic. Because their minds never were fully trained to distinguish individual objects in isolation, they see the world as a blur of colors and shades and a kaleidoscope of ever changing patterns. All is process and movement. Discrete forms with boundaries are not easily distinguishable, all of which suggests that even our commonsense perception of bounded objects existing in isolation is a learned experience and part of our cognitive development.
While most human beings continued to act as if the world was made up of subjects and objects and solid expropriatable things, the physical sciences quietly but inexorably established a new philosophical framework for the rethinking of reality. Today, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, complexity theory, and the theory of dissipative structures all reflect the new scientific emphasis on contingency, indeterminacy, embeddedness, and diversity in the natural world. Where modern science looked for ultimate truths and fundamental particles, the new science looks for unexpected possibilities and emerging patterns. Nature is seen more as a series of continuously creative acts than an unfolding of reality based on unalterable laws. Nature is full of surprises at every juncture and creates its own reality as it goes.
Nowhere have the new ideas in physics, chemistry, and mathematics been more deeply felt than in the humanities. If there is no fixed and knowable reality but only the individual realities we create by the way each of us participates in and experiences the world around us, then the idea of an overarching metanarrative - an all-encompassing view of reality - must not exist. The world, according to the postmodernists, is a human construct. We create it, say the semioticians, by the stories we concoct to explain it and by the way we choose to live in it. This new world is not objective but rather contingent, not made up of truths but rather of options and scenarios. It is a world created by language and held together by metaphors and agreed-upon shared meanings, all of which can and do change with the passage of time. Reality, it seems, is not something bequeathed to us but rather something we create, whole cloth, by communicating it into existence.
The Spanish philosopher JosÈ Ortega y Gasset once remarked that there are as many realities as there are points of view. His theory of perspectivism challenged the modern notion of a simple, knowable, objective reality with the idea of multiple realities, each representing the unique life story of every human being that lives on earth. He summed up the new postmodern way of thinking about reality by positing the dictum "I am I and my circumstances."9 Even science, argue the postmodernists, is an elaborately constructed set of texts or stories whose authority rests ultimately on their ability to sway and convince their readers of their validity. Heisenberg observed that when it comes to the exploration of science, "what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language we possess."10 Reality, then, is a function of the language we use to explain, describe, and interact with it, or, to paraphrase Hamlet, reality is "words, words, words."
In the postmodern world, stories and performances become as important as, or even more important than, facts and figures. The new era revels in semiotics - the study of signs and signifiers - and is as concerned with the laws of grammar and semantics as the modern era was with the laws of physics. The scientific preoccupation with truth becomes less interesting to scholars than the personal and collective quest to find meaning. Language is the key to exploring meaning because it is the vehicle we use to communicate our thoughts and feelings to one another. Language, then, says psychologist William Bergquist, "is itself the primary reality in our daily life experiences" in a postmodern world.11
If people of the modern world searched for purpose, those of the postmodern world seek playfulness. Order of any kind is considered restraining, even stifling. Creative anarchy, on the other hand, is tolerated, even pursued. Spontaneity is the only real order of the day. Everything is less serious in the postmodern environment. Irony, paradox, and skepticism are rampant. There is no great concern with making history but only making up interesting stories to live by. Because there is no overarching historical frame governing either nature or society, interest in history, per se, wanes. History is less a reference for understanding the past and projecting ourselves into the future and more loose story fragments that can be recycled and made part of contemporary social scripts.
The fast pace of a hyper-real, nanosecond culture shortens the individual and collective temporal horizon to the immediate moment. Traditions and legacies become fading interests. What counts is "now," and what's important is being able to feel and experience the moment. Climax and catharsis subsume efficiency and productivity in both personal and social life. It is a world full of spectacles and entertainments and highly sophisticated performances acted out on elaborate stages. In this new era, the "reality principle," which governed human conduct from the Protestant Reformation through the industrial revolution, has been dethroned, or, more appropriately, abandoned. The "pleasure principle" reigns.
Playfulness and pleasure seeking are everywhere. Take, for example, architecture. In contrast to the seriousness of modern architecture, with its emphasis on regularity and functionality, postmodern architects stress irony and amusement. Postmodern buildings are often collages of historic styles drawn together to shock, titillate, and entertain. Classic Greco-Roman columns and cornices might be juxtaposed with neo-Baroque bric-a-brac. The faÁade of an old nineteenth-century brownstone building might be saved and used for a space-age-looking structure. A Rube Goldbergñtype contraption might adorn an atrium, while trompe l'oeil art on a nearby lobby wall creates a three-dimensional representation of a French village. Architectural orthodoxy has given way to iconoclasm and an anything-goes attitude as long as the result is likely to capture attention and be the subject of conversation and debate.
In the social sciences, postmodern scholars say that the modern effort to create a unified vision of human behavior has led only to ideologies of classism, racism, and colonialism. Postmodern sociology stresses pluralism and ambivalence and preaches toleration for the many different stories that make up the human experience. There is no one ideal social regime to which to aspire but rather a multitude of cultural experiments, each equally valid. The idea of inescapable linear progress toward an agreed-upon future utopian ideal is eschewed. The postmodernists celebrate the diversity of local experiences that together make up an ecology of human existence.
The new era is ambiguous and diverse, entertaining and humorous, tolerant and chaotic. It is eclectic and highly irreverent. Ideology, unalterable truths, and ironclad laws are cast aside to make room for performances of all kinds.
The Postmodern Age, then, is punctuated by playfulness, while the Modern Age was characterized by industriousness. In a regime built around work, production is the operational paradigm and property represents the fruits of human labor. In a world orchestrated around play, performance reigns and commercial access to cultural experiences becomes the goal of human activity. Making things and exchanging and accumulating property become ancillary in the Age of Access to scripting scenarios, telling stories, and acting out fantasies.
Gone are the hard edges of an age dedicated to harnessing and transforming physical resources. The postmodern era is softer, lighter, and bound up with feelings and attitudes. It is a world turned upside down. The conscious mind of rational and analytical thought becomes suspect, while the unconscious mind of erotic desires, illusions, and dream-states comes to the fore and becomes, in effect, reality, or, more appropriate, hyper-reality. The underworld of fantasy is glorified and made manifest.
Jean Baudrillard, Frederic Jameson, and other postmodern scholars credit this historic turnaround - this triumph of the unconscious - to the vast changes in communications technologies and commerce that have made the whole world a stage and all experience a simulation. A French postmodernist once remarked that if a child grows up spending most of his or her waking hours in front of a screen, peering deep inside a virtual reality, after a while it is no longer virtual. It is their reality. Baudrillard says that TV, for example, is no longer a surrogate for reality. TV no longer interprets or dramatizes the world. "TV is the world."12
A 1999 survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, entitled "Kids and Media at the New Millennium," reports that American children now spend an average of five hours and thirty minutes a day, seven days a week, interacting with electronic media for recreation. For youngsters eight and older, the total is even higher, with the average child spending six hours and forty-five minutes a day engaged with television, computers, video games, the Internet, and other media (outside the classroom) as a part of their leisure-time activity. Equally important, the survey found that most children interact with electronic media alone. Older children, for example, watch television alone more than 95 percent of the time, while children between the ages of two and seven watch TV alone more than 81 percent of the time.13
MTV captures all of the various features of the new postmodern ethos better than any other television fare. Millions of preteens and teenagers all over the world spend hours in front of their screens, watching rock promos. MTV blurs all the many distinctions that have been carefully built up over the course of the modern era. In this sense, it is a revolutionary art form. It is also, don't forget, a marketing mechanism. The goal is to sell music CDs. Rolling Stone writer Stephen Levy notes that "MTV's greatest achievement has been to coax rock and roll into the video arena where you can't distinguish between entertainment and the sales pitch."14
MTV destroys boundaries of every kind. It levels all the rich gradations of human experience to a single, flat playing surface in which all phenomena exist in the form of pure images, one following the other at lightning speed, with no seeming context or coherence. The whole of human culture is ransacked for images that are then jumbled together to create a blitzkrieg of hot, evocative visual stimuli designed to both disorient and fix the gaze of the viewer. Categories are meant to be reshuffled, borders destroyed. The separateness of things in time and space - what makes them unique - is eliminated. Ann Kaplan, director of the Humanities Institute at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, observes that "MTV refuses any clear recognition of previously sacred aesthetic boundaries: images from German Expressionism, French Surrealism, and Dadaism...are mixed together with those pillaged from noir, gangster, and horror films in such a way as to obliterate differences."15
MTV is not parody but rather pastiche. There are no judgments to render, no critiques to make. In fact, there is no point of reference from which to even make commentary - just an endless procession of cultural fragments creating what Jean Baudrillard calls "the ecstasy of communication."16
MTV is experiences without context. It has the feel of the unconscious - a timeless realm in which fantasies of all kinds bubble up onto the screen, only to fade away in the wake of the next and the next....MTV is dreamlike entertainment, unencumbered by the weightiness of either history or geography. MTV repackages snippets of culture in the form of simulated fantasies that entertain and excite and provide a kind of simulated lived experience for millions of young people. It is the ideal signifier of the postmodern world.
TV and cyberspace have become the places where we spend much of our time and where we create much of our individual and collective life stories. Today's generation is as likely to compare the "real" world and events that take place there to something they saw or experienced on television. The late cultural critic O. B. Hardison mused that "for many people today, an event is not authenticated - is not ëreal' - unless it has been seen on television."17 The question, then, is, which is reality and which is illusion? The answer, say the postmodernists, is the experience that is the most powerful - and for more and more young people that often means the simulation. Says Baudrillard, "Today we live in the imaginary world of†the screen, of the interface...and networks. All our machines are screens. We too have become screens, and the interactivity of men has become the interactivity of screens....We live everywhere already in an ëaesthetic' hallucination of reality."18
English to Japanese (US State Department) English to Japanese (Eiken Level 1) English to Japanese (University of Michigan) English to Japanese (6 yrs of Ph.D. course work in Comp Lit (E & J)) Japanese to English (US State Department)
Japanese to English (6 yrs Ph.D. course work, U of Michigan (Comp Lit)) Japanese to English (Taught Jpnse & Jpnse Lit @ U of Mich, MSU (10 yrs)) Japanese to English (Eiken Level 1 (1975))
Yasuo (pronounced “YAHS-oh”) Watanabe, born and raised in Japan, has lived in the U.S. for 38 years (as of April, 2022) – first as an exchange student (UC Berkeley, 1977-78), then a graduate student in comparative literature and teaching assistant in Japanese (Univ. of Michigan, 1984-90), full-time lecturer of Japanese language & oriental classics (Michigan State, 1990-93), and part-time lecturer of Business Japanese (Univ. of Michigan Business School, 1994-2000).
He was a regular staff member of “Negotiating with the Japanese,” a celebrated executive seminar offered by the East Asia Business Program of the University of Michigan, 1988-1998, where he played an instrumental role in demonstrating and analyzing for participants typical Japanese group dynamics and corporate behaviors at negotiation tables.
Yasuo’s career as interpreter/translator started early in 1979 in Tokyo, shortly after completing a year of study at Berkeley, for journalists attending the first G7 Summit Conference there. He went on to take simultaneous interpretation courses at International Christian University (Tokyo), his alma mater, where he further pursued the study of comparative culture as a graduate student, and he continued to practice the skills after moving to the U.S. in 1984. Requests for help with Japanese started funneling during the late 1980’s and his desire to truly excel in interpreting caught a hold of him through teaching subtleties of Japanese expressions to students at University of Michigan and Michigan State University.
He became independent in 1995, and since then has provided conference (simultaneous) and consecutive interpreting and translation services full-time to U.S. and Japanese corporations, governments, military, courts, law firms and academic institutions. He passed the US Department of State’s interpreter qualification test at "Conference" (highest) level in 2014 and is a contract interpreter for the Department. He is one of only two Japanese interpreters officially qualified by the Michigan Court Systems.
In 2001, Yasuo’s translation of Jeremy Rifkin’s bestseller in seven countries, The Age of Access, was published from Shueisha, Japan’s second largest publishing company. He has also translated the Official Report of the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan Organizing Committee, CAW Union Contract, a Nikkei business book on corporate restructuring, a Takeda Drug Interview Form, and extensive legal contracts, among other numerous translations ranging from subpoenaed emails to book-length studies and reports.
Using his communication skills, he also contracts to do research for major think-tanks.
He gives talks on Japan’s ancient art of tea at variousartmuseumsand cultural institutions including the Detroit Institute of Arts, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, WUOM-Ann Arbor, WUOM-Flint, as well as at local libraries and arts councils (tribute to his late wife, Yoko [1956-2018], tea master in the Sekishu School tradition, who headedavolunteerdemonstrationgroup performing the exquisite art before charmed audiences).
Member since Jun '12
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