02667cam a2200337 i 4500 551272839 TxAuBib 20220330120000.0 211210s2022||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2021056383 9781324091318 HRD 27.95 1324091312 HRD 27.95 TxAuBib rda Barton, Polly, (translator.) Fifty sounds [BOOK] : a memoir of language, learning, and longing / Polly Barton. First American edition. New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2022. xxviii, 350 pages ; 22 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier "Originally published in Great Britain by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021" -Title page verso. Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-348). Shortly before graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge, Barton on a whim accepted an English-teaching position in Japan. With the characteristic ambivalence of a twenty-one-year-old whose summer—and life—stretched out almost infinitely before her, she moved to a remote island in the Sea of Japan, unaware that this journey would come to define not only her career but her very understanding of her own identity. Divided into fifty onomatopoeic Japanese phrases, Fifty Sounds recounts Barton’s path to becoming a literary translator fluent in an incredibly difficult vernacular. From “min-min,” the sound of air screaming, to “jin-jin,” the sound of being touched for the first time, Barton analyzes these and countless other foreign sounds and phrases as a means of reflecting on various cultural attitudes, including the nuances of conformity and the challenges of being an outsider in what many consider a hermetically sealed society. Despite her months-long immersion in the language, a word would occasionally produce a sinking feeling and send her sifting through her dictionaries to find the exact meaning. But this is precisely how Barton has come to define language learning: “It is the always-bruised but ever-renewing desire to draw close: to a person, a territory, a culture, an idea, an indefinable feeling.” Provided by publisher. 20220330. Barton, Polly Translator. Translating and interpreting. Japanese language. Translators England Biography. Autobiographies.