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Japan’s earthquake tweet by tweet

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Host Marco Werman talks with Aya Watanabe who has been translating tweets by people affected by the earthquake in Japan. The tweets were originally collected by a Tokyo blogger who wanted to offer his readers hope. The tweets make up a sort instant social history of the crisis and ordinary people’s responses to it.

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The Two Tweets that inspired Aya Watanabe to start translating them into English

At a jammed crossing
I was driving home after the quakes. Streets were extremely jammed and at many crossings only one car could cross the street per green light. At a spaghetti crossing, all traffic was paralyzed for more than 5 min. All drivers, I encountered, waiting to cross streets were calm, giving way to others. All thru my 10 hr driving, I didn’t hear any honking except those showing gratitude to others. Of course this travel was scary but also heart warming. This experience made me like Japan all the more.

At Tokyo Disneyland
They distributed sweets that are part of their merchandise. High school girls with heavy makeup took away more candies than they would possibly eat and that raised my eyebrows. Later, I saw those girls giving the candies to kids at evacuation areas. Families with kids had limited mobility and couldn’t get to where the candies were distributed. Go girls!

These are some more recent tweets that Watanabe has translated

My mother’s foot warmer
Mom goes, “Oh! My little foot warmer got away!” My sister goes, “No I did not! ;D” And Mom goes, “Oh, there you are :) :) ” … Mom and sister were sharing a futon during a blackout and Mom was searching for my sis’s warm feet. Cute mom :) :)

A little knight
I was walking behind a mother with a little boy and a baby in a carriage. The mother said to her young boy, “What if another earthquake hits? Scary, isn’t it?” The kindergarten boy said, “No worries, Mom. I will do THIS!” Then the boy bent over the baby in the carriage to protect his young sibling. What a little knight in a shiny armor. My heart felt warm.

Disgraceful
A teenage boy walked into a drugstore, a package of toilet paper in hand. He said, “My parent hoarded and bought two packages yesterday. How disgraceful. I would like to return one.” –My friend who works for the drugstore was impressed to hear a word “disgraceful” from a high school boy. We have bright future ahead in this country.

Packing for a move
When I was packing for my move, my mother handed me a flashlight and survival food she had kept for the family, saying “Take these and don’t buy new ones. There are people who really need them now. Us? We are fine. We have family and neighbors. We can help each other if a disaster strikes our area. You will be living by yourself, a stranger in a strange land. You have all the reasons to be anxious about your new life. No need to be anxious about us, your family.” I felt so proud to be my mother’s daughter, to be part of this family.

Mom’s Pep Talk
Called my Mom to let her know I survived the quakes. She lives in Kagoshima, on Kyushu Island, a thousand miles south of Tohoku. Thought she was worried about me and wanted to calm her down. Instead of tears, what I got from her was a pep talk. “Know, with all your heart, the meaning of your being where you are, at this timing and age in your life. Do the best you can to serve others.” Mother, I am proud to be your son. I will live through all this.

 

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MARCO WERMAN: There’s been on outpouring of emotion in Japan this month, many emotions, and most of them were not translated. Aya Watanabe is a professional translator, for the past few weeks she’s been working with a Tokyo based blogger who’s compiling some of the most poignant tweets out of Japan.

 

AYA WATANABE: I contacted this blogger Gen Taguchi the day after he earthquake hit, and I think it was the day when he started sending out these tweets. And it just touched my heart, to the core. And I think I was one of the many, many people who had been so shocked and devastated and we needed something to give us hope.

 

WERMAN: I mean it’s interesting; Twitter really became this almost indispensible communication device after the tsunami and earthquake. In fact, I read that Twitter use increased, in just the few days after the earthquake, by a third. That’s enormous.

 

WATANABE: It is. And it’s been really helpful to all of us. I was not in the affected area of Tohoku but I was getting so much information out of Tweets, rather than any other media that I was able to reach.

 

WERMAN: Well let’s just pick a few of the Tweets here. I mean this first one that I saw was actually about Twitter, this writer says, ‘I could not use phone and text message but Twitter was just working. I believe it was much more useful than the special installed phone number to contact people’, the 171 which is their 911 version, ‘I believe many re-Tweets supported someone’s heart’. Which is pretty extraordinary. And here’s another one which is also very poignant and not about Twitter, this is from a woman who was taking a mass transit, she says, ‘Transport facilities were dead and I was so tired waiting so long, then a homeless guy gave me a cardboard saying use this it can warm you up. I used to pass homeless people by even when they were begging although what he did to me was such a sweet stuff’. Really, really moving. Maybe you can tell us some of your favourite Tweets.

 

WATANABE: Sure. One of my favourites is one that had been posted quite recently and it’s called ‘Mom’s pep talk’. It goes like this, ‘I called my Mom to let her know I survived the quakes. She lives in Kagoshima, on Kyushu Island, a thousand miles south of Tohoku. I thought she was worried about me and wanted to calm her down. Instead of tears, what I got from her was a pep talk. “Son, know with all your heart, the meaning of your being where you are, at this timing and age in your life. Do the best you can to serve others.” Mother, I am proud to be your son. I will live through all this.’

 

WERMAN: That is an incredible pep talk, I mean, it sound like one of those pieces of life advice. Just on a practical matter, our listeners are going to say that’s ay more than 140 characters, but these are written in Japanese characters so you can actually sum up a lot more things into a character, right?

 

WATANABE: Yes. And also this is a Tweet that I translated and I added a few words, like where    Kagoshima is, because I just imagine that people who are reading this in English would not really know where Kagoshima is and that the mother lived a safe place, where as the writer of this Tweet did not.

 

WERMAN: There seems to be such a big translation gulf between Japanese and English that’s exposed at a time like this. I mean there’s so much we haven’t grasped, but with these translated Tweets it feels less distant somehow.

 

WATANABE: I’m so happy to hear that because that is exactly why I wanted to translate these Tweets coming directly from people in Japan, to really connect all of us. Because it’s something unfiltered, well obviously filtered by us translators in a way, but other than that it’s totally direct. And I think this is what kind of gives me passion as a translator.

 

WERMAN: Reading and hearing you read, some of these Tweets, I mean even though these events have only happened a few weeks ago, it already feels like a moment in time that’s passed, like a time capsule. Which seems to be taking the lead right now, generosity and goodwill, or frustration and impatience?

 

WATANABE: I think it’s still both. Initially I think there was more generosity but yes, we have been seeing more impatience and frustration. And especially because of the nuclear threat.

 

WERMAN: Aya how long are going to keep translating these Tweets coming out of Japan?

 

WATANABE: Well, I would say as long as these Tweets get collected by this blogger Gen Taguchi.

 

WERMAN: Aya Watanabe thanks for speaking with us, very good to talk to you.

 

WATANABE: Thank you Marco, pleasure to speak with you.

 

WERMAN: And you can read some more translated Tweets from Japan at theworld.org, and you can hear more from translators and linguists in our weekly podcast ‘The Word in Words’, that’s at theworld.org/language

 

 

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