hello, goodbye, good afternoon, good evening, goodnight, how do you do, thankyou, yes, no, my name is..., well come. translation is always a foolish affair. Annamarie Jagose wrote this in her first novel, "In Translation".(1994). A story of unrequited love with a terrible malevolence and conceit about it. A woman (Helena) living in India intercepts the correspondence between her ex-lover(Navaz) and Navaz's client (Nishimura). Navaz is a renowned translator of Japanese into English. Helena embellishes the words and intent of the Japanese novelist and forwards the results to Navez for translation into English. To accomplish this deceit she takes Japanese lessons from a local Indian tutor. He falls in love (lust) with her. Communication is never direct. This is a book about writing, about writing with love and its remains. translation is a foolish affair. We both reach for the formal as a place to leave from. "Good Evening" - "Konbanwa". The vernacular comes after much practise. Unlike Helena, I didn't get there. "Tourists are engineers of a collision between their bodies and the exotic." (AJ)

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