【英訳】侏儒の言葉45：ある弁護

Some Defence
　A certain critic in the new age used the phrase “to seem like there were so many sparrows in front of the gate” (literally “so deserted that sparrows gather at the gate”) for “to swarm”. The phrase in question was made by Chinese people, and we Japanese do not necessarily have to use it as the Chinese do. If it makes sense, we should be allowed to describe “Her smile was like there were so many sparrows in front of the gate”, for example.
　If it makes sense, ― everything depends on this mysterious “sense”. Take, for example, “Ich-Roman”. It originally means a novel in which the writer uses the first person, and “Ich” (the first person) is not always the author himself. However, in Japan, the so-called “Ich-Roman” is always taken to mean  a novel where that “Ich” is supposed to be none other than the novelist. Moreover, once it is interpreted as the writer’s personal history, even a third-person novel is called an “Ich-Roman”,  I hear. This is certainly a new usage, which disregards that of the German ― or rather, of all the Westerners. The all-pervasive “sense”, though, has given birth to this new way of using the word. The phrase, “to seem like there were so many sparrows in front of the gate”, may have an unexpected new usage like this some day.
　Therefore, that critic was not particularly poor in his academic knowledge. He was just a bit hasty in seeking a new usage from outside the fashion of the day. The critic was ridiculed because ― anyway, every pioneer must always be prepared for a short life.