The Google Translate app allows you to point your camera at text and receive a real-time translation in your chosen language overtop the live image. The app shifts the translation several times, leaving multiple fleeting, often poetic, translations of the text. During a trip to Japan in 2019, Kelsea O’Connor captured images of Japanese text and arranged the resulting series of English translations into found poems. O’Connor is a contributing editor to Geist. She lives in New Westminster. Read more of her work at geist.com.
From a package of two eggplant-shaped cast iron cooking ingots, Kappabashi, Tokyo Two iron tolerance 2 iron lumper 2 Two iron beer 2 Two songs of theory Boil the black bean I pick out the child Boil the hot water Sand out of shellfish Rules for dogs, Todai-ji Buddhist temple, Nara Pet dog is a corridor. In the largest in the Buddhist I want to walk, I’m sorry 2 (Do not drive, universal grief) Pet husband is in the corridor / in the Buddhist Please cooperate so that you can not walk (Do not dogs dogs, exclusive advertising excluded) Pet dog is cockroad. In the Buddhist Please collaborate so that you can not walk (Expansion Dog The dogs are excluded) Description of ginger ale, Tokyo Automobile ship which was simply boiled with the darkness