9/21

 

    Really I quite enjoyed both of these readings, once again. I found Cathy Hirano's especially interesting, though. In particular, I felt that the way she described English and Japanese were spot on with my own intuition in terms of how I felt they worked. She says that "in English we stress clarity, in Japanese subtlety is preferred". Basically, the Japanese writer implies what he means without saying it out right, and the English author is more direct. In a lot of cases when trying to speak or translate English into Japanese, I find it to be incredibly difficult to rework my way of speaking to be less "specific" about things. I say that in quotes because it seems to me in English (although, I could easily be wrong), there's more description available at hand due to the sheer amount of adjectives, whereas in Japanese, it seems that precise description comes with compound words or little nuances of the language, such as the 'Eight Ways to Say You'. 

    Edward Seidensticker's approach to translation seemed interesting, especially when he described the job of a translator to be that of a 'counterfeiter'. With his approach to translation, he says that a translator 'must reproduce every detail of [the] original to the best of his ability, not changing anything'. He's also incredibly concerned about maintaining the rhythm of the work between the two languages, understandably. This seems to be quite different from how Cathy Hirano approaches translation, as it seems that she's often open willing to reworking entire areas of the text to better suit the intended audience. He also talks about how sometimes, there just isn't a great solution for a translation, due to the difference in the two languages. He talked about how two of the first sentence's in Snow Country had been endlessly criticised by Japanese readers. Specifically, in the second sentence, they complain that he gave a subject, being 'the train'. Without this, he says rightly, it just wouldn't make sense in English. There's some scenarios where you just have to go with what works in the language, I guess.