I found the contrast between translators in this week's readings very interesting. Hirano is a translator who mainly works with young adult and children's readings, while Seidensticker is a translator who works with pieces that are more target towards literary scholars. Although they translate texts that are extremely different from each other, I found it interesting how they both basically run into the same problems. They both have problems deciding whether or not they should keep the author's original intentions or translate as literally as possible.
With that being said, there were some differences that I didn't even think of. I thought that it was really interesting to read how Seidensticker translated classical Shakespeare texts where the number of syllables per line mattered in the translation. It wasn't something that I had even thought of when I'm thinking about translation.
Personally, I thought the challenges that Hirano runs into are very similar to the problems that I run into while translating. For example, in the most recent translation, the line "I have a light fever." was one of the instances where the Japanese sentence carried an implication that couldn't be properly translated in English. Apart from translation, I also thought that the book Hirano talks about "the friends" sounds very interesting, and I would love to read it if I get the chance to.
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