It was pretty interesting reading through all of those articles. Obviously, there can be a lot of nuance that can be hard to communicate when translating from one language to another, but I never really thought much about how different translators can drastically effect the style/overall feeling of a book. I found especially interesting the comparison by Wendy Lesser of Rubin and Birnbaum's translations. The former's, totally accurate, and surely well translated, but the latter of which flows entirely differently and gives off a completely different feeling, having been written in present tense. It's a stylistic choice, but no doubt one that changes your perception of how Murakami writes as an author. Kind of wish I'd read this stuff before I submitted my コロッケ translation, might have thought a bit differently about it if I had. :/
Something else that I found really surprising was Gabriel's comments about how long it takes him to translate a book. He said he can finish about four pages per day, twenty pages a week, 80 pages a month. I found to be a bit slow, especially considering he's a native-level Japanese speaker. I guess it just goes to show, there's a lot more thought put into how something like a book is going to be translated, versus how an interpreter, like Marie Kondo's, essentially just has to translate on the fly to the best of her ability. When you think about it, there's almost certainly a lot of nuance that is going to be lost when something is interpreted versus painstakingly translated (although certain elements will be lost in both cases), as with an interpretation, you just kind of need the bare minimum amount of information to be communicated properly, and you're not necessarily considering the eloquence of your statements.
No comments:
Post a Comment