10/13 Comments

        I think Terry's notes on Japanese-English translations was both interesting and enlightening in that he points out things that I never really noticed when reading English novels vs Japanese novels. I would preface that I'm not the most avid reader of novels in either language (especially because I enjoy books on history and psychology rather than fiction nowadays), but of the novels that I'd read when I was younger, it had never occurred to me that English and Japanese be so different. Thinking back, when I was reading a light novel series called Youjo Senki (a military fantasy & SF fiction series that even my parents had some difficulty reading; I had to keep a dictionary at hand), the sentence structure was long and elaborate with multiple layers, which didn't exactly help with understanding what was being said when combined with difficult military language. Still, I didn't find it particularly frustrating, and like Terry mentioned, I really did skim the text, albeit slowly. For English novels, I think the last novel that I read was Pride and Prejudice in 10th grade which (while I did find boring), was a simple read and most of the content was straight to the point. 

        Even looking at the paragraph above, I can see some of my poor habits from Japanese fiction writing and English fiction writing merging. My sentences do tend to be long and can be more complex than it needs to be. I will, at least, note that it's worse in Japanese, but still I find it interesting to see the influence of my writing in each language. 

        I also found Terry's point on the lack of true equivalent words in English to Japanese and vice versa interesting. I've gotten used to it and therefore haven't ever thought of it deeply, but reading his point on "ham" for example, made me chuckle as I recalled that ham indeed wasn't really ham in Japanese. It's similar to the word purin or "pudding" in Japanese, which refers to (usually caramel) flan. I found myself in quite the conundrum when I was telling my friends how my mother loved purin and when they gave me very strange expressions (well, they also didn't know what flan was so it was quite the experience). 

        Finally, to move to Terry's central point, I also don't know if translating word for word is the correct form of translation. Well, I suppose it is correct, in that it is loyal to the definition of translation, but whether it's a good translation is a whole other story. I think with novel writing, I'm inclined to agree with Terry that ensuring the translation is easy to read is important, as is the case for magazines or articles which are aimed at the general public. I'm a little more hesitant to say the same for poetry where an author's word choice is especially carefully picked, as well as more official literature like newspapers and scientific journals, but the latter two are obviously written differently from Japanese novels.