10/13 Readings - Glenn Ee

 

I thought that the readings this week provide a fairly novel perspective on translation. While we have seen discussion of taking liberties from the original text prior to this, these readings seem to take this almost to an extreme, the Riggs reading in particular recommending a great deal of restructuring and editing of the translation’s first draft. It seems to me that this is quite an interesting contrast with, say, the Seidensticker reading, where he discusses his translation of the opening lines of Yukiguni, and talks about how he would have liked to keep the translation closer to the text of the original, even despite internal rhyme possibly making it awkward in English.

I think that the point that Charles Terry brings up about considering the audience might be one of the key issues here. It seems to me that in translating more literary works, it may be more important to keep close to the original text; whereas, for instance, in popular novels, as in the Charles Terry reading, it is more important to keep the reader’s attention by choosing to preserve the brisk pace, and in expository writing like in the Riggs reading, conveying the original arguments and information in a coherent manner is of paramount importance – hence the need to shuffle the structure to present said information in a way the English reader can easily comprehend. Working with poetry last week definitely made a point about how the form of the original can change how you approach a translation, and I think this really does drive the point home even further.