10/19 Comments

    In John Nathan's talk, he elaborates on a "strategy of fluency" as a method of ensuring fluidity in translations by ridding the work of cultural and linguistic differences. Personally, I feel like overwriting cultural context is in some ways trapping the reader in their own world and doesn't allow for the exploration of other cultures with their own cultural norms. Reading works outside of one's own language is a way to, of course, interact with literature outside of say English, but it's also a way to learn about another culture. Linguistic differences, I think, might be inevitable since things like grammar are crucial to the reading experience, but I do think cultural differences should be retained to some degree. This reminds me of our first translation with oseibō which could be kept oseibō or translated to holiday gift or some variation of the translation. 

   For Hibbett's talk on Tanizaki, I found myself somewhat amused by the mention of Tanizaki's emphasis on ero, guro, and nansensu (admittedly, it was mostly because of how silly nonsense sounds in katakana). Reading on, I found it interesting how Tanizaki often thought about the European world and painted it in such a fantastical way, much like how Japan is often depicted abroad, yet he didn't seem to want to actually go to Europe. As mentioned by (I think Madalyn), I'm curious is Tanizaki maybe didn't want his view of Europe to be destroyed or warped from going to Europe. I also find it interesting how now, though Japan is often put on a pedastal abroad, people generally want to go to Japan, unlike how Tanizaki seemed to avoid the abroad experience to Europe.