10/19 Reading Comments

 

While I was reading the readings by John Nathan, I especially enjoyed the Questions and Answers segment. While answering a question about translation, he gave an example of a translation he did for a book by Kenzaburo Oe. He states that Oe’s books are “full of excess and wildness, which, if reproduced in the abusive fidelity mode, would look like bad English.” He describes the difficulty of translating writings from authors who write like this, “So to take this all on and let the author be prolix, or let him be repetitive, or let him be overdone, or whatever it is, takes courage.” As previous readings have stated, there are certain aspects of Japanese writing, such as repetition, that are essential to the story but do not sound good when translated into English. This puts the translator in a difficult situation, as they would want to maintain similar tones and accurately characterize the writing. However, when translated literally, a lot of Japanese phrases and sentences would not make sense in English, simply due to the differences in culture and speaking patterns. He recalls when The New Yorker wanted to publish a piece of Oe’s book Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age. Although difficult, he tried to “preserve a lot of the clumsiness and wildness and awkwardness in the Oe text and not to clean it up and hide it.” However, as this sounded awkward in English, the editors at The New Yorker made the translation neat and clean, removing all of the excess wildness that Oe had originally written. 

In Hibbett’s reading, I thought the question about the problem of naturalization or assimilation of the text to the target language was interesting. As there are many cultural and language barriers and differences between Japanese and English, I would find it especially difficult to accurately translate Japanese literature into English. Words and phrases that would read normally to a Japanese person might often sound very strange when an English reader reads a direct translation. He states “There are all the particularities of culture- from artifacts, often unfamiliar, to behavior.” He then follows up by stating that he tries to avoid footnotes, which makes it difficult for him to accurately translate an aspect of culture without explaining it in the text, or adding a footnote. However, he says that nowadays it is easier because facts and information about Japanese life and culture are more widespread tot the English-speaking world.