10/19 - Reading Comments

 Both of the readings by Howard Hibbett and John Nathan expressed a common theme of cultural differences and the act of translation in reference to being as loyal to the original or varying to accommodate for the language it is being translated to. When Hibbett was describing his translation process for The Key, he spoke of how the husband and wife used different kana within their diaries. As a result, he read various books by female authors in order to learn how their dialogue differentiates for the wife’s diaries. Although the most helpful book ended up being written by a man, it still emphasized how much a cultural difference can cause the translator to go at lengths to retain at least some of that distinction between the diaries. I know I certainly haven’t read enough books to pull a feat off such as that. Furthermore, he spoke of Manji, which is the Buddhist swastika symbol. Of course, the connotation with swastika in the west is wildly different. This is of course troubling for the translator since they must maintain some of the original title but also attempt to remove the negative connotation that results from a direct translation. This sort of reminded me of one of our previous readings where the author of a poem changed their own poem somewhat drastically into English due to a motherly complex that would arise in English versus the Japanese version. As for John Nathan, he spoke more of the translator’s duties. He spoke a lot of how translators should not attempt to remain exactly the same as the original since it may cause the author’s original voice to be lost, but to find a way to maintain the cultural and linguistic differences while transforming its readability to that of the translated language. A quote that I thought was good was that people see “translation as important not because it transmits some kind of an essential meaning from one language to another, but because of what happens to both the original and the translation, the target language, as a result of translation.” I think this quote summarizes what it means to be a good translator. Anyone who understands the other language can get the meaning across, but a good translator is able to convey that meaning into English, as if the Japanese author would have intended to write it if they were writing in English.