Hibett is a very interesting case, in this article having primarily focused on one author. What is fascinating to me is that Tanizaki has so many translators and translations of his stories, I wonder how they influence others or if many translators look at other translations. It's also very interesting in the aspect of "aestheticizing" Japan. And with the accusation of writing an "exotic Japan" I really think it has heavily impacted modern views on what Japan is. Of course, the "Cool Japan" movement also didn't help with establishing a generic aesthetic of Japan. In contrast, the fantasy of the West is also surprising. I know there are cases where Western culture is glorified, but it stood out to me that Tanizaki enjoyed this romanticized vision of the West, but had no intentions of going there. I wonder if he didn't want the image to be destroyed, or if he wanted it to remain in abstract. But then, wouldn't that pose the same threat to creating an imagined Japan to Western audiences?
I enjoyed Jonathan's comparison between the Japanese text and the translations. The success in translation to him is retaining the author's voice. And this is such a hard thing to do when the voices exist so differently between Japanese and English. However, I think that it is possible to capture styles and meanings if you are good at reading the language and also the people. I liked how he also referred to awkward wording as "translation-ese" because it really does feel that way sometimes. When you've tried to translate something perhaps too close to the original that it just sounds outlandish in the English. As he mentions in the article, translation is done in a lot of different ways and states that even the original text is a translation in a way.
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