It does seem only natural that when dealing with technical terms, one would need to either look them up or ask an expert about them to ensure accuracy. Something that Carpenter mentioned which I thought was much less obvious, though, was capturing how people in a certain field speak, with her example of the biker in The Hunter. I think any relatively small group of people brought together by, say, a common hobby, would have their own little catchphrases recognisable by all of them. If something like that comes up in a translation, I’d definitely want to be able to consult someone in that group, since it just wouldn’t sound right to anyone reading it otherwise.
In the readings, Carpenter also discusses at length two authors who were heavily involved in the translation of their work: Arthur Binard, an American writing poetry in Japanese, and Minae Mizumura, whom she worked with very closely in translating A True Novel. While it is of course impossible to tell without ready access to both of their works, from the examples given it seems to me like Binard was much more willing to readily change significant parts of his original work. Perhaps this reflects on the differing natures of poetry and prose translation more than anything, but I thought it was really interesting to take note of.
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