This reading by Carpenter was very interesting because the overall themes about translating and the difficulties involved are similar to the other readings we have read, yet she brought up some points that were distinctly different from other translators. She discusses the onomatopoeia, which Japanese has an impressively large amount of and can be used with one verb to greatly alter the emotion and feel of the action which is hard to capture in English. I think it is extremely difficult for any non-native Japanese speaker to understand, let alone translate, as there are so many and they don't all have clear cut definitions. Carpenter touched on this briefly but besides the challenge of simply translating the meaning, a lot is missed because a lot of Japanese onomatopoeias don't translate into English onomatopoeias but other forms of speech instead, so the repetitive nature as well as the sound is often lost.
Another interesting challenge that was brought up was the use of technical terms. I myself have noticed that when writers, not even translators, don't extensively research or get a second opinion on the use of more technical or specific terms, it sounds very unnatural. One example that comes to mind is I've read a lot of dialogue where a character, who is written as bilingual by a non-bilingual author, will often say things like "Oh I forget to switch sometimes" which doesn't sound natural or realistic at all. In this sense, I do find it important to discuss such things with someone who has direct experience and connects to Carpenter's point about being humble and never assuming you're right from the beginning.
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