Comments: 10/13

 "A Live Dog: Some Pointers on Translation."

    That's uh, quite the opening line there isn't it? 

    This was a fun read, I think. The author's matter-of-fact and dry style of humor certainly got a few laughs out of me (although its age is fairly apparent), and a lot of his more pessimistic and jaded comments about readers, both Japanese and English-speaking, struck me as interesting insights. Unfortunately, I find myself largely unable to make judgements in either direction regarding his pointers, if for no other reason than that I refuse to use the words 'good' and 'bad' in reference to anyone or anything other than myself, in which case I have a strong tendency to go for 'bad.' I do, however, find it interesting that the author himself did not seem to suggest that his method of translation was necessarily the best; rather, he seemed to position it as a viable solution to the difficult problem of moving texts from Japanese to English and vice-versa, akin to the use of logical induction in proofs. And so, I thought it was interesting! I didn't have to squint much to see where he was coming from with a lot of these tips, and I may even employ some of them in my own translations when I can't find a path forward myself.

^_^ / 10

"Notes from Interlingual Hell: The Translations of Essays and Journalistic Prose."

    Also a fun read! I like the proposition that translation is itself an artform rather than just some clerical process. What with the amount of time it takes me to translate anything at all, the idea that my own efforts are artistic in nature is validation of sorts, nice to think about (that's how I've been justifying all the time I've thrown into these things). If you think about it though, really anything can be art for its own reasons (at least I think, I don't pretend to be an authority on this stuff); the ideas that flow through the head of a translator while they're at work may in many cases be similar to those that pass through the mind of a painter as they sit at their canvas, or maybe even a mathematician as they search for a proof of some outlandish mathematical idea. I think it's a nice thought --- anyone that deals in work requiring original, creative thinking ought to be called an artist, and valued as such, I think! Wouldn't that be nice?

^_^ / 10