11/30 - Comments

Bellos spoke about machine translation more specifically about Google Translate. He speaks about how it translates, which was actually kind of interesting to find out, and why it could never replace real translators. At first glance, that is very true. If you have ever used Google Translate you can see that the sentences are a bit off even if you have no understanding of the language you are translating. Furthermore, I do agree that any machine learning will indeed have trouble translating into more creative pieces of work and literature. But that's the thing though. It feels like there is a limited number of ways to write things that eventually at some point machine translation will eventually be able to translate sufficiently. Even then, there could be a development in the future using some different approach that could replace translators. The passage by Steiner itself was a bit of a translation project, but if I understood correctly, he spoke about the approach a translator should take, so basically the typical motion. The first step is putting faith into what you are translating, meaning that there is a purpose to what you are translating, and not just some nonsensical nonsense. Next would be figuring out what the actual meaning in what you are translating actually is and extracting all of it. Then he goes on to speak about creating some sort of balance in the translation, and compares it to that of importing and exporting. It is difficult to balance what you change and how faithful you are to the original. Lastly, he speaks of ways in which to maintain this balance. At the moment, there is not really anything that I disagree with so I think this is a decent approach, although it is possible later on I may see some flaws.

11/30 Comments

 

        Bellos' text on Google Translate was interesting for me to read simply because I've definitely used Google Translate in the past and have seen both the accuracies and inaccuracies of the program. Though in the past, I'd mostly used it for Mandarin - English translations (simply because that was the language I studied in middle school/high school), in the latter half of high school, I actually used it mostly for Japanese. The reason for this was because Google Translate has a sort of review feature where you can correct, review, and help with more accurately translating the language you've selected. As a means of brushing up on my Japanese, I'd spent some time doing so in my free time. It was an interesting experience where I found myself taken aback by sentence fragments, which of course lacked context, that made me cock my head and think huh. What does this mean? It was really my first conscious attempt at translating Japanese / English so I'm quite attached to Google Translate still even if some translations still make me chuckle. As Bellos states in their closing paragraph, I highly doubt Google Translate will ever become accurate enough to perform literary translations in an authentic sense (and it's unreasonable to expect it to do so) since it'll almost always be a copy from someone (plural) else, simply because of how the program is made. And of course, there is that component of no translation being correct. I do think it'd be astounding if machine translations evolved to a point where it can take into account things like historical context, but I do think that'd be quite difficult. 

        Steiner's "The Hermeneutic Motion" was quite a dense read and not as interesting for me. It seemed to reiterate much of what we have discussed in previous readings, and I agree with Steiner in that there are words/phrases that simply cannot be translated in a 1 to 1 sense. But still, there are ways to go around such issues (even if it can get wordy) so I don't think it's quite as dramatic an issue as Steiner seems to put it. I also agree that there is no perfect translation or the "perfect "double'" but I think that's part of the charm of translation. Just like how we can describe the sky in hundreds of different ways, the same sentence can be translated in hundreds of ways, each one with a different emphasis or uniqueness to it. Of course, some might be more literal or poetic than others, but they're still an attempt to convey the meaning of the original to a different audience.

11/30 Comments

 As for George Steiner's "The Hermeneutic Motion", I'm not really sure what to say about that... After reading it, it feels like it's one of those things where I technically understood the words he was using but couldn't understand a damn thing he said the whole way through.

As for the Google Translate article, honestly, I'm surprised by his description of how it actually works, as I honestly wasn't aware that it just looks for similar, already existing sentences out there to achieve its translation. Granted, this article was written 10 years ago so I'm certain it's changed significantly in its approach, but I think it's rather brilliant. Rather than try to calculate a translation based on a set of rules, just look for it's equivalent somewhere out there in the ether of the internet. It was such an obvious choice, I think, given that Google is at its core a company dedicated to search and retrieval of information. It is pretty amazing that even after 10 years of work, though, that Google Translate's performance is still rather poor, especially when translating languages like Japanese into English. Although, I guess it's really no surprise, as like Bellos said, "when it comes to real challenges in...translation, human beings have a hard time of it, too". After reading this, I'm actually quite interested in looking into how some of the other translation systems out there compare in their approach to Google Translate, especially ones (like Papago or DeepL) that seem to fair much better when translating East Asian languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

11/30 Reading Comments

 

I think Steiner’s view on trust in translation is very interesting. He claims that the translator trusting that there exists some meaning that can be translated is a “radical act of generosity.” It seems to be such a fundamental assumption that it is hard to conceive of it being false, since after all, languages exist to allow people to express and communicate their thoughts, to give form to meaning. As such, I think bringing up this point as the essential first step in the process of translation definitely gives for some fascinating food for thougt.

Bellos’ article on machine translation was also a good read, and I do definitely agree with his take that machine translation cannot handle literary translation well, nor is it reasonable to expect it to. As he says, machine translation cannot (and likely will not any time soon) take into account the real-world context of an utterance or, in this case, a work of literature; yet no literature exists in a vacuum, so I think it would be quite impossible to produce an adequate translation without at least some knowledge of the world in which it was written and the experiences of the author.

11/30

 I found the "I, Translator" article very interesting, especially because this article was published in 2010, and stated that Google Translate had just been made in 2009. I never realized but I didn't start using Google Translate until I was in middle school which was 2011, so I don't know what life was like before Google Translate. The article states the obvious: Google Translate is not entirely reliable, so it could never replace human translators. I don't know why, but even the language you choose to start off with can make the translation vary. For example, if I were to translate English to French, the phrase I put into Google Translate would not be as correct if I started the translation in Spanish. This has happened to me many times, which is why I usually use Spanish if I'm using Google Translate. I found it interesting that Google. Translate essentially searches the web for similar sentences in already translated texts. I did not know that is how it works. It's 2020 now, so I'm wondering if that has changed in the past 10 years. The Hermeneutic Motion article was relatively dense and less interesting to me. It repeated what we've seen in previous texts: even if you try to stick close to the text, "the trust can never be final. It is betrayed" because sometimes there is no way to translate a certain word or phrase from one language to another. I do agree with the statement that "certain texts or genres have been exhausted by translation," but honestly even a different writing style can incline me to read a book, so the more options the merrier in my opinion. If the writing style is too difficult, I won't pick up the book, and I find that many writers attempt to have a unique style when it should just be simple.

11/30 Reading Comments

  In “Fictions of the Foreign,” David Bellos talks about machine translation and its advantages and disadvantages. Machine translation first developed during the Cold War, as the United States did not have enough translators who knew Russian. Developers of machine translation regarded Russian as a code, stating that once the two-language lexicons were inside the machine, the machine would be able to translate from one code to another after giving it the whole set of rules by which people in the two languages generate meaningful combinations of terms. Bellos then talks about more modern forms of machine translation, such as Google Translate. Google Translate, like every other form of machine translation, is not 100% accurate, because first of all, there is no such thing as a “correct translation,” and second, it only “gives only an expression consisting of the most probable equivalent phrases as computed by it’s analysis of an astronomically large set of paired sentences trawled from the web.” He then states that behind every form of machine translation, a human translation always came first. Machine translation, although not always completely accurate, is helpful in urgent situations. For example, in the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Carnegie Mellon University released Haitian-Creole text and spoken data, which proved to be very helpful as it developed a machine translation system that worked to communicate with victims of the earthquake. Bellos ends his writing by arguing that although machine translation can be helpful due to its speed and easy access, it should never be used for original works. 

In terms of Steiner's reading, I was very confused by his argument and I was not quite sure what he was trying to say. However, I liked how he explained that while translating, the translator should refrain from simply replicating the original text, and they should add their own interpretation of the text. I think that this furthers the creativity of the translator, and it would be interesting comparing different translations. 

Reading Comments 11/30 - Sarah Watanabe

     I found Steiner's take on translation and fidelity to be quite interesting because he doesn't see it as an issue of being faithful to the original text. Rather, he accepts that it's impossible to replicate a text at all and sees it as an issue of equality- whether you can add to the new text as much as you can lose when translating. I actually liked this approach to the fidelity argument the best of the ones we have read so far because instead of trying to choose between two approaches which are both unsatisfactory, this approach accepts the futile efforts of trying to replicate a text and instead focuses on what can be done by the translator. However, Steiner's description of the steps, particularly aggression and incorporation, were quite vivid and seemed rather forceful and violent than what I imagined translation to be, kind of describing it like the forceful removal and assimilation into a new language. 

    Bellos' article was also quite interesting. I have seen my fair share of comically bad translation, a mix of both human and machine translated. Though I knew that Google Translated used probability to determine which specific words or patterns are generated, I had no idea it was generating translations based off information from the Internet, though it does make sense. I agree with Bellos in that for routine or quite common patterns this works great but for more obscure grammar patterns, less common readings of kanji, or rarely used phrasing, Google Translator fails. Because of this, Google Translate is notorious for weird grammar patterns and I know that some TV shows, when they want a character to sound crazy or speak gibberish-like English, they will put it into Google Translate it and convert it to a bunch of languages before returning it to English. 

Reading Comments 11/30

I thought it was quite interesting that Google Translate actually searches the internet for the most probable equivalent sentence in the target language. Explains why single words or short phrases are translated quite accurately while sentences or paragraphs often are not (with the exception of popular passages as mentioned.) I actually use Google Translate quite a bit myself to aid with translations. Obviously, I don't paste the entire sentence I'm trying to translate, but rather, singular words are short phrases. Usually I'm able to understand the grammar but lack the vocabulary necessary for translating and so using Google Translate as a one-to-one translator for small fragments works decently well.

I've never really thought about it too much but when translating something you often place the original text on a pedestal. It's easy to forget that the thing you are translating might not have as much depth as you might credit it with, but at the same time the opposite can happen and you don't do the original text enough justice. However, whatever might be the case, it's interesting that Steiner describes both to have merits. It's unrealistic to have a perfect translation all the time and we can take solace in the fact that imperfect translations are still acceptable in their own way.

Reading Comments 11/30

     Given that I tend to rely on the help of Google Translate for some of my translations, I really related to this article "I, Translator". I wholeheartedly agree that the purpose of Google Translate is just to directly translate sentences, which proves useful when I can't read kanji, or when I don't know vocabulary. It is far too often the "correct translation", because when I can't understand a sentence and I input it into Google Translate, it won't understand the context and I still won't comprehend completely. 

    I really loved how Steiner said that "there is more here than meets the eye." To an extent, I agree that paraphrasing and translating can enlarge the stature of the original. I think in some sense, translating can be seen as a magnifying glass enlarging the text after squinting at fine print, because in some sense you can see the work as a whole, but still not comprehend the deeper layers, if any. After rereading the piece in a language you speak, I think only then you can fully grasp the big picture and view the author's intent (of course, not to the extent of the original given that translation will bring some details to light and omit others). 

Hermeneutic Motion (Q)

Steiner describes translation as a fourfold process where damage to the original text is inevitable either by overcompensating or under-compensating. It is also described that the reciprocal nature of translation ultimately benefits the original text in some way: a bad translation would highlight the good points of the text, and a translation that surpasses the original would reveal unrealized "potentialities". Which of the 2 would be preferable? Do you think it is in fact inevitable that certain translations cannot be perfect?

11/30 (C)

Bellos: I think his focus on just Google Translate and other statistical modeling applications might be somewhat narrow-minded. There is no guarantee that a breakthrough in natural language processing isn't right around the corner at some lab somewhere, and if one does pop up, it could pose an existential threat to us translators. It's unlikely that the tech private sector and academia have put all of their eggs into just the Google Translate basket after all, so having a little bit of paranoia might be healthy for us in this field.

Steiner: This text was written in English, but I had to do more head-scratching to figure out what it was getting at in some places than I did for many of the Japanese texts we've read this semester (though maybe I was just tired). Had to look up as many words too. I need to read more, probably not good that I had this much trouble ('-_-) 

TIL there are texts that are seen as inferior to their own translations. I didn't know that was a thing, it's interesting... I wonder if this is just an issue of authorship, or if there are actually languages that are better equipped to discuss certain topics than others (maybe they have a more robust vocabulary, special idioms, or certain grammatical features that can enhance things somehow)?

I, Translator (Q)

Suppose the linguists and computer scientists of house Chomsky crack Universal Grammar and develop some kind of hardware tool that allows its users to understand any language, living or dead, as if it were their mother tongue. In such a future, would translators like us still have any reason to exist?

Just to be safe, we should all have a plan B.

Comments 11/23

David Bellos describes both the shortcomings of machine translating, and the situations in which it can be pretty reliable. It can absolutely come to the rescue to get across simple statements or pieces that are not too complex in grammar. This is why it worked especially well to get across necessary information between survivors and rescuers. Though, despite the growing use of machine translation, it is still lacking when compared to a human translator. Translation of literature is especially difficult for machines to do because of abstract meanings and abnormal grammatical usages. Since these programs are more statistical and are based off of routine phrases, there would be a lot lost in any media that has a purpose of creativity.

The article by George Steiner describes the difficulties of translation and provides examples of why translation is done particularly well by a real person. He describes the trust a translator has that there is meaning to be discovered in the piece. Then, there is the problem of translations and the lack of meaning, and can't be carried over to the target language. He continues describing the strategies of the translator in understanding meanings and then goes on to extract those meanings and recreate them in the target language. Next, he describes incorporating the meaning and form into the form of the target language. The fourth stage of the translation process he describes is bringing balance to the translation, so that it works as a creative piece. The restoration of balance goes beyond the "appropriative comprehension," as he says. I believe this has to do with how the original language must be deconstructed and understood in the target language, and much can be lost. However, there has to be some way of putting back in specifics of the original and maintaining fidelity, or exchange without loss.

Reading Comments: 11/9

 The article by Deutscher is indeed interesting. As a bilingual, I've read article about how languages affect how we think before and have thought about it for many times. In terms of time and tenses, Thai works quite similar to Chinese, we don't have tenses of time and are not obliged to give the exact time of the event or how that particular event 'has been going' or 'was going,' etc. That's why it's been intriguing me when we were talking about how narratives for 1Q84 changes by changing tenses. It would be hellish to try to translate that nuance for Thai readers, since we have no such system. Luckily, we have different pronouns for first person, so that might made it a bit easier. It also recalled me back to when we were talking about 'Croquette' translation whether we should translate the title as singular or plural, and the issue did not even occur to me because there is no plural indication of words in Thai, so I just went with 'Croquette' in singular without even thinking of anything. Experiences like this make me think more about translation process and appreciate (and is a bit frustrated by) it more.

11/9 Comments

 

    "You Are What You Speak" was a particularly interesting article for me to read because of its connection to social psychology & psycholinguistics. In Global House at BU, we actually spent a discussion section talking about gendered words in some European languages and the influence that it may have on how someone perceives the object (such as with bridges as mentioned in the article). We spoke about it in the context of bias as well as how European languages with gendered words can adapt to a modern society where gender isn't quite just male and female. In addition, we covered words that weren't easily translatable such as しょうがない, よろしく, and お疲れ for Japanese and Schadenfreude for German. Of these, I think しょうがない is a good example of how our brains tend to lean towards the "it can't be helped" mentality. As outlined in the article, it's not as though non-Japanese speaking folks wouldn't understand it, but those who natively speak Japanese seem to have more of an affinity for thinking that way. 

    "On the Different Methods of Translating," other than finding it needlessly wordy, was interesting in that it puts into perspective the experience of bringing the audience to the author or the author to the audience through a translator. When translating from Japanese to English, I frame my thoughts in the context of Japan (if that makes sense) and if I'm doing the opposite, I'll frame my thoughts in the context of the States. While this isn't exactly a conscious decision, I do find it important to remain aware of the cultural context and implications of words. Even a simple word choice like "consequence" tends to have a negative connotation, though the word itself is neutral. If an author chose to use consequence as opposed to result, I like to think that the implications are also of importance. Hence I try to retain that when translating. Of course, it is much, much easier said than done. 

11/9 Reading Comments

 

I thought that Deutscher’s article on how our mother tongue can affect some fundamental aspects of how we think about the world was quite fascinating. It made me think about how some aspects of language are thought of sometimes as untranslatable, or at the very least extremely challenging to translate accurately; it is often said that our goal as translators is to give the readers of our translation as close as an experience to that of readers of the original, and I do wonder if these so-called untranslatable aspects might be reflective of certain irreconcilable differences between the experiences of the two audiences. For instance, consider the Japanese honorific system, and more broadly, keigo in general. Even if we are somehow able to capture accurately the degrees of politeness that were in the original text, it seems to me after reading the article that native English speakers would not be quite as acutely aware of the bearing they have on social relationships.

I think this also brings some clarity to Schleiermacher’s points on the two ways of translating, as he puts it. He draws a distinction between bringing the audience to the author’s original text, which he characterises as giving the foreign audience an experience similar to that if they had learned the language themselves, and bringing the author to the audience as attempting to write what the author would have written had they been a native of that language. Taking Deutscher’s article into account, we can see how these methods are different; in particular, when Schleiermacher says that the “father [of a work] is [the author’s] paternal tongue,” we see what he means, since the author would include in their work ways of thinking that would change if their native language were different, and so of course the work would be fundamentally different if we attempted the second method.

11/09 Readings

Of the two readings, I found "You are What you speak" most interesting. The reading was very correct in saying that hiding gender in certain languages, such as Spanish, is difficult. Whenever my parents ask me what I did on a particular day, and I just want to say "I went with my friend to..." I would either say "fui con mi amigo a" or "fui con mi amiga a." The gender of the friend will ALWAYS be revealed if I'm hanging out with just one person. However, if I'm hanging out in a big group I would say "amigos" and in the plural you would have to ask if any girls were there because girls are included in the plural masculine. So there is some ambiguity, but compared to English, Spanish often reveals everything. The masculine/feminine articles "el" and "la" definitely contribute to how I feel about a certain object. Some words such as "superior" which means "superior" or "the best" can take either a masculine or feminine article. Making it "el superior" makes it sound really feminine. I know a supermarket that goes by "La Superior" and it gives the store a more cozy atmosphere. This is not to say that women are the only ones who shop at supermarkets, but it does give the impression that the female customer was particularly important in the naming of the store. It also gives female empowerment vibes because it was a choice to use "la" instead of "el." Regarding the other reading, it was kind of confusing how the author spoke about bringing the reader to the author or vice versa. I did agree with the part about having certain inclinations to translate in a certain way because there are just too many options.

11/9 comments

 

Deutscher's description of how language can influence how we think is really quite thought provoking. Like that guy who wrote the article for MIT claimed, it's not the case that language shapes how we can think, but how we're, as Deutscher describes it, obliged to think. It's not that we can't understand concepts that may not exist in our language, it's just that we're not forced to use them all the time, as in the example of future tense with Chinese versus in English. I think it's kind of amazing though, how different languages can shape people's perceptions of objects, like bridges in German versus in Spanish due to them being gendered nouns, and how the Germans thought that they were more sleek and curvy due to them being 'feminine', and the Spanish thought they were sturdy and manly. Even more incredible, perhaps, was how Guugu Yimithirr speakers experience the world so fundamentally attached to the idea of cardinal directions. These linguistic idiosyncrasies remind me of how Japanese people often bow when they're speaking on the phone out of habit. It makes me wonder how English shapes, or I suppose instructs me to think on a day to day basis. I think that by learning Japanese, it's helped force me to focus on conveying different pieces of information that may or may not be deemed more important in it, like the lack of personal pronouns, I, me, you, etc. and how using them can convey different kinds of information (place in the social hierarchy, relationship, etc.).

Reading Comments 11/9

From "On the Different Methods of Translating", I thought it was really interesting on how the author commented that translators performing their work will do so while "retaining a feeling of the foreign [tongue]." I do agree that to some extent, when I'm reading something in Japanese, I'll translate it in my head from a sort of "Japanese" perspective, so that my head translation doesn't exactly sound "American" in a sense. 

From, "You Are What You Speak" I agree with the author that English makes you specify certain information. The given example is specifying time, but I thought of how in Japanese the subject is implied, but in English you need to specify the subject. It's a bit confusing for translators in that aspect, because unless the original language is clear, the translator is left to either guess or ask the author for clarification. 

Reading Comments 11/9

 Schliermacher is correct in his statement that we cannot assume how someone speaking in one language would speak in another. However, I don't think equivalencies in translation are so focused on imagining Romans as Germans. I think the focal point of translation is on making the text read in a way that someone in the other language can understand it, making it approachable to a new audience, not necessarily re-imagining it in this way. In his article, he leans more towards accomodating the author in a way, and translating more literally. While this would stay true to the literal aspects of a text, it would do very little in working as a translation beyond the word level. 

I think total accomodation to the reader, though, isn't as severe as Schliermacher thought it was. As we see in Deutscher's article, people are able to grasp more than the limitations of their language may imply. 

I think Deutscher makes a lot of very important points about how we use and understand language. I love the point about what languages have to include and what they can include. People assume Japanese is very vague, when in reality it just has different types of mandatory information. English relies more on relative pronouns, while Japanese does not. Languages do not establish limits in understanding, but they do affect our ways of thinking and understanding information and signals. This is exactly why language is so important.

11/9 Reading Comments

I liked the quote by Roman Jakobson that stated, ”languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” At first I was confused about the meaning of this quote, but I realized that it meant that our minds are shaped in different ways by the languages that we speak. Our respective language does not encourages us to think, but rather because of what it generally causes us to think about. This statement resonated with me, as I often find myself thinking about things differently in both English and Japanese. Even when I am thinking about the same thing, I find myself approaching it differently depending on whether I am thinking about it in English or Japanese. I also thought that the example about the remote Australian aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr was interesting. I couldn’t even imagine speaking a language that doesn’t use directional words such as left, right, forward, or behind. I thought this was very bizarre, as this language uses words such as “east” and “north,” using cardinal directions instead of the egocentric system. This was interesting to me because in order to speak this language, you have to know cardinal directions at the back of your hand, as we know left and right very easily. In the article, they state, “the convention of communicating with geographic coordinates compels speaking from the youngest age to pay attention to the clues from the physical environment every second of their lives, and to develop an accurate memory of their own changing orientations at any given moment.” When asked where north is, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr did not know how to describe it, just as I wouldn’t know how to describe where left or right is.

11/9 Reading Comments- Sarah Watanabe

     I found this week's readings to be very interesting, especially Deutscher's discussion about how language shapes the constraints of our thinking and the way we see the world. I largely agree with him that in the most general sense, languages share many commonalities and humans generally can relate to other experiences even without a specific word in their language. However, his example of how different languages indicate directionality highlights how a person's framework of thinking can be greatly influenced by their language. I found that stigma related to certain words could also be a slightly different, yet similar example of this. The social associations and stigmatizations of words can vary across languages and direct translations may greatly skew the meaning. For example, in many countries around the world, mental health is still highly stigmatized and words meaning depression, anxiety, or panic attack, though stigmatized in the West to an extent, would seem much more extreme and not relatable to everyday people when used in another language. In this way, though increased globalization and the rise of the Internet has led to a lot of transnational communication and may have reduced many of the ways that language differences shape people's perceptions and experiences, I think language is so strongly intertwined with culture that it is something that translators are likely conscious about. 

11/9 Comments

I found Deutscher's article to be quite interesting since it deals with certain things that I would not have normally thought too much about without inquisition. Considering the impact that different languages might have on someone's mindset or attitude towards different objects or concepts, I think it is true that thinking in different languages does actually yield different results. Going off of my own experience, since I speak both English and Chinese, I have realized that my attitude (I suppose) sort of changes when switching between the languages. For reasons I can't quite explain, I feel like I'm a bit more polite when speaking in Chinese. Maybe it's due to the varying environments where I would use either languages when growing up; Growing up, I would mainly only use Chinese when talking to my family members and occasionally guests that would come over that only speak Chinese. Obviously it was expected that I talked with respect to these guests and I suppose that might have had an influence on my association with Chinese. English on the other hand, I would use when talking with my friends and my sister, where I was allowed to talk in a more casual tone I suppose. One thing that was brought up with Tanemura sensei during one of our interpreting classes which is relevant, is how whether or not when speaking in Japanese over the phone, one might been obligated to bow while saying certain things (greetings, thanking someone, etc). Even though I havn't been learning Japanese for a long time, I thought it was true that there is a sense of obligation to bow during certain exchanges even when not in person. It's quite interesting the amount of subconsciously learned cultural associations people learn with regards to objects, routines, or even simply abstract concepts such as time as mentioned in the article.

questions for "you are what you speak"

 1. In the article, Deutscher described how some languages assign gender too inanimate objects, therefore changing the speaker's perception of the object. While Japanese doesn't assign gender to inanimate objects, the distinction between male and female pronouns are significantly more pronounced than in English. Such pronounced distinctions often does not exist in English, therefore most native English speakers don't even have a concept of it, and the distinction is often lost in translation. How do you as a translator counter this? In other words, how would you describe the color red to a blind person who don't have the concept of color?

2. Deutscher described how the concept of colors might be distorted depending on the language. In Japanese, the word for blue and green - あおい and みどりare often used interchangeably to describe a color that is somewhere between blue and green. Have you ever encountered a situation where the difference in concept of colors became a problem? And in your mind, is あおい blue and みどり green, or the other way around?

Questions for "On the Different Methods of Translating"

 Schleiermacher claims that "there are only two possibilities" when the translator chooses their approach to translating. Do you agree with this?

Schleiermacher says that when taking the first approach he discusses in the reading, the translator must find a way to keep the sense of the foreign in his translation. Do you think this is true, and why?

Schleiermacher believes that to attempt to translate something as though the author had originally written it in the target language is to fundamentally change the nature of the work. Do you agree? Why?

11/2 Comments

 I thought these readings were very interesting. I found it interesting in our discussion today that factors such as gender and age may have somewhat of a subconscious influence on your writing style, even as translators try to convey the words of a character completely different from the author and themselves. I also think while it's very natural to change the titles of books to match their audience, I think something maybe authentic and foreign is replaced with dressed-up and familiar. That's not to say that either has an advantage over the other, I think depending on the reader you can find more enjoyment in a title that caters to your native tongue and your creative needs, but it's also exciting when there is a word unknown to you and reading this book will hopefully get you closer to discovering its meaning. 

11/2 Comments

 

        I found the beginning section of Copeland's text somewhat heartwarming (微笑ましい？かな？) and nostalgic when she elaborated on her first major translation under Seidensticker for Shiga Naoya. I remember a little earlier in the semester feeling like I had to translate every word and struggled somewhat with words that were difficult to translate (like oseibō). I think I especially felt that way when it comes to novels, short stories and other more artistic texts since writers don't pick words willy nilly and I felt like I should respect things like word choice (which is still how I feel though to not as strong an extent). I think translating more official texts helped since those focus on readability and I also felt like those were more fun.

        Like we discussed in class dialect is difficult to translate, especially since it's often used in a much deeper sense than just "this person comes from here." I still don't know how we would translate dialect, aside from using a maybe Southern dialect/accent or a British tone or something since Southern accents have their own implications, as do British accents. When running into accent/dialect problems, I can't help, but wish we were translating to Chinese since there are similar dialect differences there (if I'm recalling correctly from my rudimentary Mandarin classes in high school). I hope we can continue the discussion on translating dialects sometime in the future, especially in the context of lesser known dialects like Aomori/Akita dialect or Okinawa dialect (both of which are really difficult to understand).

11/2 Comments

 Rebecca Copeland's article was incredibly interesting to read. I love how she captured the realization of a translator. She went into it with this idea of perfect equivalence in translation, but then realized how naive she was. Then, quoting Seidenstecker's point of choosing between two undesirable options. With her article as a whole, though, she points out how easy it is to zone in on a word, or a few words, and forget the piece as an entire entity. I think it is especially important when translating women's writing, or anything written by groups of people that have experienced some kind of discrimination, to look further into intention and voice. It is really fascinating that she pointed out that these voices can be more important than the stories they are telling. I think this can be true if the story is an extension of the voice. 

The round table discussion was very interesting with its regards to equivalence. I think that while translating, I have heard and considered the term "equivalence" a lot, and just accepted it as a logical idea. Now, having read this article, I really wonder what it can really produce. While there are many logical similarities and relationships of some part of Japanese into English, they simply aren't the same. I agree with what Seidenstecker said, having accents or dialects that we think is perfectly similar to the Japanese still wouldn't work because the relationships, time, and place within the English are too glaringly specific and can't properly represent the Japanese. 

11/2 Comments

     Something that I found interesting about Copeland's write-up was when she talked about her translation of Grotesque. She described that one of the most challenging things was enduring the translation of "the darkness of the story". That's interesting to me, and something that I think we aren't likely to experience unless we're to take on the translation of literary work as professionals. Something else she said that was difficult was keeping up with the number of different characters in the story, and the fact that they all "spoke through different textual formats-diary, letters, journals, court records". I can only imagine the difficulty in conveying all of the character's distinctly through such mediums. Another comment I found interesting was where she talked about how "large trade presses feel obliged to provide their readers with books that will appeal to them." And, such an obligation gives them reason to manipulate the translations in such a way that a university press (the kind she was used to working with) would not, and such it would be marketed and targeted to an audience that is very different from the original audience who'd have read the work in Japanese. I can understand the logic behind it, of course, as a printing company's job is to sell copies of the book, and they should have a target audience to be able to accomplish that, but in some sense it's almost a shame because you'll inherently lose some of the originality of the work. Although, if it was me deciding whether I'd want to read a translation that was attempting to be totally accurate in its translation, versus one that had been targeted toward an English speaking audience, if I'm reading it for fun then I'd probably want the one targeted for English speakers. Something else interesting she mentioned is that the editors basically got rid of the original ending of the book, as it introduced information that they felt wasn't supported by earlier chapters and so it was confusing. That's pretty bold, I think, to go to that level of editing as to totally change/cut the last chapter of a book. As Copeland points out, this totally goes against what Seidensticker told all of us, that a "translator who reshapes is not a good translator". However, in this particular case, the kind of book that will appeal to a Japanese audience versus a Western one are completely different, and so significant reworking and edits can be absolutely necessary to appeal them. I think this quote sums up the logic nicely: "So, by trying to create an 'equivalent' reading experience, they (the editors) were perhaps being truer to the text than a translator who avoided reshaping." 

Reading Comments: 11/2

 Reading Copeland's article raises the popular question circling around this class again, "How can we translate the text as faithful as possible." And the definition of faithful differs among people. In Copeland's perspective, it seems like her 'faithfulness' is how the readers will perceive the translated text versus how the Japanese readers will perceive the original text. Sure, the experience of readers are important, but I've seen many articles talking about deleting some pieces in a text that will 'ruin' the experience for American readers, and I find that a bit concerning and weird. I know that the point of publishing novels is to sell them, but to assume how a group of readers' taste will be and edit some parts of the text cannot convey the feeling of faithfulness to me. I think if a reader decides to pick a foreign book to read, their interest already lies somewhere that is far from their original language. Maybe different style and setting are what they want and hope to find in the foreign book they pick up. At least, they would try to comprehend or look for footnotes or editor note's when they stumble the part that seems foreign to them, I think. Multiple layers of problem of faithfulness is something I never consider before joining this class (before I would think to translate everything the text provides would be 'faithful' and did not consider about the experience), but it sure is an interesting aspect of translation that will linger in my mind long after.

11/3 Reading Comments

 Rebecca Copeland's experiences with translating definitely relate to my own. When she said she wanted to create a perfect equivalent to an author's piece and how she later realized she was naive because this is impossible. She had Seidensticker as a professor, and he described translating as "a series of dilemmas" because when translating we face "a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives." This article is called "copeland hearing voices" and I found it interesting how she said her first encountering a voice was through Uno's Ningyoshi Tenguya Kyukichi. Copeland states that there were also dialects, which almost made her lose "the voice." I wish she talked more about the voice, and how to make sure to always have it. I'm surprised Copeland did a joint translation. I feel like my style would differ too much from others and I would get frustrated easily, so congrats to her for accomplishing a joint translation. As Copeland later states, "what we translate, the way we read, see, interpret is already informed by our readerly experience, by the voices we are taught to hear." Even though something I write might look good to me, it could be a disaster in another's eyes, but that's just because we really do have our own ways of judging works. I find myself differing in which version of a translation I enjoy more, and I'm not sure if it's because I've read less or because I just can't recognize the "best" translation. It was interesting to see Copeland's experience with unviersity presses versus a major trade press. According to her, a major trade press' main goal is sales. I feel like that makes sense because after all, they're in the business to make money. But also cutting out characters and scenes seems kinda strange because so far we've been taught to not do that, and keep to the original.

    Regarding the round-table discussion, I liked how Nathan stated "We need to be the best reader that could have existed for that particular author." Seidensticker extended this point later, and said that for works he felt less attached too, the final result was not as good as for works he genuinely enjoyed. I can understand this because I have definitely felt more motivated to work on a certain work over another during this course. Seidensticker seems to be well-admired among translators, but I enjoyed how he could find faults in his own works and make fun of them. I also enjoyed his reasoning behind why men should be able to translate a woman's work and how he said the statement "a man cannot translate a woman's work" basically means a "man can't enjoy a work by a woman" and how absurd it all is. I definitely agree.

11/3 Reading Comments

 

I thought the dialect discussion and some of the tangential points brought up in relation to it in the round table reading reading particularly interesting. Intuitively, there certainly would be something different about the impression that characters speaking different dialects leave on people reading it in its original language, and one would certainly want to try to preserve that when translating it; yet, as the translators at the discussion mention, transposing it to a dialect associated with a certain English-speaking region of the world, like Cockney, does somehow feel wrong. I definitely think Seidensticker hits the mark here when he says that "dialect ... doesn't travel," as it feels like having an accent that the English-speaking reader can place somehow breaks the suspension of disbelief in a way that more standard English does not.

I think the point that Seidensticker raises with regards to Genji Monogatari is worth considering too. He remarks that these days Genji is considered haute couture even in Japan, despite it being a colloquial work when originally written. I imagine this is probably due to the evolution of Japanese dating the classical language even to a Japanese speaker. In this sense, it does seem like while we speak of an ideal where we try to translate the experience of a native speaker reading the original, this experience cannot be said to be unified at all.

Copeland, on the other hand, discusses in detail how the different expectations of communities of readers result in heavy changes being made beyond just the translation of the text, and provides more insight into why these major changes happen, which I thought was worth noting as a parallel to Seidensticker talking about how he had greatly reduced the amount of crying in Genji in his translation. Copeland mentions that she was taught by Seidensticker, so I thought this parallel was a neat illustration of her point that individual translators are influenced by many voices.

11/2 Reading Comments

For "Hearing Voices: My Encounters with Translation", I thought it was an interesting point how there can be different ways to be "faithful to the original". On one hand, you can translate the text with the mindset of trying to provide the same exhilarating experience one might experience reading it in the original language; to adapt the text by cutting out parts and perhaps altering other parts so that the translated text is more marketable and suited for the target audience. As was mentioned, the Japanese audience is more comfortable with the meandering, concept-driven novels which western-language readers are not necessarily used to. On the other hand, you can translate the text with the mindset of maintaining the integrity of the original Japanese without as much consideration for appealing to a Western readership. Personally, although I feel like both aspects of translating are important, I would consider the mindset of appealing to the target audience to be slightly more important. For me at least, I have little to no interest in texts that require a prerequisite amount of knowledge of a subject which I don't have. If I were to come across a book on let's say Spain for example, and the book looks like it deals with content that requires former knowledge of Spain's history and culture, it would seem like too much effort to read. Moreover, if I truly did find a piece of translated text to be an enjoyable read, it would probably motivate me to seek out the original either way. That's why I feel like it's slightly more important to first attract the attention/interest of a reader.

11/2 - Reading Comments

There were a lot of interesting points in these readings. One such thing is in Copeland’s reading she discusses how the culmination of experiences within a person’s life affects how one translates their texts. For instance, she said she recalled her grandfather’s accent to assist with mirroring a Japanese dialect into English. But of course there are more than just dialects that are affected, like the way one rights or wants things to sound. Furthermore, I found it very interesting how the marketing press modifies a work of literature so drastically. Copeland discussed how they would remove parts entirely or change some characters to streamline it for English readers. It is such a weird thing that seems like it really shouldn’t be done, but I guess they thought it was ok for the experience to be the same in the west as it is in Japan. Furthermore, in the round-table discussion, someone brought up a translator who removed an entire chapter that they deemed irrelevant for the story, mostly because they did not like translating shrines. One of the people mentioned how the chapter they removed was one of the good ones, and was written very beautifully. So I am just amazed that something like this can even happen, at both the translating level and at the press level. I also found it interesting that some of the translators in the round-table would not translate a text because they did not believe they were a good enough writer, or were capable of writing in a specific enough way. This went to show even further that translation, especially in literature, is far more than just changing in one language to another. It requires being able to capture the style it was in Japanese and make it so in English. Lastly, considering how important it is to capture the style of an author, I found the point that Seidensticker brings up that if a man enjoys a woman’s writing, then surely he is allowed to translate it. I do think that they can, but considering what Copeland said about experiences affecting how you translate, and how in the round-table discussion they speak how their ability to write in certain styles, it makes me wonder how drastic a difference in translation would be between a man translating a woman’s work, versus a woman translating a woman’s work.

11/2 Reading Comments

 

In Hearing Voices: My Encounters with Translation,Japanese professor Rebecca Copeland writes on certain difficulties while completing a translation. I liked how she included a quote from Edward Seidensticker, where he described translation as “a series of dilemmas.” This resonated with me, as when I am translating, I often find myself trying to decide between various words and formats, as translation is not as straightforward as it might seem. She then explains difficulties when translating pieces that come from different dialects. This can be difficult because as a translator, it is essential to capture the feel of a piece of writing and mirror it in the translation. However, when translating different dialects, it is often difficult to translate the feel of the dialect into English. As there are different dialects specific to Japan, it is nearly impossible to mirror the dialect into English. This is difficult because the dialect that a piece is written in can have a large effect on the overall feel and atmosphere of the writing. Finally, I found it interesting how Copeland included the bit about Sharon Sievers and her study of “Flowers in Salt.” As Copeland began to work through the piece, she noticed that there was no mention of salt in Kishida’s speech. She later contacted Sievers in hopes of clarification of the mistake in translation, and received an answer acknowledging the mistake. Sievers stated that although there was indeed no mention of salt in Kishida’s speech, but “the most important thing was really not a literal translation of that particular line, but the face that “flowers in salt” so powerfully conveyed the feelings of so many Meiji women I read.” This highlighted the point that a translation does not have to be accurate word-per-word, but it should capture the feeling of the original work. 

I found the Round-Table Discussion to be very interesting as it also emphasized translating different dialects and certain precautions that should come with doing so. I liked how Edward Seidensticker spoke on the many possibilities and routes one must take during translation. He stated that one must “frequently have tot choose between one or two-three-four possibilities, none of which is a perfect.” I agree with this statement, as although there can be various ways to translate a word or a phrase, it is important to consider the entire feel of the original work, and choose an option that fits in best with the given context. He then goes on to give an example of how he had problems dealing with translating a piece that was written in the Kansai dialect. He stated that although difficult, he decided to go about translating Osaka speech in a “formal kind of English without contractions.”

Questions for Words, Ideas, and Ambiguities - Round-Table Discussion

 As discussed in one of our previous classes, people from different parts of Japan speak different dialects. There are many arguments relating to how those dialects should be translated into English. Seidensticker states that "dialect is too much of one time and place." What do you lose when you choose not to translate the right dialect? Do you agree with Seidensticker's words?

Seidensticker argues that "what may seem bowdlerization may be something subtly different" and that it is crucial to maintain the same effects upon reading the translated work. These same effects affect how the audience reacts to the author's work; therefore, the translator should prioritize sticking with the desired mood and tone of the written work. He also provides an example for Yukiguni where he has been accused of bowdlerization by changing the word "finger" to "hand." He explains that this choice of word was due to avoiding unnecessary sexual context to the original Japanese text. If a translated work  reflects the same mood, tone, and effects that the Japanese author has created, should some bowdlerization accusations be forgiven? (Such as the example of Seidensticker's Yukiguni)

The discussion at one point touches briefly on the topic of translating works by a writer of a different gender. Seidensticker claims that "if a man can enjoy a writing by a woman, then, surely he can translate it." He furthermore mentions how he feels that a woman's writing language differs from that of a man because women tend to write in pure Japanese. Is there a clear distinction for writing styles of different genders? To what extent should translators take into consideration the author's gender when producing translations?