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."