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.