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.