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.