Seidensticker Reading

  I appreciated his treatment of rhythm in translation down to the word and syllabic level, not just at the sentence level. His example and struggle with the opening of 雪国 with ‘night’ and ‘white’ was interesting to me because it showed how one could accidentally create associations or impressions that aren’t there in the original even if the meaning is ‘better’ conveyed. Of course, that begs the question of whether the meaning of a work is stored in its content directly or ultimately in the author, and with Kawabata, it seems like it would’ve been impossible to reach too far past the words on the page into the author’s intent, which was closely guarded. 

The other thing I found interesting was his division of modern Japanese literature into Heike and Genji camps, which I had never considered before, even though the influence of both works on Japanese culture and literature cannot be understated. What I thought was important was not to associate these two styles of writing to be classed as two schools of thought. The ‘pure Japanese’ element of the Genji is not necessarily so in its influence and provenance, as Murasaki Shikibu was certainly well-versed in Chinese language and poetry as many aristocrats of the time were. Of course, Seidensticker knows this well, having translated it himself and publishing a diary about it alongside, so what I took away from this comparison was more about who Kawabata and Nagai were as prose stylists relative to each other.

What I felt when reading Seidensticker’s translation of Snow Country was that it felt both a little sparse and far away, so it’s funny (and a little rewarding, I can’t lie) to have that confirmed by the translator himself. From there, I personally agreed with his general resistance to explanative translations on both the grounds of rhythm/flow and to cultivate the reader’s experience. I was just discussing recently the idea of ‘accessibility’ in translation with a friend, especially when working with older works (so not applicable directly to Kawabata/Seidensticker here), but one of the takeaways was that accessibility need not mean simplification or dilution of the original, and as such it’s perfectly reasonable to leave work for the readers to do, since that is one of the primary pleasures of reading literature (in my opinion). It makes sense that editors want clarity, but I can see situations (especially with such popular and influential works) where marketability interests could endanger the principles of the translated result, whatever the translator has set them to be.

Sydnee

Edward Seidensticker on Nagai Kafü and Kawabata Yasunari - Evan

 Seidensticker brought up how one shouldn't fix flaws within the text. I agree if these "flaws" are intentional to bring out a distinct writing style or purpose, but if they are literally errors, I think its the translators job to translate both for accuracy AND comprehension.

I think rhythm is a highly unspoken aspect of translation. English has way less syllables than Japanese, and emphasized stressed syllables rather than, say, intonation. I think you need to make the English natural, no matter how many direct word-to-word translations you want to have.

I noticed that--sometimes--a phrase or word translated in Japanese just doesn't hit as hard as it should in English. It's hard for me to tell what impact the authoer wants in Japanese, but making suring the emotions and IMPACT lands in English can be hard, especially for puns, inside jokes, and cultural things.

I think translation boils down to how much you know the author. Like, if I needed to translate for my brother into Japanese, I know how he acts, so I could do a good job. I feel like you are defined by the language you speak. I have a Japanese Evan, and an English Evan, because I simply can't express myself the exact time both ways.

by Danielle

Seidenstiker's attitude towards translation intrigued me. He argues that the role of a translator resembles that of a counterfeiter, as both require someone to "imitate" and "reproduce every detail" included in the original work. With this analogy, he then explains how the idea that a translation may be better than the original is "not to praise it at all." The role of the translator is to give the reader in the target language the same experience as a reader in the original language, not to rewrite or improve the material. 

Sticking with his desire to recreate the same events and feeling in the target language, Seidenstiker recounts his first attempt at translating Snow Country. When he took on the work, Seidenstiker explained that he had not realized the popularity of the book, especially the opening lines, until after his translation had been published. Once he learned how important the opening lines were to the Japanese, he listen more closely to critique on his translation. Sticking to his previous claims, Seidenstiker rewrote those lines in future editions of the translation, sticking more closely to the meaning expressed in Japanese. 

I enjoyed Seidenstiker's approach towards translation, as well as the fact that he held true to his approach. We have discussed rather heavily the question of how much we should translate literally and how much needs to be adjusted for the target audience. While I don't necessarily agree with his idea that translator must be like counterfeiters, but I am both intrigued by an appreciative of his approach and commitment to it.

Thoughts on 'On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari' - Elaine

Edward Seidensticker's philosophy of the translator as a "counterfeiter" makes me think alot. It reminds me of my experience reading Arthur Waley's translation of The Tale of Genji. Waley's version preserves the work's classical Japanese essence, which doesn't read like modern English. Its syntax and cadence feel slightly alien, purposefully evoking a different time and sensibility. I believe this is also the practice of prioritizing replicating the original's atmosphere over creating a text that is effortlessly familiar to the English reader. 

Seidensticker's examples from translating Snow Country were fascinating. His decision to omit the specific meaning of "国境" (the provincial border) in the famous opening line seems entirely justified for the sake of the sentence's rhythm in English. As he argues, adding an explanation would have clumsily weighed down the prose. However, I find myself disagree with his other choice in the same passage: adding "The train" as the subject. The original Japanese, "国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった," masterfully omits the subject, creating an immersive, almost cinematic perspective. The reader experiences the moment from within the train, sharing the protagonist's disembodied, immediate perception of emerging from the tunnel into the snow country. This subjective viewpoint perfectly sets the tone for the protagonist's profound sense of isolation. By specifying "the train," this delicate effect is somewhat diminished. We are suddenly observing the train from the outside, rather than seeing the world through the character's eyes as he is transported into a new emotional landscape. 

This article ultimately underscores the immense complexity of the translator's task. It is a constant negotiation between two languages and two literary sensibilities, where every gain in clarity or rhythm risks a loss in ambiguity or mood—the very elements that often constitute a work's deepest beauty.

Seidensticker -Alex

Seidensticker writes that "the process of translation is the constant repetition of choices". He then gives an example with the translation of Hamlet in Japanese and how the Japanese translation disturbs the rhythm of the original by having twice as many syllables. This raises the question of what do you prioritize: rhythm and flow or "proper names" and accuracy, and this question is especially prudent in translating between languages as different as English and Japanese, where not only the grammar and syntax are different, but also the culture behind these languages and how it finds its way into the words and expressions. 

For example, Japanese is known to be quite tactful -- people rarely say things directly and explicitly. Therefore, in Japanese, changing the subject after someone says "oh well, don't you have such a nice watch" is completely normal -- a Japanese reader will understand the what the speaker really meant (and the joke perhaps). However, an English reader might be startled by the sudden change of subject and assume that the sentence was just a compliment; they were probably expecting an "oh thank you (blah blah blah)" or something, and be confused when it didn't happen. How would a translator approach this?

For me, I would prioritize flow over accuracy. In this case, it would mean changing the dialogue completely to translate its effect over to English. I would swap the dialogue entirely with something along the lines of "that's great, but I don't give a crap about what you're saying" -- nothing to do with a watch, but everything to do with "shut up". This will also make the sudden change of subject (and probably atmosphere) understandable, thereby preserving the flow of the scene. To quote Jay Rubin again, "you're not trying to translate the original, but to recreate the story."

Seidensticker "On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari" - Sloane

 I was a bit amused by the criticisms made about the first sentences of Seidensticker's Snow Country translation. The blowback seemed a bit overdramatic to me, but after thinking it over I can understand a bit why the Japanese general public might have reacted the way they did, even though I still think they're somewhat wrong. 

For reference, his translation was: "The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky." 

One major issue Japanese critics had with this translation was the direct specification that it was a train that came out of the tunnel, when in the original Japanese exactly what came out of the tunnel is not specified. The anger at this seemed ridiculous to me because, in Seidensticker's words, "what else would be coming out of a long railroad tunnel" than a train...? I might understand the public's insistence on omitting the sentence subject if it served any true literary purpose and was not just purely a quirk of the Japanese language. For example, in The Silence of the Lambs the reason Buffalo Bill's "it rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again" line is so creepy (or at least one reason why) is the unconventional use of third person narration. In a case like that, I think it would be understandable for native English speakers to be frustrated if that same effect wasn't transmitted through a translation to another language. But here, I don't think this is the case at all! In my opinion, Seidensticker's filling in of the blank here doesn't truly add any more information to the story than is provided, but rather completes an inference the reader would be sure to make anyway. 

Secondly (and this is the part I have more sympathy towards the Japanese critics about), many people took issue with how Seidensticker changed the second sentence away from its original meaning "the bottom of the night turned white." Seidensticker said he did so because he wanted to avoid the rhyme of night and white, which sounds sing-songy and distracting, which I agree with. However, I think there was probably a better way to avoid that pitfall without abandoning the concept of the sky changing color entirely. If the rhyme was an issue, couldn't he have found a synonym for white (ivory, alabaster?) or night (evening, dusk, midnight?). I know that there's the potential issue of specifying a specific time of night if you were to say dusk, midnight, etc. so I personally would have opted for changing "white" to a specific shade of white. I see how that could be seen as inserting language into the writing that is more descriptive, or potentially flowery, than what was originally intended. But I personally share Seidensticker's strong aversion to rhyme without purpose, so I think it could be acceptable in this case. Seidensticker seems like a great translator, but I don't really know why he addressed this issue the way he did. The way his translation reads, it makes me visualize the ground, trees, etc. turning white, but if the "bottom of the night" turns white, that sounds to me moreso like the base of the sky itself? I'm not quite sure. Either way, I think I have to side with the Japanese on this one.

Seidensticker - Lane

 I found the discussion of rhythm in Japanese Shakespeare translations to be particularly interesting. One of the defining characteristics of Shakespeare's works is his generous use of iambic pentameter. His works were a key component in this development, but iambic pentameter is now the dominant meter of English. However, the dominant Japanese poetic meter is the syllable-focused (not stress-focused) 5-7-5-7-7 waka meter. Would a good Japanese translation of Shakespeare change the poetic meter to allow the sound to land the same way it would in English (like with the vengeance -> fukushuu anecdote), or would it maintain the meter that made Shakespeare's works so eye-catching at the time, just in a different language? Would this even be possible without considerable foreignization, given that Japanese is not a stress-timed language? I doubt there is a definitive answer to this question, but it is interesting to consider. Many people, in translating haiku, attempt to retain the 5-7-5 syllabic meter, even if the stress is considered alongside the syllables. I wonder if a Japanese translation of a sonnet, for example, may attempt to play with stress and iambic pentameter.

The question about how far a translator can expect their reader to go in making an effort to understand a work also resonated with me, and perhaps this can be related to the problem of poetry, sound, and meter. Certainly, a direct translation of Shakespeare that preserves iambic pentameter would sound quite strange in Japanese, but maybe there is a subset of people who desire such a translation, foreignizing as it may be. I do think that, by and large, translated literature in Japanese does err on the side of literal, and the reader accepts strange turns of phrase, unnatural language, and foreignization (though of course, I will not generalize and say that every Japanese reader of translated literature shares this view). In any case, if a populace of readers desires foreignization, would an attempt at stress-meter in Japanese be warranted? Or would it produce a clunky, bad translation?

Seidensticker on Kawabata and Nagai – Cheryl

Snow Country was one of the novels I read for a Modern Japanese Literature survey course I took when I was still dipping a toe into Japanese literature and although I found the plot somewhat dry on the whole, I do remember the first two lines of the novel being particularly beautiful and that scene with the girl/woman distinction being very interesting, so to have the translator expound on those two matters was a real treat. (He also seems like such a funny guy.)

The translator as counterfeiter

I really liked his comparison of the translator to a counterfeiter. Maybe this plays into that tension between the two qualities of arrogance and humility required of translators that Cathy Hirano explores: the translator is not the editor, he/she is not called upon to improve the text but to reproduce it, flaws and all, into the target language. As Seidensticker bemoans, however, editors will often not let ambiguities stand and in clarifying what was originally unclear, the translator is forced to abandon their role as counterfeiter for better or for worse. 

The translator as independent

Other times, it seems that the translator is left largely alone, and may not even confer with the author although they're still alive and potentially available. It was interesting to me that Seidensticker's authors would choose to be so uninvolved in the translation process, especially compared to a writer like Murakami who is selective of his translators and appears to weigh in every so often. In these cases the translator has the authority to make choices to the extent which his arrogance allows him to, to have the "earth" lie "white under the night sky" when really it was the "bottom of the sky"that "turned white".

(I can't decide which I prefer.)

Seidensticker - Oscar

 Seidenticker's description of Japanese criticism of literary translations and how they perceive this exchange between Japan and Western cultures in particular interested me. As he describes it, translation between both languages is an endless matter of choices to make and concessions to give, none of which are perfectly satisfactory or adequate. The translator must come to terms with the fact that they are a dubious counterfeiter, that they will never be perfect in their translations. And so it does irk me a bit, like Seidensticker also seems to be, that critics assume that a translation is "bad" because of these choices - there simply are none that result in a perfect 1-to-1 copy, and dismissing that fact is just wholly ignorant of the field. I mean, basing quality off the comparison of proper noun counts?

There's also the matter of the jousting with editors. I feel like the noble way to think of translation is this grand, wonderous exchange of knowledge and creativity transcending barriers like language or culture, when in reality it often comes down to what will be the most successful product to push. Seidensticker describes Kawabata's writing as intentionally vague and ambiguous, like the confusion between who's waving the white cloth at the end of The Izu Dancer - it would be best to be ambiguous in the translation as well, as that was the intention, right? But perhaps to the editor, that ambiguity does not match the palette of western readers, and would result in a less successful product, which is a no-no. Frustration abound.

Reading on Seidensticker

 Seidensticker said that, “You have to make constant choices.” He continues by saying there are many possibilities to choose from, but each possibility is “inadequate when it comes to translation between English and Japanese.” To me, this sounds like a trade-off. Should I sacrifice humor for a longer sentence so the reader understands better? Or should I make a shorter sentence but sacrifice details in the original? It is up to the authors to decide what is best, and this is often a hard decision, as Seidensticker said, “no solution is ideal.” This problem is especially prominent in the context of translating Shakespeare. The renowned British playwright uses Old English and phrases that I don’t see can be translated into Japanese with their full meaning.

Another interesting thing Seidensticker said, during the “Questions and Answers” section, is about using intuition, and intuition can be trained. I wonder what he means by training intuition. He continues by saying, “you can point out to a translator instances of what seem to you a want of feeling, and that comes perhaps near the matter at hand.” I was a bit puzzled by what he is trying to say in this quote, but after some thinking, I think he means that through repetitive feedback from the editor at places where it feels unnatural, the author will eventually develop a sense of intuition, which is interesting. 

-Allen Tian

Seidensticker Comments - Dawson

    While reading the start of the article, the passage relating to the difficulties of translating Shakespeare, it made me realize that the medium itself matters immensely in translation.  Fukushuu sounds very bad compared to Vengeance given the context.  It lacks the same punch, and considerably so.  But this is because the medium itself constricts the translation.  I doubt the translator had much other choice.  Novels have a lot more freedom.  They have a lot to play with.  All they have to worry about is text, so they can be as free as they want in translating the text as well as possible and take as many liberties with the text as they need to in order to maintain the text's feel.  However, for more limited mediums, say plays or a television dub, they are constricted by the length of the line, the movement of the actors/characters and their mouths.  All of this greatly constricts how much they are able to fiddle with the text to get the desired feeling, since they also have to match these other constraints.  

    I really like what he says about translation being a series of choices that are all impossible and all inadequate, and that one just uses their intuition to make the least bad of the choices.  A perfect translation cannot exist, for no word has a one to one correspondence between Japanese and English, and every person has a different feel for words, even within the same language.  Thus, to fully translate someone's feelings, someone who probably has an entirely different way of thinking due to being raised into an entirely different culture, into a different language whose words can't even fully capture that way of thinking, when you yourself get a different feel from the words they wrote than they do - obviously that would be an impossible task!  I just found the part about every piece being between a series of inadequate choices especially topical, personally, since that was basically the style I took when translating the second homework.  Whenever a choice didn't come clearly to me, I'd write down the choices I thought of, both or all three of which would feel inadequate to me, and then I went back later and took the one I then felt was least bad given the context of every other choice I had ended up making and of the text itself.  

    And sometimes you know the choice is horribly inadequate, but you're left with no choice but to go with it anyways, because you can't for the life of you think of anything else, like him with the "bottom of the night turned white" line.  It's still inadequate, he knows, but there is no more adequate option.  So he is stuck with something that still comes nowhere near to the beauty of the original, but there are simply no other options, really.  Just another instance showing how difficult translation is, especially for languages so far apart.  I do actually think intuition for it can be trained, and that is by reading a lot.  Reading lots and lots and lots of your native language to know what good writing is in your native language, plus lots and lots and lots of the language you want to translate, so you can get the best feel for the language as possible.  Personally, I know I still have nowhere near enough intuition, for I can see that actual good translations will often end up changing the text wildly, yet still hold the same feelings.  I, however, can never even think up those kind of changes in the first place as options, and I am sure I very often misunderstand the feel of words because I still need far more experience.  Especially where he talks about translating bad writing as bad writing and good writing as good writing - I need to read a lot more Japanese to be able to clearly tell what is bad Japanese vs good Japanese!  I can still only really tell subconsciously over the course of an entire text, rather than consciously on a sentence by sentence basis.

(Marcus) On Seidensticker Reading:

I was not surprised to know that Sidensticker had 45 different renderings for the verb omou, as it was something I experienced myself when translating Murakami's Ko-ro-kke.  For example, when translating the verb i-tta, referring to the act of saying something, simply saying XX said YY feels quite under descriptive. 

However, using 「言った」in Japanese literary work feels much more acceptable to me - most likely because the context carries much more weight, where who is speaking, how, and why is often left implicit (and acceptable in Japanese high context culture). 

On the other side, in English, speech verbs are often expected to carry tone directly - making the user of the verb "said" feel plain and unexplained. This also corresponds with how in English, subjects are stated explicitly and avoids ambiguity - which becomes a challenge when translating from Japanese to English, as Seidensticker has mentioned.

I was also impressed with how Seidensticker made the deliberate choice to omit the word 国境 (ko-kyou, kunizakai) to avoid the risk of miscommunicaing author's original message - which I will 

Seidensticker - Aaron

 Seidensticker corroborates a lot of the ideas we have seen in the readings thus far: translating between English and Japanese is inherently an infinite number of difficult choices; and translation should not try to improve upon the original.

I thought his way of describing these aspects were interesting, though. He calls the choices of translation a "big sacrifice", since every choice sacrifices something. Do you preserve clarity at the expense of the flow of the work? Or do you preserve the flow at the expense of clarity? He also called translators "counterfeiters", since their job is to imitate the original as accurately as possible, and not try to improve upon it (like how a counterfeiter has to reproduce George Washington's warts, not "prettify" them).

Even in the case of counterfeiting, though, the counterfeit does not form an adequate substitute for the original. So Seidensticker seems to make the implication that translations are a paler imitation of the original. I don't know if I agree with this sentiment (and I'm not sure if he does, either; that was not necessarily his point here), but I will concede that a translation will be a very different work as compared to the original, because translations between English and Japanese will suffer from choices that sacrifice the original intention of the author. As was mentioned in a previous reading (I forget which one it was specifically), the experience of reading a work will be very different in different translations. The translator must do their best to minimize this, but it seems to be unavoidable as a rule.

Seidensticker reading comment - Kohki

 The first thing I found interesting in the article is that you have to sacrifice rhythm over explanation/direct translation and vice versa in translation, especially between Japanese and English since they are so different from each other. I'd never really cared about the rhythm of sentences when translating, and the Hamlet example was really convincing since the original line is beautifully written and its beauty comes from not only from the words' meaning but from the rhythm of it. I feel like there are other trade-offs like that in translation, such as that between the direct translation and indirect translation that focuses more on the semantics. 

 The author prefers to have clarity in translation, such as in the last scene of The Izu Dancer. If I had to choose, I would be on Kawabata's side, since the absence of subject is a unique, essential aspect of the Japanese language. In daily conversations, Japanese people don't really mention subjects unless they are really necessary, but they can perfectly and effortlessly understand what others mean, and it's just what it is in Japan. Moreover, In the case of Snow Country, I prefer the second version of the translation of the opening line's second sentence. The first version "The earth lay white under the night sky" doesn't quite capture the ambiguity and mysteriousness of it. In both cases, I think ambiguity is an important "spice" that makes Kawabata's literature great and so Japanese. It leaves interpretation up to the reader/audience, as can be seen in literature and movies. In that way, American and Japanese movies differ so much, such as Ghibli movies v.s. Marvel movies which have a clear structure and can easily be interpreted.

9/22 Reading Kohki

 Many of  the points made in this reading were what I confronted when I was translating 「コロッケ」. Before, I had never translated literature at all between English and Japanese since I'd only translated school letters and news for my parents, which don't really require preserving the nuances or subtle details, but it's just translating word by word. I agree with Hirano's argument that "I must strive to remain true not only to the essence, but also to the style and tone of the writer in the source language while at the same time render it in a way that is understandable to someone from a very different culture and way of thinking". When translating literature, I find it difficult to preserve really subtle yet important nuances and characters' personalities, and if I want to do that, it would need a description and also there would be many "correct" versions of translation. And that's why I agree with Hirano's view that it's important to know the purpose and intended audience of translation. Then, it's possible to know the general direction as to how the original text is translated.

In my opinion, it's impossible to not miss any information in the original text because cultural and linguistic differences are just too large. As Hirano mentioned there are numerous ways to say 'you', as well as 'I' in Japanese, and each one of them has a subtle nuance to it. Also, calling a character by its first name or last name changes the implied relationship between those characters too. But I think it's possible to convey most of the original meaning by providing contextual information and choosing words and sentence structures flexibly.

Thoughts on "Eight Ways to Say You" -Allen

    The first interesting point I came across is the idea of treating translation as a mechanical process. I agree with the author that for a creative piece of writing like Yumoto's "The Friends," translating word by word would fail to convey the message of the original. However, for something like a research paper or a user manual where keywords must be chosen carefully, perhaps translating word by word would be the best option.

    Another point is how Japanese sentences have backward grammar. This is important to keep in mind because the verb is mentioned last, and an author may use this to create tension. I remember watching an anime a while ago in which character A was calling character B. It was character B's birthday, but B didn't know A remembered. So, A called B on the phone and said, "ケーキ...作る!" The English translation was, "I am making... a cake!" When I watched this scene, I wondered how the English translator could rearrange the sentence to preserve the original order while sounding natural. There is a subtle difference in mentioning the cake first, which builds tension for what is going to be said next.

    I also like how the author included an extra section explaining what a Juku is in the context of Japan. In America, cram school is less common (the first thing that comes to mind is Kumon), and students tend to attend for shorter periods. In Japan, though, whenever I hear a friend mention Juku, they always associate an exhausted tone with it, as if it's something they don't like but have to go to.

    Lastly, the topic of different ways to say "you" reminds me of the different forms of "I," like watashi, boku, and ore. There is a famous scene in the anime movie, Your Name (Kimi no Na wa), where the main character is judged for how he refers to himself, and he says, "私...わたくし...僕...俺.” The English translation was, "I (watashi), I (watakushi), I (boku), I (ore)," which felt awkward because the parentheses and need for explanation ruined the humor. I wonder if there is a way to preserve the humor while translating this.

https://youtu.be/79ZyG-mNLpg?si=y9qN8Av5MyFBn8Dz

Hirano - Eight Ways to Say You Comments

     I found Hirano's article into her thought process and obstacles when translating to be extremely relatable and insightful. She starts broadly with the simple syntactic differences and organization of the Japanese language versus English that clearly illustrates the difference in how two sentences of the same meaning can be structured between the two languages. This is a really strong point to start, in my opinion, as the two languages have a strong divide both syntactically, but also pragmatically, as the organization of English writing favors explicit detail rather than the tendency of Japanese writing to dance around the theme, almost complementing the intellect of the reader. This emphasis on confidently blending translation with transferring style and the intention of the author leads well into the three important qualities of a translator that Hirano mentions: humility, vigilance, and arrogance.

    While vigilance is always needed in a task as extensive and difficult as translation, humility and arrogance come together in entirely different manners of equal importance. While it is important to capture what one can from the writer, there are incidents where the translator may be able to articulate an idea better, or may think they are translating an idea correctly. It is important to carry the humility to be able to allow the original author to have the final say, and to take their word as what is right, since it is their own work being translated. However, since the original writer is not in the role of the translator, it is vital that the translator carries a sense of arrogance, as they are essentially becoming the writer in another language. I think this idea works really well in expressing the importance of overcoming the self-doubt that arises in trying to express the authors words and intentions with the appropriate style and verbiage as a third party.

    Finally, the cultural struggles of translating certain words and jokes had some extremely useful examples as Hirano used multiple examples to overcome things that could not be simply translated by word for an English-speaking audience to understand. One example I liked was the decision after consulting the author and her editor to add and additional explanation when describing the juku the characters in a story went to, noting how "it makes a tremendous difference to how readers experience the rest of the book." She then explains the struggle with translating the usage of kimi, as the reaction of it, when only translating the word as "you", makes no sense to an English audience. The reaction becomes far more appropriate, however, when the speaker uses an almost equally pompous "I presume". This reading offered many insights into combating self-doubt, structural and organizational changes, and the translation of cultural ideas in a way that will be extremely valuable for me in my future translations.

Darian

Hirano Reading

  I appreciated Hirano’s attentiveness in translating children’s and young adult fiction. I think some might be inclined to assume that because the language is simpler, the content so too must be, as well as the underlying meaning. Simplicity, however, does not equate to the impact it has on its young readers. In these cases I’m almost inclined to say that the translator has more responsibility to cultivate the tone and humor of the work than with regular (adult) literature because it’s more likely to influence the reader. 

In the start I found her self-description as an “accompanist” (62) to be interesting because it brought to mind musical accompaniment. Seeing the author as the soloist and the translator as the accompanist was an interesting comparison that could’ve been made in passing, but I love analogy and chose to linger instead. This puts the translator not as a communicator between two groups but as something occurring alongside the original author, suggesting that translation is not a pass-through operation or function but rather a tandem delivery with the author that both must contribute to for success. I suppose this would apply more to living authors who can work with translators and provide clarification on intention, and may be optimistic, but nonetheless I thought it a pleasant comparison that focuses on translation as a cooperative act rather than a purely transformative one (though it is both).

Another thing I took note of was the trap of overfamiliarity with the original text, which she phrases as the “dangerous assumption that I understand,” (64) which highlights the differences between understanding a language and understanding the work itself. Upon reflection, it’s a no brainer that even in one’s native language there is so much room for mis- or under- or over-interpretation of literature. That’s not to say that translators should rigorously analytically examine or write at length about something before translating, but I suppose as a reader I just assume they know enough about not only the content but whatever references and connections are throughout to translate everything meaningfully. On the translation side this seems like an impossible task. 

Reading on about her experience and trials translating The Friends, I came to appreciate her stated objective of “[bringing] the world of Japanese children and adolescents closer” to English-speaking children anywhere, and that it was not so much about ‘teaching’ culture as it was about trying to introduce Japanese childhood as a fundamentally human experience like anyone else’s. It is to this end that Hirano feels the strain of the balance between preserving the original texts’ meaning and making things more natural for readers in translating literature in particular, and as I mentioned in the beginning, is especially delicate when dealing with young readers. I’m glad for this heightened sensitivity to translating between different groups, that in this case author nor translator belongs to.

Sydnee

Eight Ways to Say You Thoughts Dawson

The first main takeaway I had from the reading was the reiteration of the point that the most important thing in translation is the feel behind the words, far more than the direct meanings of the words.  Since words that are technically the same have vastly different "feel" behind them across languages, the best one can do while translating is to choose what matches those feelings, rather than what matches the exact meaning the best.  Since all words in general are simply the personification of feelings and vague ideas, this will end up translating the text more accurately in the end as well, as the true nature of the idea behind the text lies in the feelings, not in the words.  I really like the "you presume indeed" translation the author did, as it took something completely irrepresentable in English and still managed to represent it as closely as possible by completely changing the words to match the feeling. 

The second main point I gathered was on the importance of culture in portraying the feeling properly.  This seems like it might be one of the most difficult aspects of translation.  Matching cultural context seems a lot more complex than matching even very difficult words, phrases and flow.  Sometimes, there is far less of a cultural equivalent to translate to then there would be for any regular words or concepts.  I really like the way the author of this piece did it, by adding a paragraph of explanation behind something that just saying "cram school" wouldn't portray at all to people who have no strong cultural perception of it.  It all just goes back to portraying the feelings behind the words you get when you read them in one language versus the other.  Part of the difficulty behind this, especially for certain cultural concepts or even words, is that unless you yourself have been fully immersed in that culture or had a lot of exposure to that word, you might be very prone to missing some of that critical feel behind it and end up mistranslating it or losing a portion of that intended feeling.  I suppose this makes large degrees of exposure to the language and culture in many ways the most important thing to successful and accurate translation. 

Eight Ways to Say "You" - Lane

 I appreciated this insight into Hirano's process, and I greatly respect her work and her approaches to translation. The examples that she gave had me pondering the concept of untranslatability. The example that stuck with me the most was the juku anecdote. Hirano notes that "to simply translate [juku] as cram school and leave it at that would make it impossible for North American readers to appreciate its implications in Japanese children's lives." There are many words and phrases like juku that wind up almost incomprehensible when translated into one short word or phrase; few North American readers are familiar with the word "cram school" to begin with, let alone its impact in children's lives in Japan. (As an aside, I'd say the closest American equivalent is likely Kumon, but it's far less widespread; only a small percentage of children attend Kumon classes.) As such, I enjoyed Hirano's choice to include a sort of in-text gloss describing the children's relationship to juku. Neglecting this aspect would decrease a reader's understanding, even if it means that rewriting or "infidelity" is required to create the final product. Although I hesitate to refer to any word, juku included, as "untranslatable," perhaps there is a degree to which it can be considered untranslatable. However, the solution that Hirano's consulting team settled on elucidates an interesting part of untranslatability--juku may be untranslatable only if you place the restriction on a translation that one word or phrase must be equivalent to one word or phrase in the target language. Although the decided translation for juku is practically a paragraph, it has translated both the word and its reaching cultural implications. It may not be possible to translate the word and its history, feeling, and culture if you limit yourself as a translator to one or two words, but can the word truly be considered untranslatable if some extra writing would do the job? 

I also enjoyed Hirano's approach to the word kimi in a similar fashion; the numerous options for first and second-person pronouns in Japanese often leads some to render them as untranslatable. However, although Hirano did not translate the word kimi as a unique second-person pronoun, she translated the emotional and cultural implications of the word. Perhaps the word cannot be considered untranslatable at all. 

Thoughts on Reading - Elaine

Several points in the article were particularly inspiring. First, it's important to naturally add helpful explanations to the translation. For example, while the term "cram school" in the article aligns with the meaning, it fails to convey to American readers the sense of pressure that this word evokes in Japanese readers, a part of their lives. Compared to adding footnotes or retaining the original Japanese text, this approach offers the advantage of making the information integral to the narrative, immersing the reader in the story without drawing them out of it. However, this approach also presents a limitation: whether the work would be interrupted by additional explanations.

In fact, this reminds me of Lawrence Venuti's concepts of domestication and foreignization. Domestication emphasizes the localization of the source language, focusing on the target language or target audience, and conveying the original text's content using expressions familiar to the target language readers. Foreignization, on the other hand, involves conveying the original text using expressions that correspond to the original language used by the author. The purpose of using foreignization strategies is to consider cultural differences and preserve and reflect the characteristics and linguistic styles of a foreign nation. Including additional explanatory language is a prime example of domestication.

The article concludes with an example about Tokugawa Ieyasu. Actually, I prefer to keep the original text referring to Tokugawa Ieyasu and put the explanation of the joke in a footnote. This reminds me of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's novels, where he often references Japanese cultural imagery, such as using chrysanthemums in a room to convey an aristocratic aura. When I'm confused about the emphasis on chrysanthemums, I research their meaning in Japanese culture and don't want the translator to translate them with the flower that has the same meaning in my culture (in Chinese culture, the peony might be used instead). In many cases, not only history books, but also novels are a medium for understanding culture. And as a very important historical figure in Japan, I believe preserving the original text will help readers better understand Japanese culture.

1, C. Hirano, “Eight Ways to Say You”

 I really respect Mrs. Hirano. The way she speaks about translation in high regard, to her desire to connect people of different cultures via translation, her personality embodies the fine balance of dedication, care, humility, and awareness needed for a translator.

I love that she always assumes there may be another way to translate a work. In many of the other readings, I sometimes felt like the translator believed they had "figured it out" for translation. Like they knew they needed this or that to do the original work justice. While they may have been right, I feel like the crux of translation is set the moment a translator thinks they've figured it out, because--in reality, that is never the case.

It feels like when you are asking ChatGPT help on a homework question, and you can obviously tell that the AI is off, but Chat still answers as if it knows it's right.

In any case, I fully-heartedly believe her message that a great translation makes the reader laugh, cry, pause, and experience the same emotions at the same time no matter the language is the true essence of translation (at least in works where thats their goal).

One of the hardest challenges I find, is determining how to translate scenarios where the emotion stems from cultural context, like a memory of a child's time at "juku", or the comedic image of a round smooth japanese figure. You can make the reader feel the same emotion theoretically if you spin the context around the set language's own cultural context, like talking about afterschool memories or another person like the "The Rock", but at what cost? You are somewhat forced to sacrifice cultural context for emotion or vice versa.

Eight Ways to Say You

 Sloane McLean

We've been talking a lot in class about whether or not we should translate certain idioms exactly as they are, or whether we should alter or even omit them altogether. Cathy Hirano's article touched on similar topics with the issue of translating jokes, and the example she gave with the child's use of 君 and her struggles to translate how that came across.

But, what was most interesting to me, even though it was barely touched on, was the description Hirano gave of how the structures of English/Japanese language themselves come across when translated directly into one another. I know that in English we address one another more directly, but never realized the actual structure of our prose itself can come across as "crude and abrasive, insulting the [Japanese] reader's intelligence with [its] bluntness." Addressing this issue seems like it would be the most difficult part of translation for me specifically, because I don't yet understand Japanese well enough to be able to pick up on what is the tone/voice of a specific character or author, versus what is just a common way to express a certain thought in Japanese. I'm afraid I would mischaracterize the tone of the original writing in a way that would be untrue to how natives interpret the source material.

9/15 Reading Comments - Evan

 I never thought about how much a translation could affect the writer's image/message to the audience afterwards. Hearing how different readers have different perspectives of Murakami based on the different translations they read, really made me curious of what the best way to translate a work it, since it has such a big impact on their career and message.

Hearing how a translation from a different age, a different time, from a translator of a different background could bring out the most from a work through their translator puzzled me. Part of me wants the author to work side by side with the translators, since its their work, but I also know that--often times-- an author does not know how their personality/writing style translates in other languages.

I think half of the issue is that the audience needs to be aware that there is bound to be differences between a translation and the original work. It's a translators job to try and best encapsulate the authors original intentions, but it's also the reader job to explore the different translations, and even do their own research if they want to try to fully understand one's work.

Lesser's final statement about how the prison of language is only temporary, once the perfect translator appears is believable, yet still over the horizon in my mind. I feel like the reason AI has yet to understand translation, is because the essence of translation lies in interpetation, which is build on understanding how humans think AND feel. AI doesn't train based on human feelings at the moment, I think, but if it were to, I wonder if AI could find the solution to translation in the same way humans fine tune ways to communicate to computers via code.

Personally, I want humans to be able to figure out how to "perfectly" translate, because it shows we understand each other beyond language, which--to me--is a very beautiful thing.

Eight Ways to Say You

I enjoyed the way the article described translation as "a balancing act, requiring sensitivity and intuition, a combination of humility, vigilance, and arrogance. I say humility because as a translator I must be willing to accept that the author comes first, and that even if I don’t agree, or think that I can say it better, the author is always right." This encompasses much of what we have discussed in class, the line between translating and rewriting an authors work. The line can be difficult to walk, as the concepts often need to be tweaked slightly when translating media into a new language in order to match the feelings of the new to those of the original. This is especially important to consider when translating any sort of jokes or figurative speech from the original language to the target language, as humor takes on very different shapes across language and culture.

The article also urges translators to find a balance between "arrogance and humility [which] may appear to be contradictory, but [you] need a certain amount of arrogance to believe that [you] have the ability to become the author in another language." If you do not have faith in your own skills as a translator, you will likely do poorly, but the same can be said for anyone who may posses too much. Too much self indulgence will change the overall feeling of the story, and it will not do the original or the author any justice.

- Danielle 

Eight Ways To Say You – Cheryl

The seemingly contradictory tension between the need for a translator to be humble and arrogant in their line of work stood out to me. In some of our other classes we have been talking about the 'invisibility' of a translator and the role of translator as a 'pure conduit' of the original text for readers in a new language—in most cases, a translator steps out of the limelight and strives to speak with the voice of the author instead of their own. I can agree that this definitely requires some amount of humility.

There is, meanwhile, also the power that a translator yields in the right they are granted to speak for someone else and as Hirano explains, there are many situations where creative license should and need to be taken and the translator has the freedom to make these choices to the best of their judgment. There can be any number of ways to approach the same issues and you need to have the self-confidence, if not arrogance, to stand by your decisions once you have made them.

I was especially struck by the extent to which conversations might be altered, exposition expanded and details changed entirely, in order for the desired impact to be had on a new audience in a different context. For a long time I've had a sense that readers should be thrown in the deep end of foreign cultural references and if they drown they drown, lest we end up with embarrassing and patronising localisations (I think of the famous scene in an episode of the Pokemon anime where they refer to onigiri as 'jelly donuts'). 

But more recently, and with this reading to bolster my new conclusions, it would be much kinder of the translator to ease a foreign reader to a new culture and that there are ways that this can be done with skill and sensitivity as Hirano has in her translation of 'The Friends'.

9/22 Eight Ways To Say You - Alex

Something I really liked was Hirano's description of how she translated The Friends and how this connects to her point of the difficulties in translating culture along with words. Already with the title we see the nuances between Japanese and English: In Japanese,「夏の庭」, a very abstract, picture-like title acting as a soft backdrop for the story; In English, "The Friends" -- a straightforward title describing the protagonists. This difference also exemplifies Hirano's previous point of Japanese being more subtle and evocative, whereas English is more explicit and stresses clarity, and the differences and complications this may create in translation.

Hirano continues with an extended discussion of the term juku. "Cram school" is the "correct" English translation word-wise, but this translation loses whole culture of the Japanese education system and the stress it brings on students; an American reader reading this, for example, might think it's something these characters only go on the weekends, or just 1-2 hours after school and they can still make it home for dinner. It was then interesting to see Hirano consulting both the original author and the editor to discuss how to translate this part, both because I always assumed that translation was more or less a one-person job without these extended discussions, and because how one word -- juku -- in Japanese resulted in a whole paragraph of translation to explain what juku was to an English reader.

This also reminded me of a (arguably much-more famous) example of culture lost in translation: the Japanese saying「３人寄れば文殊の知恵」. It is easy to translate this to English: "two heads are better than one". However, 文殊 -- the bodhisattva of knowledge -- gets lost in this translation, therefore the nuance of "how much better" is not completely transferred over. In English, "2 > 1" -- almost like a primary school math problem; In Japanese, 3 "commoners" can surpass the "god of knowledge" -- a huge gap able to be covered by adding two people.

Eight Ways to Say You - Aaron Epshteyn

It's no surprise at this point that translating between English and Japanese is an art that requires much creativity due to the syntactic and cultural difference between both languages. But while reading this, it hit me how much the art of translating between English and Japanese is different from translating between English and, say, a romance language. The art of translating between English and Japanese is quite a unique one in how much extra thought needs to go into it, due to the major differences between the two languages.

Cathy Hirano's discussion of writing style differences between the two languages also fascinated me, because it never occurred to me before. She says that while English writing is linear, stressing clarity, Japanese writing is more circular, stressing subtlety; and converting one style to the other is necessary in making it readable in the target language. I can't say I understand at all what she means by this, which makes it all the more fascinating that it's apparently an important consideration in translation. My understanding of the Japanese language is still fairly weak, and I am yet to make it through a full Japanese text, so I have not experienced this difference in structure that she refers to. But I think this difference is fascinating, and I will make sure to look out for it when I read Japanese texts in the future.

I thought Hirano's discussion of translating humor was also fascinating. I personally feel like I would struggle with translating humor. But it sounds like an interesting creative exercise that I want to try at some point.

8 Ways to Say You Thoughts - Oscar

Something that stuck out to me at first was Hirano's description of Japanese composition as "almost circular", preferring subtlety and implication, dancing around what is really being said - compared to English's linear, direct, logical flow. She emphasizes how Japanese literature relies on and assumes readers' emotion to get a message across, allowing them to use their imaginations to create their own interpretations and understanding of the storyline. 

I never thought about this, but in hindsight it seems quite clear. Of the varieties of English literature that I've read, I've assumed that being told the character's thoughts, emotions, and reasoning is the norm, and that leaving it out could otherwise lead to a choppy and nonsensical plot. Reading Murakami, however, I'm met with vivid descriptions of the setting with simple recounting of what our protagonist does, letting me place my own logical reasoning and interpretation of the plot along a backdrop I can easily picture and connect with.  

Along the same line, I found it enlightening that much of the time, translation deals more with conveying the emotional impact and 'feel' of the scene rather than finding equivalents for every word written. In the examples Hirano gives, many lines of dialogue and accompanying phrases are reorganized with additional adjectives or adverbs inserted in, and sometimes even deleted, and how the need to explain cultural topics like juku or Tokugawa Ieyasu, in order to maintain that emotional connection, involves adding to the translation what wasn't originally there, or just changing the phrase completely.

9/15 Reading Comments

I gained a lot of insight on the intricacies and difficulties of translation in these four articles that I previously had trouble putting into words to convey.

In Wendy Lesser's article, I first found her section on the dichotomy of translators in being "brilliant shadows" while still being invariably inserting their own writing characteristics into their work. She brings forward the bias one may have for certain writing styles, or for familiarity in the case of preferring the translation you found first. Lesser's section on Murakami was also great to see, as the translations of Birnbaum being compared to Rubin really brought home the point of matching a writer's style and tendencies cross-linguistically. Murakami's knowledge and interest in the West shows in his work, and Birnbaum's ability to show that by leaving La Gazza Ladra untranslated, or referring to the "musical climax" as a "crescendo" further suggests to me that the writer favors inserting the exact words that come to mind rather than translating or simplifying their language.

While I prefer Birnbaum's translation in the excerpt provided in Lesser's article, I believe Jay Rubin's insight in his interview, "Found in translation," shows an extremely interesting perspective on translation and reading translated works. What stood out to me in particular was his hesitance to agree with the premise of the question about how he is able to align with the author to be able to communicate even the subtlest aspects of their work. He approached it in a manner that allows the reader to not put absolute faith in the translator as the absolute authority of conveying every meaning that comes from an original work, but instead as a writer relaying the feeling and emotion of the original the best they can.

I was not aware how much Murakami and his translators interacted with one another. Considering Murakami is fluent in English, it was really interesting seeing Philip Gabriel discussing a translation with Jay Rubin and Murakami. For a language Murakami doesn't interact with, like Chinese in the case of Shi Xiaowei, it seems like an even more difficult task to provide a faithful translation to the original, so it does not surprise me that there was only one established Chinese Murakami translator before him.

Murakami Readings 9/15 Kohki

I never read a book with different translations and compared them, so it was a new concept to me that there are important differences between different translations. Lesser mentioned feeling a barrier when reading a book written by an author whom she’s used to reading but translated by a different translator. I never really paid attention to the translator when buying a translated book, since I thought it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. However, when I read the examples from Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I was surprised by how different the two translations are.

It was mentioned in one of the articles that Murakami himself is a translator too, and that it was helpful for the translators. It made me wonder if the opposite is true, so if translators are writers as well, would the translated text be better than one that was translated by a non-writer translator? When translating a novel, it’s not just converting from one language to another, but writing another novel at the same time. Writers will know the workflow of writing a novel and the struggles of it too, so I guess writers would do better than non-writers.

Also, when a translator revises a translated work, it seems impossible to perceive it completely separately from the original text, which would make it difficult to objectively assess the translated text as a novel. Especially when working on a long novel like 1Q84 with another translator, I thought it would be hard to keep the consistency and revise/assess the translated novel as a whole.

Thoughts on Readings

I think these articles have given me a lot to think about the meaning of translation.

Looking at the example Wendy Lesser gave, Rubin's translation is more literary and easy to understand, while Birnbaum's uses short sentences, which reminds me of the rhythmic way Japanese people speak, but it seems to take me longer to grasp the meaning (because I need to connect the sentences logically). This has made me wonder whether the acceptance of a translation is not only determined by the degree of authenticity, but also influenced by many mundane factors. For example, when reading on a noisy subway, I might prefer the simplicity of the former, while when reading quietly late at night, I might prefer the latter to experience Japanese art. Another example is Haruki Murakami's "End of the World And Hard-Boiled Wonderland," the title of which comes from Jay Rubin and is translated as "Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World" in Birnbaum's version. The Japanese title is "世の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド," so Rubin's translation is clearly more accurate. However, Birnbaum switched the order because the publisher wanted to increase Murakami's popularity in the United States, and the opening "End of World" was too common in bookstores. Chip Kidd for Knopf's choice of cover was also a significant factor in American readers' understanding of Murakami.

Translators like Jay Rubin, Alfred Birnbaum, and Philip Gabriel have all openly acknowledged that their versions of Murakami are not the same. Each is shaped by their own style. Rubin's English is cleaner and more concise, Birnbaum's language has a jazzy playfulness, and Gabriel's tone is more moist and emotive. I've read Lin Shaohua's Chinese translation, and I think it perfectly aligns with the loneliness and healing described by the Chinese students in the article. This point isn't mentioned much in the article, so I wanted to elaborate on it in this blog. Since Lin Shaohua favors traditional Chinese prose, his translations are more infused with the flavor of classical Chinese literature.

Finally, I'd like to share an article by Jay Rubin titled The Other World of Murakami Haruki. I'll link it here.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/1304279970/fulltext/A725D9030A944A8APQ/1?accountid=9676&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals&imgSeq=1

What caught my attention in this article was this paragraph:

Unlike traditional novelists, Murakami stubbornly insists that the images in his work are not symbols and that he himself does not understand their “meanings.” They come out of his unconscious, he says, almost like automatic writing, and any reader’s interpretation is as valid as his own. If A Wild Sheep Chase succeeds at all, he insists, it is because he himself does not understand what the sheep means. The very act of identifying a symbol and defining it, as far as Murakami is concerned, drains it of much of its potential power. He would prefer to leave it alone and let it do its work, undefined, in the mind of each reader.

Interestingly, during his lecture at UC Berkeley, he mentioned that he sometimes didn't understand Haruki Murakami's writing, so he would ask Murakami about it. However, Murakami was reluctant to discuss the deeper meaning of the works or engage in textual analysis, often telling him he was overthinking. Therefore, I think Murakami Haruki also strongly supports understanding his texts from different perspectives. Translation, as the retransmission of text, will inevitably incorporate the translator's own understanding, thus producing different styles of presentation, which does not contradict Murakami Haruki's own ideas. 

Murakami Articles/Interviews

I thought it was interesting that Lesser’s article describes translation as a “disappearing act” done by “selfless workers” (55); these descriptions sowed suspicion that her opinion would be skewed towards defining the ‘authenticity’ or ‘integrity’ of translating the original authors’ voices and intentions. Instead, the piece turned out to be quite charitable to different approaches to translation and embraced the role of the reader in translated literature. I quite enjoyed reading it overall, but found some irony in her discovery and loss of Arthur Birnbaum’s Murakami translations. With the transition to Gabriel and Rubin, Lesser phrased it as “[losing] an author through a change in translators” (60). Though she recognizes that the strong connection between a reader and a translation is personal to that reader, she still states it as a feeling of the loss of Murakami’s voice as she knew it, distilling the translator’s responsibilities to both the author and reader into a single statement; a loss suffered individually by Lesser and without a perpetrator. 

Michael Emmerich expresses a similar idea, that readers are in something like the “parallel universes that appear and disappear in the author’s works” (Templado par 4). As a translator, I imagine that the looming, infinitely-tined fork of reader interpretations ahead could either weigh you down or set you free. It follows, then, that those who seem the most ‘free’ and take the most artistic/stylistic liberties narrow the field of possible interpretations more than those who take pains to make few choices beyond what is ‘strictly necessary’ to communicate what they see as the core of the source text to a new audience. What the latter task entails is highly subjective, of course, so I do understand Lesser’s introduction which gives all literary translators some common goals and principles in generalized terms. I also don’t necessarily see the latter group as ‘sufferers of illusion’ as Emmerich does in relation to Birnbaum who tries to “‘create English sentences that will live on their own in a way similar to the way that Japanese sentences live’” (par 12). 

In the Gabriel/Rubin interview by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Rubin states that there’s never a promise of communicating the “unalloyed original” to readers of the translated work (par 7). Referring to translations as ‘alloys’ was personally amusing to me as an engineering student. Alloys can be created in many different ways just as there is no singular ‘translation process’ and to different final compositions, properties, and that do well in different applications. In translation, however, there is no static beginning or end. Source texts can feel like definite things (and so they may be by necessity if their authors are dead or have otherwise abandoned them), but for living authors like Murakami, translation turns the soil of these works and offers opportunities for revision. To borrow Emmerich’s idea of living sentences, the core of each work is as unknowable and dynamic as a person’s. The author may be the parent but sends it off for editing, publishing, reading, critique, the cycle repeats with translation, and all the while the author is changing as well. 

Sydnee

Thoughts on Murakami Articles - Lane

I appreciated the numerous perspectives presented on Murakami's works in translation. I feel as though Murakami has always been a hot topic in reference to translated literature in particular; many authors, translators, and linguists believe that Murakami writes with the intent to be translated, especially given his affinity for Anglo-American culture and the English language. J. Philip Gabriel noted, in the interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, that Murakami is a translator himself who is very comfortable with English, and perhaps this even influences his authorial process. Though I'm also of the opinion that Murakami certainly aligns his works with the English language enough that a reader of the original Japanese might even believe that his works are translated literature, I think this brings to mind an interesting question that was on my mind while I was reading these articles (and that has been on both my mind and the collective mind of the translator for years): Is translation authorship in its own right? 

Michael Emmerich, Jay Rubin, J. Philip Gabriel, and Wendy Lesser all seem to have a somewhat unified perspective on this matter, though there are certainly differences in their thoughts. Rubin notes that in his translations, he's "not trying to explain the original, but recreate it so that it works in all the same gut levels" and "feeling to see if [the translation] moves [him] in the same recognizable ways" cross-linguistically. Gabriel, when translating humor, completely changes the semantic meaning in order to express the same feeling in the translated text. Emmerich notes that Murakami is "an incredible storyteller, but [he] would frame him in terms of who's translating him." Lesser discusses that her perspective of Sebald actually "consisted of Sebald plus Hulse," and her love for Murakami was more a love for Alfred Birnbaum. All of these views either seem to place the translator as an essential part of the existence of a work, or the translation process as more divorced from the semantic authority of the original than some are led to believe. When Rubin "recreates" the original to evoke the same emotions in the reader, is he playing the role of an author? If Lesser only loves Murakami through Birnbaum's voice, is Birnbaum the true author of Lesser's beloved texts?

Though it's true that a translation certainly cannot exist without an original, I wonder if there is anyone that believes that a translation is crucial to the existence of the original. If a work is written to be translated, is its creation incomplete without a translation? Or, as Gabriel mentions in reference to Kenzaburo Oe, the author's work with him on his translation led to the creation of a different final product than the original, a reflection of how Oe had really wanted the original to be. Is Oe's Somersault thus incomplete without its translation? Which version holds the authority? These are some questions that are interesting to consider when discussing translated literature, though there is really no definitive answer. (Though, of course, they can generate interesting discussions!)

 As a mild fan of Murakami, I was a bit surprised to know the difficulties involved in translating Murakami's work - as I was familiar with how he had an expose with Anglo-American culture as well as his rich references to Jazz and whiskey and Western music in his texts.  Furthermore, he's also known for his rhythmic style of writing, which I thought makes the translation to English smoother and not quite difficult.

However, now I see that the "ease" of translating Murakami's work into English is precisely what makes it difficult, as Murakami's unique style of writing can be lost in the process of translation. Thus, this is where translators also get their creative decision/interpretation during their translation, much like how we see Jay Rubin translating an accurate translation, whilst Birnbaum tends to maintain the playfulness and the jazziness present in the native, original text.

My important takeaway was how reader's perception of an author may vary depending on the translators - when one criticizes the artistic style or the phrasing of a literature, one could be criticizing the translator, and not the author themselves. I also found the interview question of "Whether a translated work can surpass the original" interesting - I personally think that it is not possible, as translated work is a completely new piece of literature in my mind, making them incomparable to the original text. However, seeing cases where the authors try to improve or cut out certain parts of the narrative was refreshing as that is a prime example of where translated work is objectively "better" as it conveys the authors message and thoughts more articulately.

Marcus

Murasaki Translation Articles

All four of the articles addressed the challenges of translation, especially between two languages and cultures so vastly different.  Each of the articles brought up interesting points and ideas, but I feel that "The Mysteries of Translation" by Wendy Lesser and "Found in Translation" by Soojin Chang most resonated with my opinions towards translation. Further, the words of Lesser and Chang compliment each other well.  

Lesser believes that the main goal of a translator is to "let us hear the writer’s voice as [the translator] hears it in the original language," and I agree with her. It is nearly impossible to produce an exact translation from one language in to another, even if each language contains the words and ideas brought out in the original writing. As Chang says, "it turns out that culture is the hardest thing to translate."  Both of these authors stressed the importance of trying to recreate the same experience for the foreign reader as would be experienced in the original language. Since concepts such as humor or cultural references are more often than not difficult to translate, as words do not carry the same weight and connotation across languages. Further, concepts that are normal to the native reader, yet scarcely known by the foreign reader, might be too unfamiliar for the foreign reader to have the same imagery and experience as the native reader. 

Danielle 

Murakami Articles - Oscar

 Reading these articles got me thinking about an author's image and how it's perception changes between readers, and how it is shaped or diluted further when you add translators to the mix. Emmerich's interview talks about this shaping of an author's image and feel - he says that “if I’d been reading the Kodansha books first, my sense of Murakami and the kind of aura he has would have been different", with regards to Murakami's style of covers. He notes how he expects his students to say that Murakami is "really cool" or "surrealistic", but instead gets "realistic" and "difficult", markedly different from the perception of native Japanese readers. 

The establishment of this perception is muddied further when considering Murakami's "voice" and how it's shaped by his three chief translators - in Chang's interview, Philip Gabriel says that he doesn't align himself with the author in order to communicate subtleties, and that one should be learning the language and reading the original to get to those subtleties. He goes further in Hoyt's interview, saying that "I just do my own thing, my own take on what Murakami should sound like in English", regardless of Jay Rubin's or Alfred Birnbaum's work. 

So here we have three doors through which we find different images and interpretations of Murakami's true voice, and how they might shape a reader's perception and enjoyment of his novels. Lesser's editorial mentions how it took until Pevear and Volokhonsky's translations to find a missing piece of Dostoyevsky’s voice that was theretofore missing. What parts of Murakami are we missing by reading Birnbaum? How might my image of Murakami as an author change if I read Rubin's first, or maybe even the original Japanese? What if Murakami himself decided to translate or write directly in English?

Thoughts on Murakami Articles - Zhihe (Allen) Tian

 One interesting point I found was Jay Rubin's idea in Making Sense of Japanese that "Japanese is more imprecise and mysterious than English." Japanese is considered a "high-context language." As a Japanese learner, in the beginning it was very hard to understand who is the subject. Often in conversations, the tone and context conveys who is the subject, whereas in English we use words like "I" or "you" almost all the time. I relate to Rubin's point, but I also like Gabriel idea that Japanese is in fact a very clear and precise language. 

Another interesting question is that "Is it possible for a translation to improve on the original?" I think this depends on the goal of the translation. If the goal is to retell the original story as closely as possible, then this question is meaningless because the criteria are different. Whereas if the original book is a comedy book, and the translated version happens to be even funnier, then one could argue the translation is an improved version of the original.  

In the interview with Gabriel, he mentions that the authors he translate are still alive, thus he can ask for comments or suggestions. In the other article, Gabriel said how some authors will ask him to delete certain sections and even add new sections for the translation because the authors are trying to improve on their published work. So perhaps the translation could improve on the original.

I read sections of Murakami's "The Elephant Vanishes", in both English and Japanese, and I liked how he gives clear descriptions of the environment (sound, mood, location). When the protagonist talked about the case he is solving, the elephant that vanished, there is something very absurd and surreal about it, like how the elephant's shape was bending and getting smaller. I thought the English translation captured the energy and feeling of the original pretty well, just like how Rubin and Gabriel said about Murakami's work being relatively straightforward to translate. 

-Allen

9/15 Murakami Articles - Alex

"After all, you're not trying to explain the original, but recreate it so that it works in all the same gut levels." -- Jay Rubin. I think this quote well summarizes my key takeaways from the four articles. Japanese and English are two very different languages, both in syntax, grammar, and cultural aspects behind the languages. Found in Translation mentions how Japanese sentence structure is SOV -- different from the English SVO, which makes it hard to translate sentences where the verb is the "punchline". The Atlantic article also talks about how the suffixes to a name in Japanese: -san, -kun, -chan, etc., can convey different meanings of intimacy between the speakers, whereas in English the best we have is perhaps Mr. / Ms. and calling by first / last name. In addition, I noticed from reading translated VS. Japanese original manga that the way characters may end their sentences in unique ways (i.e. すごいにゃん for a cat-themed character) can be really hard to translate, and often feels unnatural when they are translated (i.e. that's so cool-nya). 

I think these are all choices that translators must make while translating the works. It is certainly easy to put annotations in the translation -- footnotes / translator's notes, if you will, but this will also break the flow of the story and read -- as Rubin puts it -- more like an explanation of the original text. Ignoring these small but special features would also not be commendable, as Wendy Lesser writes, a translator should "translate the author's voice", of which these narration techniques are integral to. In Found in Translation, the description of Phillip Gabriel creating the paws vs. pause pun to substitute for Murakami's original Japanese pun of liking a cat to lend a hand was especially interesting to me, as I think it is a great example of combining being truthful to the original while preserving the flow and legibility of the story. However, I also expect that finding such equivalent puns isn't possible in every situation, and I wonder what should happen when a translator encounters an "untranslatable" joke. 

Murakami Articles - Dawson

 Reading these articles brought me to recognize something that I had never really thought about before: it is impossible to completely accurately translate something.  Which is something that is obvious in retrospect, but never something I had consciously thought deeply about before.  No matter how skilled the translator, two translations of the same emotionally complex text will inevitably differ.  Not only because the words themselves have different meaning that doesn't translate one to one to the target language, but also because even for native speakers, every person will likely end up with their own interpretation of the text.  Every person's mental model of words and what emotions they carry will all differ, and thus every reader and every translator will have a different interpretation of the text at hand.  

This invariably results in translated works containing to at least some degree the soul of the translator in them on top of that of the author.  Even the 'perfect' translator (which by itself is a contradiction, since there can be no perfection in translation) will leave behind small traces of themselves.  The best they can do is interpret the feel of the language to word choices and sentence structures in their native language that will give them a similar feeling.  

The Wendy Lesser article is especially interesting, as it brings up the idea that the voice of the translator can have a significant positive effect on the readers' (or at least a portion of the readers, as everything is subjective) experience.  Lesser vastly preferred Birnbaum's translations, due to his unique voice that he put into the text.  However, is the fact that he put any of his voice at all into the text a bad thing, since it overshadows, to some degree, the author's voice?  He may be adding, at least somewhat, emotion that wasn't fully there in the original text.  Is that not changing the author's original intent?  I honestly am not sure myself whether that is bad or good.  I think it should be the author's choice whether that is okay or not.  Due to that, I agree with Philip Gabriel in that a translation can almost never improve the original text. But it does beg the question.  What *should* proper translation look like?  In general, how much liberty *should* you take in making a more natural, enjoyable experience in English whilst still maintaining the original intent/feeling?