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.