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