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?