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.)