Book Design - Oscar

As much as I wish I didn't, I do judge books by their cover. It's the first point of contact between the book and my eyes, and it's the cover that catches my eye and makes me pull the book off the library shelf to check out the title and blurb. It was interesting to see the kinds of thought processes that go into creating something that is shelf-worthy, such as the intentional spine designs for the Buddha volumes or the subtle storytelling that pulling out My Name is Red can pull off.

One thing that caught my attention is when Chip Kidd referred to the creation of covers as a sort of translation/interpretation of the book's content. While I can see the logic behind that (converting the message of one language to another, that being visual art), I don't agree with it. Just like soundtracks, I believe that covers and similar pieces of art are less "translating" the content of text into another medium, and more shaping that medium to become representative of the text. On the other hand, the texts we've been reading keep talking about the importance of getting across the feeling of the text rather than the literal word meanings, and that's exactly what the cover art is doing, isn't it?

Regarding the article by Bosman: I completely disagree with the idea that people will be more enticed to by a book based on the gaudiness of the book's design, but that's just a personal conviction that I have. I have bought the physical copies I own not because I enjoy the cover art, but because I enjoyed the text itself and I want to keep it with me in a more tangible way. While a more exquisitely designed cover would definitely catch my eye, I'd faster look up the digital version than "pay a dollar or two more for a beautiful book."

On Book Design - Sloane

     I'm someone who always chooses books based on their cover -- I'm sure many others are, too. Over the years I've found that this usually works out for me. Covers are supposed to be representative of the stories inside, after all. In Chip Kidd's TED Talk video about book cover design, I got to see a bit of the thought process/creativity behind this. It seems quite straightforward -- take a central aspect of the book (whether this is a plot point, an idea, or the format of the writing itself) and creatively transpose this concept into visual design. But I think this process goes in the other direction as well. What I mean is, as a reader, I find my perception of the story being impacted by the cover. Since it's the first thing I see, its visual acts as a sort of background music for the text as I read, and I use it to hone the mental images brought about by the words inside. It becomes something of a confirmation bias in that the cover sets up an expectation that my mind then seeks to fulfill. For instance, if the cover of a book is a mysterious, misty blue, I might interpret a simple but vague dialogue spoken by a character to be profound and deep, but if the cover was plain and beige instead, I might take the exact same dialogue to just feel incomplete and lacking. In this way, I would argue the cover is as much a part of the reading experience as the words themselves (the publishers mentioned in Bosman's "Selling Books by Their Gilded Covers" article seem to agree, although for somewhat different reasons). To put it simply, packaging matters. In class we already saw this with how the marketing for the movie version of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 varied from country to country. I think this has the potential to complicate the job of translation a bit. On one hand, there's little an individual translator can probably do to influence how a publisher chooses to package the story, so maybe they just do their work as usual and then hope the story still feels the same no matter how its physical form is presented. But, on the other hand, if a cover design is picked out in the middle of the translation process, I wonder if a translator can't help but be influenced by its design to some extent, either subconsciously or through overt direction from a publisher. 

Book Design Reading/Video - Sydnee

 In the years since the article was published, I feel like premium elements in books has possibly driven up the price of physical books overall, and adding these elements doesn’t always benefit the actual design. For example, I’ve been seeing a lot more sprayed edges (painted/colored edges of book pages) recently, and in my opinion it doesn’t always make sense or look good beyond just participating in a book design trend, and gives publishers/retailers a reason to charge more for those editions. On the other hand, I am a fan of deckled edges and don’t necessarily ever think that I’d rather a particular book not have them. My personal design opinions aside, I’ve been considering how the recent ‘trend’ of reading has influenced the book design scene in terms of churning out releases faster to meet demand or which design elements can be traced back to social media or consumer trends rather than thoughtfully creating books that still are meant to entice the customer, but strive to do so without compromising design principles.

In general, I also think it’s necessary to consider the general democratization of graphic design, where I feel like in the last decade or so it has been pushed that just anyone can break into graphic design and that making things that ‘look good’ don’t need to be so technically grounded and that the existing design scene is (or was) too uptight and exclusive. I’ve seen arguments in the last year or two making the case for reevaluating the quality standards for professional graphic design work to emphasize that there is real value in studying and understanding fundamental principles, even if those rules are broken later (as with other art, writing, music, etc.). I thought that the various design processes in the TED Talk actually agrees with this perspective, because under the surface of his humorous anecdotes (tracing a picture from the museum, throwing water at a paper, etc.) lie references to typography and formal education in design.

Of course, there are clearly positive aspects to diversifying the elements included in book design. Most of my book collection is secondhand and paperbacks, so I probably have some natural bias against brand new hardcovers, but I do enjoy examining the design of new releases when I go to the bookstore, from atypical sizes to embossed dust jackets and how they form color schemes with the covers underneath. Perhaps it’s greedy to both support ‘integrity in book design’ (whatever that even means, since I’m no expert on what that really entails) and want to see things that are new and interesting, since everyone starts somewhere and that to get more ‘interesting’ results, more must be produced in general. 

Thougts on readings

    Rebecca Copeland’s essay feels like a journey through layers of sound, containing voices that come from texts, from other translators, and from her own memories. From the start, she situates translation not as an act of word-for-word equivalence but as an act of listening. Her puzzling over kogai, kanzashi, and kushi captures the tension between precision and presence, between wanting to get it right and realizing that translation is built on dilemmas rather than resolutions. Through her reflections on Uno Chiyo, Kishida Toshiko, and Kirino Natsuo, Copeland shows how translation moves beyond semantics into ethics: the translator must decide whose voice is heard, what emotional register is preserved, and what kind of world the translation constructs. Her piece becomes a polyphonic composition, an orchestra of the author’s tone, the editor’s demands, the translator’s emotions, and even the publisher’s marketing choices.

    What resonates most deeply is Copeland’s metaphor of translation as a conversation across time and identity. The cacophony of professors, authors, dialect speakers, editors, and imagined readers turns translation into a shared act of remembering and re-voicing. When she recalls how the dialect of the puppet-maker conjured the voices of her own grandfather, Copeland reveals translation as a form of haunting, a process through which language reawakens forgotten intimacy. This idea transforms the translator’s role from mediator to medium, someone who channels the living and the dead, the foreign and the familiar, into a fragile linguistic balance.

    Reading Copeland’s meditation reminded me of the multi-layered history of The Tale of Genji translations, which traced from Arthur Waley to Dennis Washburn. Each translator, like Copeland, listened to different frequencies in Murasaki Shikibu’s thousand-year-old prose. Waley heard aesthetic melody and rearranged it for a Bloomsbury audience; Seidensticker valued clarity and restraint; Tyler and Washburn sought fidelity to Heian subtlety and psychological depth. Their choices, whether to smooth, to simplify, or to estrange,m irror Copeland’s dilemmas about kanzashi and dialect. Both Copeland and the Genji translators reveal that accuracy is inseparable from personality and historical moment: translation is never neutral. It is always colored by taste, education, gender, and ideology.

Hearing Voices - Darian

 From the start of the reading, I really found the description from Professor Seidensticker that translation is a "series of dilemmas" to be an interesting way to view the various crossroads translators run into while translating. While it isn't necessarily true that translators are constantly choosing between "equally undesirable alternatives," there are multiple instances where the translator is forced to make a decision on how to portray an element of the original text, such as hearing an translating the writer's voice.

The section on voice was really interesting to me, as there were certain elements, such as the "orality" of the author in Uno's "A Wife's Letters," that really jump out to me once I see how the text was translated. Translating Tokushima dialect in another one of Uno's works also shows the challenges of capturing the nuances and quirks of a dialect in an original text while still conveying the voice, but Copeland mentions using people from her personal life as reference to capture the voice of the Tokushima dialect speaker.

Copeland also speaks on the influence of marketing and target audiences in the editing and presentation of the novel Grotesque. Not only was the English version of the novel shortened by 27 pages to make it more accessible to Western readers, but the Japanese marketers downplayed a lot of the elements that were more sensationalized by Western marketers, such as the sexuality and "human element" of the story.

Hearing Voices- Allen

  I found the passage about “community of voices” the most interesting. When translating a passage written in the Tokushima dialect, the author mentioned that, “I inadvertently found myself brushing up against voices from my past--an elderly beekeeper, the dulcimer-maker, my own grandfather.” The point was that the style a translator writes in is a direct reflection of the translator’s voice and the translator’s community’s voices. When translating, perhaps we are limited by the words used by our acquaintances and ourselves. The author then mentions turning to Mrs. Akiko Hayashi for assistant, and that her translation embodied the voice of Mrs. Hayashi. This is interesting because if the author had talked to someone else instead of Mrs. Hayashi, I’m sure the translation would have turned out very differently. Therefore, I think the best way to translate when one doesn’t understand a dialect is to consult many people to get a wide range of voices and perspectives. 

One other point that captured my attention was the editorial’s influence to make the translation more friendly toward a broad audience. The point that, “A translated book, regardless of how “exotic” the subject matter may be, should read as if it were originally produced in English,” stood out to me. It made me think what would be sacrificed to make the text natural in English like omitting many details important to Japanese culture.

Hearing Voices - Evan

 I like Copeland's experience translating Grotesque. She talks about the hierarchy of publishing translations, an almost meta detail that plays a bigger role than I thought. The translator may not have full control over the project, and there may be other influencing factors beyond authenticity at hand. For people choosing which translation path to take, this is definitely an important consideration.

Copeland also mentioned difficulty translating scientific words. While they may be the correct word technically, they often lack the meaning, "voice" behind it, especially when it comes at the wrong time. I think it's because we often don't use these words. As a result, our emotions are somewhat detached from them as well.

I couldn't really follow the idea of "hearing the author's voice". I think that takes a long time to build an intuition for, definitely not something I can develop over a single short passage. It seems too whimsical a concept to be applied in translation. If we were to look at translation as an art of understanding something through the medium of a foreign language, rather than a painting, I can imagine some being able to "hear the author's voice".

Hearing Voices - Danielle

Just like most of the other readings, a key take-away from this article is the idea that there is no one correct way to translate, but the passage below stood out to me:

"Words are metaphors after all, place holders for meanings that are conditioned by context. What we translate, the way we read, see, interpret is already informed by our readerly experience, by the voices we are taught to hear. Just as we are taught to accept tastes, to develop a palate that distinguishes flavors and distinguishes the tasty from the tasteless, we are taught to read, to impart meaning, to evaluate, to accept" (141-142)

Throughout the passage, it was this concept that resonated with me. Almost everything we do is shaped by the culture around us and the society we live in, so of course the same can be said about how we produce and interpret language. Translators usually have to work extra hard in order to hear these voices in more than one language. When a language is not native to you, it takes a great deal of practice and exposure to understand both the culture and the literature in the unknown language. This understanding is crucial to the author's idea of listening to the voices in works, for each language has its own way of conveying certain meanings and connotations that cannot directly translate, only equivalate, in the target language. 

Hearing Voices - Alex

I really like the metaphor of "the voice" in the text, both as the voice of the original author and the voices of fellow translators and editors working on the project together. Copeland mentions this "voice" first in her translation of Uno Chiyo's The Power of Voice, which taught her to focus less on the "literal meaning" and more on voice and emotional tone. This is in part due to Uno's style of seeming simple writing with deep unspoken meaning. I would agree that a major part of translating is trying to dig at what the author really wants to say, and thinking about or even reenacting the author's voice is a good way to ensure that the meaning behind the plaintext is thought of and conveyed.

When I translate, sometimes I try to imagine the author's voice in and read the text out loud in my head. This helps me find the rhythm of the text as well as identify emotions / atmospheres that are being conveyed or created, therefore making my translation also reflecting the author's voice. This is also especially helpful in Japanese because Japanese sentences tend to be much longer and use less punctuation than English, therefore reading it "out loud" can also help me pinpoint where to stop -- where a complete thought ends and another begins -- so that I can better and more accurately grasp the logic of the Japanese sentence and translate it in a way that complies with English grammar rules. I really enjoy this imaginary discussion between mine and the author's voice in my head, and while it does sometimes stump me trying to find a suitable word or phrase for the original text, it ensures that what I translate is (to the best of my ability) a representation of both the text and the author. 

Copeland Reading - Sydnee

 Having picked up Grotesque at my local library by chance (4 or 5? years ago), I was most interested in reading Copeland’s reflection on that process. I didn’t particularly like it at the time, and upon reading reviews (I didn’t yet really have any opinions on translation like I do now) was inclined to agree with those who said it sounded ‘too American’ or that it didn’t flow very well. It brings mixed emotions to find out that those comments have been more or less verified by Copeland herself in this reading.

We’ve discussed the editorial influence on translated works in class, and I also listened to Susan Harris’s talk on editing translation as someone who doesn’t understand the language of the original, but the situation Copeland was in with Grotesque came off as unfortunate to me. Perhaps things were different in the early 2000s when the translation was published, but it seemed unreasonable to me that the work required so much “reshaping” just to be broadly palatable for an American audience. I think I’ve encountered similar discussions before about Japanese authors being sequestered into genre fiction in English translation for marketing purposes, to the detriment of the actual content of their works, such as Fuminori Nakamura (I read Cult X a while ago but not his more acclaimed work, The Thief). If I remember correctly, in an article I read about him, there has been a strong push to translate all of his books as crime/thriller works when they actually could be better characterized as literary with crime/thriller elements, which I’m sure has had an effect on the translations themselves. 

Another recent novel this situation made me think of was Butter by Asako Yuzuki and translated by Polly Barton, whose translations I greatly appreciate overall aside from the occasional distinctly British word (niggling, telly, bloody, etc.) and how it was marketed to English readers. It seems that some English readers were bored with (and disappointed by) the endless food descriptions and the meandering plot that explored the characters more than it did the ‘thriller’ murder investigation plot that was emphasized in the synopsis. In this case, it seems that while certain marketing choices were made, Barton was not pressured into cutting and modifying the narrative into something it wasn’t to fit the bill. I wonder if this is a sign of a shift in the publishing landscape when it comes to translated works (and particularly from Japanese?) or if it is just situational since Polly Barton is now so veteran and well-regarded. 

I thought an interesting thread through the reading was the idea of ‘voices’ and that Copeland feels they rightfully impart a significant influence on translations. Before reaching the section specifically about Grotesque, I thought this might be the reason I didn’t connect with the book, but now I think that would get off the path of what she really wants to convey about voice and style. The ‘voices’ influencing Copeland’s translations do not necessarily manifest as words from someone else’s mouth, but various guiding hands that get the translation from the original to a different language, which is just one way in which translation is a social process and cannot exist in a vacuum just as language cannot. 

Hearing Voices - Dawson

     Wow, Seidensticker keeps coming up again and again since we first saw him.  He must have been quite the big deal in the world of translation during his time.  I really like this piece though.  I think it ties in fantastically to the other works we've read.  You can really boil down the theme of many of them to that exact Seidensticker quote she uses, which also appeared in the Seidensticker speech we read, about translation being a series of dilemmas.  I feel like I've come to appreciate that more as we've gotten further into this course, although, of course, we've still only scratched the surface.  Her hairpin dilemma was certainly significantly harder than any dilemma we've encountered so far in class.  I also really like her translation of the Uno passage!  It does a great job of capturing the older feel of Uno's prose in the paragraph.  She does an incredible job in the next Uno paragraph as well, of capturing the accent and voice.  It seems like one of her biggest talents is her ability to capture the voice of a text.  Her translations stand out most in how precisely she captures tone and voice.  In addition, her anecdote about the ‘flowers in salt’ misunderstanding also really showed how context and interpretation shape translation.

    However, if I am to be quite candid, it is essentially a reiteration of the same point as many of the previous readings.  Once again, the main takeaway I get is that the most important thing to focus on is not the words themselves but the voice and the feeling behind those words.  Honestly, I'm not sure what else to say about that message that I have not already said up to this point.  It seems like the central message of translation.  Along with other common themes, like seeking advice from those more knowledgeable, and how translation is a series of impossible choices, and how cultural nuances have to be handled very delicately and carefully to translate them well, etc.  This article ends up boiling down to a few of these points, just like most of the others.  I enjoyed it though!  It's just getting very hard to avoid repeating myself every blog post!

Dawson Maska

Hearing Voices - Marcus

 As with all the translation-related readings we have seen, direct translation is always never possible, and I echo with Copeland's argument that translation is about choosing between "equally undesirable alternatives" - there is no singular best answer/choice of the phrasing and word, so it's up to us to decide what nuances/details to be lost.

The notion of listening to voices of the text, though vague, is a relevant advice I think I could use in my process of translation - first, we should get an intuitive feel of what the original text is conveying, and then we focus on molding that intuitive understanding to words. However, I do believe this can be risky as there can be many "intuitive understanding" of the original text depending on the translator - and since intuitions are culmination of experience and rich cultural understanding, as well as one's gut feeling, directly using this approach for a beginner, such as myself, can be risky, though I plan to take this approach to a certain extent in future translation.

Hearing Voices - Lane

 I often hear the perspective that reading a translation should be an equivalent experience to reading the original in its original language and cultural context, especially in discussions of domestication. I do agree with this perspective to an extent--I think that being overly faithful can actually wind up being unfaithful sometimes--but hearing about Copeland's experience with her publisher has made me examine this perspective.

In hearing voices and translating them onto the page, we are, in part, domesticating and creating an equivalent experience; we translate the voices we have heard rather than faithfully adhering to every single word on the page. Still, in discussing her translation of Kirino's Grotesque, Copeland notes how part of this process of domestication was streamlining and cutting parts of the text, as "Knopf was charged with making the English Grotesque as familiar to its audiences as Gurotesuku was to Kirino’s." While the text may now be an equivalent experience to an American reader, the cuts that were made do call to mind another meaning of the word "domestication"--taming. The Japanese nature of the text has been tamed in favor of an English audience--I am not sure how to feel about this, in all honesty. Is there such a thing as going too far in localization/domestication?

Hearing Voices by Rebecca Copeland – Aaron

 When I began the reading, I immediately recalled when you mentioned that as we gain more experience in translation, we start to hear the author's voice in English when we read original texts. We have seen a number of times already that translation is largely about preserving the voice of the author. Since Japanese and English are such different languages, often the words themselves matter less than the voice and flow of the text.

These ideas stuck in my mind as I read about the "salted" translation, since Copeland struggled with the dilemma of whether to keep the "salt" mistranslation so as to not call out the author who published the mistake, or to translate it correctly. Which alternative Copeland ultimately chose is not clear to me, but the lesson learned is nonetheless clear: the individual words matter less than the communicated meaning as a whole. The metaphor "flowers in salt" is ultimately effective, and conveys the same meaning as the original Japanese metaphor. Therefore, that translation, while neither faithful nor ideal, is an acceptable one.

The major changes made to the English version of Grotesque, however, seem to me like they cross a line when it comes to translation. I do to some extent understand Copeland's justification for the changes made to the novel, that perhaps these changes were necessary to make the translation equally enjoyable for an English-speaking audience as the original was to its Japanese-speaking audience, thus making the translation "faithful" in this sense. But this justification is too theoretical and windy, so I am not convinced. I am suspicious that Copeland is wrong, and that the editors were simply worrying too much about how the novel would be received.

It is also surprising to see how marketers change which themes are advertised on the covers for translations compared to the covers for their originals. I do not know whether this generally counts as faithful to the original or not, but my instincts tell me that this is a shame. Alas, it is out of the translator's jurisdiction.

Hearing Voices – Cheryl

I like the idea that translation is about hearing voices—capturing the personality of a writer, narrator or character and transferring it onto a page in a different language. The reality of the publishing industry, however, as Copeland elucidates, is that in the process of getting a story out into the world, we are inundated with a host of other voices too: the authors', the editors' and the readers'. 

We spend a lot of time in class discussing and debating translation theory—foreignisation, localisation, what to change, what to keep, but we forget that more often than not the final say may not be ours. Is this something we should protest in righteous, academic anger or something we have to accept, as cogs in a capitalist machine? There is art for art's sake, but then there are also people with families to feed whose books sold will only be read if they are written in a way that is able to engage them. 

The more I learn about translation and the industry surrounding it the more questions I find with no clear answers. 

"Hearing Voices" Reading - Sloane

     I was interested by Copeland's inner conflict between Seidensticker's principle that "the temptation to reshape... should be resisted," and the goal of the publisher she was working for, which was to re-craft a Japanese story (Gurotesuku) into an American format. Although she agreed with Seidensticker to an extent, Copeland made a good counterpoint -- in this situation, from an English-speaker's perspective, there is no true original to be faithful to because, as of yet, this audience has had no contact with the story. Once again, the issue has come up in one of our readings where, if a translator attempts to recreate the Japanese text in English so that it follows the same stylistic choices, makes the same decisions concerning how to execute the plot, etc., you end up with an echo of the original, yes... but this is still not necessarily readable for the English-speaking audience. If a Japanese writer's style reads as conventional in Japanese, then shouldn't it feel conventional in English as well? However, to get this effect, some doctoring of the work must be involved. It seems oxymoronic but sometimes in order to make the text feel the same in both languages, it can't be left as is. At the same time, Copeland still leaves room for more "faithful" interpretations (by Seidensticker's definition) in the realm of academia, where readers might crave more of a taste of the Japanese writing style than the average person who wanders into a bookstore. I think both strategies have a time and place.

Hearing Voices - Oscar

 "...the perfect translation. I was naïve." I can't imagine ever growing out of that naivety, constantly anxious about staying loyal to the text as I am. 

This talk of voices that become infused with the translator's work makes me curious about the original author's work itself. What are the myriad voices that were involved in the creation of the original text, and how are they transformed by the writing and editing processes? Then, through the translator, these voices are mixed once more, transformed, with new voices added and old voices perhaps lost. Is it ever possible, then, for the translated work to ever faithfully carry across that originality?

And then there is the matter of those that don't bother even trying to carry anything, rather preferring to melt and mold those voices in their favor for the sake of sales. Perhaps there is merit in attempting to appeal to the general American reader compared to the average Japanese reader, but is it ever a consideration that the voices in play aren't for them to hear? It doesn't feel accurate to call it a translation when the original expresses the cruelty of nature, and the translation instead emphasizes sex and the "seductive Oriental" - rather, it seems more like an entirely new derivative of the original work. 

Even when reading the well-reputed translations of Murakami or even the Genji Monogatari, I become paranoid whether the voice I imagine behind the words is the voice of the author themself, or if it's become something else that I think is the original simply because I'm told so. 

Terry and Riggs Reading - Evan

 I like Riggs' point on prioritizing the fluidity in the translated language. Oftentimes, I feel like a translation tries to preserve the sentence structure or the words used in a sentence, when the thought conveyed in English would be totally different in formatting or tone. This is especially the case when Japanese sentences pile a lot of background detail or take a passive tone. In many cases, the best answer is to omit when translating from Japanese to English. 

The other point I wanted to talk about relates to explaining context to a reader, when the context is mutually known in the native language but not in the translated language. Many believe you need to explain everything--especially what's not said in the native language--to preserve the context, but in reality, a text that relies on shared knowledge could never be written the same way to a group without the same knowledge. You have to pick between context and maintaining the flow of the story. I believe the flow is more important because it is not the translator's duty to give implicit information directly, as it wasn't the author's duty either.

Terry and Riggs Readings - Sydnee

  While reading Terry’s notes, I was reminded of some of the topics in the Wakabayashi chapter I read for class. He seems to prefer omission in many such cases rather than adapting them into English ‘appropriately’, which I can understand, but I was more interested in the motivation behind it. Terry mentioned making things easy for English readers multiple times and also that Japanese readers also don’t understand every detail they read, which further justifies simplification or leaving things out for the sake of a better English sentence. For popular works or works that are easy to read in the original, I agree with this sentiment, but for works that are intricate and can pose a challenge to the reader in Japanese, I think it could be a disservice to English readers to simplify things just to make it more readable. There are in fact people who enjoy (on occasion, anyway) reading “difficult or labored English” (Terry 32). 

In Riggs’ piece, it was interesting to see the level of reconstruction required of some nonfiction texts like articles or essays. One thing I wonder is at what point adding sentences of additional context becomes necessary. Of course, it depends on how well-known something is in the original context as well as the depth of knowledge required to link something to the current text, but I find myself resisting adding such information anyway. As a reader, I expect to not know or understand things going into a new text, and am prepared to research things if necessary, especially if I understand that the piece is coming from a different context. With non-fiction, I suppose I’m less inclined to do whatever it takes to create a ‘smooth’ or ‘easy’ reading experience for the reader in this way.

Live dog and Interlingual Hell Reading - Marcus

 I completely agree with the notion that the translation must feel alive at the minimum, even at the cost of some unfaithfulness. This is the idea that has been repeatedly discusses and explored in the past readings - literal translation, most often times, do not flow and read naturally most of the times - which can sound foreign to target audience and thus fail to translate. 

What really stuck with this reading was how the best way to translate "Itadakimasu" can be simply silence - as there is no direct translation in English and it is not something English speaking population practice and say. This well supports Terry's argument that dictionaries fail to offer insight into the pragmatic layer of languages and thus, translators and interpreters should know the social convention of they are translating to, which I also agree.  

I really enjoyed the "Linguistic Hell" reading, as it offered a higher-level approach in translation, where it recognized the inherent difference between the English and the Japanese language. Specifically, the argument about how Japanese essays can be loosely organized and rely on shared background knowledge felt home, as that is exactly what we saw in this week's assignment. The article was written in the assumption that everyone knows what Empress Masako went through - because the Japanese have much more of a homogeneous audience compared to the States, where it is well accepted there are distinct set of audiences (Politically, racially, religiously, etc). 

Marcus

Terry and Riggs - Alex

Both articles mention the differences in writing style between Japanese and English. For example, Japanese uses more indirect expressions and long sentences, while English tends to be more direct and logical, with shorter sentences (too long and you have a run-on). One point from Riggs' article regarding this which I really like is that Japanese text is generally meant for a homogeneous audience, while English caters to a more diverse one. This is something I've never really thought of, but come to think of it it really does make sense and shows in the texts of the two languages. Japanese primarily serves Japan, therefore the target audience for a Japanese text will be quite similar in culture and customs. Hence an author could include certain phrases and references that are not "standard Japanese" but generally known by Japanese people and not have it be a problem, as the author can safely make the assumption that those reading the text will understand the phrases and references. 

Compare this to English, an English writer cannot make this assumption because English serves a far more diverse range of people. If an English writer uses a pun popular in England, for example, they cannot assume that an English reader in Tonga will understand the pun because of the huge differences in culture between the two places. I think this is something that we as translators must keep in mind while translating. From Japanese to English, we need to be familiar enough with Japanese culture to understand any puns or references that may be thrown in a Japanese text, and also be careful not to use any region-specific expressions or references in our English translation, as the wide range of English-speaking areas may mean that not everyone fluent in English can understand what you're talking about. 

Terry and Riggs Readings – Aaron

 Right away, I saw one of those analogies you told us about—Terry compares translations to women, saying "if they are faithful, they are not beautiful; if they are beautiful, they are not faithful." Perhaps an analogy that would not fly these days, but I nonetheless see his point. As we have seen before in readings, a translation should not improve on the original; if it does, it is a bad translation.

Terry says that iû made mo naku should not be translated because phrases like "needless to say" and "it goes without saying" are signs of bad writing. Needless to say, I understand that English writing has definitely changed since this was written, but I disagree with that claim. So maybe I won't necessarily take this advice. But I'll have to see what I choose to do when I encounter this situation; maybe I will understand where he is coming from.

In general however, the points he mentioned are things I can agree with, and stem from the differences between English and Japanese as languages. Being very different languages, the writing styles are naturally going to be different. For example, he mentions that rhetorical questions are common in Japanese writing but looked down upon in English, and I agree with that; if I saw a rhetorical question in some work, it would feel patronizing, or like it was written for children.

I thought it was interested when Terry mentioned that itadakimasu is translated as silence in English, and vice versa. But it got me thinking, because in movies and TV shows, you cannot do this. Even if a foreign viewer doesn't know itadakimasu, they will here the characters speak, and if there are no subtitles, or there is silence instead of dubbed audio, they will feel like they missed something. For this kind of media, a translation has to be chosen, and there are rarely any good options. Phrases like "bon appetite", "thanks for the meal", or "let's dig in" are ones I've seen, but none of them work that well, since in English you simply wouldn't say anything.

Looking at the intro of Rigg's text, I immediately understand where they are coming from. When translating an article for an international audience, you are converting something that was written for one specific audience into something that should be understood by a wider audience, and that requires many changes, as the rules for logical argument, as well as what concepts are understood to the reader, will differ between languages. When I translated the article excerpt we were given, I got the distinct impression that a foreign reader may not understand some of the things that the author assumes the reader would know. I tried my best to compensate for this by being clear, and at one point I added an extra clarifying phrase. But I didn't change much structure-wise, and I have a fear that if my translation were to be actually given to readers, they would have trouble understanding what was going on. In general, I agree with Rigg's points, though I'm a little skeptical that major structural changes would be necessary for an article. That might be changing the author's voice a little too much. But perhaps it is necessary in this case...

C. Terry and L. Riggs - Danielle

I think both of these texts discuss an important concept that we have only hinted on in class thus far. English and Japanese literature have very different styles and structures, so translations between the two must be restructured if we do not want them to sound awkward. As Riggs puts it, a translation's "bones and internal parts may have to be reorganized and rebuilt so that the “meat” will not be lost." I have noticed often in the past that English and Japanese do not often follow the same flow and have different standards for sentence, line, paragraph, and even chapter lengths. We already know that Japanese sentences often have to be separated in to two or more sentences in the English equivalent. In the same sense, Japanese paragraphs may also need to be pieced apart differently. Terry also discusses how English often prefers more concision than Japanese. Terry comments on one detailed Japanese sentences, saying, "in English, it would be insane even to try to put all this detail into one sentence, or even one paragraph. In Japanese, presumably the small points make the description seem more vivid, but in English they are distinctly in the way." On top of this, I have also noticed that Japanese accepts repetition that would sound poor in English writing. I have noticed many times how 言う can be used over again in Japanese writing. In English, if you were to repeat "to say/said" as often as in the Japanese text, the writing would seem boring and juvenile. 

Dawson Terry and Riggs Readings

     I feel like Terry's piece gets at a core piece of translation that we haven't really talked about yet.  With languages and cultures as far apart as English and Japanese, nothing in one can be fully represented in the other.  Therefore, one must be a lot more creative when translating it.  Just like how during the poetry section, the thing that makes the translated poem good is that it itself was made as it's own poem, every translated work, at least in literature, has to itself be a good story.  Just like Terry says, there is no point to translating it if the way you translate it turns it into a really boring story in English.  You have to start from the frame of reference of "I am going to write an English story".  This goes the same for magazine articles or scientific articles.  You have to start from the idea of "I am going to write an English scientific/magazine article."  Only from there can you make the decisions that are necessary when translating to make it enjoyable and natural to read in English.  The worst part is the fact that the very pattern of our speaking is so different that translating certain phrases sounds extremely alien, since we don't use those phrases very often but they do in Japanese.  Therefore, one must always keep in mind how an English person would talk or react or write that specific situation, not how exactly that would directly translate into English.  This is an essential skill of the translator.  And one that I feel takes a lot of experience in translating to fully develop.  It's something I haven't given proper thought to yet at all in our translation homeworks.

    The second text mostly reiterates this point.  The text must not merely be translated directly, but rather transformed into a full fledged English essay in its own right.  A whole other host of changes must be made, since the English language is used differently in English than the Japanese language is used in Japanese.  This comes down to the cultural aspect of language.  If you present the English essay the same way the Japanese essay is presented, it will be alien and nigh unreadable to the average English reader.  Like Terry said, if people in your target language aren't going to enjoy reading it, then what's the point?  Therefore, after getting a full translation of the feeling of the text, you then have to transform that text from the broader Japanese syntax to the broader English syntax for essays/articles.

Riggs and Terry - Lane

 The analogy of translation as a contributor to (or the entire process of) life and death is particularly striking in both of these pieces. It seems inherent to the process of translation to injure (and even kill) the text to facilitate its reincarnation into another language, or to reincarnate it by transmutation to avoid killing the text (see the "live dog" analogy). This analogy is of course, not unique to this text; translation is often seen as a form of violence or violation against the text and it is the translator's duty to ensure that the text they've metaphorically set on fire rises from the ashes like a phoenix. But a phoenix cannot be a 鳳凰, of course.

Which brings me to another point--these two meditations on J->E translation seem to touch on the fact that it's essential to kill (or knock unconscious) the part of the brain that thinks in Japanese when translating into English, and vice versa. When an English speaker thinks of a phoenix, they have a specific image in their mind, one taken from Greek mythology and the Western world, while a 鳳凰 calls to mind a Chinese mythological bird that is further detached from that image of reincarnation. Translating "phoenix" to 「火の鳥」is also problematic in that it calls to mind the Tezuka Osamu manga for many Japanese speakers. Only by setting the part of the brain that thinks of the English word "phoenix" on fire can a translator see the word rise from the ashes in Japanese; 不死鳥 carries the same image of resurrection that the other two options lack.

I also often worry about the depiction of translation as violence if the text and its translation are depicted as women--I wonder if there are any feminist translators who have different metaphors and approaches to translation. (Personally, I like to think of it as a kind of eating, though this can't be entirely detached from the violence of hunting and consuming. Is violence necessary for these analogies? Is there a non-violent act of translation?)

Riggs and Terry Articles - Oscar

While reading these articles, I was reminded of my time in manga fan-translation. As Terry stresses throughout his piece, the literal words of any given original text matter far less than the meaning and intention they convey, which Riggs says is a "laborious and painful...process of expository transmigration" that is often too much for a translator to handle and often falls to editors or rewriters to complete. In my circle, at least, the process was exactly so: the translator would provide a line-for-line manuscript of all text from the chapter, and it very often fell to the typesetters and quality assurers to make sure the translated chapter actually sounded English and appealed to English readers. 

Terry's commentary on the many extraneous grammatical constructions of Japanese was also something that I hadn't considered before. Lots of repetition, restating, or circular writing that supposedly add to a Japanese reader's experience of the text is completely unnecessary or even burdensome to an English reader. To this end, he suggests that when grappling with word-for-word translation versus an "unfaithful but good English" translation, one should keep in mind what a Japanese reader goes through. The example given is that a Japanese reader would also skip over those extraneous phrases, but the difference is that they know to skip them, while an English reader does not. 

Rigg's piece gives me the impression that translating non-fiction is indeed way more difficult than fiction translation, as the latter often does follow a certain structure that can be relied on. I was a little surprised at the recommendation that one would often completely turn the original text over its head, essentially rewriting the entire thing based on the ideas it puts forth, rather than just carrying the words over to another language. After all, if you drag something through Hell, does it really come out the same?

Thoughts on " In Interlingual Hell" and "A Live Dog."

 I thought the two ways that a professional translates from Japanese to English were interesting. I have to say I would much rather translate the second way, which is to read to the end to understand everything I don’t know. This way, I’m equipped with more context, and then I can go back and translate sentence by sentence. Also, I was surprised that translators do a very rough first draft that doesn’t have great transitions or has incomplete details. I thought translators would work chapter by chapter, with fewer drafts but each taking longer.

When talking about giving the translation a title, I really liked how the Japanese title, “nihon seiji no tokushitsu to tenkai,” was changed to “Postwar Japanese Politics at a Turning Point.” It is not a direct translation, but it is much more intriguing (especially by using the word “postwar”), and I can see this book selling a lot more. Then the author talked about reconstructing the opening paragraph. I think the opening paragraph of a book is supposed to hook the reader into the story and give a glimpse of the content of the book, so I agree that the translation should rewrite the opening paragraph. With these two points, I realized that not only does the translation have to be accurate, but it also has to sell. Thus, having an intriguing title and captivating opening paragraph is crucial, even if it is not in the original.

I thought the quote, “the live Dog better than the dead Lion,” had a point. Sometimes the Japanese text is really difficult to translate to English authentically, so the translator has to change the structure or rephrase sentences. The translation may not be authentic to the original, but at least the reader can understand the story. When I first started translating in this class, I tried my best to be authentic to the original by keeping the order in which words were written and not adding things not said. But considering that the English translation is targeted toward mostly Western audiences who don’t have a background in Japanese language or culture, it may be best to reinterpret over being overly authentic.

-Allen

Some Pointers for Traversing Interlingual Hell – Cheryl

 I think both articles touched on differences between English and Japanese writing and speaking conventions which barely occurred to me when I was first learning Japanese but which I was realising in subtle ways: for example, in a Japanese speech or presentation you often hear the person say 「〇〇について話したいと思います」 which directly translated would be something like "I think I would like to talk about X" and sounds extremely wishy-washy in English. Inversely, when I'd first learnt Japanese I was also always slapping 「と思います」at the end of all of my sentences to approximate how often we use "I think" in English until I realised no one else was talking like that. 

While everyone knows that there are these notoriously untranslatable or mistranslated phrases like 「よろしくお願いします」or 「お疲れ様でした」it isn't always highlighted that even when a relatively precise literal translation is possible it isn't always natural. In Terry's methodology, we might translate 「〇〇について話したいと思います」as "I'd like to start by talking about X" or have the speaker just start talking about X.

In a world where translators are sometimes paid by the word, it seems a dangerous thing to concede that the best translation for something might be silence—and while I agree that this in some situations could be strictly speaking the most "accurate", would a foreign audience really be able to stomach it? For example if in an anime a character says 「いただきます！」or 「ごちそうさまでした」and for those lines of audio no subtitles appeared, would the audience dialled enough to realise that in fact, that is what an English-speaking person would have said (or not said) or would they be confused and assume that the subtitle file was missing a few nano-bytes of data? Or in a simultaneous interpretation scenario, if the non-Japanese speaker turns to their interpreter and is met with a stony wordlessness? (The interpreter might say something in explanation along the lines of "you wouldn't say anything here in English" but that is not silence.) It could be that the option of excising a phrase or sentence entirely is only available to the translator in the slightly more removed position of written text and even then only when they are able to do it discreetly. 

It seems to me that both articles were pulling at the thread that communicating in a different language is not just changing the words you speak or write, but they way you think.

Terry and Riggs Articles - Sloane

     I think a common point both these articles made was that translating between Japanese and English often requires a vast amount of re-writing, particularly for expository writing. 

Terry definitely made his point clear, that a good translation is almost certainly not a truly faithful one. Japanese and English are simply too structurally and culturally separated to be able to easily substitute the exact sentiment from one language into the other in the same manner, as he outlined with his various translation tips. Of these, I was most interested in his focus on how readers skim and skip around writing, and so it's important to keep the pace of your writing moving along and also compelling enough for your reader to continue. I liked his practical, real-world approach here. If nobody wants to read what you wrote, what's the point in translating it? I think he made a good suggestion in regards to this: provide the cultural context an English-speaking reader would need in the right amount -- enough that they can slow down and examine it closely if it matters to them, but strategically delivered so that they can skim or skip it if they choose, therefore keeping them engaged but still serving the readers who care to be more informed.

The way that Riggs described translating Japanese explanatory writing into English, detailing how tedious of a process it is because you essentially have to rearrange the entire text into the traditionally accepted English format, made me wonder what the reverse of that process (English into Japanese) would look like. Would it operate exactly opposite to the method Riggs mentioned, where you essentially deconstruct the English structure and rearrange it to match the comparatively repetitive and abstract argumentative orthodoxy of Japanese? You would think that expository writing would be easier to directly translate than literature, but this compositional issue made me change my mind.

Sloane

Juliet Winters Carpenter Readings - Sydnee

  I really enjoyed Carpenter’s anecdotes about subject matter information she got from talking to those around her, not just the authors or specialist consultants. There are so many elements of everyday life that are best expressed by the people who live doing those things, not just those who study them (for example, her connection who rode motorcycles vs. author and film historian Donald Richie). It was also worth noting that some of these subject matter experts were English speakers and only interacted with the translated text, since I feel like up until now we have talked about specialist vs. layman Japanese speakers as references but not informants in the target language.

From the interview and what we discussed in class today, I thought more about the possible role of the author in translation and how it could lead to good or bad results. If the author speaks English, they can both give valuable insight into the translated result, but they could also try to assert influence over the translation in ways that may or may not be helpful/appropriate. On the other hand, one of Carpenter’s translations discussed in the other reading required careful, precise treatment and the author did not speak any English. In this case, everything was back-translated into Japanese for review, which was necessary to verify that the complex ideas were properly conveyed. Some of the difficulty and length of this process could have been shortened without another translation step required for author review.

Overall, it was nice to see that Carpenter (of course, as a seasoned and respected translator) gets to deal with a variety of texts, styles, and forms, rather than being pigeonholed into working with only one author, era, etc. This could be the translator’s choice as well, and many people across different fields choose to become specialists for good reason. However, as more of a generalist myself, I like seeing others who do a variety of things succeed and be competent in them. 

- Sydnee

Thoughts on readings

Seidensticker articulates a philosophy of the translator as a "counterfeiter." His primary duty is one of meticulous replication, aiming to reproduce the original with the highest possible fidelity without embellishment or "improvement." This approach is inherently conservative and places the translator in a service role. His detailed explanations of the choices in translating Snow Country, such as omitting the cultural specificity of "国境" for rhythm, or adding "the train" as a grammatically necessary subject。Although I think the fundamental inconsistency between English and Japanese will result in the loss of some of the aesthetics of Japanese, it is undeniable that this does make English more like English.

In contrast, Carpenter's experience translating A True Novel demonstrates a collaborative model. Her process was not one of solitary decision-making but of deep, sustained partnership with the author, Minae Mizumura. This relationship redefines the boundaries of fidelity, which is not just to the words on the page, but to the author's intent and vision, even when realizing that vision requires adaptive measures for a new audience. Clarifying "Japanese prudishness" or the joint rewriting of passages to sharpen a character's voice show a translation that is dynamic and co-creative. 

What I find most valuable from this comparison is that there is no single correct path. Seidensticker's method is a powerful reminder of the humility and discipline required to let a text speak for itself, resisting the urge to clarify or smooth over its inherent ambiguities. Carpenter's approach, however, shows how a close author-translator relationship can lead to a different kind of authenticity，one that is perhaps more attuned to the spirit of the target culture.

Carpenter comments - Kohki

  In "Jumping Into The Pond", Carpenter mentioned one of the problems I encountered when I did the haiku/tanka translation assignment. In the "Recasting in Poetry Translation" section, she mentioned the two methods in translation, one is jun okuri and the other is gyaku okuri. She argues that jun okuri is better than gyaku okuri, and I completely agree. When I translated haiku and tanka, I tried to keep the order of words in the original text where possible, since changing the order inevitably changes how the poem sounds. For tanka, it was much harder to preserve the order than for haiku, since the length is almost double and thus makes it sound really weird if I keep the order the same as the original. 

In the interview, they mentioned how the English translation of A True Novel included a new line to help bridge the cultural gap between Japan and the West. In my opinion, translations should include explanations like that when it’s clear that Western readers wouldn’t understand the situation or cultural references, rather than prioritising the so-called “purity” of translation. The main purpose of translation is to connect different cultures separated by language, and it defeats the whole point if readers can’t understand the story—not because of the language itself, but because of the cultural context. If I were reading a novel originally written in English and translated into Japanese, and it offered no explanation for minor cultural references, I’d honestly get tired of constantly looking things up. That’s why I think a good translation isn’t just about accuracy, but about empathy for the reader.

Carpenter Comments - Dawson

     Just a few pages in and Carpenter's experiences are immensely relatable.  I as well got interested in translation after I started learning Japanese and came across sentences that were very alien to English and seemed very hard to translate.  The limitless void of words that you don't know as well is very relatable.  Onomatopoeia being horrible to translate as well is extremely relatable.  I don't love the "Rarin' to go" translation of もりもり、 even given the context, but this was written in 2009, and I do think it actually works really well for that time period.  Just not for the modern day.  I think the point about the original text needing to be followed more closely since it was a bilingual book was interesting.  That is something I hadn't really thought of before.  I suppose in general, it basically goes - the more constrictions you have, the worse your translation is going to end up being, on average.  This makes sense intuitively.  It also explains why anime subtitles are often much more subpar than novel translations!  They have to match the mouth movement.  And for a bilingual book, they have to clearly be expressing the same idea in similar words, since readers might understand both languages, and the editors probably care more about the similarity.  But for a novel, they have a lot more discretion, and can play with the words as much as they want to capture the same feeling, more than meaning.  

"Even if you get a different feeling for the music yourself, you’re stuck with the feelings that the author had or that Mozart had. That’s the nature of translation." - This feels quite pertinent as well.  The translator is merely a middleman between the author and the reader.  What matters is not the translator's feelings in the middle, but that the feeling is conveyed from the author to the reader.  And you have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of everyone at once, like Carpenter says, in order to ensure that feeling gets across.  It seems like such a balancing act, though.  To manage to convey the full feeling and rhythm of the original text whilst not changing anything too significantly seems very difficult.  If you are an official translator, you'll end up getting some critic writing an entire book attacking you for not translating it exactly word for word regardless of how it sounds in English, apparently, like that Murakami translation criticism book.  Carpenter seems like a really good translator in general, is one of my takeaways.  Every one of the translations she brigns up as an example is really quite clever.  

Carpenter Comments - Evan

I really agree with the idea of translating the spirit or atmosphere of a work rather than simply translating its sentences. Language is, after all, just a tool for expressing our thoughts and emotions to one another—and every language does this differently. In the same way that we try to translate our thoughts directly into Japanese, rather than first putting them into English and then into Japanese, we should approach literary translation by first understanding the intended meaning.

Every writer has a specific thought or feeling they want to express, and with the right language skills, anyone can communicate that in another language. Therefore, it should be possible to recreate the same meaning and emotion across languages if the translator fully grasps the original intent. However, while this is true in theory, in practice it can be extremely difficult—sometimes only the original author, or a translator working closely with them, can truly capture that same inner expression.

Carpenter Comments - Oscar

Something that caught my interest in the interview with Carpenter was the fact that while the original author, Mizumura, was capable of English to the point of editing and improving a translation of her own book, she chose to stick with Japanese when beginning to create fiction. In a way, these two texts help to answer a question I had about earlier readings about Haruki Murakami and similar authors - they work so closely with their translators, and seem to be perfectly capable of writing in English, so why don't they?

The thought processes Carpenter describes in Jumping Into the Pond provides some insight, perhaps. Particularly the examples involving onomatopoeia, she highlights how differently you need to think about these types of phrases in order to differentiate the innate meaning they seem to elicit in native speakers - waku waku and doki doki could almost mean the same excited, but they are clearly different phrases meant for different, if adjacent, feelings. 

And perhaps this is why these authors choose to write in their home language - there's so much more that goes into these words than just dictionary definitions, and often the translator has to work very closely with the authors to fully grasp their intentions in order to act as the bridge between the two languages.

Carpenter Comments - Lane

 I really resonated with Carpenter's description of translation as akin to coloring—the comment on how it warrants a childish love for language rings true for me; I often find myself carried away by joy when discussing my translations. Thinking about this in relation to Carpenter's translation of the bilingual children's Mozart book is also interesting--maybe it is a childish love for language that allows Carpenter to translate something "childish," and maybe working with children's literature can help us open our eyes to the nature of the process.

I will also say that both of these readings and insights into Carpenter's process have opened my eyes to the complexity of translation in practice. Most of my translations are ones that I've done in the span of a few short months at most; I haven't translated anything so long as to warrant multiple years, but reading Carpenter's experience translating A True Novel elucidated how much thought, time, and collaboration is necessary in translation for publication and translation of longer works.

Carpenter Readings - Danielle

One of Carpenter's comments really stood out to me. Carpenter said, "translation to me is very like coloring in a coloring book. You’re stuck with this picture that somebody else drew, and you can give life to it in your own way. That’s what you’re doing in translation—you’re giving life to a work for people to whom it doesn’t mean anything because it’s in a foreign language. You infuse it with life—and you can do it any way you want, which is why, like coloring, it is so much fun!" I find this to be a very pleasant way of looking at translation. There are many ways in which one can decide to fill a coloring page, just as their are multiple way to translate and bring a work to life in other languages. With this outlook, Carpenter explains, the translator's creativity will allow them to fill any holes that may seemingly be left in the translation process. As Carpenter puts it, "you could put a little tree over here if you thought the picture needed one." 

On this same note, Carpenter further explains that translators much have a sense of creativity, a connection to the work and the reader, and a joy in doing what they are doing. As Carpenter says, "People do not seem to appreciate how much you really have to be a child in some ways. You have to have a sort of childlike enjoyment of words and language." If a translator takes themselves too seriously or approaches translation without any imagination, they will struggle to produce a work that not only reflects the original work, but also resonates with the reader. While a goal in translation is too express the author's original ideas as closely as possible,  "you do have to identify with the reader just as much as you identify with the author. That’s another way that you have to balance all the way through: you have to be the child who’s reading the book, the parent who’s reading it to the child, and also the author."

Carpenter Reading - Marcus

As an avid fan of Japanese comedy, I have often wondered how humor, if at all, can be translated well. Juliet Carpenter’s essay “Jumping into the Pond” helped me see how humor depends on sound, timing, and feeling more than literal meaning, sometimes at the cost of abandoning the original joke.  Her example from Geisha Boy showed this clearly - instead of repeating the English joke, she rewrote it in Japanese using a new pun that kept the same playful tone. It was a reinforcement for me, that translators are often asked of the same level of creativity as the original author (just like how translator has to come up with a new joke but still capturing the original spirit of wordplay).

In her interview about A True Novel, Carpenter described working closely with the author, Minae Mizumura. Here, I learned something new about translation: the depth of collaboration an author and translator would go to create a powerful literature. Seeing how they revised each line together it reinforced how critical it is to capture the author's original intent and message - not just assume what they meant based on your interpretation (Although, I assume it is difficult to allocate such time, both for the author and the translator). 

Marcus

Carpenter Readings - Alex

One thing I really liked was how Carpenter compares translation to coloring in a coloring book in the article Jumping Into the Pond. Indeed, translators are given the liberty to do "whatever they want" as long as they follow the outlines provided by the original text. However, a discussion in the same article about translating for a bilingual book made me revisit and reconsider this statement. While usually you are "not trying to explain the original, but instead recreate the story", in a bilingual text that's not entirely true -- you have to recreate the original to some extent otherwise the texts won't match -- the original will be there alongside your translation. How do you "recreate the story" in this case? You can't substitute onigiri with donuts anymore -- the reader will be confused thinking onigiri means "donut" because they will try to match the translation with the original. 

Perhaps one way -- and this way is in no way unique to bilingual texts -- is to weave an explanation into the text. As explained by Carpenter in her interview regarding her translation of A True Novel, her translation included a long description of the history of Karuizawa for the benefit of the western reader. I'm assuming this specific location is central to the plot of the story, therefore a description of Karuizawa for those unfamiliar with the location is necessary. It also surprised me in this instance that the description was actually written by Mizumura herself before being translated by Carpenter and inserted into the story. I didn't think this was possible in translation; this extent of discussion and collaboration between author and translator to have the author write something for the translation, and I think this really shows how translation is not a one-person job but a group endeavor. 

Juliet Winters Carpenter Readings – Cheryl

My lasting impression from both of these readings was what a truly gruelling process translation can be. Even for what would seem to be a fairly simple children's book on a famous musician required so much thought (onomatopoeia being notoriously tricky) and when it came to translating a complex novel which draws deeply from different literary traditions, dedicating three years of intensive discussion is at this point unimaginable to me (as much as I enjoy it, even brainstorming translations for an hour would be enough to put me out of commission for the rest of the day).

Apart from the time and effort Carpenter takes in bouncing ideas with the author or mulling over options on her own, it also struck me how much she seeks out expertise in her translation process. Whether it's having her musically-trained brother look over her translation of a book on Mozart, or picking up a phrase from a roommate's brother, or seeking guidance on the intricacies of camera equipment—she often seeks a second opinion and isn't ashamed to consult with others who may be more well-acquainted with the subject matter.

This, however, brings to mind the ever-present issue of attribution or credit in a creative process that involve so many individuals and so many opinions. For example, in the case of "A True Novel" where Carpenter worked closely with Mizumura and Shaw, would it not be accurate to say the book was translated by all three of them? Or is it the case that as the "main" translator with the authority to make the "final call", she is the one who gets to have her name at the bottom of the cover? 

Finally, just as a side-note, I liked what she said about language-learning:

"I did wonder whether I would ever know enough Japanese. What you have to know is limitless. Now my students ask me, how do you learn a language? All I can say is that you just don’t stop learning."

I often felt (or feel) like my Japanese isn't good enough to translate, but I've come to the point where this resonates with me a lot—being a translator is really about being willing to learn as you go.

J. Carpenter Reading - Allen

 In the text, “Jumping Into the Pond,” I was interested in how “Doki Doki” can be translated into English. I quite like Carpenter’s interpretation with the accompanying text saying, “Your heart goes pitter patter when you see somebody you like.” I think this is clever because you don’t need to know what “pitter patter” means, and even a child can understand the feeling. Interestingly, when I was at the Osaka Expo earlier this year, the Luxembourg Pavilion was themed around heartbeats. They repeatedly said “Doki Doki” in the pavilion and presentation, instead of translating it, which I found to be unfitting. I think if they had said something along the lines of Carpenter’s translation, it would have made the pavilion experience a lot smoother.

A question I had was how to convey the significance of Japanese history and locations in a translation, since Western readers probably are not aware of the historical and geographical context. In the interview with Carpenter, she talked about how she did it with “Karuizawa.” I like how she asked the original author, Mizumura, to write it herself, and then she would rewrite it. For example, adding the phrase “Japanese prudishness” into the passage when Minae met Taro was very clever, I thought. For Western readers reading this, they would understand the awkwardness stemming from the cultural difference.

-Allen

J. Carpenter Readings – Aaron Epshteyn

Some of the ideas J. Carpenter talks about are familiar—the idea that translation requires creativity but must still convey the same intention as the author. I liked her analogy about translation being like filling in a coloring book: you are given a pre-drawn outline, and your task is simply to fill it in—but there is a lot you can do, like choosing the colors (so long as they fit), and adding small details here and there. I also thought it was interesting that she feels the translator must identify with the target audience just as much as with the author—but this makes sense, considering a translator must consider things like proper nouns and jokes, and whether the intended audience will understand them.

I also loved hearing details about the actual translation process of a novel that Carpenter went through. It was interesting to see the different revisions that took place, the manner in which J. Carpenter and Mizumura collaborated, and the overall dynamic that the two people had as they worked on the translation of A True Novel. It was good to have a reminder that in the real world, translation will be a messy process with much deliberation and revision.

I also want to add, I thought the interviewers also did a great job! 😉

J. Carpenter Readings (Sloane)

     I loved learning about Juliet Winters Carpenter's translation process when she worked in tandem with Minae Mizumura. It seems she was really grateful to have Mizumura right there with her to confide in and ensure that each sentence was coming out how Mizumura originally intended it to. When Carpenter provided the varying drafts of the translation with the bit about the "shards of moonlight, glittering on the asphalt parking lot," I could really appreciate how much more vivid the imagery became due to Mizumura's request for a bigger focus on the moonlight compared to earlier translated versions. Carpenter was lucky to be able to ask Mizumura directly about such things, but in the case that you can't consult with the author, I think it's vital to anticipate the intentions behind their work and try to guess what they wish to highlight in each particular section. To do so, reading the original in its entirety before beginning seems like a good way to establish a solid framework for your writing. I think this is part of what Carpenter was getting at when she emphasized the importance of knowing the work you're translating thoroughly. It'd be a shame to write a character, writing their dialogue, movements, and attitude to be one way only to find out some detail later on that completely unravels what you originally crafted. Worse yet, if you don't understand the author's voice or opinions about their own writing, you risk mischaracterizing key themes or statements they had wished to communicate in the first place. I see why Carpenter's major advice to translators is "just keep learning"-- about Japanese, about the author, and about the subject matter.

Poetry Reading (Marcus, Late)

I definitely agree with the idea that translation should recreate the poem’s voice rather than simply copy its words. Pulvers explains that tone is “everything,” describing translation as dragging a poem “through a wormhole” into a new linguistic universe where it must still sound natural. 

My main takeaway from the two readings was that translation requires devotion to both the original text and the target languages. As Beichman mentioned, translation can be “an entirely selfish act,” where translators bring together the two languages they love within themselves. There is also a lot of weight put on translator’s creativity and comprehension - as there is a lot lost in translation that “a great deal must be put back in”. 

I especially liked Pulvers’s discussion of Miyazawa Kenji’s “Ame ni mo makezu,” where he translated “I won’t give in to the rain” into “Strong in the rain / Strong in the wind / Strong against the summer heat and snow.” Despite shifting from negative to positive, it maintains the rhythm, repetition, and quiet strength of the original, which I think is crucial when translating poems.

This example also helped me understand Pulvers’s point that being “faithful”often means being faithful to the feeling, and not for the literal meaning. Overall, both readings taught me that translation is not always about preserving the original, but it is also about restoring whatever feelings, rhythms, and nuances that get lost between the linguistic barrier of different languages

Poetry Readings - Sydnee

  I found that reading the end of the Beichman article really emphasized the labor of translation. The experience the original author might have, scribbling as they multitask or as an impression comes to them, is a workflow I can’t imagine for translators of poetry (or anything else, really). It then seems all the more difficult to make the translated product have both the potency of the original and the voice, whether it be measured or effortless and fleeting. In her analogies of hometowns and second selves, Beichman figures the poetry and translator as living beings interacting with each other, an idea that has been explored in other readings but in a different way, with perhaps more tension between the ‘meaning’ of the original and translated texts than with poetry, but less struggle to capture the essence of the work on a deeper level.

Poetry, more so than other written forms, rely on impressions and feelings passed between members of a group, in my opinion. Where poetry seems to transcend these boundaries, I think it actually is an example of how many impressions can be created from the same source, like many ripples from a disturbance in water. As Beichman highlights, however, this is far from a sign that the translation of poetry is futile– she stresses the influence of western poetry on modern Japanese poetry and how beautifully such translations can be done. It was a reminder to me of the importance of communication through art and how it can be just as much about the principle of sharing and exchange as it is about communicating things in the ‘right’ way.

Going back to the idea of the relative experiences of writing poetry versus translating it, Pulvers asks ‘how’ good translations of poetry can be done, and to be sure offers useful tools and considerations. In the time that I’ve been writing this I thought of Ink Dark Moon, a collection of poems translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, and between them Hirshfield is primarily a poet and Aratani acted as the language specialist. There is something stressful about the thought of capturing the poet’s voice in such a small space that there scarcely seems room for collaborators, yet when reading some of their translations (I didn’t read the whole collection) there were no such issues. From this, the translation process for poetry could be just as diverse as the writing of poetry, just along different axes.