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.