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
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