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.