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.