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.
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