Hibbett Reading – Aaron

In these readings, I love when translators talk about errors in translation that they have made or come across. It makes them look more human in relation to their craft, and helps remind me that it's okay to make mistakes, or not know certain things, in my own translations.

(On that topic, I found his description of his "painful" error quite interesting, about how he didn't understand how a sozu worked, which led him to incorrectly describe this function. I feel that most people today know about this device, even if they don't know what it's called.)

I thought his talk about how he translated the manji symbol to also be quite interesting. It's interesting how sometimes a translator has to concern themself with something that is completely normal in one culture but might approach some problematic lines in another. In this case, however, it makes complete sense. Although making changes in a scenario like this might seem like it's compromising the faithfulness of the original, I would argue that it makes the translation more faithful than a more literal one, since it avoids the negative connotations that the original isn't designed to have in the first place.