Seindensticker and "Picking and Choosing"

 When reading the remarks of Seidensticker on the multiplicity of choices that a translator must make in literature and media, one prominent example comes to mind. Within the manga/anime Jujutsu Kaisen, which is wildly popular in the U.S. and Japan, there is a massive difference in audience perception of characters, largely centered around one person: Naoya Zenin.

While he is obviously a very cruel character within Jujutsu Kaisen, he consistently tops favorite character charts in Japan, while being entirely disavowed by American audiences. One Japanese linguist pointed out that the difference is largely due to one crucial characteristic: his usage of 関西弁.

The Kansai Dialect, spoken in Kyoto, Osaka, etc., is regarded in Japan similarly to how a Southern accent is within America. The voice itself, while not made fun of, stands out in this show among the various characters who, on the whole, only speak 関東弁, which lends itself to what is considered "Standard Japanese."

In America, this difference in speech is not transmitted at all in Dubbed or Subtitled versions of Anime. The Manga attempts to make him sound quite different, but his speech style in the Anime is too close. This choice creates a very different outcome that likely was not intended by the translators. It is hard to say whether or not the author intended Naoya Zenin to receive such a reputation in Japan, but nevertheless, the "choices" of a translator, in my opinion, should largely seek to replicate the reaction of the audience in the place that was targeted in initial releases.

Michael

9/28 What If the Intended Experience Itself Is Ambiguity, Awkwardness, or Even Imperfection?

Up until last week, I thought that faithfulness may be closer to preserving the author's intended experiences. But what if the intended experience itself is ambiguity, awkwardness, or even imperfection?

I used to think of ambiguity as a problem that a translator had to manage or solve. But Seidensticker’s translation of The Izu Dancer gave me a different answer. When he added an agent, the dancer’s brother, to the scene where a white object is being waved, simply to make the English more natural and grammatically clear, he destroyed the openness of the original. More importantly, he eliminated the possibility that the dancer herself might be the one waving. His attempt to clarify the sentence actually took away something that Kawabata had left for the reader to imagine.

Looking back at my own translations, I realize that I have always been concerned with how to recreate the “same” experience for the target reader, which, in my mind, often meant “helping them understand”. For example, when translating Croquettes, I was afraid that English readers would not catch the sexual implications or the deadpan humor, so I kept struggling with whether I should domesticate or clarify certain parts. In a way, I was constantly acting as a commentator of the text rather than simply a translator.

But Seidensticker’s treatment of the “girl/woman” passage in Snow Country made me reconsider this instinct. Instead of explaining the ambiguity for his readers, he simply followed the original and allowed the uncertainty to remain. If the characters/authors themselves are in confusion, perhaps readers should sometimes be allowed to remain puzzled as well.

Then, faithfulness does not mean giving target readers the clearest possible version of the original. Sometimes it means preserving the same space for uncertainty, hesitation, and interpretation, leaving room for readers to arrive at meaning on their own.

Mingzi

Seidensticker's Counterfeiting, and Dark vs Light

    Seidensticker offers yet another dialogue on the mechanics and inherent thematic difficulties of translation. Inside it, there's another metaphor for translation: this time, the translator is a counterfeiter, trying to imitate the original currency for distribution alongside the genuine. Maybe this metaphor is especially apt for Seidensticker, since, like currency users might bemoan counterfeits floating among genuine bills, he seems plagued by Japanese people unsatisfied with his translation. The way he frames their reception, it appears, in some senses, less that those critics would prefer a better translation and more that they would prefer none at all, which is more in the spirit of a counterfeit. Still, confident in his work, he defends his first sentence from Snow Country with matter-of-fact self-assurance. Regardless, I found it pretty funny that a significant portion of Seidensticker's lecture focused on his grievances with Japanese critics of his work.

    One interesting tidbit that was new to me from this lecture was the distribution of "dark" and "light" within Japanese writing, and the division between pure Japanese and Sino-Japanese styles, which feel rather closely related to me. I don't know if I have any idea about how I want to treat works written more in one style or another, or even if I'm familiar enough with the language and wider body of Japanese literature to differentiate between the styles accurately, but it's a quality I'll try to watch out for as I continue to learn translation.

    I also wanted to give a little shoutout to Nagai Kafū, since Seidensticker mentions him. Although I'm not terribly well acquainted with the ranks of prominent modern Japanese writers, I think I can agree with Seidensticker's appraisal. Nagai might not be the best writer, but I very much enjoyed the little of him I was assigned for BU's Tokyo class. And, as might already be obvious from the fact that we continue to read his work to study Tokyo, Nagai's stories gave me a beautifully crafted image of late Meiji Tokyo.

winter

Seidensticker Reading

    I think it's interesting that he says the issues of translation are the same no matter what the languages are. I both agree and disagree with him here. I agree that in general the nuance and balance between the translator and author's voices are pretty universal, I think it does also heavily depend on which languages are being translated, since they all have their own set of characteristics. I fully agree that the job of translation is just an endless string of choices to find the "best" option even though none are exactly right most of the time. I also never really consciously considered the idea of rhythm in translation. The thought of keeping the flow has crossed my mind when translating the texts in/for class, but I had never defined it in my head. I like how he talks about this, though.

    This isn't super relevant to the actual material of what Seidensticker is saying, but I think it's funny how you can tell this is a transcription of some kind of speech. He goes on some small tangents, and it got me thinking about how differently we speak vs. write. I think that's where English and Japanese are very interesting, in the fact that they can both be very concise in literature, but then the speech feels more human in a way with it's natural unpolished feel. You can, however, tell just how much he deals with literature in the way he speaks. It almost feels carefully calculated, whether that be because he planned out this speech or that's just the way he speaks, I'd be interested to know. 

Side note: the Jane Austen glaze is absolutely deserved, she was truly a literary genius.

Madison

Seidensticker Reading

"You have to make constant choices...The choices are often between two possibilities, each of which is unsatisfactory...you, the translator, are perfectly aware that every one of these possibilities is inadequate, not a perfect solution"

I found this quote interesting because I related to it when doing the translation homework. There are so many possibilities to get the author's words across, and each of them bring a different tone. Furthermore, you can "mix and match" these possibilities to create a certain flow but also be conscious of how it sounds in the translated language. There were several instances where I was between two choices and each option was not quite right. One would skew in one direction while the other would be too far in the other direction, and I couldn't find an adequate "middle ground" that was the most faithful to the original work. In these cases, you simply how to follow your gut feeling and make a decision. However, the trouble I had with this was that the readers would not know my specific intentions, and why I chose a certain phrasing over another. Of course, some of my friends would have realizations when I explained my reasoning behind the choices, but a stranger reading the text would not get the same treatment. I began to think of how they would criticize the translation without the context behind the choices. Seidensticker even says, "explanation takes time, and taking time slows down the rhythm". Sometimes you must accept your fate and hope that the pros and cons balance out to create a decent piece of work.

Another quote I found intriguing was: "translation is not interesting unless it's difficult. It becomes boring when it's easy. You have to have constant problems to hold your interest". I did not think about this until I read these words, but I whole-heartedly agree. The challenge and artistry of picking and choosing specific words to convey a certain feeling is what makes this process interesting.

Emma Messerian

Seidensticker

 The aspect that stood out most to me from this reading was the comparison of translation and counterfeiting. For one, I found it funny to look at translation with that sort of negative connotation, as if the translator is a thief in the night trying to steal away the secrets of a sacred text. Though, in that sense, it is kind of a true idea when looking at it with counterfeiting in mind. Seidensticker is of the idea that a translation should not beautify the text, brush up and clean whatever mess had been made before. A translator is stealing a text, since it never will be the same afterwards. In that same notion, a counterfeiter is not only not trying to make their fake better, but it would be a failure if the product were anything but the exact same as the original (as akin to translation). 

I think going into translation with this idea would be a good idea, at least for myself. While translation is harder to quantify, with no exact “right” way to translate something, I think having this idea of creating a copy instead of a new text would help when making decisions when translating (another difficulty mentioned by Seidensticker). Instead of which translation has the better rhythm or correct proper names, “could this be passed off as the original” is a better question to ask. That, and the idea of doing something wicked should make translating more fun :) 

Avi

Seidensticker

Joey Potter

    Seidensticker made lots of good points in his speech, like how easy it is to critique translations, and the struggle of translating bad writing/dealing with editors and ambiguity.

    About the importance of intuition in translation, I was kind of disappointed in the Q&A section when he was asked "How can we be trained to be intuitive" he didn't have much of an answer at all. I think there are lots of concrete ways to train yourself to be a better 'intuiter'. Fundamentally, a good intuition in translation is the ability to 'feel' what 'sounds better' (to, perhaps, your average reader) when deciding between translation options (when making one of those choices translators are constantly making).

    First of all, you need to consume lots of good-quality English media (of the medium you're translating, ideally) to a get a sense for what good English prose (etc.) sounds like. I think it would also be good to look at bad translations to get a sense of what to avoid (e.g. not being overly literal), and good translations as well. Maybe practice writing (not translation) yourself and get feedback (on writing or translation), especially from people that don't know the source language. I'm sure having an editor is helpful. And doing all of this over and over again should definitely develop you into a better translator into English.
    Also, there are lots of tools to help make sure your intuition isn't off track. Search google/google books for phrases that seem dubious to see if they are actually in regular use or not. Ask a friend, or three. Walk away and come back later and reread your translation like someone else wrote it.

About Yoru no soko ga shiroku natta. I get why he wants to translate it more literally in the end; it is an intentional metaphor ('bottom of night=ground') in Japanese. But I don't like the word 'bottom', it feels vulgar and ugly and weird to say and not beautiful at all. So let me think of an alternative to "The bottom of the night turned white." 
"The base of the night turned white." "The underside of the night turned white." "The belly of the night had turned white." If I had to pick one, I actually like belly. I feel like it is used in this metaphorical sense from time to time. I think "underbelly" would work well, too! Maybe even better. "had turned" also sounds better to me (just "turned" sounds like it almost happened in a flash as we are watching the ground). I think this is an improvement on Seidensticker's translation. 

The Choices We Make in Translation

 “The process of translation is the constant repetition of choices,” Seidensticker says. Before practicing translation myself, I probably would have responded, “Of course. What else could translation be?” Every word requires the translator to make a choice. But through my own translation practice and reading this article, I realized that these “choices” are not simply about deciding which English word to use. There are many more nuances involved. For example, are you making the original sound better than it actually does? What if you know that another translation may be more accurate, but you simply do not like it? Seidensticker himself admits that another translation of a famous line in Snow Country comes closer to the original than his own, even though he personally does not like it. Translation also involves the question of how to deal with the author. When Seidensticker asked Kawabata, “Don’t you think, Sensei, that this is a little ambiguous?” Kawabata simply looked at the passage and replied, “Yes, it’s ambiguous.” And that was it. Consulting the author does not always give the translator an answer.

“Explanation takes time, and taking time slows down the rhythm,” Seidensticker says. Rhythm seems to be especially important to him. Since English and Japanese have very different linguistic structures, it can be extremely difficult to reproduce the rhythm of the original. At the same time, he believes that the translator should resist the temptation to improve the author. His discussion of Arthur Waley’s translation of The Tale of Genji is especially interesting to me in this regard. Waley’s translation is certainly beautiful, but he sometimes adds details that are not present in the Japanese. Sometimes when I encounter a particularly beautiful sentence in Waley’s Genji, I look at the original and realize that part of what I loved actually came from Waley. One famous example is the passage quoted by Virginia Woolf, including the phrase “lips of people smiling at their own thoughts,” which comes from Waley’s rendering rather than directly from Murasaki’s original.

Seidensticker compares the translator to a good counterfeiter. If George Washington does not look particularly handsome on the original one-dollar bill, you cannot make him more handsome simply because you are a better artist. You might end up producing a more beautiful bill, but it would also be a worse counterfeit. Perhaps this idea also helps explain why Seidensticker took a different approach when translating The Tale of Genji. 

I think it is very difficult to find the balance. Am I helping to express what the author is trying to say, or am I improving the original and adding something unnecessary? I noticed this problem when I was translating Yoshimoto Banana. Sometimes I unconsciously wanted to add something because I thought it would make the sentence sound more elegant in English. But perhaps the original author did not want the sentence to sound elegant in the first place.

Kerry

Siedensticker & Translation

 I think Siedensticker made a lot of good points about varying concerns we've begun to discuss in class about translation. The most difficult of these may possibly be the tolerance for ambiguity in literature. Japanese literature has a much higher tolerance for saying as little as possible to convey a meaning. English, on the other hand, HATES this. Siedensticker mentioned especially how the average editor is not a fan of keeping it vague. So how do you stay true to the source text when you are urged to explain away all of the nuance of the original? Siedensticker talks more about how Japanese people will complain about his translations for this very reason. How it's not a "good" translation because it is not exact. But he makes a good point as well; there comes a time when the translator has to decide whether or not to protect the literal translation or protect the rhythm of the text. And it usually works best if the translator themselves trusts their gut. "Which way sounds the best?"

I've also been concerned about being responsible for translating a famous/ culturally significant work. Something that a large group is passionate about. It is nearly impossible to make a translation that every single person will be happy with. But there are people who will pick it apart. That's usually why I try to stay as close as I can to what the text actually says. Recently, with the in-class translations, I try to translate it literally first, then comb through it and swap things for a more natural read. But it's still scary to present it for everyone to judge.

Melissa

Siedensticker on Translation

I thought Siedensticker's comments on his translations were very interesting. I agreed with his perspective on ambiguity and faithfulness, particularly that faithfulness does not always equate to literalness or direct interpretation. This opinion echoes a familiar belief among the translators we've heard from: a translator's goal is to capture a "feeling" through translation. Sometimes, this process requires moving away from direct translation, as Siedensticker demonstrates. In his translation of Snow Country, Siedensticker opts for wording different from the original because it creates the same confusion in English-speaking audiences that was present in Japanese. It is interesting to consider how differently ambiguity is supported through the linguistic rules of Japanese and English. In Japanese, there is much more room for being vague because Japanese allows you to omit the subject, whereas English grammar requires more context.

Kenna Ward

Seidensticker reading reflection

This speech by Edward Seidensticker touched on some very interesting topics that I felt he had a bit of a unique perspective on. Firstly, Seidensticker's reflection on his time with the author Kawabata brought up the conversation of ambiguity within writing. Ambiguity can be either intentional or unintentional and Kawabata's lack of clarity at times proved to be a significant challenge in Seidensticker's process. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to have to ask clarification and only getting "Yes, it's ambiguous" as a response. With that answer, however, it forces the translator to question why a section might not be clear. If it is the author's intent, it is then the translator's duty to convey that confusion for the English reader.

Another topic that interested me was the difference in writing styles between Sino-Japanese and Heike Japanese. Seidensticker mentions that kokkyō and kunizakai are the same word read from the two styles. These terms were new to me and I had not considered that Japanese would be written in a way like this. Of course, I am familiar with Genji monogatari and have recognized a difference between modern and antiquated writing styles, but it is interesting to read Seidensticker refer to Kawabata's preference as "pure Japanese". It definitely adds another layer of nuance to the words knowing whether or not the original text had Chinese influence.

Tori

On Arrogance and Humility - Michael

On Arrogance and Humility

Michael Tsegaye

The sentence on Arrogance and Humility in the last reading rings especially true in my opinion. Translation as a means can easily be conflated with and end in itself, leading to translations that are so "hyper-faithful" to the essence of each word and its equivalent that it threatens to "throw out the baby with the bathwater". Translating will always shed meaning absent in the target language, but what is easy to replicate is affects. 

Effective translation starts with Humility. Rather than paying attention to each word and its equivalent, consider how the totality of the message creates its effect (insofar as you too are a subjective recipient of language). When possible, even consider the reaction of others around you. Afterwards, still consider the words as they are translated individually, but treating the words as holding strongholds over meaning is a worse tyranny than simply how the words make you feel. Ultimately, the purpose of language is to represent understanding within an already subjective consciousness. Because of this, the next step is unfortunately composed of Arrogance.

To be arrogant enough to assume meaning is to skip the step of endless anxiety over meaning. If you have done your duty of understanding the myriad ways the words can and often are interpreted, gladly set your fears aside and let your feelings guide you through the translation. Good translators, in my opinion, must be almost like dancers, letting the various directions the words in the target language pull you in help you keep tempo with how the original language compelled you. Too much revision, and your meanings fall flat and without teeth. Too little, and one risks letting their personal interpretation terrorize any attempt at faithful interpretation.

This is how I attempted to approach my translation for this week. I doubt whether or not I did an efficient job, but the last thing I want to do is treat translation as an ends rather than simply a means to the transfer of meaning.

9/21 What does it mean to be faithful to the original

This week’s reading led me to think about what does it really mean to be faithful to the original?

Through the workshops over the past few weeks, I have come to realize that translation rarely involves finding a one-to-one equivalent between words. The intended audience inevitably shapes what a translation becomes. This is why translation is not simply a transfer between languages, but a form of cultural mediation.

Yet this realization also brings me to the dilemma that Hirano herself raises. If we remain too faithful to the original, the target reader may not understand it; but if we change too much, translation begins to become rewriting. However，the example in The Friends, where "Tokugawa Ieyasu" is replaced by "Buddha", suddenly made this tension clear to me. It is obviously not a literal translation. But if "Tokugawa Ieyasu" were kept, an American child might have no idea why the entire class was laughing. In that moment, I began to see that faithfulness in literary translation may be closer to preserving the author’s intended experience.

A good translation, then, is not necessarily the one that looks most like the original. Perhaps the similarity between two versions does not lie in the text itself, but in the experience it creates—the ability to recreate, for a reader from another culture, something close to what the original reader felt. That includes cultural assumptions, tone, humor, relationships, and emotions.

The ending of the article stayed with me the most. The author’s son experienced the beauty of Japanese literature through an English recorded book. The medium had changed, the language had changed, and even some of the details had changed. We may never know whether every change was exactly “right”. But what matters is that, somehow, the story still found its way to “reach” another person.

Mingzi

Hiruna's insights connects with Translating Philosophy in China

A translator has to carry over meaning, emotion, tone, cultural assumptions, and relationships while still making the work feel natural to readers in another culture. Hirano describes translation as a balancing act between remaining faithful to the original author and making the work understandable to the target audience. One major challenge comes from the large differences between Japanese and English. Japanese frequently leaves the subject unstated, relies heavily on context, and structures sentences differently from English. Therefore, a literal translation can preserve the original words while actually failing to communicate the author's intended meaning. Before reading this article, it would be easy to think that a good translator should change as little as possible. But Hirano shows that words carry cultural information that may disappear when translated directly. 

There is a saying for good translation in Chinese called: 信达雅(faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance), where faithfulness means translation should not be off the original author's meaning. expressiveness meaning the translation should not be locked on to the exact phrase and component of the original passage, it should be understandable by native readers, and elegance means that the translation should be choosing words that match the status, meaning, feel of the original passage, concise and elegant. I though that this can connect to what Hirano has been talking in the passage saying that translators should achieve.

Hirano's Arrogance and Humility

    As a professional translator, Hirano's insights into the major difficulties of translating from Japanese into English are fairly spot-on. All the classics appear: word order, ambiguous plurals, gaps in cultural knowledge, and different implications behind the same basic words, among others. Several of the obstacles she mentions came up in my own work on 「クロッケ」 this weekend. For example, Hirano says puns are a type of humor that is particularly hard to carry across cultural boundaries. 「クロッケ」 includes a few puns that rely on the natural ambiguity of Japanese sentence structure, which were especially challenging to translate into English. 

    Hirano also brought up other differences between Japanese and English that were less familiar to me. Namely, that Japanese is more partial to repetition than English. This is something that's also been mentioned in class, and it was somewhat tangible in 「クロッケ」, but I feel I still haven't grasped the extent to which this is true. Of course, we don't translate from English into Japanese in this course, but I also found her point that English can feel abrasive when translated directly into Japanese interesting. My experience with Japanese texts, especially nonfiction or analytical works, is limited. Still, I have the vague impression that this is true, and it's an idea I'll keep in mind as I continue to read more Japanese.

    These are all primarily technical details of translation, though; to me, the most valuable insight was the attitudes of arrogance and humility needed to push through a high-quality translation. I felt deeply that you need the arrogance to willfully rewrite the text in another language, especially as I struggled to keep working through 「クロッケ」 while questioning my word choices and second-guessing my understanding of the authorial intent. And, as Hirano puts it, the translator must always maintain the balancing act between trusting in their work and being careful not to drown out the original author. After all, whatever decisions we make in translation, "the author is always right."

winter

Cathy Hirano Reading

There were various points that I found interesting from the reading, including general thoughts on translation as well as the author's own opinion. "It is a balancing act, requiring sensitivity and intuition, a combination of humility, vigilance, and arrogance." I found this quote interesting because I never really considered that arrogance could framed in a positive light, especially in this scenario. However, after reading the author's explanation, this statement makes a lot of sense. While the translator must stay true to the author's work and prioritize conveying their tone, nuance, and overall artistry in the new language, there is much room for interpretation and seeing things from different perspectives. This idea makes me think about how impactful the translator's upbringing and relationship with the two languages affects how they view their work. For example, I feel that as a person who grew up in a bilingual, multicultural household where I was surrounded by Japanese, American, and Armenian culture from childhood, I would have a different interpretation or approach to translating a text than someone like this translator who grew up Canadian and married a Japanese man later in her life. I do not think there is any "right" or "wrong" way to translate or interpret work, and I think that each experience shapes a person's procedure which can result in interesting varieties of the same writing. I also found it interesting that Hirano stated that she was, "terrified of reading [her] translation after it has been published because [she knew that she would] find errors, omissions, or things that [she] would now say differently" and that she needed that "arrogance during the translation process to sustain [her] to the finish". Her worry emphasizes that translation is an art, not a science, which can in turn make it difficult to feel satisfied with the final product. Having confidence in one's own interpretation of the author's work is highly important in translation. In order to strengthen one's confidence, I believe that speaking to the author (if possible), doing specific research on the work and topic, and having a deep understanding of the purpose of the work can build this confidence and guide the translator with the tools they need to convey the original message.

Emma Messerian

Cathy Hirano Reading

With the way that she talks about her job, I can tell she gets a lot of joy and fulfillment from it. She might be convincing me to switch prospective career paths haha. I think something I hadn't previously considered was how different languages have different levels of difficulty translating between. To some extent it does make sense, but I feel like she would have to be a translator of multiple languages other than English to be able to make a fair comparison between the job requirements of Japanese-English translators compared to others. I didn't really think about that difficulty when choosing to learn Japanese initially. I think everything she says regarding the difficulty in translating between the two are perfectly reasonable, though. I feel like tone is arguably the most difficult part, since the way of speaking can differ so greatly simply because of the country in which the author is native to. I didn't consider that this goes both ways, though. A direct English translation of a Japanese work (without adjusting by a translator) might be just as difficult to absorb as that of a Japanese work translated into English.

I think it's cool that Hirano says she actually rewrites some sections of text in things like academic resources meant for Western learners. I admire how much she prioritizes getting the author's point across, and not just translating word-for-word. Honestly, I'm constantly blown away by how dedicated and detail-oriented translators are. I also like the comparison she draws between translation and jigsaw puzzles. That's sort of exactly what it feels like to me, where it's bit and pieces that you're trying to put together to make one cohesive picture.

Also the part about immersing herself in American media while translating into English seems like a really cool idea, though.

Madison

Cathy Hirano on The Challenges of Translation

I like when Hirano points out, “Translation of literature is far from mechanical, and translating between languages that, like Japanese and English, are very different from each other requires fairly strenuous cultural and mental gymnastics.” I think this description is pretty fun and true.

She also makes a very helpful point when she says, “The first thing I need to know before I even start translating is the intended readership and the purpose of the translation.” For example, academic works and literature require different approaches. The former may prioritize presenting the author’s point more clearly, but for the latter, she wants to preserve the essence of the original, as well as the style and tone of the writer, while at the same time rendering it in a way that is understandable to the reader.

After translating Murakami’s short story, I can relate to her statement that “translating conversations often requires more ingenuity than descriptive passages.” It is so hard to get the dialogue across! She also says, “Probably one of the trickiest problems I face in translation is humor. More often than not, slapstick and situational humor transcend cultural boundaries. Culture-specific jokes and puns, however, usually do not.” This problem is also prominent in Murakami’s case. His writing is humorous, but it is hard to replicate that humor in another language to the same extent. Everything has to be handled through subtle choices.

I really like this article. Even though Hirano writes about many of the challenges she faced while translating The Friends, she ends on a heartwarming moment when her child listens to the whole book and says with satisfaction, in Japanese, “That was a good book, Mom.” I can imagine nothing speaks more strongly to the success of this translation than the translator’s own child, who belongs to both cultures, sharing his love for the book. After all, the rewarding aspects of translation are much greater than its difficulties.

Kerry

Cathy Hirono & "The Friends"

In the reading, Cathy Hirono retells the various challenges of translation-- most of which we've been picking at during class time. Tone, formality, humor, culturally significant terms and references, etc. I, myself, find translating tone and formality the most difficult part of Japanese-to-English translation. Like when Hirono mentioned the use of kimi in The Spring Tone. English is a fairly casual language. It isn't possible to show how the word "you" can change tone with the word alone, the way it can in Japanese. It's a neutral word itself. I liked how Hirono chose to insert "I presume" after the translated sentence in order to try to channel this shift. In the case where someone is talking down to the other person, it is crucial for the dialogue that some level of snootiness is kept in the text. In most other cases, it's hard to keep these distinctions. The easiest way is super formal speech, where we can make the text extra stiff, or casual/somewhat rude text.

"I do not suppose you would mind stepping aside so I may pass?"

vs

"Move it!!"

I also loved her outlook on what translation is for,  not just its practical use. Translation is about making a work accessible to a wider audience. Provide a new group the opportunity to read and connect to an author's work. It's a shame to be limited only by your own language ability, after all. Without translation, not only could we not enjoy various authors, but we wouldn't be able to experience a new culture through the eyes of someone raised in it. Especially in cases such as The Friends. This book follows children living in Japan. Growing up with a daily routine unfamiliar to the average English speaker. Thanks to Hirono's translation, the author was able to share the daily life of Japanese children: the conditions they live in, their curiosity, their growth.  We are privileged to live in a world where we are able to not just read, but connect to the works of authors around the world.

Melissa :)

The Spring Tone

Cathy Hirano translating The Friends

Joey Potter

After doing the first translation assignment myself, I could relate a lot to this passage.

 "I am terrified of reading my translation after it has been published because I know that I will find errors, omissions, or things that I would now say differently. I need that arrogance during the translation process to sustain me to the finish."

I had a very similar experience. Every time I would look back over my translation, I would find parts of it that I didn't like and/or want to rephrase, and I'm sure if/when I look back at it on Monday I'm going to find some indefensible parts of it or parts that I want to revert to an earlier draft, delete, change entirely, etc. So, when I was composing it, I basically just had to just pick an arbitrary stopping point and decide that it was good enough; exactly the kind of arrogance that Cathy Hirano describes.

Also, I was surprised by how large the added passage was to explain Juku. I think that it was a great idea and fit very well, but I didn't know that that kind of thing was allowed/normal in translation.

Here is a picture of the cover. I'm noticing her name isn't credited on the front.

Cathy Hirano's Translations

This article gave me a lot of interesting insight into the nuances of translating Japanese. Something I hadn't realized before was that since "you" is not often used in Japanese, a sentence including it carries a different tone or implication that cannot easily be conveyed in English. Essentially, Hirano demonstrated that communicating this implied meaning in English requires adding phrases that aren't present in Japanese. 

Another aspect of translating I hadn't considered before was that a lot of meaning is lost in the translation of a cultural word. For instance, the word "juku" conjures a specific image for Japanese people that is not equivalently expressed through "cram school." After consultations with the author, Hirano settled on adding an entire paragraph, which was not present in the original Japanese text, in order to give the North American reader a better understanding of "juku." While it requires significantly altering the original, I think this decision was necessary as there is context about "juku" that the reader needs, which is immediately understood by a Japanese audience without additional explanation. 

I found it interesting how Hirano's process often involved consulting with the original author about their intent for the piece and how they would like it to be received in English. This seems to be a theme for a lot of translators, and it's interesting to think about how the translations of certain pieces would differ if the original author were still alive to give their opinion. 

Kenna Ward

Cathy Hirano

 While this article invoked much of the same ideas as the previous two assignments, I think something that was more clear in Cathy Hirano’s text was cultural divisions and the attempts to bridge that gap. I enjoyed how she explained this divide, but the fact that this problem is fixed based on the purpose of the translation stood out more. With the example in the article, the author’s main intention was to make the story more accessible to those of other languages. This inherently gave the translator more leeway to make changes to facilitate understanding instead of remaining truly faithful to the original text. It becomes a balance between understanding and faithfulness, which I would argue the latter would probably stem from pride in one’s work than any reason to translate. 

I thought this was an interesting idea, in combination with Hirano’s words of “the author is always right”. Whether or not the translator has a “better” translation, or at least a translation more easily understood in a new culture, does not matter. It is up to the author’s intent on the translation, and the limits they would go to in order for others to be introduced to their work. And even then, it’s a gamble on whether their new readers both understand and enjoy the translated work. 

Avi

Cathy Hirano Translation

Overall, I really liked the translation choices of Cathy Hirano. I felt that she made very good points about omission and rephrasing certain sections in order to be truly understandable and relatable to the other audience. I have found that when I talk about my host family in Japan to my American friends, I usually mention how the daughter often went to cram school (juku) and even that concept was usually unknown. Then, I found myself in the situation of having to almost over-explain what a cram school is just like how Hirano mentions in her article. I thought that her translation - and brief explanation - of juku within her story was a very good choice that I wouldn't think twice about if I read a book containing a similar section. 

It was also very interesting to read Hirano's perspective of altering the word choices of the story for the sake of understandability. Some people might disagree with her sentiment for the sake of staying true to the original text, but I honestly really appreciate that change. For me, the point of a translated text is not to read 1 to 1 translated words from the original language, but to understand the nuances that come with the language and culture that I might not understand. I think when I start on my own translations I would like to do so with this in mind.

Hirano also mentions various manuals being incomprehensible because of the translation method. I wonder if it would be a worthwhile endeavor to have specialized translators for this reason. I can only imagine the confusion it would resolve.

Tori Raiken

9/14 Readings Commentary

    I really like Lesser's cage metaphor in "The Mysteries of Translation," because part of the reason I took a deep dive into learning Japanese (among other languages) was because I didn't want to limit myself to what media I could personally consume. In a way, I have a secondary goal when it comes to studying languages where I can always have my own interpretation of the author's voice. On that note, the Ludwig Wittgenstein quote in "Found in Translation" also really stood out to me:

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"

This is obviously where translators come in to do God's work, however, something came to mind when I began reading further. When you're reading translated literature, you're reading just one person's interpretation of the text, and essentially leaves way less to the imagination of the reader, since most of the hard work of comprehension is done by the translator. Side note: that makes me really curious as to how often translators take an open-ended statement or part of text and just went with whatever they personally thought it meant, as opposed to allowing it to be up to interpretation in the target language as well. Regardless, I fully agree with Rubin on the fact that it's better for people to learn the language the text is written in anyway, rather than reading translated work, because "there's never a guarantee that you're getting the unalloyed original".  

All things considered, the work that translators do is incredibly admirable, and they make foreign media so much more accessible to people who don't speak the author's native language (and likely aren't able to commit years to learning the original language). Translators are able to take their own understanding of the source material and the author's voice/intention and relay that understanding into a whole new language. Plus, they do this all while considering the extent of the audience's knowledge of the culture that the original text belongs to. Lesser mentions that English literature "can seem insufficient and tedious after a while," and that "you will soon find yourself in need of foreign companionship," which I fully agree with. In fact, reading her work made me gain much more appreciation for translators. I hadn't previously considered just how many doors they open for people all around the globe to literature and media.

Madison

9/14: Readings Are We Really Reading the Writer Himself?

After this week’s reading, I started to rethink a question I had never seriously considered before: when we read the work of a foreign writer, are we really reading the writer himself?

I used to think of translation quite simply as changing one language into another. Though the words translators use might vary, I assumed the core of the work would remain the same. However, Emmerich finds “the Murakami who appears in English to be a totally different writer from Murakami in Japanese”. East Asian students see Murakami as “lonely” and “healing,” while Americans describe his work as “realistic” or even “difficult to read”. This made me realize that there may not be one fixed version of the “Murakami world”. Readers from different languages and cultures are actually creating their own Murakamis. I started to wonder what creates these parallel worlds of Murakami.

“There can ever be a one-to-one correspondence between the Japanese and the English”. When a foreign text is brought into another culture, it has to be adapted in many ways to make sense to local readers. For instance, the subtle levels of intimacy expressed by Japanese terms like “-san” and “-kun” can be lost when they are simply translated into “Ms.” or “Mr.”. Gabriel also highlights that Stoicism in Japanese culture causes certain climaxes to be very low-key, and he had to underscore scenes for an American audience. Although the purpose of translation is to help people understand another culture, that culture can also be altered in the process.

I also had rarely thought about how book covers and publication order can shape our understanding of a writer. Emmerich mentions the series of covers Chip Kidd designed for Murakami’s books, as well as the different publication timing of Norwegian Wood in Japan and the United States. I found this detail especially interesting because it shows that our image of a writer does not come only from the words themselves. We encounter a writer through a larger cultural and commercial environment: what the book looks like, when it is published, which book is translated first, and who translates it can all shape the “author” we eventually see.

This also made me reflect more deeply on why I study foreign languages. As someone who has studied English for many years and has been learning Japanese in recent years, I am increasingly realizing that learning the original language is not only about “understanding the author more accurately”. It is also about discovering what translation changes. Sometimes the tone, distance, or cultural associations of a word in Japanese cannot be fully carried into Chinese or English. If I only read translations, I might think that what I am reading is the author’s original voice. Learning the original language makes me more aware of how that voice has been extracted, filtered, and transformed before it reaches me. Realizing that my understanding of an author is shaped and guided by these processes is valuable.

So what is real? Maybe we can never reach an author without any form of mediation. The Murakami we see might be Murakami in Japanese, Murakami in an English translation, or Murakami shaped by book covers, the publishing market, and reader culture. Each version is not necessarily false, but no single version can completely represent the author. Perhaps that is what makes literary translation so interesting.

Mingzi (Lisert)

Limits and Aspirations in Translation

    The more I read Lesser's "The Mysteries of Translation," the more intimidated I felt by translation. She describes an almost magical persuasiveness in Birnbaum's translations of Murakami that she finds missing in later translators' work, and reading that, I found myself thinking about how nice it would be to bring the essence from an author you find compelling into a new language. Not that I'm presuming to know what Birnbaum's thoughts were as he worked, but this is just the shape that the ideal translation is starting to take in my mind. At the same time, this ideal forces me to confront the difficulty of translating a work at that level, and it starts to feel like nothing I might produce will achieve the effect I'm looking for.

    Still, I'm going into this having concluded that translations are, inherently, modifications of an original work, and I'm still a student, so maybe it's better to do the best I can and not let perfectionism bog me down too much. And of course, a modification implies that a translation can never perfectly capture the original intent. Rubin seems to agree to some extent, saying that "people shouldn't read translated literature, [sic] they should learn the language themselves." I'm unsure whether that comes from a similar lack of confidence in his own work to convey enough of the original text's meaning, or whether the best way to consume foreign literature is really just to learn the language. Regardless, it's obviously impossible to simply pick up a language whenever you come across literature you would like to read, which brings me back to the idea that, as a translator, my job is to work within my limits to convey the meaning I see.

winter

Murakami, Reading the Same Book in Different Languages

What interested me most was Emmerich’s idea of readers experiencing different “Murakami worlds.” I used to assume that even if people read a book in different languages, they were still basically reading the same author. American students described Murakami differently from East Asian students, and even the Chinese and English translations can give him different voices. It makes me wonder whether there is really one Murakami that international readers all know, or many different versions of him. Murakami has been translated into English mainly by Alfred Birnbaum, Jay Rubin, and Philip Gabriel, and each translator gives him a somewhat different voice. The same thing happened in China. Lin Shaohua's translations were described by critics as having more influence from classical Chinese writing, while Shi Xiaowei's later translations were considered closer to Murakami's Japanese style because he lived in Japan for 20 years. 

Lesser’s article made this idea even more interesting because she shows that you don't even need to change languages to experience a different Murakami. Two English translations can make the same character sound different because of choices in tense, sentence structure, and vocabulary. Lesser clearly prefers Birnbaum’s translation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is objectively the most correct version. It might just be the Murakami she first became familiar with. I think this shows how our idea of an author can depend on our first experience with their work.

I think this is especially interesting for international literature because two people can say they have read the exact same book but may not have experienced exactly the same book. Also really interesting for bilingual learners like me, for example, I have read Journey to the West in both the original Chinese and in English. Even though the story is the same, the experience of reading it can feel very different. Some expressions, humor, cultural references, and even the personalities of the characters feel more natural to me in Chinese. The English version has to make choices about how to present these things to a different audience. Like for example, Wukong's ability 筋斗云 in Chinese has more of the fantasy-like feel but in the English translation it is Somersault Cloud or Flying Nimbus which to me, who knows both languages, does not sound really fit.

Terry

9/14 Readings

    These readings emphasized that translation is not an exact science, but an art. Each translator has their own style and interpretation of the original text, which can result in differences in tone, nuance, and overall style. This concept seems especially true with Japanese and English since they are so linguistically and culturally different. Translators must do heavy analyzing and understand the original author's intentions clearly so that they can relay the same feeling that readers of the original language experience when reading a piece of work. Wendy Lesser's article depicts how the translator can really make or break a reader's experience, and that their job is more than just word-for-word translation of a text. While none of the translations are "wrong" per say, each one provides a different experience for the reader. 

    The 1Q84 interview highlights how much work translation truly is. Before reading this interview, I did not really think about how much work it would take to translate an entire book. Since I have grown up seeing interpreters on TV who can relay information in seconds, and I have also grown up interpreting Japanese and English between family members, I have had a certain image of this process being quick in my mind. However, I have not really thought about how difficult it is to translate a text because of the additional layer of preserving artistic integrity and creating an entirely new work of art that is still true to the original. This process is completely different from me telling my mother what happened at school in Japanese, then relaying the same message to my father in English. My subconscious goal in these moments was to communicate information as quickly and straightforward as possible. 

In "Found in Translation", I found this quote to be especially interesting: "Brevity is a problem because you're so tempted to explain things the reader might miss. You always have to engage in a judgment to keep the verbiage as tight as it is in the original, and try not to overwhelm your reader with explanatory prose. After all, you're not trying to explain the original, but recreate it so that it works in all the same gut levels". This quote revealed another layer of the difficulty of translation. While the translator wants to accurately portray the author's original work, over-explaining may distract the reader from the artistry and style of the work and take away from the author's voice. Translation is a balancing act between accuracy and stylistic choices.

A realization I had in Emmerich's interview was that famous Japanese works were being translated into languages besides English. While it sounds silly, I had not thought about the fact that each pair of languages would have its own difficulties, nuances, and connections, resulting in a unique voice showing through.

Overall, I found these readings to be very interesting and felt that they gave me more insight into the world of translation and how a translator's mind works.

Emma Messerian

The Powers Of Translation And How It Affects The Voice Of The Translated Work

Throughout the readings for today, there was a theme concerning the limitations around one's known languages. A work is best experienced if you have studied and know the language in which it was originally written. But alas, we can't all be polylingual, as pointed out by Wendy Lesser. Sometimes we need to use a "crutch"-- a translation. It is a huge loss to limit oneself to literature only available in one's native tongue; translation is an invaluable service meant to broaden the opportunities for enjoying literature.  But there is a downside to reading a translation. It is impossible to completely separate the translator from their translation. Pieces of themselves will find a way to trickle in. Every translator has their own style, after all. Their own preferences. The only way you could guarantee a completely accurate translation is if the original author did it themselves! Which is rare.

In the case of Gabriel and Rubin, these translators were lucky. Working on Murakami's works was much easier for multiple reasons:

1) Murakami is alive and able to answer any questions they may have/ make direct changes he is not happy with in the translation.

2) Murakami is a translator himself; he understands the process and can level with the English translators.

3) Murakami's voice is much more accessible than other Japanese authors-- he is very translatable.

So, under such guidance, it's no wonder Murakami's works flourish even in America. 

Of course, there are still challenges. A big one is humor. Japanese humor is not well reflected in English. It relies a lot on specific wordplay that doesn't translate well. G and R were noting how it's hard to monitor themselves; they don't want to catch themselves explaining something to the reader that they might have missed due to a cultural gap, etc. But their job is not to explain, but to recreate the work so that an English speaker may enjoy.

It was interesting to me how Emmerich and Lesser seemed to be fans of specific translators, as well as the original author. It has never really occured to me that the way someone translates can affect how much I enjoy the work. It makes sense-- there are some authors whose voice I enjoy so much, it makes me want to read other works they write. It makes sense that translators can have the same effect. They can take the meaning and convey it in their own style. Each style resonates with different people and voila! You have people like Lesser spending $100 on two books just because their favorite translator worked on it. I always thought of translation as a tool, but maybe it's more of an art. Art is subjective, just like the quality of a translation.

Melissa

Translation Readings

 Out of these four articles, there were two ideas that caught my attention.

  The first came from Wendy Lesser’s article, “The Mysteries of Translation”. She spoke of the connection between translator and original author, where there is a precarious balance between achievement and voice of the respective parties. I thought this was a good idea to highlight. Whilst a main goal of a translator is to maintain an author’s voice and purpose from the original text, it would be remiss to speak about it without mentioning a translator’s desire to leave a mark on the work as well. There is a reason as to why they have chosen this author, this work to translate, along with attaching their name to it. For this reason, I agree with Lesser’s analysis that translated works are more of an author-translator hybrid than just one of them individually. I believe it is impossible to completely separate yourself from a translation, and even more so the idea of seeking recognition with a written work. 

On the other hand, an idea from the interview of Michael Emmerich is the image of an author. Since the order of stories published in translated languages and original text language can be different, readers from different cultures will have different images of the author. While part of this is due to the author themselves changing the atmosphere of each respective story, some of it may also be due to the translators. The article gave the example of Lin Xiaohua, whose background influenced a translation of Murakami with an air of Chinese classics. I thought this was interesting, since there is also an argument of whether it is wrong to translate in a way where it's easier for the reader to understand (especially with cultural differences). 

-Avi

Murakami translation

Out of all the readings, the perspective of J. Phillip Gabriel stood out to me. In the interview in the "Found in translation" article, he says, "I try to preserve the basic rhythm of the prose, alternating between long and short sentences. But the sentence structure itself is so different - verbs are at the end of a sentence in Japanese - and when you move the verb to the front, it's like giving away the punch line." This line really resonated with me because it reminded me of something my dad and I discussed when I first tried explaining Japanese grammar to him. I remember him being specifically very confused about this part of Japanese sentence structure and how it felt to him that one would have no idea what the other person is talking about until the very end of the sentence. However, I think in perspective it is a very identifying feature of the Japanese language and because of that, has allowed authors to use it to their advantage. Understandably, it has created issues for translators like Gabriel who have noticed it and try to create a similar effect in English.

Another part of the readings that I enjoyed learning about was the collaborative work that was 1Q84. Wendy Lesser, in "The Mysteries of Translation," acknowledges that she perceived the same work differently depending on the translator and remarked that her understanding and appreciation changed as well. It is understandable that translators will have varying interpretations of the works they are handling which makes the collaboration on 1Q84 so interesting. Although I have not read it myself, I imagine it was quite difficult to find continuity between the sections that each translator handled. Gabriel remarked that he did his own thing and that they relied on the editor for a final say. I wonder if I took part in a project like this, would I want to work actively together with the other translators? Or work independently like Gabriel?

Tori Raiken

Murakami Translations

Unfortunately, I'm not that familiar with Murakami's work. I've only read one book of his, Kafka on the Shore, which was translated into English, almost two years ago. I was glad to read the interview with Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, as they briefly mentioned their experience with translating Kafka on the Shore. 

A core goal I've gathered from interviews of various translators, like Rubin, Gabriel, or Marie Kondo's interpreter Marie Iida, is to maintain the "voice" of the original author and to make it seem as though the translator was never there to begin with. I think this is most difficult when translating humor. So much comes into play in these cases, such as cultural or vocabulary differences between Japanese and English. I thought it was interesting what Rubin and Gabriel said about translating humor in Kafka on the Shore. The translated joke is a pun, playing on the words pause and "paws." I remember being particularly curious about this while I read the story because this pun fit the character quite well and made a lot of sense in the context of the story. The character who says this line is called Nakata, and he was involved in an accident as a child and has reduced mental capacity. As a result, he's portrayed as pretty quirky and strange throughout the story. Specifically, he has the ability to communicate with cats. Although the translated pun is slightly removed from the original meaning of the joke in Japanese, I thought it was nice that they were able to keep this humorous aspects of his character and his connection to cats. I wonder if there is a way to maintain humor across translation or if it must be explained through a note from the translator or something similar. 

I have not read the Japanese version of Kafka on the Shore, but after doing some research, I think the different depictions of Nakata from English to Japanese is pretty interesting. In Japanese, his name is written in katakana and that implication is lost in English. In the English text, certain words he says are spelled incorrectly. For example, ministry is spelt as minis tree. From what I've seen this is not in the Japanese text, and I wonder how the translator came to the decision to make this stylistic choice.  

Kenna Ward

Translating, Murakami

 1. Wendy Lesser's article

I appreciated her appreciation of translators, and it is a feeling I share with her greatly. I was surprised with how much she detected the difference in translators across Murakami novels. I have a memory of reading a lengthy light novel series that switched translators at least once halfway, and only realizing after the fact, and in fact being astonished by how little I had noticed, or, in other words, how much the original author's voice felt preserved across translators. Perhaps my experience was just a special case, though.

I can also relate to her experience of being interested in the translators. After reading the English translations of the aforementioned light novel series (the Monogatari series, see below), I immediately looked up the translators out of curiosity, since they did such an unbelievably spectacular job (which is when I noticed there were more than one translator). 

Here is the Japanese for the start of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which her English translation exhibits naturally made me interested in.

台所でスパゲティーをゆでているときに、電話がかかってきた。僕はＦＭ放送にあわせてロッシーニの『泥どろ棒ぼうかささぎ』の序曲を口笛で吹いていた。スパゲティーをゆでるにはまずうってつけの音楽だった。

電話のベルが聞こえたとき、無視しようかとも思った。スパゲティーはゆであがる寸前だったし、クラウディオ・アバドは今まさにロンドン交響楽団をその音楽的ピークに持ちあげようとしていたのだ。

This struck me as very matter-of-fact. Birnbaum's translation (Lesser's preferred) might be more fun to read, but it simply injects a voice that is not there into the text, as far as I can tell. Perhaps Birnbaum is trying to make up for somewhere elsewhere where he failed to translate a 'fun' vibe by putting it here in the text, but barring that possibility, as far as I can tell, he's making it up for the reader for fun. 

So, I was slightly irked by Lesser putting judgement on the translations without knowing the original; I wish at least referenced the fact that 'for all she knows, Rubin is more accurate and Birnbaum is taking creative liberty..." at least. You could call Birnbaum's better written, but if you're calling it a better translation, you have to consider the accuracy axis.

Later, we hear Emmerich's opinion on Birnbaum: "not a translator who suffers from the illusion that there can ever be a one-to-one correspondence between the Japanese and the English, so he uses all of his powers to create English sentences that will live on their own in a way similar to the way that Japanese sentences live." This is fine to me in theory, but are they really living similarly to the way that the Japanese ones do...?

Though, personally, I don't mind departing from the original in translation. I see the translator as a bit of an author in and of themself. 

2. Rubin

I just wanted to highlight this exchange, which I feel like brings out a truth of translation that not everyone expects.

 SFBG: How do you align yourself with the author so that even the subtlest aspects of their work are communicated?

JR: Maybe I'm not doing that. You never know, do you? I'm always saying that people shouldn't read translated literature, they should learn the language themselves.

I also like Rubin's bluntness, saying "You just simply have to make up wordplay that seems to work in a similar way" and "you're not trying to explain the original, but recreate it so that it works in all the same gut levels". He doesn't entertain the possibility of 'just directly translate everything!', which I like.

Joey

The Myriad Voices of Language

The Myriad Voices of Language

Michael Tsegaye

A prevailing thought entering into this course was: "how can interpreters avoid imposing their own ideology when conducting interpretation?" My initial thought was that the interpreter should labor to shed their ideology and attempt to "faithfully" execute the will of the author. This "negativist" standpoint towards conscious application of language becomes faulty when we consider two facts; language is inherently relative to the speaker's experience with the words, and simply knowing their dictionary translations is not the same as having formed stories with those same words.

What strikes me as effective is not possessing less ideology (which is impossible to entirely shake off), but rather the study of many uses of the same language. Reading what conversations and texts look like depending on those dispatching and receiving them provide a translator with indispensable tools to accurately represent the purpose and meaning of the source material.

With this in mind, I would propose that the winner for "hardest" group to translate would easily be adolescents and young adults. In practically all cultures, young adults are the most flexible with their use of language, largely due to newfound freedom and a wish to break from traditions. Most additions to the English (and Japanese) languages originate from popular culture generated by people 18-24 years old, before being co-opted by young children and then all other adults.

Thankfully, I am a young adult, which is why I want to take this opportunity to translate a piece of young adult slang that is commonly used by Japanese people my age: 「ワンチャン」（abbreviated from ワンチャンス). Jisho.org uses a literal translation and only reserves the third and last to define it as meaning "one night stand." Personally, I have seen many young people (and practically only young people) use ワンチャン purely in a sexual context. Even then, I do not think "one night stand" is how I would define it. To me, I have seen it used more in contexts in which a person would find someone attractive, but would find flirting (or ナンパ) so risky that they would essentially be "shooting their shot," with the expectation that they would only have one chance to take such a risk (and then potentially engaging in a "one night stand"). The reason for this risk could vary greatly, but the anxiety involved in the encounter remains mostly constant. Similar ideas exist in the English speaking world, which is why you often hear young people asking, "would you shoot your shot?"

Translators of Murakami: The Shape in the Dark

This week‘s readings mainly focus on Murakami and his translators, but what interested me most was how they all discuss the relationship between an original and its translations. In “Mysteries of Translation,” Wendy Lesser writes about her experience as a monolingual reader who can only access a literary work through its different translations. Even when two translations can both be considered good, one translator’s voice might feel more fitting than another. At the end, she imagines language as a kind of prison and the perfect translator as a “merciful guard” who might someday arrive with the right keys and let the reader out.

I find this image very powerful because Lesser seems to have an almost romantic faith in translation: somewhere out there, perhaps, is a translation that can finally give the original its perfect voice. However, I think about translation a little differently. To me, a translation can come infinitely close to the original, but the two will never completely overlap. Yet this is also precisely what makes translation fascinating. I do not think language is necessarily a prison. Language is the medium through which information and feelings become accessible to us in the first place.

I imagine translation more like trying to understand the shape of an object in the dark. We may never see the whole object clearly, but every time we touch it from a different angle, we understand its shape a little better. A new translation does not necessarily replace an older one or finally “free” us from language. Instead, it allows a little more light into the room. Sometimes even a small amount of light is enough to change what we thought we were looking at.

This question becomes even more complicated in Philip Gabriel’s discussion of Kenzaburo Oe. Gabriel recalls that Oe asked him to edit parts of a translation so that they would better fit his ideas. Gabriel writes, “What I got from it is how writers, Murakami included, often tinker with and rework their stories. There is an authoritative text—but maybe only for the moment.”

This surprised me because I had unconsciously imagined the original as something stable. The original comes first, and translation comes afterward. Therefore, the original seems to possess a kind of unquestionable authority. But Oe’s example disrupts that hierarchy. If an author can use the process of translation to reconsider or revise the work, then translation can become another stage of creation. In that case, the relationship between original and translation is no longer simply one-directional. The original produces the translation, but the translation can also turn back and reshape our understanding of the original. It even makes me wonder: once a literary work has left the author’s hands and entered the world, how much does it still belong to the author? If the author changes something through a translation, is that translation becoming more faithful to the author’s intention, or less faithful to the original text?

Michael Emmerich’s interview made this question even more interesting to me. He mentions that students who read Murakami in Chinese tended to describe his writing with words such as “loneliness” and “healing,” which are relatively close to the image of Murakami that circulates in academic discussions. Students reading him in English, however, described him as “realistic” and a “difficult writer.” I was surprised that readers encountering the same author through different languages could develop such different impressions of him.

But even saying “Murakami in Chinese” is too simple, because there is no single Chinese Murakami. Emmerich discusses differences between Chinese translators as well. An older translator renders Murakami in a more literary and formal style, while a younger translator stays closer to the style of the Japanese original. This made me wonder whether different generations of Chinese readers might actually have encountered different Murakamis. If the translations popular among one generation sound different from those read by another, then their impressions of Murakami may differ not only because they are different generations, but because the author they encountered through translation was, in a sense, a different author.

All three readings therefore made me less certain about what we mean by the original. Each translation reveals something while also inevitably changing something. Returning to the image of an object in the dark, every translator touches the object from a different angle, and every reader encounters a slightly different shape. Maybe there is no final moment when all the lights turn on, and we see the object exactly as it is. But perhaps that endless process of approaching, touching, and seeing differently is part of what makes translation so interesting.

Kerry

AI Translation

I read https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-literary-translation-exposes-the-limits-of-ai-282955, which I found on google because I wanted to try to read something as recent as possible since AI is always changing (this was June 25, 2026). It was an Amherst College Professor's attempt at using AI for poetry translation (Urdu to English), which was very interesting and apt for this assignment. She found, unsurprisingly, that while technically correct in general, ChatGPT stumbled in various places to get across the nuances of the poem, and delivered an unsatisfying translation.

In contrast, for me I wanted to ask ChatGPT not about poetry since that is well-known as beyond its capabilities, but instead wanted to see if it could satisfy me with just prose translation from a novel I'm currently reading, 悲鳴伝 by 西尾維新.

Japanese: そして扱いの荒さに散々苦情を申し立てつつも、空々から『使い心地』をリサーチして、クレームはクレームとして受けつけて、付属品までまとめて、彼女は『グロテスク』を持って帰っていった.

English: Even as she lodged complaint after complaint about the rough way it had been handled, she researched its “usability” from Kū-Kū, accepted his complaints as complaints, and took Grotesque back along with all of its accessories.

This is from a random place in the middle of the novel (the place I'm at in the novel right now). I highlight this sentence since it struck me as especially poorly translated. 

First of all the main character's name is Sorakara, but there is no way for ChatGPT to know that and Kū-Kū is the right guess in my opinion. Kuku is probably more palatable as a translation though, given the genre and expected audience (sci-fi, Teenagers/young adults). Kū-Kū feels too weirdly Japanese for a casual english translation of a casual novel. 

Second of all, I don't like the usage of 'Even as...'. This (and my other complaints as you will see) is probably a problem with translating too literally (...つつも) such that it ends up a bit awkward. I would prefer something like 'Despite..., she was sure to...". Perhaps I feel this way because in English the つつも equivalent goes at the start which separates it too far from the next clause, so I want a callback to it in the next clause the form of e.g. 'was sure to'.

Thirdly, 'accepted his complaints as complaints' for 'クレームはクレームとして受けつけて' is weird (unobvious meaning) and obviously because it is way too literal. I was curious if chatGPT would notice this itself, and in a revision it did suggest 'taking note of all his complaints as legitimate feedback' which is a little wordy, but, it also suggested 'taking his complaints seriously' which I thought was pretty good. 

From the same page - 

Japanese: 「空々くんが殺した怪人だけど、無事に死んだってさ」

回収に際して、『再開発』がそう教えてくれた。無事に死んだというのも、かなりおかしな言いかただが、それを聞いて、空々はほっとした。
なにせ頭部を目掛けて踏みつけたのだ、大ダメージを与えたことは確かだろうが、しかしすぐに逃げてしまったので、結果までをはっきりと確認したわけではない──中途半端な脳挫傷とかで不要に苦しめる結果になっておらず、本当によかった。

    English: “The monster you killed, Sorakara-kun? I hear it died without incident.”

    That was what Redevelopment told him when she came to collect it. “Died without incident” was a pretty strange way of putting it, but hearing that, Sorakara felt relieved.

      After all, he had stomped directly on its head. There was no doubt he had inflicted serious damage, but he had fled almost immediately afterward, so he hadn’t actually confirmed what had happened in the end—not for certain. He was just glad he hadn’t left it suffering unnecessarily from some half-finished case of brain damage or something.

I suppose I'm including this section more to praise ChatGPT than anything. I guess I would replace 'it' with 'Grotesque' in 'she came to collect it', and delete '—not for certain', and maybe nitpick it a bit more here and there, but other than that I think this is a perfectly great translation. Maybe 'without incident' is too literal... "...died just fine"? It's not bad though.


On the other side of the spectrum, here is ChatGPT's attempt at the start of コズミック by 清涼院流水.

Japanese: 天は号泣していた。

──なにをそんなに悲しむのか。『予（よ）』の考えを知ってのことか？

仰向けに寝転んだまま、密室卿（みっしつきょう）はごろりと首を横に向けた。バショウの葉にあたり、雨の滴（しずく）が窓から踊りこんでくる。

滴は密室卿の頰に接吻すると弾けてそのまま滑り落ちた。

English: The heavens were weeping bitterly.

    —What is there to grieve so deeply? Is it because you know what Yo is thinking?

    Still lying on his back, Lord Missetsu slowly turned his head to the side. Raindrops, striking the leaves of the banana plant, came dancing in through the window.

    One of them kissed Lord Missetsu on the cheek, then burst and slid down his face.


This is laughably bad. Perserving '予' like that is so weird. Why is 密室卿 translated as Lord 'Missetsu'?? 'Still' is weird too - まま translated too literally without regard for context - and the last line's use of 'then' is also too literal in my opnion. 


It's clear that ChatGPT needs attentive supervision even for prose - it can produce something absurd just as easily as it produces accurate and natural translations. It seems to orbit around the concept of a 'natural english translation'; too flowery or too literal depending on the passage.

Joey