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