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
No comments:
Post a Comment