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.