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