10/13 Between the Coloring Book and the Pond

After reading Carpenter’s Jumping Into the Pond, what interested me most were the two metaphors she uses to describe translation: a coloring book and a pond.

In the coloring book metaphor, the original text is a picture that has already been drawn. The translator can choose their own colors, but must follow the outlines drawn by someone else. This reminded me of my previous understanding of faithfulness: a translator should respect the original as much as possible, including emotions that are left unexplained, subtle implications, and even expressions that may seem unnatural. There is room for creativity, but only within the boundaries set by the original text.

However, the pond metaphor seems to suggest a different relationship. Carpenter compares the original text to a pond and the translator to a frog jumping into it. The sound of the splash belongs neither to the frog nor to the pond alone, but emerges from their encounter. In this metaphor, translation is no longer simply about adding colors to an existing work, but about creating something new through the interaction between the translator and the text.

This difference made me reconsider her discussion of wordplay. In the example from Geisha Boy, Carpenter is even willing to change the original names and jokes so that Japanese audiences can experience the humor of the English original. According to the coloring book metaphor, this seems to go beyond the original outlines. But according to the pond metaphor, perhaps this kind of change is precisely how a translation comes to life.

Still, I am not sure where the boundaries of this creativity should lie. If a translator can invent a new joke to preserve the original humor, does that mean they can also rewrite the original text? Where should we draw the line? And if we understand faithfulness as preserving the experience a work creates for its readers, who gets to decide what that experience is supposed to be?

Perhaps Carpenter’s two metaphors are not really contradictory. A good translator should respect the original shape of the pond while also having the courage to jump into it. Maintaining that balance may be a lifelong lesson.

Mingzi