Foreignness in Translation

 Joey Potter

    I think I've always been on the side that it's ok to leave in words that represent unique concepts in the source language's culture, or, to smooth all of that over. For example in our first "コロッケ" translation, we could have translated it "Korokke" and "Oseibo", or "Croquette" and "holiday gift" (or whatever). The merit of the former is that you are more accurate and you get to teach the reader about Japanese culture (with a translator's footnote, or explanation weaved into the text, or more likely just trusting them to google what these words mean exactly), while the merit of the latter is that it makes for a smoother read. There is no fact of the matter to which is "better" (though your editor might have a strong preference).

    So that's my opinion and here are my disagreements with the reading.

    1. Foreignness in translation is not about reminding the reader they're reading something originally written in another language 

    Imagine a novel written in Spanish that takes place in America and there are no unique hispanic concepts invoked ever. In it's translation, why would you ever include foreignness for an American reader? Foreignness should only be about gaining accuracy: where the concept is foreign, the translation may be foreign, too. I would understand leaving words like e.g. itadakimasu or chan/san/sama as they are, but for example (to give a Japanese example rather than the French/German ones), why write "this is so kawaii" instead of "cute" just because kawaii is a well-known word? It turns whoever says that line into a Japanese caricature instead of a normal person. The problem of course being that to the native speaker and author the person who said that is in fact just a normal person so we should want to reproduce that.

    2. Foreignness is not about "transmitting this feeling of foreignness to his readers" that the translator feels when reading! This was really baffling to me. Who cares what the translator felt! Translators should transmit the feeling that the native-speaker readers felt when reading the original. Obviously. Also, transmitting foreignness is easy; it's the default. Translators are usually hard at work trying to figure out how to get rid of the foreignness...?

    3. "some prior knowledge of the original language is essential for a foreign effect to arise." No? Just make the reader look stuff up. Why not just leave uniquely Yoruba concepts in Yoruba.

    At the end, the text talks about how translators introduced new words/concepts into their target language. Exactly! It's the translator's responsibility to introduce these new words/concepts, be they Yoruba or Japanese, to their audience. It's not foreignness for the sake of foreignness or satisfying the reader's already-held knowledge, it's foreignness for the sake of introducing a new culture to the audience. A foreign text should sound foreign to a foreign audience even after being translated into their native language just by virtue of the setting and concepts invoked.