D. Bellos, “Fictions of the Foreign”

Melissa: I posted this on the wrong blog last week whoops

    This reading was very interesting. The idea of the level of foreignness to leave in a translated body of text. Do we leave it foreign, or do we acclimate it to the group we are translating for? In the reading, Bellos mentioned a bit about French. If we are reading about a French detective, shouldn't they sound French?

    French and English are very close languages linguistically. A lot of people have a basic knowledge of stereotypical French phrases. So, if written in the original French, that could be something that is left untranslated in English in order to reintroduce the foreign nature of the text. The same could be said with other common phrases in German or Spanish too. But what about Japanese? A language so far removed from English is not so easily relatable to an English speaker. Where is the line for allowing foreignness in a Japanese-to-English translation?

    In class, we have also discussed this dilemma. This often comes up in idioms or filler words that exist in Japanese but not in English. Names and organizations, too, are unfamiliar to a non-Japanese reader. In this case, I have my own opinions on what to do. For idioms, I often search the meaning and try to find an English equivalent amongst English idioms. I want the rhythm and charm of the idiom to stay, but recognize a change must be made in order for the reader to understand the meaning. I hesitate with Names and Organizations. There is an urge to explain when translating Japanese. The language carries so much meaning in so few words. But I think it's important to remember that the reader can choose to look something up. I am pro footnotes. When we translated a short story a few weeks ago, we debating the name of a postal service included in the original text. I chose to omit it because I didn't think it bore significance to the text. If it had, however, I would have chosen to keep the name and write a footnote about it being a large postal service commonly known in Japan. I don't want to baby the audience. If they would like to know what something is, and the source text doesn't explain it, then I think a better alternative is to leave explanations in the back. This keeps the foreigness of the source text. 

    While Bellos talked about phrases and such to bring out foreigness of a text, I think his thoughts apply to how we deal with names in Japanese translation. Of course it depends on the significance the world plays in the text. Too many foreign organizations or shop names may be a little too confusing but generally I vote keep the name, add a footnote later.