Charles Terry, A Live Dog
The first line of the article, "It has been said that translations are like women: if they are faithful,
they are not beautiful; if they are beautiful, they are not faithful" is pretty misogynistic. I get that it is supposed to be a playful analogy, but it is a completely untrue generalization. I also don't get why 言うまでもなく is fine in Japanese but translating it to "needless to say" in English is considered "a sign of bad writing."
It's interesting to see the difference between Japanese and English in terms of didactic and rhetorical questions. I've never thought of how different the connotations are between the two languages despite being the same types of sentences, and it does seem that the English versions can come off as assertive and interrogative.
"The worst problem in translating from Japanese into English is simply
that Japanese and English speakers do not say the same thing in
similar circumstances." This is once again referencing the familiar problem of translating cultural nuances. I would argue that the silence before eating in English should not be translated into いただきます in Japanese. Also, it seems that 難しい being used as "no" instead of "difficult" is very common, especially in the business scene in Japan. My brother, who works in Tokyo, said the same thing to me during an interview for another Japanese class.
To me, the ridiculously long paragraph-sentence from Miyamoto Musashi just seems to be bad writing. Sure, the descriptive phrases and words help paint the imagery more vividly, but I don't see why the sentence couldn't have just been divided into two or three sentences. In my opinion, only having one gigantic sentence in the section just makes translating needlessly difficult, and as a result, much of the original is eliminated due to redundancy and readability during the translating process into English.
Finally, I agree that a literal, exact, word-for-word translation of the original work does not equal a good translation. Instead, translating the original text into an easily readable, comprehensive text for the speakers of the other language is much more important, even if that is considered not staying true to the original work's contents or the author's intent.
Lynne Riggs, Notes from Interlingual Hell
The author says regarding the translating process of essays or magazine articles from Japanese to English: "The
physical body of the original piece has to be obliterated and reincarnated in a totally different guise in order for the soul (message) to be
reborn in the next (English) life." This sounds very similar to the generally accepted process of translating poetry from Japanese to English which involves breaking down the poem and rebuilding it in a new context.
I prefer the second approach of the two described. It makes more sense to me to read through the article first before attempting to translate the whole thing. Knowing the overall content of the article, as well as any professional or technical words, should help streamline the translating process significantly.
I thought the recreation of titles in English compared to the original Japanese titles was very smart. To be honest, I originally thought that a literal translation of the original title was best in this case, but some of the titles shown, such as "Credit Card Quicksand" and "Antidote for Anomie..." were genius.
I agree with one of the ending remarks: "After working with a text for a long
time, one ceases to be able to see it objectively. A team of one or two
translators and
an editor is ideal for some projects." I think this applies to many other time-consuming jobs that require a lot of creativity and focus. One of which I can think of is songwriting and producing music. Since you have to spend so much time checking various aspects of the music itself, it becomes overplayed and your ears become tired. When that happens, it is often a good idea to have other friends or collaborators listen to it instead and ask for opinions/suggestions from them.
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