Carpenter Readings- Carly

Compared to some of the other readings, I think Carpenter makes the idea of Japanese to English having so many options seem like more of a positive thing. I think her knowledge about literature and willingness to try many ways to say something until it feels right is a very admirable trait in a translator. Something that was mentioned in both, the article and the interview was about what her process when she is not quite sure about how to express the feeling of the original in English. Carpenter mentioned how she asked her brother to look over her translation of the Mozart book, and he gave her a lot of feedback on what she should change. In this case, she did not need technical help, she needed help finding the "mood." Through this story, I think it showed the importance of not only focusing on the syntactic elements of language, but the pragmatic aspects of it as well. She also described how it is very important to fully understand the original piece before translating it. Because of this, she sometimes gets assistance from the author and even filmmakers to complete her translations. In an earlier reading we had, the translator mentioned how there are authors who sometimes do not like to answer questions about their work. So I found it interesting that the author is not Carpenter's only source when it comes to getting help with her translations.

In the article, I liked what she said about what she said about humor in translations. I also feel like it connected to what she said about "imitation," vs "transposition." She explained how there are some situations or some dialogue that would simply not be said in Japanese or vice versa. I think when translating, it is very hard to resist the urge to try to write a sentence in English exactly how it is written in Japanese. This is probably because it takes more work to think of something new on your own. However, when you read, the words allow you to have some kind of image in your head of what's happening in the story. I think being able to remember that can allow your translation more accessible to people who come across your translations.