I like the idea from Copeland of "hearing the voices from the texts." I also do that when I'm reading books. As the characters are built by lines, I will have a voice that fits my image of the character if they are very characteristic, like misers and uneducated people. I think this is also a way to say, "catch the soul of the text." Copeland mentioned "temptation to reshape," said Seidensticker. I remember we mentioned that in most cases, translators translate, and the works they translate look like him since the voices they hear are different and stylish. I also like the American cover of "Grotesque" we saw this week. The water's ripple and the twisted fonts really got me, and at least for me, I got a sense of mystery, and I'm willing to read a few pages of the book because of the cover.
I read Hibbett briefly since I don't have a decent knowledge of most of the authors outside Japan. Hibbett compared Japanese literature frequently in his speech to other author's works, and I think it definitely helps to read more literature works that belong to the same genre as the work translators are trying to translate. Especially for a language that's so different from English, reading similar types of literature must bring benefits like being more familiar with the expressions in the genre and, most importantly, having a feeling of what a native literature piece should look like. The situation of knowing the expressions in English but not being able to pull them out when I looked at the Japanese texts happened a lot. I think understanding the original text and having a solid knowledge of the language you are translating to are equally important.
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