This article was a bit hard to understand, but I got that the main idea of the author was to focus on the two different primary approaches to translation: "moving the reader toward the author" or "moving the author toward the reader." I agree that either approach has its benefits depending on the text and intended audience for the translation and that mixing both approaches will result in bad translation where neither the author nor the reader can really get what the other side is thinking. The author thinks that the first approach is suitable for works that aim to evoke a sense of the original language's spirit, such as classical works. I agree with this since I think no one is interested in reading a modern English version of The Tale of Genji. He seemed pretty critical of the second approach, which seeks to make the foreign author appear as if they had originally written in the target language of translation. I agree that translating in such a way will make most if not all of the nuances in the original language get lost in the translation and that the translator's role is not to rewrite the original work but to convey its meaning without losing its uniqueness.
The author also argues that translating a scientific or artistic work is difficult because it requires a thorough understanding of the history and context behind the work, and that it is especially challenging when the original work uses languages that do not have an exact equivalent in the target language of translation. This seems pretty similar to the process of translating novels. You'd really have to read through the books and understand the context to achieve a good translation. If you cannot understand the individual personalities and unique styles of the various characters who appear in the novel, you cannot have a fully accurate translation.
Maintaining the balance between the original and the translated work was also mentioned a lot. It's kind of contradicting that the translator has to try not to be too close to the original work as it can lead to a loss of the natural flow of the language, but at the same time, they must preserve the rhythm, tone, and overall foreignness of the original text. I agree that for the most part, the translator should attempt to stay true to the original in terms of content, but there are definitely times when choices have to be made regarding changing the text so that the translated version is more accessible and understandable to the reader. I think staying true to the original content is important, but not necessarily staying true to the structure of every sentence, paragraph, etc. due to the grammatical differences in languages.
Guy Deutscher, "You Are What You Speak"
This article contained many interesting things about the differences in the many different languages we speak. Despite Whorf's theory of linguistic determinism being discredited later on due to a lack of evidence, I actually thought that many aspects of it are very true, such as how certain languages have certain words whose concepts cannot be fully understood in other languages. How could you possibly explain the nuances that phrases like "お世話になっております" or "いただきます/ごちそうさまです" have in Japanese in another unrelated language, like English? There is just never going to be a perfect translation for these phrases, because of the difference in the average level of politeness used in daily life between the two countries. This aligns nicely with Roman Jakobson's modernistic perspective that "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey," where he points out the fact that languages can influence thought by making speakers use certain phrases out of habit and routine. Nevertheless, I think it's true that the average American can still understand these concepts if they were to experience them in real life in Japan or be exposed to the nuances of Japanese culture through media.
I thought it was interesting how some gendered languages like French and German make it so that the speaker is forced to specify the gender of the noun. To me, French being a gendered language makes a lot of sense, as it is considered a "romantic language." I don't know much about the previous two languages, but I learned Spanish in high school, and I think it's interesting how aside from gendered nouns, Spanish also uses a lot of gendered adjectives, which change between "o" and "a" to describe either men or women (e.g. bonito/bonita). While Chinese doesn't use gendered nouns, I think it's interesting that pronouns such as 他 (he) and 她 (she) are written differently but pronounced the same way, which essentially makes it so that gendered is specified in writing but implied in speech.
I think It's crazy that the Australian language Guugu Yimithiirr uses north, south, east, and west instead of left, right, in front of, behind, etc. for directions. Personally, I am terrible with using and correctly identifying cardinal directions, so I would not be able to do that at all, but I think it's really cool how this feature in their language made it so that their speakers have an enhanced sense of orientation and a good sense of direction. It's also cool how sensitivity to minute differences in colors can be caused by the difference in words used for categorizing colors in different languages. I think English actually has a lot of rathered detailed color words, such as indigo and teal, but it seems that most ESL speakers aren't really familiar with the shades these colors imply when relating to the more defined colors, such as blue and green. I think sometimes even native English speakers can struggle with fancy color words.
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