"Eight Ways to Say You" Response (Umi)

Throughout the article, Cathy Hirano discusses the difficulties of translating texts in general as well as what makes translating Japanese into English especially harder. She mentions how the structure of the languages (ENG & JPN) are completely different and how Japanese authors tend to dance around the theme (imply rather than being direct), whereas English authors stress clarity. I found this to be quite an interesting point because I have read quite a few books which have been translated from Japanese to English (Murakami Haruki and Mishima Yukio). This means that there is a chance that the translated versions of the books I've read may have been much more clear and comprehensible than the original works, which now makes me curious to read the original, Japanese books. For the rest of article, Cathy discusses the other aspects of translating that troubled her such as integrating humor and integrating cultural context. She gave examples from books she had to translate and explained in the paper how she went about translating those specific examples. Having read other papers on translating Japanese to English, I already knew about the difficulties of integrating cultural context, however I had not truly realized how difficult it was until Cathy provided these examples.