C. Terry and L. Riggs (Micah)

 "A Live Dog"

I found Terry's writing to be insightful because many of the points feel obvious, but was something that I never had seen expressed in writing before. For example, the tendency of Japanese writing to have words or phrases that are considered unnecessary in English. The example Terry uses is "gozonji no yoni," which they say is being unnecessarily condescending, which I fully agree with. But, when reading it in Japanese, I would never have thought twice as it is not uncommon to see. Just that if you were to translate it in English to something such as "as you know," it feels both unneeded and condescending. Another point Terry brought up that I was glad to see written was how long Japanese sentences are. Again, reading Japanese text I don't feel that sentences are too long as I can understand them clearly. But once I am given the task to translate that sentence, I see the issue with it.

"Notes from interlingual hell"

Rigg's writing brought up an interesting point of adapting how you translate based off of your audience. I agree with them in the necessity to add completely new sentences or paragraphs to provide context in certain situation. The lack of knowledge of things that are widely known in one culture but not in another can significantly impact the understanding of the text. So despite not sticking to the original, it definitely improves the translation overall. In the same vain, the importance of reorganization of text was something that I never had given though to. Rigg gave the example of restructuring an academic paper in order to make it clearer for people in the West. While I knew that sentence structure and the directness of Japanese writing differed, this point by Riggs made me realize how the entire structure could be seen as confusing to someone in the West.