In Terry’s article, I found it very interesting when he talked about all the issues that arise regarding the fact that Japanese and English speakers do not say the same thing in similar circumstances, as is the case when a person begins to eat dinner. It was also extremely interesting to learn more about how there are very few words in Japanese for which there is an exact equivalent in English. I have found this to be the case from personal experience, when translating things in Japanese for my family in the States, and also while translating English for my family in Japan. There are very similar words, but they typically carry slightly different meaning or tone, which can quickly complicate things. I also found it interesting when he brought up Vladimir Nabokov, and how translating between languages within the same family may provide easier parameters to work within, as there are many more words that mean exactly the same thing. However, with languages that are distinctly different in a variety of ways, such as Japanese and English, you as a translator have to adapt to the changing nuances when translating a piece of work into another language.
In the next article, Riggs further explored the reasons behind the challenges of translating Japanese magazines or essays. In line with what Elliott Sensei said regarding translating the magazine article from class, Riggs explained that Japanese magazine articles tend to employ long and potentially overly descriptive titles that might not translate well into English. One thing that surprised me in particular when further reading this article was the fact that topic sentences or thesis statements in Japanese essays and some articles are often situated toward the end of a paragraph. While I was somewhat aware of differences in sentence structure in Japanese writing, I will definitely pay more attention to these differences.
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