C. Terry and L. Riggs Readings (Umi)

 C. Terry, “A Live Dog”:

In Charles Terry's paper, he brings up interesting points regarding the difficulties of translating between Japanese and English; points of which I have not heard of nor considered before. For instance, I found it fascinating to learn that Japanese writers tend to employ a written language that is very different from the spoken language. As Terry mentions, Japanese texts "contain many peripheral ideas that an English writer would omit in the interest of clarity and conciseness", which makes me wonder if translators tend to omit a lot of Japanese words or this was something Terry preferred to do. This is because, as mentioned in my previous blogs, I have read my fair share of translated Japanese literature by Haruki Murakami and Yukio Mishima so I am now wondering if a lot of the details from the original works were omitted, meaning that I may have "missed out" on unique elements of the Japanese author's writing style. Lastly, Terry had a very interesting point about the approach for translating Japanese works: literal translation yields something that is neither easy to read nor very pleasant to the ear. Further, Terry mentions that if he were to make the changes that he wanted to, he could be accused of not being faithful to the author's style. However, Terry questions later on that if he were to translate more literally (which may produce something irksome and rather foreign-sounding in English), would he still be faithful to the author's style? to which I believe no. I understand why Terry posed this question and I honestly cannot see the issue of modifying the style slightly in order to convey the same message with the same feelings associated with that message. 

L. Riggs, “Notes from Interlingual Hell:

In her paper, Lynne Riggs describes the process of transforming Japanese magazine articles to English not as translating, but as transmigration, a concept I found to be rather humorous but at the same time suitable and realistic. In her paper, Riggs breaks down the various elements of magazine articles and the ways of tackling the translations, some of which I did not even realize were distinct from one another (i.e. restructuring the text vs the lead paragraph). In the same vein, her first point was about having an inviting title -- which I understood because Elliott Sensei discussed about this in class. Similar to what Elliott Sensei told us, Riggs mentioned that often times it is more suitable to not literally translate the title because Japanese magazine articles tend to use long, and possible unnecessarily descriptive (if it were translated into English) titles. Furthermore, Riggs addresses other aspects of magazine articles which I found to be very informative and useful as I have to complete a magazine translation for this coming weekend. At the end of the day, I hope I am able to apply some of the concepts that Riggs taught me and other readers, notably, a point that mentioned how Japanese magazine articles tend to contain a lot of metaphors, wordplays, literary allusions, dialogue, etc., which often do not emerge gracefully in English without going through contortions.