Edward Seidensticker On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari (Bruce)

I found myself to appreciate Seidensticker's view on the role of a translator. He strongly believes that a translator should never strive to improve an author's work. Rather, he should try his best to portray the flaws of the work. It is for this exact reason that authors usually make terrible translators for their own work, as they would be tempted to change certain aspects about the story. 

I also enjoyed his points on the subtleties of writing, specifically from Kawabata, who intuitively prefers to leave subjects ambiguous. These idiosyncrasies tend to give a charm to his writing, but it does make translation much more difficult. It falls on the translator to choose between clarifying, or to attempt his best at carrying the confusion over to English.