Hibbett on Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (Daniel)

Something that particularly caught my attention was when Hibbett talked about the challenges with translating Tanizaki’s The Key. In the original text, the husband’s diary is written in a more masculine style, utilizing katakana, while the wife’s diary is written in a more feminine style, with hiragana. This really made me think about what subliminal ideas and associations we attach to these different styles of kana. These nuances are relatively noticeable in Japanese, but once translated, the author needs to truly consider how, if possible, they can communicate these writing style associations in another language that only utilizes a single writing system. 

Another thing that I have thought about as this class has progressed, which Hibbett touched on as well, has been the translation of titles. I feel as though authors take too many liberties with titles in general. I personally prefer translated titles that do not diverge too much and stay as close to the original as possible, as I believe the author selected that specific title for a valid reason. Of course, there are instances when title changes are quite necessary, as was the case with Manji, which I believe you must change in order to avoid unintended meanings. Regardless, I found the final translation, Quicksand, to be too far from the original, with alternatives such as Whirlpool to be more fitting.