The experience of Howard Hibbett in translating the works of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro gives a rich commentary on the complexities and nuances involved in literary translation. Hibbett's challenges reflected not only the depth of Tanizaki's work but also the cultural and linguistic subtleties.
Tanizaki's often vague hints about the events of his time serves as an intriguing literary device. It allows the work to maintain a sense of timelessness while also engaging the reader's imagination. This vagueness can be viewed as a double-edged sword for a translator. On the one hand, it offers the flexibility to adapt the text within the context of another culture or time. On the other hand, it poses the challenge of retaining that intentional ambiguity without making the text seem incomplete or confusing to readers unfamiliar with the original cultural context.
"The Key" presented Hibbett with another unique challenge: the text was written using a combination of katakana and hiragana to denote masculine and feminine styles, respectively. This gendered linguistic difference is a feature of the original text that doesn't have a direct equivalent in English. Hibbett's choice to research past examples like Alba De Cespedes’ novel, "The Secret," suggests a methodological approach to solving such problems. By examining how other translators have navigated similar challenges, Hibbett could find inspiration for his own work. What I learned from this reading is that referencing past works is one way to find solutions to current translation problems because these translation problems have certainly existed in the past.
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