First of all, it was nice to hear a seasoned translator describe the process as "playing around with sounds and ideas until something sticks". I have found it easy to get frustrated with myself for not always having an intuition for how something should be translated, so hearing that sometimes it truly is just a matter of trial and error was comforting. I enjoyed Carpenter's general philosophy on translation, it feels very functional to me. I particularly appreciated the discussions on translating wordplay and humor, where she described how she and her students translated the Jerry Lewis movie Geisha boy. I thought she handled it very creatively - I wouldn't have thought to make a similar wordplay with another character's name if the original wasn't translating well. My instinct might have been to just abandon the joke if it was really impossible to make it work with Watanabe.
The waku waku/ doki doki conundrum is tricky, although in this case I'm not sure I agree with pitter patter. I understand Carpenter's line of logic, but to me pitter patter conjures images of footsteps rather than heartbeats. Especially since she describes the feeling as "fluttery", I wonder if there isn't an onomatopoeia in English that is more evocative of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment