Reading about Carpenter's struggles with translating onomatopoeias was something that resonated with me as someone who grew up speaking Japanese at home. Carpenter touched upon how "doki doki" and "waku waku" were two that were particularly hard to translate. While for this example in particular I felt that the distinction between the two is not that ambiguous, this sheds light to the general challenge of translating onomatopoeias. There have been many instances where I have tried to explain a situation to someone in English, but the words to describe the vibe/feeling of the situation that would come to my mind were Japanese onomatopoeias. I would be able to eventually explain the feeling, but it would take a lot more words than the onomatopoeia itself. With this in mind, I think that it is impressive how Carpenter translated the art piece's onomatopoeias in small amounts of words.
Another part of the text that stood out to me was the way Carpenter described translating. Carpenter compares the art of translation to a coloring book, in that you are given an outline on what to do, but it is your own artistic choice when choosing the colors to use. When put this way, it really highlights how much power the translator has. For me, I believe with this in mind it will push me to be more creative and stray away from the literal text.
From the interview, the biggest takeaway I had was how much collaboration is necessary with the original author in order to have an accurate translation from both a technical and qualitative lens. Carpenter talks about how they worked with Mizumura in the translation of a story, and how they literally spent time going over every word in the book. Carpenter went into further detail about how much effort that took which leads me to believe that collaboration is key if you truly want to have an accurate translation.
No comments:
Post a Comment