Musashi Kuwa Response to reading

 Jumping to the Pond

In the article, she shared her experiences translating various works, and especially her story of translating a bilingual children's book about Mozart was very interesting. These days, I have been reading articles about various types of difficulties in each writing style, and I completely forgot the challenges of children's books because when I read them in English or Japanese, the words used in the sentences are very easy since they are for kids. However, that is exactly what makes translation harder because of the limitation of word choice to use. She emphasized the challenges of nuanced emotions such as "ポカポカ” and”ドキドキ" and I completely agree with this. These phrases can be only translated well if you have an understanding of culture, humor, and feeling in both languages and as she said, the translation will only get better with persistence and continuous learning in languages. Lastly, it was very interesting when she talked about her experiences working on translating a book about Buddhism. She mentions how difficult it was not to add concepts of her Christian influences into the translation of Buddhism. It was fresh to know the process of translation is closely connected with the translator's background and how it could be easily influenced.

Interview

In the interview, it was very cool to learn the details of the actual translation process such as getting to read the real drafts and how it takes to complete translated sentences. I also did not know that the translator spent that much time with the author to complete the translation and it was very cool for me because I thought that translation was always just working alone.