On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari (Matt)

 It was interesting to see the perspective of Seidensticker, and how he sees translating between languages can be a different task. He notes that some languages like English and German are a bit easier to translate between compared to English and Japanese. One thing that I like was his take on how there is a rhythm to translating, and having that is apart of what makes a good translation. Since explaining things does take time, it would interrupt the piece that is being translated. Its also interesting to see that there can be so many different ways a translator might be trying to translate a sentence, but none of them they are satisfied with. Even in published works, there can be things that a translator wouldn't agree with and would want to change, but that is because everyone has a different perspective on the writings. He also brings up that he likes translating for Kawabata the best because it is difficult. In lots of the writing, there are ambiguous part which can make it difficult to pick out the meaning, which makes it harder for the translator. It was also interesting to see the fact that he thinks that the translated version of something shouldn't be better than the original which is something I would agree with. In the native language of something like literature, there are certain things that won't be able to be directly translated, making it the best version of whatever that is. If the translated version is "better" this means that the translator added things that weren't there which could be seen as a problem. It was overall nice to see that different perspectives can have differing results on translations and it can be a matter of preference of which translator you'd like to read from.