On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari Response (Umi)

 In this paper, Edward Seidensticker brings up very interesting points when it comes to translating between two remote languages such as English and Japanese. For instance, he mentions that it is part of the process to count the number of proper names in a translation and compare it to the number of proper names in the original and if it is fewer in the translation, it is a bad translation. To address this point, I could see why every proper name should be translated (because you do not want to drift too far from the original text), but I agree with Edward that the flow/rhythm of the translation could sound worse or better, which in turn is actually worse. By this, I am referring to the point in the text where Edward mentions that if you tell a translator that their translation was better than the original, you are actually not praising them because a translator is supposed to reproduce the original work with great precision; not make it more interesting. Later on in the text, Edward discusses the difficulties he had when translating Kawabata Yasunari and her piece, The Izu Dancer. He mentions that Kawabata characteristically says very little in the sense that he likes to omit subjects and be rather vague. Edward recalls a few instances of having trouble translating because of Kawabata's writing style which makes me have more respect for translators because I had not ever considered the possibility of having to translate works by writers who purposely choose to be vague. Lastly, another point that stood out to me is when Edward mentioned getting hundreds of letters from Japanese people complaining to him about his translation. He mentions a specific line he translated from Kawabata's Snow Country, which, he had scrutinized numerous times but still received criticism for. This made me recall one of the other articles we had read for homework which mentioned why translators hate reading their own translations: because they do not want to stumble upon sentences that they could have phrased better.