R. Copeland, “Hearing Voices” (Matt)

Thinking about what Copeland said, I get it's tough to put the real meaning of words into another language. In "Hearing Voices," she talks about how some things just don't have the same words in another language. She describes it as a dilemma, where she is stuck between different choices that she doesn't want to use, trying to pick the best one. When I'm translating, I also focus a lot on matching the feeling or tone to the people who are going to read it. Copeland talks about how different voices influence the translation and I feel the same where the voices for me is the audience that would be receiving the text, and trying to put it in a tone/wording that matches them. She also talks about how trying to keep stylistic choices done by the author can be difficult to translate, particularly in her translation of Grotesque. Things like Katakana, or even just how certain characters talk can be difficult to portray in a different language which is something that I try to keep as best as I can, but sometimes it feels too difficult so I end up just translating it directly without the stylistic touch that it has in the original.