In reading "Hearing Voices"by Copeland, a part that stood out to me was her translation of The Puppet Maker Tenguya Kyukichi. We had just discussed ways to translate dialect in class and the guest speaker on Friday delved a little into the difficulties and so it is nice to finally see an example. I think the translation itself is great. I can imagine hearing a voice in a Southern accent reading out the translation which I guess is the most "American" equivalent. The not-so-accurate grammar as well as "some'll" (not pronouncing "well" out) is something I find quite characteristic of Southerners. I have always been an advocate of just leaving out the dialect in the dialogue so I'm very impressed to see it done well.
I also found the discussion on decoding katakana in Copeland's translation of Grotesque quite amusing since even after study Japanese for a while katakana continues to be quite difficult. The combination of the hard to read blocky letters and the "Japanesification" of the pronunciation of the foreign words (エネルギー ) makes katakana impossible to decode sometimes.
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