Edward Seidensticker On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari (Daniel)

In this reading, Edward Seidensticker addresses many interesting points regarding translation, some of which I don’t believe we have touched on before during class. One prominent point Seidensticker brings up is the difficulties balancing rhythm with other things such as proper names. He brings up a short sentence from Hamlet to explain this concept: “Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” When translated into Japanese, many translations focused on providing a direct translation by sacrificing the rhythm and simplicity that makes the statement so impactful. This truly highlighted how many decisions translators have to make, and how it is not simply the words you are translating but the cadence, feeling, and emotion as well. 

Another very interesting thing that stood out to me was how Seidensticker believed that it is not a translator's job to improve or fix the work's imperfections, but rather be as faithful to the original as possible. This creates a very difficult dilemma, as translators are constantly placed in difficult positions where they must decide what to sacrifice (rhythm, proper names, ambiguity, etc.) in order to convey the most faithful representation of the work. Ambiguity was a prominent topic in the reading as well, as Seidensticker really highlighted the challenges he had previously faced translating Kawabata’s work, which I found to be extremely interesting. His exploration of the excerpt from Snow Country made me realize how many things a translator must consider when working with such ambiguity, as well as how the dynamic between translator and author plays into how a translator must approach the unknowns within the literature.

E. Seidensticker, “On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari” (Tai)

 Seidensticker focuses on the difficulties that arise when translating very remote languages like Japanese and English. First he mentions how translations sometimes ruin the flow or rhythm of the original writing. An example he provides is the Japaense translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, more specifically, the statement: "Good, night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to rest." Compared to the English version, the Japanese translation had twice as many syllables, which meant that the rhythm is disturbed. 

Another problem is translating the ambiguity in the original writing, intentional or not. Seidensticker mentions the writer Kawabata, who he says is a "murkey" writer, meaning he doesn't explain himself. This causes a problem since editors usually demand clearness and thus, the translated work often has clearer writing than the original. If I were a translator, I would want to retain the ambiguity in a writer's work if it was unintentional, but there are times in writing where ambiguity serves a purpose.

Edward Seidensticker On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari (Micah)

 In this text, Seidensticker dives into the various nuances that arise when translating between two very unrelated languages such as Japanese and English. One example he cites is a translation of a line in Shakespeare's Hamlet. In English, the line he references is elegant not just for the meaning, but also because of its simplicity despite the meaning it carries. He points that this elegance is distorted when translating into Japanese though, as double the amount of syllables are used. Seidensticker says that this is an indication that the rhythm of the text is ruined, and I would agree that this is quite important especially for an artistic piece of writing that Hamlet is. 

Another issue that Seidensticker brings up is ambiguity. Many Japanese texts have passages that are left intentionally ambiguous, so the reader can come up with their own interpretation. He mentions that as a trasnslator, this becomes an issue as editors want a clear translation and can be quite troublesome when there is nothing to translate.

Aside from the issues that comes from translating text, Seidensticker brought up an interesting way to see how accurate a translation may be, which is comparing the number of proper nouns in the two versions of the text. If one is more than the other, it is sometimes considered to be a bad translation. Seidensticker does mention that using this metric can lead to the rhythm of the text to deteriorate. I think that the logic of this sort of test makes sense, but in practice I would imagine that the rhythm and readability of the text is more important in the quality of the translation.

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.

On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari (Jane)

 There were two topics in this article that really stuck out to me. The first one was the art of translating being compared to a counterfeiter. The idea that the author is always right is something even I have a hard time with when translating stories. The way an author wrote something may sound awkward or almost childish when being translated directly into English. I think it is the way that the sentences are broken up and the simplicity of some Japanese words. In reality, what Seidansticker is absolutely right and I completely agree with this analogy. The author wrote the story in a specific way because it is their creation that they wanted to publish. Who are we as translators to change that based on our own opinions? When wording sounds awkward, I think it is still the translators duty to continue to translate as closely to the original text as possible because, in the end, the translation is simply a way of sharing that author's work to other audiences, not critique the author on their product. In the example he gave on the conversation between the sick man and woman, he talks about how the point of the conversation may fly over some readers' heads. However, just like in English books that write in metaphors, sometimes the point of the story is to be confusing. If that is given away, the whole purpose, beauty if you will, of the story is taken away.

The other point that he brought up that I never thought about was the flow of the translation compared to the original, especially in terms of syllables. Sometimes, when I translate, I don't like the way a sentence sounds compared to the original and I never could understand why. I simply assumed it was because of my instinct, another trait that translators should have according to Seidansticker. However, it was the flow of the sentence compared to the original that was not the same at all in my translations. Over explaining can be detrimental to the translation even though it can provide some context that the audience would not understand due to cultural differences. This is where, I think, translators have to be careful and ensure that the addition of information does not take away from the flow or the purpose of the story.

Overall, Siedansticker brought up good points regarding the hardships that translators face when translating texts. One final thing I found interesting was just his tone while speaking. Seidansticker was not afraid to voice his opinions, whether they were controversial or not. He even blatantly brought up the tension between Japanese translator and English translators. 

Edward Seidensticker, On Nagai Kafu and Kawabata Yasunari (Racky)

 In this reading, Seidensticker introduces numerous interesting points regarding the translation of two completely different languages. He claims that translators constantly have to make choices in the process of translation. In numerous contexts, there are always better choices than others. Finding better choices is the translator's main job. In this reading, he does not just describe how translator makes decisions but also explains how critics see translators' works. Because critics are extremely busy reading through numerous papers, they often count the names in the original and translated texts. By doing so, they can compare with each other and easily point out their mistakes. In addition, Seidensticker describes his translational methods. He tries to translate as simply as possible because that is the only way that he can convey what the author really means to say in the texts. He has seen some translated work, which is better than the original work. Some people think that the translators have done a great job; however, Seidensticker thinks that the translated work should not be better than the original because if it is better than the original, it means the translators add something that they do not have to. He explains more about this by using Shakespeare's work.  One professor from Harvard or Oxford points out that Shakespeare has made many mistakes, and his work is not even close to perfect. For Seidensticker, nothing needs to be fixed when translating Shakespeare's work because imperfection makes it perfect. The same thing can be said for translation. Seidensticker believes that mistakes made by Shakespeare should be kept in the translated version. I thought it was interesting how Seidensticker has such an established idea about translation.

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.