Cathy Hirano's "Eight Ways to Say You"

The title of this article really stuck out to me because I was just writing a paper on Micheal Lucey's "Never say I" this summer in which he addresses this linguistic phenomenon-- non-referential social indexicality. I noticed that this type of index occurs in high context cultures and languages such as Japanese. In Japanese, pronouns index gender and social class and Hirano perfectly communicates the difficulties of translating these pronouns into English. Her example with the second person pronoun "kimi" and the way she translated it was very enlightening to me. The pronoun, as she writes, when used by a child, can come off as "snobbish", and her solution to translating this same air was to incorporate the snobbish sense in a different statement. She chose the phrase "I presume" to encapsulate the same feeling and I felt that it worked very well.

 Hirano's approach to literary translation is very well rounded and informed and the fact that she can work with the author really enhances her work process. She describes translating from Japanese to English as requiring "strenuous cultural and mental gymnastics" which I found very apt. Much practice is needed in order to produce a good translation when culture is so difficult to translate. She describes her approach to translating words such as “juku” as a “balancing act”, adding additional description to convey the essence of the term, and her translation of culture specific humor as “a compromise” that retains humor, but loses precise meaning. Her approach is foreignization when required and subtle domestication. I found Hirano’s methods of translation to be a sensible and balanced approach to the common obstacles within Japanese to English translation.

 

Suis