The idea that translators aren't supposed to improve a work is interesting to me, because it's hard to tell if it's something I'm doing or not. Since I'm still inexperienced as a reader of Japanese, when I come across something that i think could be improved in English, I can't really tell whether it's part of the author's style and should be preserved, or if it's a byproduct of some quirk of the Japanese language. I think I tend to assume the latter, and prefer to try to make it easier to read in English, even if it might lose some of the nuance. I'd like to imagine that as I grow more experienced and read a larger variety of Japanese literature, I'll be able to appreciate and preserve those kinds of subtleties better.
The section on ambiguity in Japanese reminded me of a situation that often comes up in unofficial translations of serialized media. Occasionally, the translators will add clarity for the sake of making the writing work better in English, and those translations might end up incorrect when something is clarified later on in the series. Unofficial translations add to the issue, since they can't simply consult the author. While you can recreate vague statements in Japanese as vague statements in English, it's difficult to keep the implications one-to-one.
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