I found Seidensticker's views on translation very interesting. When he mentioned that translation is a very boring job if it wasn't difficult, I was quite taken aback as I personally would not think the same. I had thought that translating an easy, straightforward piece would make for a smooth and easy job, but I can kind of see why someone would think that translation, the process itself is fun. The work itself requires creativity and imagination after all. I understand his perspective, but I do not agree with him. I think the joy of translation comes from seeing a complete finalized piece.
Seidensticker also points out that translators should be perfect 'counterfeiters'. I like the way he uses that word. I agree that translators should try their best to translate the text that they were given with instead of finding ways to improve on it. The latter of which betrays the very point of translation after all. I think I would find it hard as well to not paraphrase often or to stick to a faithful rendition of the same lines all the time when translating. That in conjunction with an attempt to make a sentence flow smoothly makes for a very hard job. It really makes me think that 'counterfeiting' is not easy.
When Mishima Yukio gave Seidensticker a disquisition on how a japanese page should look, specifically the disposition of the 'light' Japanese kana and the 'dark' Chinese characters I was also surprised to find that page aesthetic was also something a translator should also care about; Given that Seidensticker said that 'it had nothing to do with literature'. Even as a Chinese person who can read both Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, I had never really thought of how it affects the beauty of a page at all until now.
No comments:
Post a Comment