“Eight Ways to Say You” - Airi Hatori

After I read “Eight Ways to Say You” by Cathy Hirano, I could not resonate less with what she had to say regarding translating from both Japanese to English and English to Japanese. In her text, she mentions that 

“direct translations of English to Japanese often appear crude and abrasive insulting the reader's intelligence with their bluntness while direct translations of Japanese into English are often frustrating to read because they come across as emotional even childish and without any point or conclusive ending. “

I strongly agree with this text since I always find myself paying close attention to the Japanese text’s tone and mood behind the words and replicating the exact same tone and mood in English. Oftentimes, I take quite a long time to come up with the most accurate word in English. Like the sentence 「よろしくお願いします。」that we talked about in the very first class we had and a word such as 「めんどくさい」are the words that I have a hard time translating because there is no word in English that expresses the same nuance as those Japanese words. 

I also agree that you cannot directly translate sentences but fix them in a way that both English and Japanese both sound natural and seems as though the text is original. As a translator, I think that we sometimes need to fix the nuance and the wording of the direct translation of the original text to convey the author’s intention with the text and the nuance that was originally expressed.