Eight Ways to Say You - comment

 “Eight ways to say You: The Challenges of Translation” explores the difficulty that writers experience in translating between Japanese and English, due to the difference in culture, the nuance of language, humor, and many more aspect. I found this text very interesting since it touched on various aspects of both languages that I had never thought of.

The first thing that immediately shook me was the second paragraph, where the author describes translating as a process that is far from a mechanical one. This is a point that I have only just started to understand as I started this class as well, and it explains why my translation abilities are not great. For me, when I attempt to translate a Japanese text to English or vice versa, my focus goes more toward finding the most accurate word to translate in each sentence. However, what this text conveys is that there is a need to look at the sentence(s) or text as a whole, which comes from having a thorough understanding of the author’s intent and context of the text, which I never usually focus on. Context would also involve things like the style and tone of the writer in the source language, so I think that is a factor I would like to work on as I learn about translating. This also leads to the next point where the author mentions that clarity is stressed in English, while subtlety is preferred in Japanese. This again was a point that made sense immediately when I read it, but something I hadn’t thought about. It made me realize that these are the hidden obstacles that make translating difficult.

I definitely appreciated the examples that were involved in the text, as they made the whole explanation clearer. Of course, the translation of the word juku was interesting, as someone who’s been to juku but always struggled to accurately explain what it was to my friends. I’d always call it a tuition center, but I was never sure if people understood what it was. Moreover, I enjoyed the translation of the two conversations as it showed how subtle difference in the order of words and choice of wording has such a huge impact on accurately translating/capturing the nuance, as well as making the passage flow better.

Overall, I believe the passage gave me a great understanding of the basic obstacles in translating, and how to overcome it. I would like to continue to keep these in mind as I work on translating texts.

Kyu