Regrets!

Last week, I voiced my skepticism about Cathy Hirano’s claim that Japanese writing styles tend to favor ambiguity and English writing styles prefer clarity. After reading Edward Seidensticker’s presentation on Nagai Kafu and Yawabata Yasunari, I now find Hirano’s claim more relevant than I previously thought.

 

Seidensticker believes that intuition has often guided his decisions in translation, but also admits that his intuition differs from that of the author. Whereas Seidensticker translates thinking his editors would ask for clarity, Kawabata writes intending to incorporate ambiguity in his literature. A translator can try to “improve” the writing by editing it and making it accessible to its English audience, but this diminishes the value of the original work. A translator is a counterfeiter, Seidensticker concludes, because their job is not to prettify the original but to deliver it as is.

 

I realized my own mistakes when I read the counterfeiter metaphor. When I translate, I tend to rewrite lengthy paragraphs in an original text into short, punchy sentences. I always thought I was so smart writing things that the authors could not think of, but now I realize I was not doing the job of a translator; I was doing the job of a fan-fiction writer. Seidensticker sometimes disagree with the original author on clarity and ambiguity in their writing styles, and I too share similar experiences in which I felt the author’s writing style was clumsy. I now agree with Cathy Hirano that I need the humility to accept that the original writers have a purpose behind their writing styles.

 

- Marcus