Seidensticker on Kawabata and Nagai

Seidensticker talked about the printed page in Japanese and how the way Chinese characters vs Japanese kana are on the page are sometimes intentionally chosen to make a visual effect on the page. This is an interesting visual stylistic choice, and I don’t think there is a way to translate that into any other languages (let me know if there is a language that can reproduce this effect), since Chinese is just full of Chinese characters, and English words don’t give a “dark” and “light” effect when typed on a page. Maybe this is unique to the Japanese language.

 

Regarding the Japanese professor sending Seidensticker a tabulation of the 45 translations of the verb omou, I think I am already started to see this in the translations for class where I’m using various English words such as “say”, “reply", “respond” for iu. Like Seidensticker says, there’s a large number of choices translators have and it’s up to them to decide which is the best fit, and interestingly, Seidensticker points out how intuition is a factor when judging what choice to make. I agree with him that sometimes the choices made are made because it sounds or feels right and can’t really be explained.

 

I find Seidensticker’s analogy of translators as counterfeiter very interesting and fitting. The translated version should not surpass the original nor be too lacking. And while translators shouldn’t be adding new things into the translation, transposition of sentences is fine if it works. I do think some transposition in translating from Japanese to English would help make the text flow more naturally.

 

To me, sometimes Japanese works seem really longwinded and yes, ambiguous, but that is part of the Japanese style. Similarly, English to Japanese may not translate well directly as well. For example, Hamlet’s repeated cry of “Vengeance!” sounds natural and emotional in English, but in Japanese, he “sounds like a leaky tire.” Various factors, such as culture and language, affect the way an audience reads a piece, and it is up to the translator to make sure the translated piece is able to resonate with their intended audience.

 

Tiffany