A core aspect of Seidensticker's belief system that immediately stuck out to me was the idea of translators as "counterfeiters". You cannot recreate the words of another into a new language perfectly, it simply cannot be done; that loss of control is immensely frustrating to realize. There is no such thing as an impeccable translation job, for there will always be morsels of meaning lost to the sands of interpretation.
He says that in order to be a "successful" counterfeiter, it is necessary to recreate every single detail of the original as best as you can, without change. This leads to another core belief of his: translators should not improve upon the work they are translating. I find it particularly interesting, because when translating two languages as far apart as English and Japanese- where you must make hundreds of thousands of minute decisions that completely alter how the story is perceived- it is painstakingly difficult to maintain the mindfulness required to recreate the text-- to make a successful counterfeit.
No comments:
Post a Comment