Howard Hibbet addresses the issue of translating the feminine “voice/tone/style,” a problem I’ve come across many times. At the end of Richie’s interview with Hibbit, Richie mentions that the long sentences in Manji are attributed to the feminine voice “as women tend to talk on and on” (50). This brought my attention to the idea of stereotypical gender roles, and mannerisms, and assigning such ideas to translations of the feminine voice could pose a problem now. I have always asked myself, when translating a feminine voice, whether my depictions could have sexist suggestions and I feel this is very important to consider. I wish that Hibbit spoke more about his specific methods in translating gendered voices in this interview.
He also mentions the difficulties of translating “dialect”– the particular “feeling” that reading dialect conveys. In my experiences translating dialect, I haven’t been able to find ways to translate the specific “feeling,” and having grown up bilingual, I have always felt the discrepancies between Japanese and English. There is always something lost or changed in translation.
Finally, Hibbit’s philosophy on translation–that he finds it “essential to translate into [one’s] native tongue” is interesting. I disagree with him. Perhaps one might have more ease translating into their native language, but one could have very good, adequate command of a second language.
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