Hibbett Comments - Kadin

In regards to translating masculine and feminine voices, I honestly have no idea how I would tackle the issue of square or flowy katakana. I think that the most straightforward solution is to simply use different fonts for both, specifically a font with more sharp edges for a masculine voice and one with rounder edges (possibly even a bubbly style) for the feminine voice. Though by doing this, I think it kind of diminishes the uniqueness or even aesthetical look of the page itself. Much like how everyone's handwriting is unique, normalizing that uniqueness into a simple text font would make the text seem somewhat half-hearted to me. One solution I came up with is to try and make up your own font specifically for the text - which in this case would be The Key. You write out the characters/katakana just the way you imagined it, and then proceed to scan each of them one by one, which sounds kind of insane, but in the end you would end up with a perfectly unique font style at the cost of going through the tedious process. I am not sure how realistic this method would be, but I thought that it would at least be able to preserve the authenticity of the style of the book.

Maintaining this aesthetical of a book, whether its the cover or simply the structure of the text, links to what Hibbett points out later in the text, that naturalizing will end up "diluting the special flavor" of the text, to which I agree with. I think that every good book creates its own tone and setting, and the difficulty in translating requires to perfectly execute that same vibe without sounding weird. Although most of the translators in which we have done readings on suggests that a true and honest translation is what's considered a successful translation. In my opinion, I think that the definition of a "successful" translation also requires a full incorporation of the same themes from the original book into its copy; If the translated text can move the reader the same way it did in the original, then it has served its purpose, has it not?