It was interesting to read the part on the translation of the title Manji. The reading talks about how Howard struggled to translate the title Manji, which is a Buddhist swastika symbol. There were attempts to translate this to words such as “Buddhist Cross”, but this didn’t really suggest much about the book. Ultimately, different metaphors were utilized to create the title, quicksand. The symbol looks like a fylfot, from Middle English, which is an ornamental device for filling up the floor of a painted window. Using the metaphoric connotation of it in Japanese, which involves a whirling of waters or something of that kind, Howard reached the title quicksand. While it is a different medium (sand, not water), because this was one of the ideas in the book, it worked. I had been thinking about / struggling with the translation of the title recently, and the fact that this level of thought can be put into it blew my mind. It’s interesting to understand that translating a title isn’t just about making it sound interesting but also about understanding the content and context.
Some other difficulties in translating that were discussed were, for example, the dialogue between a husband and wife where the text was written in a masculine and feminine voice which is easy to do in Japanese but not in English. Not only that but square Katakana was used for the masculine voice and soft hiragana for the woman. This made sense, and it also reminded me of the “Amenimo Makezu” by Kenji Miyazawa. I would need some time to think of a solution to this, but it reminded me how different languages can have different forms to emphasize certain things (which also makes translation difficult)
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