Copeland Comments - Kadin

Quoted from the text: "When you translate, it is not just the word that you must consider but the power that resides around it. Obvious, perhaps, but not always easy to put into practice." As most of the other translators have said, it seems that Copeland also feels the same way about translation, in the fact that you must not focus on only words, but on the meaning of these words as a whole. 

I would also like to comment on Grotesque, specifically the streamlining part and how that would affect sales. I find it interesting, yet not surprising, that the psyche of an American audience and a Japanese audience would have different preferences for book genres and themes. As Copeland has said, a western audience prefers a more plot-driven book with a riveting storyline, rather than a conceptual book that focuses on themes. Going back on topic, I find that cutting scenes from a book to be quite unfaithful and disingenuous to the original, even if they were short. Not to mention the characters. Although it may appear to be insignificant through a western perspective, interpretation of a book is up to the readers, and I think that if major deletions were taken out of a book due to an assumed standpoint, it may add up to affect the reader's opinion on the book as a whole. On another note, I think that changing the cover of a book for a western audience does not really matter from a marketing standpoint.