Copeland comments - Kyu

I found this text interesting since it touched on the difficulty of translating dialects, which I had never thought about before. I think dialects are a huge part of Japanese culture, and although we don’t see it very often, it’s sad that the actual voices cannot be often translated accurately. Looking at the example given, I liked the approach of using words like “well… now… but I suppose”. I suppose this slightly adds an emphasis to the way things are mentioned in a dialect, but it also only seems to be effective because that’s the way the original text is (using “へえ“， “まあ”）. If the person was speaking in a normal tone instead of a questioning tone and in a dialect, I think that would pose a lot more difficulty. The lack of “realness” that translation creates and the fact that the English audiences aren’t able to even identify is sad.

The text also emphasized how complex language and voices are, and I found that fascinating. When Mrs. Akiko was helping Rebecca, the text mentioned that “she would explain the context, the colors, the emotive qualities of the language” using one metaphorical expression after another until he understood. The more I learn about translation, the more it amazes me because, in addition to all that, finding the right voice also requires you to be able to imagine yourself hearing the voices of those you are translating.

As a side note, I thought the part on the American and UK cover was funny since we talked about it last class on how they would often resort to putting a female (geisha) on the cover for marketing purposes. It’s like telling us that japan = geisha = people love it, and I think that almost degrades the art of literature that the authors create, so I hope designers continue to shift to focusing on using the content to create the cover, which I think is already being done now.