I really enjoyed reading Deutscher’s musings on the ability of language. If I’m not wrong, I read some of Whorf’s ideas or very similar ones in a language and neuroscience class I took my first year of college. That said, I like how he differentiates between what we convey and if we can convey certain things. I think the implication of the ‘things we must convey’ has implications for translation: namely, almost necessitating adding things, or making things which had been made vague explicit or vice versa. I find the rumination on how it could possibly affect gender norms and culture interesting as well, and I think that could lend into how localization tends to occur, recalling the example of the case of the explanation of the girl’s self-consciousness in the work translated by Carpenter and Mizumura.
The dilemma that Schleiermacher presents is one we have essentially been discussing for a lot of class, though I appreciate how he goes over it— do we localize things to provide a similar reading experience or keep things faithful to a T? I’m still not entirely sure where I stand on this. I think there are some works where the fact they are slower and meandering as in Japanese contributes to the overall effect of the story, so being faithful would be appropriate. That said, as in the case of ‘Grotesque’, i instinctively find myself against how the editors changed or sections of the book to keep it fast paced and provide an experience that is just as enjoyable to American audience as the Japanese audience. That said, there is truth that a perfect translation would risk sounding unnatural, and that may give the reader a changed experience as well. I think the best one can do is try to manage between the two to the best they can.
Reshma
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