1. How does Seidensticker feel about improving upon works when creating the translation? Does he feel this a beneficial or harmful thing to do?
2. What are some of the difficulties that Seidensticker faced while translated Kawabata's works into English? In what ways was his work a "challenge" to translate?
3. Why does Seidensticker think that Kawabata is a good writer? To clarify, what "style" does he use in his writing and how is this remarkable?
1. He thinks translated text should not be better than the original one because if it does then the translator is doing something else to the text not just translating. But he also admits that it is hard to not improve the original text.
ReplyDelete2. Seidensticker feels that it is difficult to put Kawabata's words into English because Kawabata doesn't always explain what he says. Seidensticker had to guess most of the time when he translates Kawabata's works because of the intentioned ambiguity left in the books. I think what particularly challenges Seidensticker is that the subjects in Kawabata's book are often unclear so when translating it's hard to be faithful to the original text and fulfilling the editors' requirements at the same time.
3. He thinks Kawabata's mix of traditional style of writing and modern subjects in writing makes him a great writer. Kawabata is connecting the old and new.
1. Seidensticker doesn't exactly reach a solid conclusion on this matter, probably because there is no perfect solution. He does seem to believe that places where the author seems unintentionally vague should perhaps be reconsidered, but instances of deliberate vagueness are often better translated more directly when possible.
ReplyDelete2.For Seidensticker, Kawabata's writing was often ambiguous, and left him no choice but to make educated guesses in some instances.
3.That Seidensticker found so many different meanings in the usage of single Japanese words in Kawabata's writing is the most remarkable point to me
1. Seidensticker believes that it is not right to improve works when creating the translation, because making the translation better than the original essentially means that the translator is doing a bad job.
ReplyDelete2. The biggest challenge Seidensticker seemed to face was the ambiguity in Kawabata’s writing, from confusion in who the subject of a sentence is, to very subtle details that completely change the characters’ attitudes. Seidensticker had trouble distinguishing what was intentionally left unclear, and what was just bad writing.
3. Seidensticker thinks that Kawabata is a good writer because although his style is very old-fashioned and “so Japanese” (being a man of few words), the topics that he covers in his writing such as “loneliness, fragmentation, impossibility of love” are very modern.