Book Covers

Dear Students,

As I have said in class, I would like you to write down your brief impressions about the article on book covers and the Chip Kidd video.
Here is the link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC0KxNeLp1E
And her is the link to the article:
https://www.cnbc.com/id/45541606

Nathan on Mishima and Oe Discussion Questions

1.  In the article, John Nathan mentions an essay by Walter Benjamin, in which he discusses the reine sprache.What do you think about the idea of the reine sprache as a philosophical idea and how do you think it relates to translation?

2. What would be your approach to handling the translation of style?  Do you side with those who say it's better to try and keep the original styling or those who say to just render it in your language?

3.  If we assume that individual style will almost always change or be lost in translation, can you think of anything else that is lost at the price of translation?  Do you think every translator must think about what is lost at the price of translation and what is worth struggling to fit into the target language? (i.e. things which are too language specific to fit into a target language vs things which can make a translation feel more natural to read)

Optional Bonus 4.  What do you think of Nathan's translation examples from Oe and Mishima?

Exciting Translation Event

Dear Students,

Please mark your calendars!

On November 19th, BU will host Hiroko Oyamada, a Japanese writer who won the Akutagawa Prize (the most prestigious literary prize in Japan) a few years ago. She will be reading from her book and conversing with her American translator, David Boyd (who will read some of his translation). David is a really talented young translator who won the Donald Keene Prize for his translation of Hideo Furukawa's Slow Boat a couple of years ago.

Another young literary translator, Sam Bett, will be interpreting. Sam will also visit our class the following day. So there are at least four reasons for you to come:
1. It will be about translation
2. You will see somebody interpreting between English and Japanese
3. It will count for Culture Pass
4. It should be interesting.

Hiroko Oyamada's book, The Factory, is to appear on October 29. I have ordered it and will post a few pages on Blackboard in English and in Japanese for you to look at before the event.

Discussion Questions for “On Tanizaki Jun’ichirō”

1.  In the interview, it says that Tanizaki is a master storyteller, and also lacked "shisho" or social/political concerns, and an outlook on life.  Do you believe that in translation it is more important to be a sort of storyteller who creates a fluent tale in English, or bring across the commentary within a work without bringing the fluent story aspect?

2.  In regards to the obscure author, do you think, like Hibbet says, attacking the text straightforwardly is the best way to translate it?  If not what would you try to do when the text in its own native language isn't clear?

3.  How do you feel about Hibbet's process of translating a work where he will read it until he knows it well, translate it, and then brings it back into Japanese again along with research without looking at previous translations until he has a full understanding, and has finished a draft.  Do you feel like there are any steps you don't agree with (for your own translations) or that there are some things that would perhaps change the value of the translation?

Questions for A Live Dog

1. Charles Terry's pointers for translation mainly focus on the translation of Japanese writing into English, and the ways that the rules of Japanese writing differs from what we are used to in English. Do you agree with his assertions that the majority of these common traits/"clichés" of Japanese written works need to be changed and/or removed in translation to make them read acceptably to English-speaking readers?

2. Terry uses a long sentence from the book Miyamoto Musashi to demonstrate the level of detail that is typical in Japanese writing. In his translation of it into English, he ends up removing a lot of these details because he believe that if he left them all in "an English reader would not bother to read it" and "would find it difficult to follow." Do you agree with his thought process, and do you think that his decision to be unfaithful to the original in this way makes it a better translation? Do you agree with his belief that his job as a translator is to "try to say what an English writer would have said"?

3. Terry lists a number of Japanese words that do not translate exactly into English, the main example being bunka. Given his examples and argument, do you agree with his assertion that "there are very few words in Japanese for which there is an exact equivalent in English"? Can you think of examples that are either in line with or go against this argument?

Discussion Questions For "Jumping Into the Pond" by J. Carpenter

1. In the text, the author finds it really difficult to translate Japanese words with similar meanings, for example, waku waku and doki doki. What she did was to go back to the original text and look at how the author of the book has conceived of them. Then she would translate these two words according to the specific contexts. 
  Do you think what she did is a good way to sovle this problem? And, can you come up with other Japanese words/ pharses that sharing similar meanings which make them difficult to be translated into English?

2. In the text, author mentions that when she was trying to translate a moive scene into Japanese, she intentionally changed the name of Ichiyama into Imaichi to translate"the spirit of wordplay" and capture the mood of what Jerry Lewis, another character in the movie, is doing with language. 
  Do you think such change is acceptable？Especially for audiences who can't understand the English, do you think it may change the way how audiences think of the movie?

3. In the text, author mentions that she "would never translate a mystery without knowing first who did it." 
  Do you think it is necessary for translators to read the whole novel first before starting to translate?