It is intriguing to see Seidensticker making the statement that he took control on not making his translation better than the original texts, as I always find his version of The Tale of Genji is much easier to read than others. Besides, he pointed out many obstacles of translation such as communicating with the author and the editor. I’ve read the Snow Country in Chinese translation and read a little bit in its original language Japanese. I do find it was ambiguous in the way of not indicating the subject, as well as the implied information, and totally understand why Seidensticker says it is hard not to be clear when translating it into English. One more thing I found helpful from reading this interview record is the question that whether it is necessary to communicate with the original author, and according to Seidensticker, it seems that in a lot of cases the author could not help much. So I believe that although translating and writing seem to be similar activities——both of them are about writing in a person’s own language, they are actually different. I do not read much, but from my reading experience, I feel that a book conforms more or less to its author’s personality. As for reading in the original language, I know the author’s writing style and can get a feeling of what kind of person he/she is. However, I can hardly feel the translator from the book he/she translates, just like how the interpreters do as we talked about in last class. Though every translator has his/her own style of translating, in most cases, it is not in the way that he/she usually writes.
Linwei
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