It was very interesting to read the translator of older Japanese books that are difficult to translate. I think there were many places that show that Edward Seidensticker is a good translator. For instance, he really understands the translator’s job and makes sure that he reproduces the original book but in English. He says how sometimes people praise a translator for writing a better book than the original but that means the translator is not doing his/her job properly. I never thought of this before because when people say translation is better, they say it to praise the translator so I never questioned if it actually is supposed to be praise or not. Furthermore, until I read this piece, I did not know that the translated version of the book delivers clearer meaning than the original even though the original book has vague and ambiguous phrases. As a person who loves to read Japanese books, sometimes I feel that the ambiguity of sentences is what makes the book amazing and they are usually vague on purpose. However, I also think that it is almost impossible to translate Japanese into English and deliver the exact nuances and meaning because everything including the fundamental structure is different. He gave an example and tells how Kawabata does not like using subjects and how he sometimes have opinions on how Kawabata writes but it is not his job to provide advice to Kawabata. I related what he said here to the previous reading I did and I learned that to become a translator, it is very important to balance between delivering the meaning of the text and adjusting to the English readers.
Mitsy
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