Thoughts on Seidensticker

I much enjoyed reading Seidensticker's article on his own experiences with translation. He is a very opinionated translator and human being it seems, but he brings up many intriguing points. His attitude about translation and his work is also very unique. When he says things like translation work is not perfect and will be flawed, it struck me as very negative in the first read-through, but then I found it sort of encouraging because you don't have an expectation to be perfect. He says that often there simply will not be a perfect choice or option, especially when considering single words, and it is ok to be imperfect. Like in the example of girl and woman in the story, Snow Country. It's also interesting that he doesn't think it is a compliment when it is said that your translation is better than the original. He doesn't believe surpassing the original is fulfilling the role of a translator, although better or worse is always subjective in my opinion. Seidensticker brings up the idea of clarity, similar to some of our other readings, which seems to be a much debated topic in translation, possibly even more so with Japanese translation. I agree with his statement that unintentional lack of clarity is not a good thing, and I think these nuances would be very difficult to deal with without being able to consult the author. One thing that was entirely new to me that he brought to my attention was the difference between writers who tend to use only traditional Japanese words, and those who also incorporate Chinese based vocabulary. I'm not at the level of Japanese yet where I can really see the differences, but I imagine they would give off a different feeling/mood as he says. Reading this excerpt, it also made me think, Seidensticker is a very good writer and I wonder if a good translator is always a good writer as well. Why does one choose to translate, instead of write their own stories if they have the ability to write well. I would be curious to know the answers of some translators to this question. 

Joanne