Hibbett and Nathan

Near the end of the reading, Hibbett talks about the theory of translation and he agrees with Seidensticker that it is not helpful. There are two major kind of faults, or virtues as Hibbett says. The first is "naturalizing" the translation, or improving on it. One of the dangers of naturalizing the translation is that it will dilute its special flavor, to reduce the work to the natural idiom of the target language. In the process of flattening out the translation, it ends up bland and colorless style of what it was. Which Hibbett says happened to some of Natsume Soseki's translated works. The other virtue is failing to improve the work, or trying to not eliminate whatever in it might seem strange. I feel like the second virtue is something that I would fall into quite often if confronted by it.

Both of these readings were difficult to follow for me personally but something that struck out to me about the Nathan reading was regarding about the people who read Kenzaburo Oe. They say his language is translationese because he was read many foreign novels and he doesn't write in real Japanese, his Japanese has been poisoned, contaminated by modes of intention. Where Nathan defends it saying, "It's nonsense to say that it's traslationese. It's a language of his own which he has created, and it is at pains to be different to itself and strange to itself." This is something I just don't understand. And majority of the reading is based off this concept which lead to me not really understanding the majority of the reading. Nathan goes on talking about Mishima's Bitoku no Yokomeki and it's literal translation and says it is unstrained and moves along nicely which I don't understand because I do not get that impression when I read it. 

Brian