Terry & Riggs

Terry

This article seemed very outdated. I checked the date, and it was published in 2009 but the ideas presented seemed very old-fashioned. For example, right from the beginning with the comparison between translations and women. Another out-of-date opinion Terry expressed was how he thought there are only 4-5 people who are truly Japanese and English bilingual. These seemed like very insulting, limited, and ignorant opinions. So, when reading the rest of this article, I’m not sure if I was just affected by this but I did not really agree with a lot of what he had to say about translations. I did like the analogy of a live dog being better than a dead lion and how that can apply to translations. However, there seemed to be a lot of generalizations and assumptions made about both English speakers and Japanese speakers. He uses a lot of phrases such as “almost every instance”, “nearly always”, and “never” which shows his narrow view on a lot of things. I think you should never assume any type of absolutism with the way that language works. His tone throughout is also kind of pretentious but I may just be biased at this point. I did like the examples that he provided for his pointers which seem helpful, but they can’t be used for every single instance. This is the same for the dead lion live dog analogy which is not applicable to every translator and type of translation. 

Riggs

This article, while also published in 2009, was a much easier read for me compared to the other one. It is also set out in a similar way, giving instructions and tips on translation.  Although it doesn’t have the same problem of outdated ideas, this article is much more vague. It doesn’t give any examples with its instructions to the point where if you replaced the word “Japanese” it could be about the translation of any other language. It was interesting to read, however, as it seems to deal with more of the method towards translation rather than the act of translating.  

 

Celine