Schleiermacher and Deutscher

Deutscher's reading makes me think of how languages influence a person's way of thinking. He addressed examples of languages such as Germany and Spanish to explain how people think of an object differently as if it were a man or woman. I feel it is similar that there are numerous words describing feelings in Japanese, and those words hardly appear in English. Or, to be more specific, Japanese has many different words describing the same feeling, and the differences really depend on nuances. A typical one is "aware," which is also one of my favorite Japanese words because I can use(or understand) it in whatever ways I want without making clear distinctions between the various meanings involved with it. But when translating it into English, I must understand and try to choose the exact feeling that the author wants to express. Besides, I really like Deutscher's points that languages oblige a person's way of thinking and the example of "the sexual identity of the neighbors" that he gave. I never thought about this topic in this straightforward way. To address the discussion question, I agree that my thought is certainly influenced by my first language, in the same way that Deutscher mentioned——I'm not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action."

Schleiermacher's reading brings out the similar debate we've met before: whether to be more faithful to the author or be more friendly to the readers. I agree with his idea that the translators have to choose a strategy of whether to reshape the original text for readers to understand or preserve the text and let the readers try to understand new ways of thinking. I think this problem can not be generalized into a polar situation as well. Sometimes it's better to preserve the contents, but sometimes it's better to preserve the voice rather than the contents. For example, suppose the book has many contents relying on the historical background and traditional customs, as a reader. In that case, I would like to learn more about them and thus hope that the translator could preserve the original texts as much as possible. So as a translator, I would prefer to leave the reader for such books. But for translating other genres of books, I may not choose to do so. I think it's crucial to keep thinking of Schleiermacher's theory every time I do translations.

 

Nina