Carpenter Reading

I thought that Carpenter’s discussion about her translation of Welcome to Mozart was very compelling because I never really thought about the difficulty of translating words such as doki doki and waku waku. There aren’t many English words that directly translate to these feelings and I loved reading about how the author thought of ways to get around these obstacles. I know that in future assignments, I will have to learn strategies in order to convey a meaning that is difficult to say in English. 

Additionally, I really enjoyed her metaphor that translation is like coloring in a coloring book. You are free to color with whatever color you like, however, you have to follow the outlines of the original picture. You cannot take out something that was there and if you change something, you have to have a reason to do it. This translation class really helped me understand the necessity of reasoning and the intention behind it. When professor Elliot tells us to write our strategy behind our translations I didn’t really understand it at first, but I then realized that you have to give reasoning behind certain changes you made in the original text. When discussing the texts other people handed in, I realized that there is an almost infinite amount of possibilities you can have to translating a text, you just need to give your thought process behind it and also understand the author’s intent.

I'm so sorry this is so late, I realized that I had this comment written down in October (I added a few things) but I somehow forgot to hand it in. 

Godayol Reading Questions

1) Godayol and Chamberlain both see a use of sexual language and metaphors in translation theory, and both propose their own respective take on the larger trends and "eras" of this history, do you agree with this? What sort of influences do you think may have resulted in such an abundance of sexual and sexist metaphors in translation studies? Do you agree with the division of these periods of time into three eras as Godayol describes them? 

2) The Third Age as Godayol describes it has introduces many terms for the middle zone that exists between the translation and the source text, different from each other in many ways. Which term for this middle zone do you prefer, and why? 

3) The retaking of myths such as Pandora's box in order to represent translation is a step forward in moving on from the sexist dialogues and metaphors of old because it can serve as a metaphor for the confusion and fear that we might have of the unknown, what other myths and legends could be reused for the same purposes? 

Hofstadter Reading

Google Translate works well I think for the general public who only want to quickly have something translated to another language that they understand. For this purpose, Google Translate is a fine translator, most of the time. However, that does not mean that Google Translate is without flaws. I agree with Douglas Hofstadter's point of Google Translate being "shallow" in the terms that it essentially takes the words at the surface level and directly translates. This sometimes results in wacky and wonky translations. This is potentially harmful as it could skew someone's understanding of a language if they were to just use Google Translate without any knowledge on the language beforehand. 

An example of a machine translation:

いつも低気圧低血圧ダブルパンチ

 I got this sentence from Twitter, and it translate directly to 

Always low pressure low blood pressure double punch

 It does quite make sense, but I feel that it is still understandable.

-June

Hofstadter Reading

 I agree that “no reasonable person thinks that a machine translation can ever achieve elegance and style,” and I agree with her statement that “translation is an incredibly subtle art that draws constantly on one’s many years of life experience, and on one’s creative imagination.” Machine translation are improved these years, but I still don’t think it can exceed the transactions by human translators. As what we’ve read last week, translators do not translate, they interpret, and machine can hardly interpret perfectly. Though sometime machine may be more accurate on word-to-word translation, I don’t think that is the most important part in translation. 

Machine Translation Example:

二十億光年の孤独

Two billion light years of loneliness

人類は小さな球の上で

Mankind is on a small sphere

眠り起きそして働き

Wake up and work

ときどき火星に仲間を欲しがったりする

Sometimes I want a companion on Mars

火星人は小さな球の上で

Martians on a small sphere

何をしてるか　僕は知らない

I don't know what you're doing

（或はネリリし　キルルし　ハララしているか）

(Or is he sick and he is sick?)

しかしときどき地球に仲間を欲しがったりする

But sometimes I want a companion on Earth

それはまったくたしかなことだ

That's quite certain

万有引力とは

What is universal gravitation?

ひき合う孤独の力である

The power of loneliness

宇宙はひずんでいる

The universe is distorted

それ故みんなはもとめ合う

Therefore everyone is clamoring for each other

宇宙はどんどん膨んでゆく

The universe is steadily expanding

それ故みんなは不安である

Therefore everyone is anxious

二十億光年の孤独に

Two billion light years of loneliness

僕は思わずくしゃみをした

I sneeze involuntarily

 

Nina

Hofstadter

 

This reading was very interesting and it is definitely such a relevant topic. For me personally, the thing that google translate is best for is when I suddenly can't remember a word in either Chinese or English and I do a quick lookup. Or when I am looking for the exact wording of something that I am forgetting. I thought that it is usually pretty accurate for single-word searches. However, throughout the process of my translation project, I realized that it definitely is good as a multi-purpose translation device and is not so good for very accurate/applicable translation of words. Jisho has a better translation most of the time with google translate being just a little bit off. I really don't think that AI could ever replace the work of a translator because language is much too multi-layered and each translator brings to the table different interpretations and understandings. Especially for much longer works AI would not be able to link together themes and motifs that could run throughout which means there needs to be particular focus on certain words etc. 

A little unrelated but this sentence really perfectly describes how I feel when I am translating. "Whenever I translate, I first read the original text carefully and internalize the ideas as clearly as I can, letting them slosh back and forth in my mind." "Slosh" is really the best word for it. 

Machine translation example from my translation project Midorikashi

新しいそうな洋風の二階建てだった。広い庭に芝生が生えていて、稲のより濃い緑色が鮮やかだった。人工芝かもしれない。私のうちの庭は、毎日草をむしっていた祖母がいなくなって草ぼうぼうになってしまった。

Google translate:

It was a new Western-style two-story building. There was a lawn in the large garden, and the darker green color of the rice was bright. It may be artificial turf. My garden has become grassy because my grandmother, who was weeding every day, is gone.

My translation:

It was a two-story western-style building that appeared quite new. It had a spacious garden with grass a vivid dark green that outshone the rice plants. Might be artificial grass. The grass in our garden had become rampant without my grandmother’s careful weeding every day.

Celine

Hofstadter Reading

 In the past I used to be worried about machine translations and what they could mean, but ultimately the limitations of the programs and algorithms used right now can in my mind only be overcome with an ability to comprehend and grasp the context in which a text finds itself in. Literal translations for one, are not always the best translation, very rarely so if I had to say so myself. And if there was an AI that could understand and process enough context to produce a translation like a human would, that is, considering factors like how the response the words it chooses to use would have on a potential reader, then in my mind there are way bigger problems to think about than human translators being obsolete. Humans in general would be obsolete if it ever came to that.

A good example would be something simple, like to be or not to be: that is the question, and from GoogleTL and DeepL are the following translations: 

生きるべきか、死ぬべきか：それが問題です

To be or not to be: that is the question

Machine translation being what it is now, mostly drawing from already existing translations, popular searches like Shakespeare default to mostly what is the most popular translations, and you can clearly see where it adds its own flair with the desu ending, which is a very odd choice for the context, while DeepL just outputs English. the following line, whether tis' nobler in mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? results in the following, from GoogleTL and DeepL, respectively: 

苦しむ心の中で気高いかどうか。 とんでもない幸運のスリングと矢、またはトラブルの海に対抗するために、そして反対することによってそれらを終わらせるために？

悩むことが心の中では尊いのか？悩む方が心の中では崇高なのでしょうか？それとも悩みの海に武器を持って立ち向かい、それを終わらせる方がいいのでしょうか？

Which, in my mind, displays the limitations of machine translation in it's current iteration. The GoogleTL translation is 95% of an already existing translation, with particles and such changed, while DeepL defaults to what it does best, word-for-word translations of nouns and verbs and recasting into English word order, except it makes a mistake and outputs the first line twice. More than anything this is likely due to the fact that GoogleTL has had more requests for that particular line than DeepL does, causing it to default to the most popular translation plus or minus a few particles, while DeepL gets none and therefore defaults to a 'proper' machine translation. 

The faults of GoogleTL are that it currently, and DeepL also to an extent, work on existing translations without full context, and without existing translation it defaults to translations that have the same problems (albeit less of them) that machine translations have always had. 

 

Steven C.

Hofstadter Reading

Hofstadter talked about how the current Google Translate cannot replace human translation. Although I agree that there is still a long way from AI translation to fully replace human translation, I wished he had explained more about the AI-translated version instead of simply saying "it makes no sense at all." For instance, the sixth oddity in the Chinese example "made no sense" as it was a direct translation. I feel it would have been more persuasive if he was able to point out these details in which how Google Translate went wrong by directly translating the words.

In addition, I also threw the original text in Hofstadter's example to Google Translate, as I was curious if there were any differences from Hofstadter's results. Google Translate still couldn't catch the gender difference in its French translation, but it was able to translate "her car" and "his car" from Hofstadter's French version. Next, Google Translate's English translation of the German text was now able to get the term "female scholars." It also translates the term in quotation marks as "odd ones" instead of "odd." Nonetheless, it still got the German Habilitation as habitation. For the Chinese example, Google Translate now had only one out of the six oddities left: the name "Yongying" was translated as "Yongxuan." However, it got "walk in the south study" for the term in quotation marks.

Despite the improvement of Google Translate, I still thought Hofstadter's version had a better flow. I liked how he said that understanding involves having ideas, and this is indeed something the current machine translation cannot achieve.

Machine Translation Examples:

吾妻照夫。享年二十八。杉並区桃井の環状八号線路上にて、乗用車に撥ねられ、四月二日に死亡。六年前に三人の女子高生を次々と誘拐、十日から二週間にわたって監禁、暴行を続け、最終的には殺害している。裁判では精神鑑定の結果、犯行時は心神喪失状態にあったと診断され、無罪になっている。

Teruo Azuma. Twenty-eight years of enjoyment. He died on April 2 after being hit by a passenger car on the Ring Road No. 8 in Momoi, Suginami-ku. Six years ago, three high school girls were kidnapped one after another, confined and assaulted for two weeks from the 10th, and eventually killed. At the trial, as a result of a psychological examination, he was diagnosed as having a state of dementia at the time of the crime and was acquitted.

やることのなくなった駅員は、自然と声かけをするようになった。通勤、通学。これから一日を始められる皆様に、少しでも元気をお分けしたい、などというおこがましい考えとは少し違った。むしろ、この仕事がサービス業であることに気づいた。その方が、心境としては近かったと思う。あるいは、退屈な業務に何かしらのやり甲斐を見出したかった、とか。

The station staff who had no choice but to speak naturally began to speak. Commuting to work or school. It was a little different from the nasty idea of wanting to give everyone a little energy to start the day. Rather, I realized that this job was a service industry. I think that was closer to my feelings. Or maybe he wanted to find something worth doing in his boring work.

もしこのまま出向いて、ちょっと調べているうちに自殺と検死結果が出たら、どうなる。殺人班の刑事は用なしになり、すごすごと本部に戻ってくる破目になる。そんなときに限って、自分たちがやるはずだった事件はもうどこか別の班に横取りされており、しかもそれがマスコミに大きく取り上げられ、拳句、派手な逮捕劇で幕を閉じたりする、かもしれないではないか。

What if I go out like this and get suicide and autopsy results while I'm doing some research? The detectives of the murder team are useless, and it becomes a breach to return to the headquarters. Only in such a case, the case that we were supposed to do has been taken over by another group, and it was taken up by the media, and the curtain was closed with fists and flashy arrest plays. Isn't it possible?

Iris

Hofstadter reading

 It's clear that currently, Google translate stands no chance against someone actually well versed in the language in terms of precision and understanding, since AI have yet the capability to think. The ways that machines learn is through the accumulation of data and simulation, it works well for black and white things such as chess or Go, where through countless simulation and history, a best move can be calculated. But for something like language where different expressions exist or phrases can have double meanings, then one's own judgement is important in order to understand the underlying meaning. Right now it's impossible but who knows what will happen.

Machine Translation Examples

注文しても空振りが多く、キャベツおかわりしても1時間来ない。そもそも焼き方が下手。やったことは無いがここで食べ放題はやめた方が良さそう。

(Translated by Google)
Even if you place an order, there is a lot of swinging, and even if you change cabbage, it will not come for an hour. In the first place, how to bake is poor. I've never done it, but it seems better to stop all-you-can-eat here.

8階のせいか空いています。
安くていいですね

(Translated by Google)
It is on the 8th floor, I am free.
It's good to cheap

 

Jon 

Machine Translation

 The article made a very good point in mentioning that machines cannot translate elegantly. Machine translation is a computer taking a set of words and following a script void of feeling, native intuition or better judgment. For my example, I chose a dictionary/translation website that I found useful in translating phrases and words/kanji that jisho.org cannot process. ＊these short passages are from my final project＊

ーAriel

白樺(しらかば)林(はやし)に囲まれたお部屋心地(ここち)よい()静寂(せいじゃく)に癒(いや)される。日常にちじょうから離はなれた一軒いっけん宿やどならではの、心地ここちよい静寂せいじゃくに包つつまれた時間をお過すごしください。

Birch Shirakabayashi Hayashi is surrounded by a gentle and healed with a quiet silence. Have a few days left from everyday life, and spend a lot of time wrapped in a pleasant silence of the comfortable quietness

本館の中にある古民家を移築再生した重厚なお造りのお部屋で角部屋で、明るく広い間取りになっております。

It is a bright and large distance in a corner room in a heavy built room that has relieved an old housing in the main building.

Ariel

Comments on Hofstadter

    The inevitable issue we have to discuss when on the topic of machine translation is the concern surrounding AI advancement. With the worry surrounding robots eventually taking over human jobs, perhaps the same worry is present in AI translating in place of humans. However, in my opinion, AI translation can never replace that done by humans.

    In the article, Hofstadter brings up the idea of the possibility of doing translation without understanding the original. Can it be good despite the lack of understanding? At least now, AI translation cannot, as the article demonstrates. All the various aspects of translation we discussed in class and read in our readings – omitting words, rewording sentences, and more – AI currently lack the ability to consider. It’s difficult for a machine to translate the nuances in people’s words, and their speech styles. On the contrary, an AI strives to decode as directly as possible, without any creativity and imagination present in human translation.

    Machine translation is still a powerful tool, and its technology has improved immensely over the past few years, but will it ever surpass human translation? If that day ever comes, it certainly isn’t anytime soon.


Machine Translation Example:


Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

これらは誰の森か私は知っていると思います。
彼の家は村にあります。
彼は私がここで止まるのを見ないでしょう
彼の森が雪でいっぱいになるのを見る。

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

私の小さな馬はそれが奇妙だと思わなければなりません
近くの農家なしで立ち寄る
森と凍った湖の間
一年で最も暗い夜。

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

彼はハーネスのベルを振る
何か間違いがないか尋ねる。
他の唯一の音はスイープです
やさしい風と綿毛のようなフレーク。

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

森は美しく、暗く、深く、
しかし、私には守る約束があります、
そして、私が寝る前に何マイルも行く、
そして、私が寝る前に何マイルも行く。

Alex

 

Hofstadter reading

I think it is pretty obvious that AI translation fails at translating more complicated sentences. While AI has evolved to do many tasks that can best humans like in chess or jeopardy. Those tasks revolve on something that has a definite outcome like the best move or a correct answer. But I don't think translation always has a 'correct answer'. I believe there are many approaches you can take to translation. 

AI translation can't think, or at least how a human does, outside of what is given to it because it has to formulate a situation with what is presented. If you give a google translate a passage with context about its situation, it still won't be able to understand it. Unlike if you give AI a chessboard with pieces, it will be able to find the best move for that turn. There are things between the lines that AI or google translation can't understand. Even words that have multiple meanings or meanings that aren't explicitly written in dictionaries won't be translated correctly. AI in its current state won't be able to translate elegant sentences into another language (I don't even think it can translate Shakespeare into modern English) but maybe in the distant future it can, but maybe by the time that happens AI might have already taken over the world. Who knows. 

Machine translation example:

山路来て なにやらゆかし 菫草

Come on the mountain road

閑さや 岩にしみいる 蝉の声

The voice of a cicada squeezing into a quiet rock

秋深き 隣は何を する人ぞ

What do you do next to me in the deep autumn?

 

Brian

Hofstadter Comments

 It's hard to understand why AI cannot successfully translate, even between languages with similar grammar patterns and origins. Especially compared to all the other things that modern AI is now capable of. Context is key here, I have found that using google translate and other machine translators, that the main issue is words that technically have the same meaning are used within a strange or incorrect context. For example, the colloquial "cool" in English, meaning any number of positive things, may be translated as cold or chilly in another language and completely alter the meaning of the sentence. If only the AI could also understand the meaning of the text, it would be able to choose synonyms that worked within the specific situation. Not to mention elements that are untranslatable as we have discussed in this class such as the lack of gendered language in English as there is in French or Spanish. 

Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot
But the Grinch who lived just North of Whoville did not!

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.

It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.

But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

フービルにいるすべての人はクリスマスがとても好きでした

しかし、Whovilleのすぐ北に住んでいたグリンチはそうではありませんでした！

グリンチはクリスマスが嫌いでした！ クリスマスシーズン全体！

さて、理由を聞かないでください。 誰もその理由をよく知りません。

おそらく、彼の靴がきつすぎたのかもしれません。

それは彼の頭がちょうどよくねじ込まれていなかった可能性があります。

しかし、私はすべての最も可能性の高い理由だと思います

彼の心臓が2サイズ小さすぎたのかもしれません。 

-Joanne

Hofstadter reading

Hofstadter talks about how machine translations replace human translators and how he does not agree with this idea. Although I understand that machine translations such as Google translate are very useful, I am also against the idea of machine translators fully replacing humans. Google translate does a great job when translating simple sentences, in fact, Google translates helped me a lot when I was learning English. However, when it comes to complicated sentences like in literature, I feel that Google translate often fails to capture the actual meaning. Hofstadter mentioned how machine translation has always to “decode” instead of focusing on trying to get machines to translate well, and I thought this is a great statement and I fully agree with this. Hofstadter then gives some examples of machine translation versus his own transaction. I was not familiar with the foreign language used there, German, however, I was able to see the clear difference between Hofstadter’s translation and the machine translation. I was able to see how the slight difference in phrasing can change the impression of the sentences even if it conveys the exact same meaning such as “defeat” and “lost war.” He also emphasized how we, humans, internalize ideas and not words, while machine translations only translate words. When thinking back, I also internalize ideas as a whole when translation rather than just words. Lastly, I thought the statement he makes, which is “translation is an incredibly subtle art that draws constantly on one’s many years of life experience, and on one’s creative imagination,” is very interesting because I never thought that translation is imagination. 

Example of machine translation:

バイデン米大統領は29日、新型コロナウイルスの新たな変異型「オミクロン型」の感染拡大を巡り「現時点でロックダウン（都市封鎖）は考えていない」と述べた。米経済の回復に水を差す行動規制の導入を避ける意向を示した。

US President Joe Biden said on the 29th that he was "not thinking about lockdown (city blockade) at this time" over the spread of the new variant "Omicron type" of the new coronavirus. He has indicated his intention to avoid introducing behavioral regulations that would impede the recovery of the US economy.

バイデン氏はオミクロン型について「懸念する理由だが、パニックになる理由ではない」と強調し、国民に冷静な対応を呼びかけた。米国内では感染例が確認されていないが「遅かれ早かれ米国で見つかるだろう」と指摘した。

Mr. Biden emphasized that the Omicron type was "a reason to worry, but not a reason to panic," and called on the public to respond calmly. No cases of infection have been confirmed in the United States, but he pointed out that "sooner or later it will be found in the United States."

既存のワクチンがオミクロン型にどれくらい効果があるか把握するには「数週間かかる」と語った。同型に対応する新たなワクチンが必要になった場合、「あらゆる手段を使って開発や供給を加速させる」と意欲を示した。

He said it would "take weeks" to figure out how effective existing vaccines are against the Omicron type. When he needed a new vaccine for the same type, he said he would "accelerate development and supply by all means."

現時点で既存のウイルスに対応するためにも、接種完了から半年たった人にはブースター接種（追加接種）を受けるよう求めたほか、未接種の人は早く受けるよう促した。屋内の混雑した場所ではマスクを着けるよう呼びかけた。

In order to deal with the existing virus at this point, we asked people who had been vaccinated six months after the completion of vaccination to receive booster vaccination (additional vaccination) and urged those who had not been vaccinated to receive vaccination as soon as possible. He called on him to wear a mask in crowded areas indoors.

米疾病対策センター（CDC）のワレンスキー所長も29日、18歳以上の人はブースター接種を「受けるべきだ」と推奨する声明を出した。これまでは各個人のリスクに基づいて決められるとしてきた。

Warensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), also issued a statement on the 29th recommending that people over the age of 18 "should" be vaccinated with boosters. So far, it has been said that it is decided based on the risk of each individual.

バイデン氏は、今冬の新型コロナ流行を抑えるための計画を12月2日に発表すると明らかにした。「ロックダウンではなく、ブースター接種を含むワクチンの普及や検査体制の拡充で対応する」と説明した。

Biden said he would announce plans to curb the new corona epidemic this winter on December 2. "We will respond by expanding vaccines and testing systems, including booster vaccination, rather than lockdown," he explained.

米国は29日から南アフリカなど8カ国からの入国禁止措置を実施した。バイデン氏は「（米国内での感染拡大は）止められないが遅らせることができる。多くの対応を迅速に取れる時間ができる」と措置の正当性を訴えた。

The United States has implemented immigration bans from eight countries, including South Africa, from the 29th. "(The spread of the infection in the United States) is unstoppable but can be delayed. We have time to take a lot of action quickly," Biden said.

一方、ニューヨーク市は29日、オミクロン型の感染拡大をにらみ、ワクチン接種の有無にかかわらず屋内でのマスク着用を「強く推奨する」と発表した。同市はすでに公共交通機関や病院、学校でのマスク着用を義務付けている。同市の保健当局幹部は「ニューヨークでも近くオミクロン型の感染が確認されると予測している」との認識を示した。

On the other hand, New York City announced on the 29th that it is "strongly recommended" to wear a mask indoors regardless of vaccination, in view of the spread of Omicron type infection. The city has already mandated masks on public transport, hospitals and schools. A senior health official in the city said, "We expect to see an Omicron-type infection in New York soon."

 

Mitsy

Steiner and Bellos comments

 Honestly, Steiner's hermeneutic motion makes a lot of sense to me, at least in a historical context. To some extent I believe the motions of trust, aggression and incorporation make enough sense in the history of Japanese to English translation at least, that I would not disagree with. To elaborate, early translations of Japanese works were to my understanding, fairly neutral and 'trusting,' at least until late Edo-early Meiji era translations, which are almost violently domesticating and bereft of their original form, as well as being in some ways condescending to the source texts and languages, in particular the translation of waka, which sometimes had its form changed to an iambic pentameter poem with a rhyme scheme. Comparing this to now where Japanese pop culture, started and fueled by translation, is now fairly commonplace, and even words like umami are used much more acceptingly by the people. All in all invasion, extraction, and bringing home may seem like very visceral descriptions, historically I believe this to be true nonetheless. 

The idea of selective foreignism is very interesting, and I think something most translators eventually find themselves grappling with as they work their ways through publishers and bosses. In regards to the prompts posted though, I think the line you draw when you consider keeping foreignizing elements ultimately has to end with the individual translator and their loyalties. Some may draw the line and removing honorifics in the translation, and others might not care what foreignizing elements are cut out entirely. Personally I fall towards the latter, probably, but I can certainly understand wanting to keep as many elements as possible, especially when they carry so much contextual weight as they do in Japanese. 

 Steven

Steiner and Bellos

Steiner writes about the idea of how translations are an exchange of elements and are meant to be balanced. He talks about even though there are things lost in translation, there are things that are enhanced through the process. Even though it is hard to achieve the ideal to find the potential undiscovered in the original text, we always seek to reach the equilibrium of being creative and keeping the intention of the text. It was fascinating to see how Steiner describes translation as an act of exchange, where readers can gain cultural and psychological benefaction.

Bellos gave me another view of localization. While he acknowledges the fact that localizing is important for the new audience, he asserts that there are also people who wish not to forget that the text is a translation. He goes on to talk about how to add foreignness in translation. This somewhat parallels with Steiner's idea that translations serve as a medium to preserve cultural meaning. I agree with them and I think translators possess the ability to transmit foreign culture to the targeted audience.

Iris

D. Hofstadter

 Hofstadter talked about technology trying to replace human translation, but they produce results that are far from perfect. This is because machine translation cannot convey style from the original piece. I found it kind of difficult when he was giving examples of different language translations since I personally don't know any of the languages besides Chinese. Although I do feel like machine translations are getting a little more accurate than those of the past, they will never be able to translate accurately. Using machine translation to translate literature is like translating human brain/function/emotion to robots. While robots/technology can store memories, find information, produce results, way better and faster than humans, it doesn't have emotions. Because of the lack of emotions, they cannot translate accurately because languages are a form of expression. 

Machine Translation example: 

From Asahi Shinbun Digital: 

Title: 大学入試、再び強まる首都圏志向　法・経済・商学部の志願増か

University entrance exams, metropolitan area-oriented again, increasing applications for law, economics, and commerce

本格的な大学入試シーズンが近づいてきた。昨年度は、初めての大学入学共通テストから各大学の個別試験まで、受験生も大学側もコロナ禍に翻弄（ほんろう）された。今シーズンの動向は――。

The full-scale college entrance examination season is approaching. Last year, from the first common test for university entrance exams to individual exams at each university, both the examinees and the university side were at the mercy of Corona. What is the trend this season?

　「感染者が少ない状況が続いているのはありがたいが、テレビで忘年会の映像などを見ると、緩みが感染拡大につながらないか心配。経済を回す重要性は分かるが、オミクロン株の報道もあり、受験生のことを思って感染を広げない行動をお願いしたい」。東京都内の大規模私立大の入試担当者はそう話す。

"I'm grateful that the number of infected people continues to below, but when I watch the video of the year-end party on TV, I'm worried that loosening will lead to the spread of infection. I would like to ask you to take action to prevent the spread of the infection, thinking of the examinees. " A person in charge of entrance examinations at a large private university in Tokyo says so.

 

Sophia

Steiner and Bellos

I personally found the reading a little difficult to read but was still interesting. Steiner talks a lot about how meanings in a text can change when it is translated from one language to another. He talks about the moves of the translator when trying to extract meaning from the original text, trust, aggression, and incorporation. Trust can never be final and "is betrayed, trivially, by nonsense, by the discovery that 'there is nothing there' to elicit and translate" due to the human bias towards seeing the world as symbolic. The translator may find that "anything" or "almost anything" can mean "everything." 

Bellos talks about how to represent foreignness and foreign concepts from the original to the translated work. The most obvious way to make a text sound foreign would be to leave parts of it in the original. For example, Bellos talks about how early French to English translations kept the full titles and everyday expression in French. This could be used in Japanese for expressions that don't have a one-for-one translations like 'itadakimasu' although you would still probably have to explain what it means to the readers. Bellos says, "The natural way to represent the foreignness of foreign utterances is to leave them in the original, in whole or in part." which I also believe as not all words have direct translations and making something to cover for it might just completely erase its original feeling. 

Brian

Bellos Discussion Questions from Alexa

Bellos writes about the balance between including foreign references to preserve the original foreign influence of translated pieces. Where should the fine line be when considering "selective foreignism" between including or excluding foreign influence? 

How should the process of "selective foreignism" change depending on the type of media being translated? (For example, should foreign influence be preserved more in literary fiction rather than a news report?) 

 

Steiner and Bellos Reading

    David Bellos, in "Fictions of the Foreign", writes of the importance of foreignness of the foreign. It is a valid statement to consider some translations to be essentially domesticating the original text into English or another language. Total domestication definitely does not improve the original as it results in the loss of the aspects that form the foreignness of the original, but no domestication at all also is not ideal as the audience for the translation are isolated because of the cultural differences. Therefore, "selective foreignism" is the better way to deal with this conundrum. By balancing between domestication and foreignism, the translation is able to achieve the two goals of being true to the original text and making sure that the readers are able to follow the content. 

    George Steiner also mentions this topic of foreignness in "The Hermeneutic Motion". One line that stuck with me when reading was "the translator invades, extracts, and brings home." This sentence matches David Bellos's thoughts on how translations are domestications of the original text. The invading, extracting, and bringing equate to the process of translation, consisting of reading, translating, and distributing to another audience of a different language. The translator has a large role in controlling what kind of content is exposed to the reader. The opinions around a translation are formed based on what is given to the reader.

-June

proficiency of the languages include

Internationalization that technological development affected on our life and society. As literatures reflect the society that it is written in, literatures now have more foreign languages, cultures, and characters involved in the story. In terms of the native speaker, it is an interesting point that can emphasize certain characteristic of the novel, but in terms of the translator, it is a very complex problem to convey those feelings to the foreign readers.

So as the people in the other countries, but Japanese people use especially lot of foreign-originated words in their daily conversation. To translate English-written sentence into English is a paradox, as bellos's title says.

I have believed, and the course readings solidified me believing, that the proficiency of the target language is more important than the proficiency of the source language in terms of interpreting. This is exactly where those target language proficiency have to work; on page 34, Bellos shows a few examples of the sentences that sounds like an European language to an English speaker (of course without any language proficiency on those languages) but I cannot really tell anything about how they sounds like. I believe anyone would understand those feeling even if they study English so hard outside of US or Western countries... I'm not really sure if there is a way to learn those senses.

Recently my Japanese proficiency enabled me to understand most of the katakana-written words, but I feel like I am still lack familiarity with English language as well as Western culture. I think I should know about the target language of the translation, more than just developing the language proficiency, so that I can result more natural and understandable interpreting.

 

Hyungsoo

Steiner and Bellos comments

Hermeneutic is a term that I am familiar with after studying religion, but it was interesting to see it applied to the field of translation. Interpretation seems to have a different connotation from translation, possibly interpretation having a freer, more flexible meaning. Steiner's piece on translation here is so theoretical and almost emotionally linked that it's hard to isolate the practical application of their opinions on the process of translation. 

I have never understood the need to relay "foreignness" in translation. I think it's a strange mindset that may have been more relevant when the world's countries were more isolated. But in modern times especially, many people have access to so many different cultures that a "foreign" element almost seems bizarre to me. Preserving the authenticity of a work's cultural background can be achieved through content, and trying to replicate a foreign sound is just impossible in my opinion. I think the most important aspect of translating foreignness is maintaining appreciation of the different culture by not replacing objects, ideas, places, etc., with a local equivalent, and that in itself is enough to make it distinct in its origin.

Joanne 

Hofstadter The Shallowness of Google Translate: Reading Questions from Moeka

What does Hofstadter believe is deeply lacking in Google Translate’s approach? Give a few examples of what translating engines miss when attempting to translate text. 

 

What is the ELIZA effect? How does this correlate with how some people treat Google Translate? 

 

Explain how a human translator would translate a text versus how Google translate would translate it. What are the primary differences? 

 

Steiner and Bellos

 I feel Steiner’s style of writing is beautiful. He used a lot of words that were accurate but also exaggerated/creative. He mentioned that “the import, of meaning and of form, the embodiment, is not made in or into a vacuum” and stated the importance of incorporative in translation. Translators not only translate meanings but also put their interpretation into the texts. As Steiner said, “translator——interpreter creates a condition of significant exchange. ” Bellos made a similar statement as well and emphasized more on how phonology could play its roles in translation. It’s very intriguing when Bellos mentioned: “In fact, the most obvious way to make a text sound foreign is to leave parts of it in the original.” I could feel it so much when I read translated books(especially the ones translated from Russian to Chinese). Bellos also pointed out another possibility that because readers did not know the original language of the book, they would assume that the author’s voice of writing sounded foreign. Like the Kafka example that he analyzed: “In German, Kafka doesn’t sound ‘German’ at all—he sounds like Kafka…Making Kafka sound German in English is perhaps the best means a translator has to communicate to the reader his or her own experience of reading the original.” As a translator, it’s hard to manipulate the voice of the author. Kafka sounds like Kafka in German, but translator could make the choice to let him sound like a German, or a native English speaker, or the Kafka who speaks through the translator. 

NIna

Steiner and Bellos

 

Steiner mentions how translators can often fall down the slippery slope of finding actual meaning in the author’s text versus finding that “anything” or almost anything” can mean everything”. It reminds me of how in high school, students and professors who analyze text can find any sort of meaning in something that the author probably wrote about that did not actually have any meaning. Steiner uses words that seem to imply that the translator leaves damage to the original text in order to extract treasure from it. For instance, Steiner states, “the translator invades, extracts, and brings home.” However, he said that this happens only with false translation or is actually illusory. I also think it is interesting that Steiner mentions how sometimes the translation becomes more popular and replaces the original text. 

In Bellos’ essay, I really enjoyed reading about the struggle between making the translation sound completely fluent or if they should add any foreign touch to the translation. I definitely believe that there would be no harm in incorporating common phrases that most people knew into translations and would increase interest in the language being mentioned. However, there is a thin line between respecting the culture and language and using stereotypes and satirizing them which would risk hurting certain people and audiences. 

 

Moeka 

Steiner and Bellos

Steiner talked about how some translation replaces the original. I thought that was really interesting because after taking this class, I felt like I had to read the original for me to completely understand the text because it is more authentic. However, it is important to trust the translator that they would only delete certain content because that was necessary for an English reader to understand better. 

Bellos talked about the importance of keeping some essence of the original in the translation so that the reader knows that they are reading a translated piece. In our translation homework throughout the semester, we often ran into the dilemma where we had to choose between using the Japanese Romaji versus translating the word entirely into English. I think for a heterogeneous language like English and Japanese, it is possible. However, I wonder what would a Japanese and Chinese translation look like because they are more similar and most of the words that exist in Japanese has a form of translation in Chinese. 

Sophia