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.