/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22900907]

How in the world did this help Kawabata win the Nobel prize? This is hands down the worst translation I've ever read. It reads like a machine translation. Actually, it reads worse than one at points. I'm just so confused at how this ever got so much praise, and why it still does to this day. Seidensticker is a fucking retard. At first I thought he must've just been an overconfident ESL, but no. And what's even wilder is that Kawabata apparently signed off on it. Let's take a look at this shit. It almost makes Kawabata read like a trashy, wanna-be Hemingway:
>He knew that if he spoke he would only make himself seem the more wanting in seriousness. Overpowered by the woman, he walked along wrapped in a soft happiness. Abruptly, at the foot of the stairs, he shoved his left fist before her eyes, with only the forefinger extended. “This remembered you best of all.” “Oh?” The woman took the finger in her hand and clung to it as though to lead him upstairs.
>... All this Komako told him with no hesitation, but she said nothing about the girl who had brought the man home, and nothing about why she herself was in this house. Shimamura felt most uncomfortable at what she did say, however. Suspended there in the void, she seemed to be broadcasting to the four directions. As he stepped from the hallway, he saw something faintly white through the corner of his eye. It was a samisen box, and it struck him as larger and longer than it should be. He found it hard to imagine her carrying so unwieldy an object to parties. The darkened door inside the hallway slid open.
>The sick man he had watched in that evening mirror, then, was the son of the music teacher in whose house the woman Shimamura had come to see was living. He felt a current pass through him, and yet the coincidence did not seem especially remarkable. Indeed he was surprised at himself for being so little surprised.
>He wondered whether the flowing landscape was not perhaps symbolic of the passage of time.
>“You’re here.” Clinging to him, she sank to the floor. She leaned against him as she spoke. “I’m not drunk. Who says I’m drunk? Ah, it hurts, it hurts. It’s just that it hurts. I know exactly what I’m doing. Give me water, I want water. I mixed my drinks, that was my mistake. That’s what goes to your head. It hurts. They had a bottle of cheap whisky. How was I to know it was cheap?” She rubbed her forehead with her fists.
What the fuck? Is this the best one of the "greatest translators of classic and modern Japanese literature into English" can do? His Tale of Genji translation is just as bad, too. I feel like I'm going insane with how everyone seems to love this and call it "beautifully economical". This? This is what made people say that "Kawabata's novels are among the most affecting and original works of our time"? It's not just the critics either, because I went around searching for other people's opinions, and apparently everyone loves this trash but me. Come the fuck on.

[Jon Kolner No.22901037]

>>22900907
Did you mean Tale of the Bamboo Cutter? He translated that one which is much shorter. Also he didn’t even translate it to English. That was Donald Keene. Did he translate Tale of Genji too?

[Anonymous No.22901047]

You are a languagelet who thinks good prose is something you know when you see? It has some grammatical awkwardness but it serves purpose in defining boundaries and rhythms. Semantically is quite good and interesting. Pragmatically the big names in early 20th century Japanese lit are fucking gods but your excerpts can not carry the pragmatics.

[Jon Kolner No.22901053]

>>22901047
It’s an entirely half baked rant as you can tell from the fact he got the name of the Classical Japanese story that was translated wrong.

[Anonymous No.22901093]

>>22901047
This. Its rhythm perfectly matches the tone of the scene.

[Anonymous No.22901104]

>>22901053
>its a half baked rant because he got a minor detail wrong and not because he he says nothing and just relies on insult to demonstrate his own greatness
OK. It is pretty much the same sort of game that you often play and are playing here. Seidensticker did translate both Kawabata and Tale of Genji to English.

[Jon Kolner No.22901108]

>>22901104
>Kawabata signed off on it

That means nothing because Kawabatas English isn’t even good enough to translate his other works to English so why would he be responsible for that specific book? That was the entire point.

[Jon Kolner No.22901121]

>this ESL who can barely speak English correctly signed off on a translation I personally don’t approve of! That offends me quite a bit!

[Anonymous No.22901143]

>>22900907
My Japanese is not great but if you want to be faithful to Japanese that's what Japanese would sound like when translated to English. Pretty sure that if you feed it into Grammarly it will make dozens of changes and might read much better for you, but it does lose the 'Japanese' it has to it.

[Anonymous No.22901162]

>>22901108
Whose point? Not OPs and you did not bring that up, you just started talking about Keene for some reason.

Also, translation is considerably more than knowing the language.
>>22901121
You seem like you are panicking now. You don't have to double down on stupid.

[Anonymous No.22901244]

>>22900907
>Even translators of Nobel-tier literature cannot learn Japanese
It's over.

[Anonymous No.22901342]

>>22901037
What are you talking about? No, I said Tale of Genji and I meant it.
>>22901047
>You are a languagelet who thinks good prose is something you know when you see?
You're an ESL, anon. I'm not trying to be rude, but I don't think you can judge English prose properly and make concessions for "grammatical awkwardness" when your own post is as riddled with solecisms as it is.
>>22901053
Of course it's a half-baked rant. I just finished it and wanted to talk about it on /lit/.
>>22901104
I'm not sure why you think I'm trying to demonstrate my own greatness when I'm only complaining about a translation I didn't like.
>>22901143
I read it in Japanese first, which is why I know how bad it is. It strikes me as extremely odd to try to translate the rhythm and feel of Kawabata's prose into English. These two languages have virtually nothing in common; they're as separate as any two languages can be. Trying to be faithful to the Japanese when translating to English is the worst thing you could do. Really, I'm sick of the philosophy of faithfulness in translation. I can't imagine how anyone who knows more than one language could ever think that it's a good idea. In most cases, accuracy comes at the cost of beauty and real connection. It comes down to this: If I wouldn't defend an original English language work if it were as poorly written as this, why should I accept it just because it's a translation? At least when it comes to The Tale of Genji, what Waley's lacks in accuracy, he makes up for with beauty. In all honesty, however, I wouldn't even say his translation is all that beautiful, nor so inaccurate as people make it out to be. Of course, I can't say that with too much confidence, because I read a modern Japanese translation of it (現代語訳), not the original, but regardless I didn't feel like Waley ever committed all those cardinal sins I'd heard he did. Only, instead of doing what Tyler did and essentially leave everything up to footnotes, he at least tried to work some meaning into the text itself.

[Anonymous No.22901488]

>>22901342
>I'm not sure why you think I'm trying to demonstrate my own greatness when I'm only complaining about a translation I didn't like.
For the reasons given in my previous post and because all you do is complain. Give us something which can actually be discussed, WHY is it poorly written.

[Anonymous No.22901545]

>>22901342
>I read it in Japanese first, which is why I know how bad it is. It strikes me [...]

Yeah, it's a very old argument. What is the translator's responsibility? Being faithful to the text or making the translation easy to read? Should they try to adapt the author's style in a different language or rewrite it in their own? At what point does the translator stop being a translator and becomes a co-author? Take McCarthy. His writing is pretty peculiar, but at the same time it's his signature. Should the translator say fuck it and remove all the "and" and try to make the sentences shorter, give it better structure or does it stop being a McCarthy?
I don't think either way is wrong myself but yeah it's up to the author. They usually write down notes for translators because they are aware of the conundrum.

[Anonymous No.22902606]

>>22901545
>McCarthy
I have the Japanese translation of All the Pretty Horses. Some concessions were made in terms of syntax, but the sentences are still pretty fluid, which I think makes it McCarthy-like. I like how well the translation evokes emotion, although that's probably just me.
>Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.
>最後に棺のなかの布のひだの間に埋もれた虚ろな表情のやつれた顔を眺めた。口ひげは黄ばみまぶたは紙のように薄い。これは眠っているんじゃない。眠っているんじゃない。