Literature in Translation, or: The Culture Barrier: Not Just for International Travel Anymore!

[cimorene]

Learn something about Japanese culture and/or Japanese story-telling before you attempt to apply your culture-centric Western aesthetic to a Japanese narrative (yes, this means anime and manga and dramas).  This applies perhaps more so to Japan than to somewhere closer like Sweden or Spain, but it applies there, too.

The fact that you are reading a work of literature in translation should never allow you to forget that you are looking through a window into an alien worldview. All those little threads that lead off into associations in English (and, in fact, in much European) literature not only don't lead there in literature in translation, they lead to somewhere completely different , somewhere that you could never anticipate.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

It's been so long since I read it and I sold my manga, so I don't have it to look up, but I don't remember being dissatisfied with the ending (other than not wanting it to end at all because it was a favorite). But I didn't have any attachment to Hikaru/Akira (either as a pairing or platonic) and like open-ended stuff, regardless of whether it's Japanese or western, so... ^_^;;

I think the only manga I've been really disappointed with was Shaman King, in which the author wrote himself into a corner and then just sort of quit. >_<