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

[cimness.livejournal.com]

She probably has no concept at all of different cultures. I think for people who haven't directly encountered a foreign country on its own terms - that is, not by watching some foreign movies and knowing a few foreigners who live near them or whatever - it's easy for culture to be invisible. That is what culture is designed to do fundamentally, after all, is make you take its assumptions for granted. People who haven't been confronted with another culture up close are prone to actually taking them for granted so much that they don't even realise they are doing it. Which isn't to excuse them, though, at least not after the point when someone introduces them to the idea. And certainly not if they're trying to analyse the art of another culture.