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]

Hee. I'm curious what brought this on?

[pixxers.livejournal.com]

I had an argument recently over a japanese novel that I read. Someone I know had just read it and kept remarking about what a jerk the main character was. She said she might have enjoyed it more if the main character hadn't been such a prick. I tried explaining that he really wasn't a jerk - he was merely written by a Japanese woman with very different attitudes toward gender roles, social interactions, and insight into relationships.

She continued to disagree with me and refused to get what I was saying. I hate it when people are intentionally obtuse.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

yes! Which is something that TRANSLATORS have to stay on top of, as well - this is why translations that smooth everything up to serve something palatable to the culture they are translating FOR offend me a lot; and why the doctrine of "transparency" is so off-putting and, well, like treachery and treason and ethnocentrism all rolled into one, urg (that's transparency as in, 'it should read like it's been originally written in the target language!' - and no as in "the translation should be transparent enough to let the reader see through it to the original version and culture", sadly, which is what I - and others thank god - advocate instead).

[kegom.livejournal.com]

I both agree and disagree with you on this topic.

It is true that there are very big differences in Western and Asian story-telling, differences that might make it hard for someone from one culture to understand a work of art from another culture. Even in countries as culturally close as England and Germany there are still cultural differences that, if an English text gets translated into German, might literally get lost in translation. (Best example is Terry Pratchett - you don't understand a quarter of the jokes he makes in "Going Postal" if you've never been in an old English post office.)

I also agree with you that there are dramatic differences in associations to something we read.

Yet, I do believe that you are not only allowed to "forget that you are looking through a window into an alien worldview", in some cases you are supposed to do exactly that.

As a reader, you not only receive a text, you actively recreate it by using your own background and experiences.
I believe that reading is, first of all, a way for you to understand your own world or life better. You can read an old story, know as much as there is to know about its historical context and therefore understand why the author wrote that story at that point in his life - but I think the thing that emotionally involved you first in the story, the reason that made you read it in the first place, is that you personally get something out of it.

I do believe that it is always helpful (and occasionally necessary) to know a story's cultural/historical/social background to fully appreciate it - but I also believe that it's everyone's right to get emotionally involved with a story, even if it means applying your own cultural preconceptions, because you cannot fully "get into" a story if you always have to remember that you're reading a text that was written in an alien culture and that you therefore shouldn't get any meaning out of unless you know the culture it comes from very well.