Jan 30 Reading Response - Audree

Ken Liu Lecture

Liu's point about translation being inherently political was one that peaked my interest, and clearly was somewhat of a controversial claim. He talks about how translations don't happen in a vacuum, and gives examples (Lu Xun) that show how translating can have political ends and be an intentional political act. And even when it isn't intentional, translators are still impacted by their socio-political environment. I found the example of not translating mythological Greek names and translating Native American ones to be particularly representative of this. Indeed, translations are always negotiating the relationship between the two cultures, and the choices made are telling of what that relationship is. I found myself agreeing with Liu on the overall message of his talk, and it made me cognizant of how translation is such an important part of cultural transmission, one that indeed has power to shape how people understand and encounter foreign cultures. 

Creta Kano, Haruki Murakami

I found this story intriguing and mystical, and slightly unsettling. The descriptions that Creta Kano has of her rapes is so forward and direct, which almost makes it sadder. She doesn't seem to express an awful lot of emotion about them, but states them as unfortunate matters of fact. The correlation between Creta's propensity towards getting raped and the water collecting that her sister does is not obvious and I don't have a very good interpretation for. Is water supposed to symbolize something's essence? Waters from different places are different because they have different essences? But people can also have water within them, so is that supposed to be their soul? And what does this have to do with Creta being raped? It is clear to me that Murakami doesn't endorse the idea that the rapes are Creta's own fault but why is it that Creta could only hear the water within her once she died at the hands of her oppressor's ghost? Maybe there are no answers to these questions, but I do find it all quite puzzling. 

Kawakami Short Stories

These stories are interesting because of the way that the "Neighborhood" seems to be cut off from the rest of the world, and I was caught off guard whenever there was a place like New York that was brought up. Perhaps it was because the town as well as the neighboring town were not given names, and perhaps it was the mixture of magical elements that made the story seem cut off from reality. 

Remarks from Twelve Translators 

In this interview, many of the translators spoke on what it means to translate "voice." I found this to be particularly interesting, because voice is something that is spoken about often in writing, and is seen to be of great importance. However, it is true that what voice actually is is hard to pin down, and with translation, voice must be paid attention to even more in order to ensure that the essence of the piece is preserved. I liked what Asa Yoneda said about reading out loud, because it is something that I often do with my own writing to make sure that what I have written on the page will work in the minds of the reader. For Yoneda, they read out loud in order to try and capture that essence and recreate it in translation. 

Interview with Ted Goosen

I found it interesting that Goosen talks about how thinking about the genre of magical realism is a Western phenomenon. In Japanese literary tradition, the merging of dreams and reality is not seen as a genre in itself, and is more common. I also find it quite poignant when he talks about how the term "women's literature" is way too large a category. Even terms like "the female voice" don't seem to make sense now that there are so many women from different walks of life who are writing.