I really enjoyed James Wood's talk ! I think honestly it started off a bit slow, and I was really fighting to stay awake for a bit. The fact that he kept saying he didn't think he was qualified to talk about the subject seemed especially unpromising to me, but I started to really pay attention when he began talking about the piano scene. I thought he was really funny, and it was refreshing to hear perspectives on translation from someone outside translation. I think it's difficult for translators to stay objective when speaking of translation--as much as I enjoyed their talks, I noticed this for both Ken Liu and Ted Goosen. Obviously Wood wasn't entirely objective and had strong opinions on how and how you shouldn't translate, but those perspectives were especially valuable coming from someone who's approaching these texts as a reader.
For the why Americans read so little in translation article, I really liked that part in the beginning about "sepia-toned battle scenes and stereotypical depictions of our 'enemies.'" Hollywood movies always slapping a weird yellow-orange filter over any scenes associated with the Middle East has become something of a joke online, but aside from funny, this American propaganda perpetuates dangerous racism--a stereotype of the foreign terrorists used to perpetuate American superiority and US American presence in wars and countries we should have no stand in. The article on the Three Percent also touched on this well, I thought, with their subtle stereotyped cover designs per nation. I also thought the nature of the insularity of the translation community, and the need to branch out into a broader readership. I thought the textbook reading talking about how linguistic diversity was seen as a punishment, not a blessing, was really interesting--when I read about how celebrated translation was in Catalonia, I couldn't help but make the comparison between other cultures finding diversity to be a blessing, and Americans finding it to be something to be afraid of.
No comments:
Post a Comment