Translation

I like to read literatures, most of which are Japanese.  I'm also interested in foreign literatures, particularly French and Russian, however, seldom read them.

This is because I don't like to read translation.  Unfortunately, I need to rely on translation if it's written in foreign languages other than English.  However, I think translation more or less changes original writing.  Also, Japanese translation is somehow difficult to read as the Japanese used for the translation tends to be different from normal Japanese.

In order to translate a foreign writing, a translator has to fully understand not only what the writing means, but the author's intention behind the writing.  Then, the translator needs to find a Japanese word or phrase, which best describes the original writing.  Such a Japanese should not be too literal or too loose, but somewhere between these two.  Finding the right degree of literal and loose is a very difficult task.

As an English to Japanese Kanji translator myself, I understand the difficulties the translator usually faces as the above.

In my Facebook page, there are Japanese proverbs, which are translated into English.  These are Japanese to English translation, not English to Japanese, but I take the same process for the translation, i.e. understanding of what the original Japanese proverb means and finding right word/phrase to best describe the original.

Taking 鶏口牛後 in my Facebook page as an example, I put a literal English translation in the Facebook page, which is "Better be a head of a chicken than the tail of the bull."

However, I also knew there were similar English proverbs for this, which are "Better be a head of a dog than the tail of a lion" and "Better be a head of a pike than the tail of a sturgeon" and wondered using the equivalent English proverb might have made a better sense to readers.

I finally decided to go with a sort of literal translation as it might interest readers by showing that the Japanese proverb uses a comparison of a chicken and a bull for the proverb, rather than a dog and a lion, or a pike and a sturgeon.

Well, Facebook is just for fun, but translation still makes me feel certain challenges to overcome.
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