Workshops – Selected methodologies of literary translation from Japanese into Polish 3600-JA-WWMPL-OW

Japanese Translation Seminar will be taught as a seminar with a workshop component. It will introduce students to the basics of the history of translation theory, as well as new trends in translation theory and practice in the United States and the United Kingdom. These theories will be illustrated with examples and compared with trends in Japanese translation in Poland. Through participation in discussions of assigned readings, joint critiques of existing translations into English and Polish, and analysis of sample translations, students will learn how to apply the theories they have learned in practice, develop their own translation strategies, and become aware of their own tendencies in terms of style and word choice. Students will also learn that different types of texts require different approaches – e.g. a literary text requires a higher degree of fidelity, while a journalistic or scientific text must be adapted to the canons accepted in the field in the target culture, which are sometimes different in the source culture.
The seminar will begin with a discussion of the basic principles of translation from Japanese and the application of machine translation and artificial intelligence to different types of translation. Participants will consider how to make good use of the tools available today, as well as what the work of a translator will look like in the future. Students will then perform translation exercises from an unfamiliar language using a method developed at Boston University that allows students to become aware of their own translation strategy.
The next eight or nine classes will consist of three parts:
1. Students will read before class one or two articles on translation theory or articles by American translators of Japanese on practical aspects of translation. In class, there will be a discussion of the readings and a discussion of examples of existing translations from Japanese into English and Polish that illustrate the issues discussed in the assigned readings (unlike in case of Japanese-to-English translations, there are virtually no texts among Japanese-to-Polish translations that have been translated multiple times, making English examples extremely useful and instructive for learning about multiple approaches to the same text.) This will allow students to become familiar with different approaches to translation and the consequences of translation ecisions on the final shape a translation takes.
Students will gradually learn to distinguish between the features of more traditional and more contemporary approaches to translation. They will also learn that while it is important to respect the text and the author, the translator's main goal should be to ensure that the translation gives the reader of the target culture a similar feeling to that of the original to the Japanese reader. On the one hand, this may require the translator to provide additional explanations (needed because of cultural differences), but sometimes it can also mean making minor cuts when leaving a certain phrase or sentence in the text would require lengthy explanations that could distract the reader and disrupt the flow of the text.
2. Participants will analyze a passage from a new text (these will be texts in different styles, by authors of different genders and ages) and consider the potential difficulties involved in making a Polish translation. Participants will learn how to recognize the voice of the author and make sure it is reproduced with similar effect in Polish. Issues such as dealing with dialect, archaic, racist or discriminatory language will also be discussed. The importance of the need to pay attention to the unconscious biases of the translator will also be emphasized.
3. Each time three of four students will prepare translations of the discussed text for the next class, when their translations will be analyzed by the whole group, which is also the method used at Boston University. The last part of the seminar will be devoted to the issue of fidelity in translation and to workshopping students’ final projects together. Students will do an exercise requiring them to find errors in published literary translations into English and Polish. Also, each participant will work on a final translation project of a text of their choice, which they will submit by the end of the semester. The selected text can be a literary text, a scientific
article, a newspaper interview, a collection of song lyrics, an excerpt from a cookbook, a manga, etc. Durign the last two or three meetings of the seminar (depending on the number of students), each student will give a short presentation on his or her own project, discussing the difficulties encountered in translation, the strategies used, etc. Other participants will be able to offer their own suggestions for solving the problems.