Ichiro's been in the news a lot lately, but not just because he's awesome at baseball. Apparently, he's been saying some silly, overly emotional things to the media.
My coworker at Wired, Erik—whose brain is arguably the most thorough sports almanac in the world—recently started a fun blog in which he featured some of the silliest Ichiro-isms. I told you guys about how the all star player thanked his dog for the $90 mill Mariners contract he signed last month. Now he's talking about the dormant fire in the "innermost recesses of his soul."
I think there's a lot that has been lost in translation here. The Japanese speak in metaphors a lot, so it's really hard for interpreters to relay messages like Ichiro's into English without making him sound either overly dramatic (via a literal translation of the metaphor) or completely dry (by extracting the non-metaphorical meaning of the words). There is a happy medium, but it's not something that can be easily deciphered in the brief moment that interpreters have to get the word out.
As a person who frequently does translations, it's difficult to go from both English to Japanese and from Japanese to English. Though, I've started to realize that, in business, Japanese to English is hard because, like you said, the metaphores and idioms are almost untranslatable... But going from English to Japanese, it's hard because Americans are used to talking informal even at high level meetings and may even crack a joke or two at the end...and sometimes it just doesn't resonate with the Japanese and it falls kinda flat. Then there's this long uncomfortable silence where I'm going "damn...", the Japanese guys are looking at me going "...and??" and the American guy is chuckling but slowing realizing no one else is laughing with him...
Fun times.....
Posted by: Nobita | August 31, 2007 at 05:43 PM