Date of Award
Spring 4-18-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Modern Languages & Literature
First Advisor
Kai Xie
Second Advisor
Yumiko Tashiro
Third Advisor
N/A
Abstract
Natsume Soseki is regarded as one of the preeminent writers of the Modern Japanese Novel. Soseki studied not only Japanese, but Chinese and English literature, and Soseki in kind has been translated dozens of times. The sheer range his works have taken on across languages speaks to the depth of his writing and the unsettledness of translation itself. If no one translation can satisfactorily capture the essence of Soseki’s original, what constitutes a good translation? In this thesis, I break down a three stage approach to the practice of translation using Ten Nights’ Dreams, a set of short stories written by Soseki in 1908. Starting with a semantic understanding of the original text and moving towards stylistic rendering of the text, I will then I explore Soseki’s biography, understanding that though the author is not the work, the author’s personal circumstances invariably impact the work they produce, to address the thematics present within Soseki’s writing. In separating out these layers of the translation process, I hope to illuminate a more coherent picture of the work and care necessary to the practice, such that the translator not only produces an entertaining and semantically correct translation, but one that is also deeply responsive to the original author's life.
Recommended Citation
Chu, Nathan, "Dislocated: A Three Stage Approach to Translation using Natsume Sōseki’s Ten Nights’ Dreams for the 2020’s" (2022). Honors Theses. 277.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/honorstheses/277
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