本人日本古典文學(xué)課的期末論文，有興趣了解翻譯難點(diǎn)的朋友可以看一看，雖說有很大一部分講的是古典日語，教授說寫的很有意思，希望各位看的開心，學(xué)海無涯，與君共勉

According to the majority of people’s perspective, translation only requires an interpreter to understand both languages and find out the right substitution words of one language for another language, and this is exactly how I thought before I attempted to interpret Japanese. In fact, translation is a difficult and complex task.. Translators play an intermediate role between writers and readers, which means understanding two languages is just the minimal requirement to become an interpreter, what’s more important is the ability to understand the meaning of work, feel the thought it is trying to express, and deliver it to readers in a way that they can understand the original thought. Even though it looks like there are only three steps, interpreters actually need lots of work to deliver the original words accurately and fluently to readers.

Before anything else, it is necessary to capture and understand the original thought accurately. Modern Japanese is difficult enough for non-native speakers to understand, and classical Japanese raises the difficulty to another level. Some of the kana in classical Japanese are no longer used anymore today and some of the words kanji have differences in the kana structure between modern Japanese and classical Japanese. Moreover, classical Japanese and modern Japanese have really different grammar structures. Classical Japanese uses auxiliary verbs for conjecture. The large amount of auxiliary verbs raises the difficulty of interpretation. For example, when classical Japanese is trying to express speculation, it could use mu,muzu,kemu,rashi,beshi,maji,ji,mashi to express, and this is only a small part of auxiliary verb in classical Japanese. The large amount of unique auxiliary verbs in classical Japanese definitely increases the difficulty for interpreters to memorize and interpret accurately. Moreover, lots of kanji characters used in classical Japanese are no longer used in modern Japanese anymore, such as the words for court ranks and ancient tools. When it comes to Kanji, it would be difficult to search it online because the translator sometimes cannot even know what hiragana it is written with, so they have to ask from experienced interpreters or find specific website that have detailed comparison between classical Japanese and modern Japanese, which is both time and energy consuming,

Other than that, it is important for translators to understand the cultural differences between speakers of different languages. Take Japanese and English in this case as an example. Japanese people,especially in ancient literary works, tend to express thought in an indirect way. In the Pillow Book, when Sei Shonagon was trying to express “In Spring, the dawn is the most beautiful scene”, she? wrote only “In Spring, the dawn.” The sentence is simple and elegant, which completely shows the beauty of classical Japanese literature. However, it would be difficult for English readers to understand it if the translator decided to interpret word by word since they tend to express and receive the thought in a direct way. Neither does it work to translate the phrase as a full sentence since that would lose the beauty of simplicity and the elegant feeling. Such situations frequently occur in the process of translation. It is meaningless if the reader cannot understand the context, but it would also be imperfect if the literature work loses the beauty of its unique genre. It is important for interpreters to make their own decision if they want clarity or beauty of simplicity as priority, and it could lead to great differences among different versions of translation.

Other than that, it is important to understand the difference between interpreter and readers. Some information may be common sense to interpreters, but readers cannot understand it without further explanation. For example, when I mention Suzaku Mon, I know it is the South gate of the emperor 's palace, but I still need to translate it into the South Gate instead of just writing the proper noun since most readers would not be able to understand it. This could happen frequently in the process of translation? if the translator has Chinese as their native language, since both kanji in Chinese and Japanese show the same meaning in many situations and the similarity of historical background would make Chinese interpreters unconsciously ignore this aspect sometimes.

Last of all, the most important thing is the professional attitude. Unlike the traditional service business, it is difficult to regulate the work of translation because of its wide business scope and ambiguous standard. Indeed, there is ASTM F2575-06,which is the current official translation standard reference for U.S. translators, however, due to the special characteristic, which is the flexible and wide range of working factors of translation, There is no specific criteria for? this business. When it comes to the company level, the clients that need interpretation service usually do not have the ability to identify the service quality in most situations. In this case, it is important for translators themselves to have a high level of professional attitude. They have to dig deeply into diction choice and dig deeply into the thought the writer is trying to express.

During the translation process, I think “Translation 5” is the most difficult one. There are too many proper noun that are no longer used today, such as Birauge no kuruma, which stands for female-servants-used carriages. In order to do the translation, I have to borrow an annotated version of Pillow Book from Professor Vincent, and I have to spend lots of time searching for the meaning of kanji in annotations that I have not learned before. Moreover, the grammar structure is really different from modern Japanese, and I did not learn every grammar point and English is not my native language. I have to refer to the Chinese translation to make sure that I understood the meaning correctly. Then I struggled with how to translate it into English since it would be difficult for readers to understand it if they did not learn about those pronouns before, so I decided to explain the meaning of proper nouns in my translation. Those processes are challenging, but they are also helpful for me to produce better translations in the future.

Overall, translation should be considered as a subcategory of literature, if? we describe literary work as a beautiful artwork, then readers with foreign language as native language would be blind people. They know the artwork is gorgeous but they do not know how it is, and it is the responsibility of the translator to describe the best of it with the beauty of language. They can not create new elements but they can polish the existing elements. A good translator can even discover the beauty of a non-outstanding artwork and a bad interpreter could even ruin a legendary work. Literacy is a important aspect in human being’s mental life and it is definitely splendid for interpreters enable readers to walk through the language barrier and feel the enchantment of works written in other languages, which is the reason why translators should always be conscious their responsibility and improve their professional skill to to have their best performance to the public.