Tatiana Schlote-Bonne Week 5

 An important takeaway I had from the videos and articles was that nothing exists in a vacuum--individual writing abilities aren't solely defined by native language, but are shaped by a combination of language, culture, politics, and one's own individual tastes and thought processes. I do believe it's a useful tool to know these ideas of intercultural rhetoric when approaching student work, and to have an awareness that their thought process and foundation to writing is likely different from what I was taught in an American school (the 5 essay paragraph, don't use the first person, etc.) But ultimately it's just one lens in a big box of tools when it comes to teaching writing. 

The video has made me interested in how translation from Japanese to English works. One of my favorite author is Sayaka Murata, and I've read the translated version of her short stories and her novel Convenience Store Woman. I wonder if it was sort of dumbed down for American readers? I found some of the scenes shocking and a little jarring but overall easy to follow, and I wonder if that's something that's smoothed, if transitions are added, so her work sells in English?

One question my native English students ask all the time is how much I care about the transitions in their essays--they come to office hours asking if I think their using enough transition statements, if all the ideas are clearly connected, and I tell them yes! Be confident! Unless an idea is wildly is out there and random, your reader can see the connection you're making without an elaborate transition. I do question why we love the transition statement in America. I remember my high school English teacher handing out a worksheet of transition statements ("In addition," "Secondly/thirdly/fourthly", "On the other hand," etc.) and giving us checkmarks on our papers for each one we used. I'm not sure why we're taught to prime readers to expect that a new idea is coming?

Comments

  1. RbtaylorSeptember 30, 2020 at 9:48 AM

    Tatiana,

    Your mention of transitions being taught in high schools hit close to home for me. I have a colleague who is OBSESSED with teaching transitions from one idea to another in formal papers. He has sheets and exercises that he spends at least a week teaching every semester. In high schools, where grading is a competition and Standards rule, it is easy for teachers to make checks on a paper as a quantifiable way of grading student work. It seems to be a flaw in the system we've created. How can we shift this paradigm?

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  2. careySeptember 30, 2020 at 12:56 PM

    Hi Tatiana -- the videos also made me think about translation, particularly translation from Japanese. In reading works translated from Japanese, particularly Haruki Murakami, I often have a feeling that so much is lost in the translation -- I find the style of the translated version of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, for example, kind of clunky and convoluted, in a way that feels at odds with the elegance of the structure of the story itself. This seems like a translation problem. A friend was telling me recently about a "translator" who doesn't actually speak any languages other than English, but who works by piecing together the best passages of different versions of translations of the same work, which I thought was interesting!

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