Meredith McKinney's lecture

 Meredith McKinney's lecture "Whose side are we on?" raised a lot of interesting questions. One of the things I found most interesting was the idea of translation as ghostwriting. I find this to be a very appropriate analogy since both translation and ghostwriting imply prioritizing another's voice and experiences. Moreover, in many cases, translators sadly don't get any credit for their work similar to ghostwriters. McKinney's lecture, however, highlighted that is not easy to assume the position of a ghostwriter and to remain completely objective.  She took us through the process of really understanding the voice of Lady Nijo which implied fighting preconceptions of how McKinney thought that Lady Nijo must have felt. This implied for McKinney finding a way to grapple with her own modern feminist consciousness and reading of the text and the textual clues that Lady Nijo left that show her to be a woman of her time. I related to this dilemma since when translating my Capstone text many times I find myself thinking "Oh, when she wrote this, she really must mean this instead", or "I really wished she didn't wrote this" particularly in instances when the narrative voice denigrates other women, and I have to remind myself to stay true to the authors voice and to not impose my own opinions. 

I really appreciated that McKinney shared her translation process with us and how her interpretation differed from previous translations. I think McKinney's translation really emphasized how empathy plays an important role in the process. In her decisions, she explained how she focused on really exploring what Lady Nijo must felt in the situations she described. This empathy is what helps her decide how to translate the feeling words which have many possible meanings and connotations. I also liked that she explained that it took her many drafts to finally inhabit Lady Nijo's voice completely by really trying to understand what she felt. I was also surprised that McKinney doesn't read the texts before translating and that on most occasions she doesn't read the other translations that exist. Overall, I found her talk really interesting and I am now really curious to read her other translations of Japanese works.

-Lia 



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