Final Blog Post

 On “Fictions of the Foreign” by David Bellos

My primary takeaway, which I think the piece leads me to, is that ultimately “foreignness” is in the eye of the beholder— what is a maintained “foreign sound” to one reader won’t be to another. I understand both the value of maintaining phrases are structures across translation that produce oddities in the target language as a means of suggesting that the work is translated, and I understand that translation has the goal of making a text reachable not only across language but across culture, and by maintaining those oddities a text can be become less accessible for the target audience. 

On “The Clothing of Books” by Jhumpa Lahiri

I appreciate Lahiri’s point that the cover of a book is never a neutral feature, no matter its original form or intention— this doesn’t need to be a nefarious thing, obviously. It makes me think about how many books from the 80s have that futuristic/ neon vibe, which scares me away, but realistically the content does not always (or even most of the time) fully match the energy of the cover. They can also reflect the political or social implications of when/where the book was published, which I had never considered before.

 

                                                                                                            Samantha