(July 3)
Overall, the single most important lesson I took away from this internship is the importance of giving credit to different perspectives–be it as an editor or reader.
With regard to editing, I learned that there is no one “correct” way to edit a piece of writing; grammar and language are flexible, and can be used differently to portray an author’s meaning, style, and tone. Especially when it comes to translated texts, the same sentence can be written (and rewritten in translation) many different ways. Therefore, listening to other people’s perspectives is essential to capturing the closest meaning to the author’s original intended meaning. I like to think of translation and editing like an asymptote: if you listen and pay attention to what others are thinking and saying, the final piece of writing (that is, after it has gone through writing, rewriting, translating, editing, and proofreading) can get infinitely close to what the author’s true intention was, but absolute perfection is not possible because there are a variety of options and decisions that can all “correctly” portray an idea in writing. For this reason, cooperation and working together with one’s colleagues (in my case, my fellow interns and supervisors who all had unique input due to their own unique ways of interpreting texts, such as due to their cultural background) is something I intend to incorporate into my outlook on life and my future career. As a communication and English major who has worked as a tutor for Japanese international students at SUNY Geneseo, I have similarly learned that improving one’s intercultural communication skills can positively benefit everyone by broadening their sense of interpersonal understanding and cultural perspective.
With regard to reading, the same concepts apply. Society benefits when people listen and try to understand each other, no matter their ethnic or cultural background. By listening to other perspectives, people can be opened up to new ways of thinking and approaching problems that they themselves may not have thought of on their own. There is strength in numbers, and there is also strength in diversity. This is why increasing access to foreign literature is so vital in the first place; it opens people’s eyes to what is happening outside of their own small corner of the world, and introduces them to new ways of thinking and interpreting circumstances.