No, I do not think the translated text truly convey a particular country’s experience. This is because the nuance of the word used in the original text may not have a way to be expressed in English.
There are many example of this occasion in the book such as the word “taegukgi” and other words that are not translated in the text. This will cause the confusion within the reader, thus, cause the misunderstanding or misleading of the content. Additionally, there are not always direct way of translating a certain word in a suitable way in English. From my mother tongue Japanese, The word “happy” can translated in multiple different ways according to the degree of happiness. Other than the example, the word “お疲れ様です” is very difficult to be translated since there are no circumstances that the word can be used in western culture.
There are also cultural difference. The way people think in some country are slightly different from each other. In some culture, the word does not directly mean the way it is said but it requires to understand them from the context and how the others said those words. For instance, in Japan, “You are welcome to come to my house anytime” is a common thing to say when someone visit your house, however, it does not mean the person can actually come anytime and people usually say so as “Thank you for coming today, I enjoyed it.”. If these conversation were directly translated in English, there will be a misunderstanding of the situation. Thus, cultural differences can also effect how the readers interpret the event. Translated texts usually originated in a country where English is not their first language and usually, they have their own culture that others might not be able to understand.
From all of these reasons, I think it is difficult for translated texts to truly convey a particular event, but it is still relevant since it is not always wrong (it is right most of the time) despite the cultural or wording differences that may occur.
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