project work

since I talked about how we went to the library for a project work research orientation I spose I should also mention a little bit about what I've decided to do my project on.
I felt a lot better about it after talking to Ari-sensei last week. I was thinking the project had to be actually researching something, you know, like "the economic policies of the Taisho era" or something like that. but it turns out that, according to Ari-sensei, the majority of students just come in with something along the lines of "I want to read this book in Japanese." and then find something sort of similar to present about at the end.
so! my topic's not entirely hammered out yet, but I've decided to do something about translation. if possible, I would love to be able to write about, I guess you could call it "theories of subtitle translation"...? some of the issues would be common to regular translation, but what I really want to examine for example (in the case of Japanese to English), is the balance between conveying Japanese culture and making things understandable to someone coming from an American cultural background. How best to translate certain expressions, pop culture references, things like that. do you translate them literally and let the viewer fend for themselves? add some sort of explanatory note? change the reference into one from American culture that has a similar meaning?
Questions like that are really interesting to me.

Oh, and-- wonderful news about my advisor, too! I had just assumed that the project advisor would be the same as our regular advisor (i.e. Ari-sensei for me). but then the other day Otake-sensei came up to me before class asking about when we should schedule my weekly project work meeting, and I got really confused, until I realized that my project advisor wouldn't necessarily be Ari-sensei. and then I got kind of worried that it might be Otake-sensei. which wouldn't be bad, it's not as if I dislike her--it's just that I've had very little interaction with her, and she's known to be one of the stricter sensei at IUC.
but then the other day they posted the assignments, and I have Senda-sensei! YAAAAYYY!!!!
everybody is really jealous of me! ^_^ (especially Jason, who has "Kawasaki-sensei" as an advisor--someone that none of us have ever heard of, or have any recollection of ever seeing. lol)
so, all in all, i'm getting really excited about this whole project thing!
;-D