Sep 11, 2020 07:00:00

What is the complex process for translating Haruki Murakami's novels?

by

Olga Berrios

Haruki Murakami 's novel, which is highly acclaimed both in Japan and overseas, has a unique style that creates a unique atmosphere so that a generator that changes tweets into Haruki Murakami's style is developed, and the reader can use the first person properly. It features skillful sentences that try to manipulate the sense of. The Literary Hub , a media dealing with literary news, explains the complicated process involved in translating Murakami's work overseas.

Inside the Intricate Translation Process for a Murakami Novel | Literary Hub
https://lithub.com/inside-the-intricate-translation-process-for-a-murakami-novel/

Alfred Birnbaum said was translated into English, 'A Wild Sheep Chase ( Wild Sheep Chase )' is published by in 1989 Kodansha International (KI), I was greeted warmly enough to be referred to as the 'Impossible success'. At that time, it was extremely rare for the same author to publish translations one after another, said a former editor of KI, but for Haruki Murakami's work, preparations for translation of the second and third books began soon. is.

Birnbaum's translator, 'A Wild Sheep Chase' and 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World ( end and Hard-Boiled Wonderland world about)' time was devoted to the translation of, 'and editing of the translation 2 People may have spent more time than Murakami spent writing, 'jokingly suggests.

David Karashima , author of the book Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami, featured by Literary Hub, provides some concrete examples of translation and editing efforts. When translating the text written in Spanish by the writer Jorge Luis Borges into English, the translator 'actively corrected' it to make it easier for American readers to reach. 'It seems that translating the first 10 percent of a book correctly takes as long as translating the remaining 90 percent of the pages,' said Michael Emmerich , a scholar and translator of Japanese literature. Is saying.

Mr. Emmerich says that the first part takes time to make sure 'in what voice' and 'in what tone' you are speaking. This 'narrative' part is usually left to the translator, but for 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', the translator and editor coordinated together. is. The reason why such a method was necessary was that it was necessary to express the voices of characters such as professors, girls, librarians and gatekeepers, and two other chapters of the story (hard-boiled / end of the world). It was in the place to write the story of.

In the original Japanese, the first person is used properly for 'I' and 'I' at the beginning of the chapter change. In the English version, it is difficult to catch this difference just by typing 'I'. Translator Barnbaum and the editors made this first-person difference by using different tenses to create a distance in the narrative of each chapter, 'a timeless that may be more appropriate than the usual narration of the original. It is explained that the quality is so high that it is described as 'quality'.

From his own experience, Mr. Shinjima was advised by the editor to translate literally into 'fluid prose' when he was translating closer to the original text and became hard English. .. As a lesson, Mr. Shinjima remembered that the translation work of 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' expressed the 'voice' of each character in order to make the translation closer to the story. I'm talking.