
The Intricate Translation Process for a Murakami Novel - benbreen
https://lithub.com/inside-the-intricate-translation-process-for-a-murakami-novel/
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gautamcgoel
Murakami is one of my favorite writers. For "classic" Murakami style, which
generally has a lot of magical realism, I recommend A Wild Sheep Chase, which
is hilarious and quite accessible, and Kafka on the Shore, which is a bit more
ethereal. I also really enjoyed Norwegian Wood, but be aware that this is
quite different from most of his work. In an interview with the Paris Review,
Murakami says that Norwegian Wood was his attempt to write a mainstream novel.
It's quite good, but it's also artificial, in the sense that it is not his
true style. Windup Bird Chronicle, mentioned in another comment, is good, but
a bit more of an investment of time and energy. I really recommend starting
with A Wild Sheep Chase.

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wanderer2323
Dmitrii Kovalenin, Russian translator of Murakami has written a book on
Murakami which is 1/3rd about the translation process, 1/3rd literary analysis
of Murakami's novels and 1/3rd about author's experiences with Japan and
Japanese people.

Kovalenin's chapter on the difficulty and involvement of translation the
'Hard-boiled Wonderland' is especially striking and goes into much similar
details of how he had to be immersed in the book to a great extent to pull off
a translation that would honor the original.

It is his literary analysis chapters that shed a great deal of light on 'why'.
Turns out that Murakami's prose is highly structured, with subtle cross-
refereces that, if translated differently will 'de-sync' and leave the reader
of a translated version without the clues to understanding the real structure
of the novel.

While an example of a structurally meaningful cross-reference escapes me at
the moment, I do remember a different example of a structural clue. It occurs
in the 'Hear the Wind Sing', the first book of the Sheep Trilogy, which ends
in the much-recommended 'A Wild Sheep Chase' (technically it was later
followed with a 4th book in 'Dance, Dance, Dance' so it's a 4-book trilogy).
In the very beginning of the 'Hear the Wind Sing' there is a small unassuming
line: 'This story begins on August 8, 1970, and ends eighteen days later — in
other words, on August 26 of the same year'. If you follow the other time
references given in the book -- such as days of the week mentioned on the
radio etc -- this time frame given cannot possibly be true. The assumption
that it is not an author's mistake gives a hint that there is a hidden
structure to the novel, which on its face looks fairly simple and linear.

I personally think that it is very difficult to get to like Murakami if you
start with 'Kafka' or, god forbid, the 'Wind-up Bird'. These are hard books
and they require a specific mindset to enjoy. 'Sheep' into 'Dance' is much
easier to enjoy and 'Norwegian Wood' and 'South of the Border' both provide a
large tractable multi-layered experience that can be explored up to an
individual desire for complexity in undertones.

According to Kovalenin, Murakami himself refuses to elaborate on his books'
structures and recommends instead to 'understand [the books] via the way you
feel about them'.

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wk_end
Let's see. I enjoyed Hard-boiled Wonderland quite a bit, failed to make a dent
in Kafka on the Shore, and loved Wind-Up Bird almost despite itself - the
writing read "flat" to me, as many others are saying, and the dramatic
conclusion was trite and disappointing, though I'm open to the possibility
that I missed the point.

I've often wondered how much of my opinion I could chalk up to translation.
After all, I know there's plenty of room for the translator to insert
themselves when going between English and French or German, languages I speak
that are close enough to English you can often jump word for word between
them, even with closely related words. Japanese (a language I'm learning but
know an awful lot less of) is _vastly_ more different; you can usually capture
literal meaning without too much issue but the thought of translating "style"
"accurately" really boggles the mind. Especially when I learned how much the
translator of Wind-Up Bird, Jay Rubin, and the American publishers played with
the structure of the book, my conjecture is that there's no "real" way to read
Murakami (or any Japanese writer) without learning Japanese first; if you try
to you're mostly just reading Rubin or whoever retell Murakami's story.

I look forward to whenever my Japanese is strong enough to be able to test
that theory, but that'll probably be another few years still. Turns out
Japanese is hard.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Especially when I learned how much the translator of Wind-Up Bird, Jay
> Rubin, and the American publishers played with the structure of the book

Wait, sorry, what? How does a translation mess with the overall structure of
the book? That doesn’t sound like a translation problem.

~~~
wk_end
Wikipedia:

> Some chapters and paragraphs of the Japanese paperback edition were not
> included in the English translation. Translator Jay Rubin cut about 61 of
> 1,379 pages, including three chapters (Book 2 Chapters 15, 18, and part of
> 17; and Book 3 Chapter 26). Combining the original three-volumes (Japanese)
> would have been too long, and so the publisher requested that ~25,000 words
> be cut for the English translation. These chapters contain plot elements not
> found elsewhere in the book. For example, the two missing chapters from the
> second volume of the original three-volume elaborate on the relationship
> between Toru Okada and Creta Kano, and a "hearing" of the wind-up bird as
> Toru burns a box of Kumiko's belongings (Book 2 Chapter 15). In the third
> volume, the computer conversation between Toru and Noboru Wataya (Book 3
> Chapter 26) and Toru's encounter with Ushikawa at the train station are also
> omitted. In addition to reducing the word count, some chapters were moved
> ahead of others, taking them out of the context of the original order. At
> the start of Book 3 the chapters have been rearranged. Rubin combined two
> chapters called “May Kasahara’s POV” and moved the “Hanging House” chapter
> to make the chronology of events consistent.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
That’s not a translation, whatever the publisher is calling it! A translation
attempts to accurately portray the original piece as written in another
language. Not every word needs to be literal, but moving around chapters is
clearly out of bounds!

~~~
fenomas
Here's an email discussion where the translator discusses the cuts and
changes. Notably, he mentions that Murakami knew about and was involved in the
process.

Jump down to the middle, starting from: "The cutting done on WIND-UP is a
complex matter".

>
> [http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/murakami/complete.h...](http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/murakami/complete.html)

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AdmiralAsshat
It doesn't surprise me that Murakami's works are well-regarded
internationally. His characters always read as highly cosmopolitan: they name-
drop popular American bands, they drink famous European liquor, they quote
Plato, Aristotle, etc. I'm more surprised that he's well-regarded
domestically, because the Japanese traditionally do not seem to regard well
artists that they perceive as not being "Japanese" enough (see: Akira
Kurosawa).

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abathur
I have, for years, been reading my first Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

This probably sounds like a bad thing, but after seeing some comments about it
I felt compelled to offer a small defense (as in--do read it, but maybe trust
someone else's advice on which Murakami to read first).

I absolutely adore it, and have gifted two copies of it since I started
reading. But, for the past _several_ years, most of my engaged/active reading
time is going into a deep pile of dense nonfiction that I'd like to get
through--leaving Murakami with my I-am-failing-to-sleep-so-bad-that-I-might-
as-well-read-for-an-hour-or-two slot.

I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through. I'm always happy to pick it up, but
sometimes I'll go many months without needing to. There's something calming
(!= boring) about the pace (of the plot, and the narrator's thoughts, and of
the language itself) that usually defuses whatever mind-race was keeping me
awake, yet manages to keep me turning pages until my eyelids are heavy.

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ineedasername
I feel a bit like a failure for saying this:

I can't read his work. I know they're considered great works of literature,
and to be honest they seem to be much more accessible than many other
extremely well regarded works of literature, but I just can't get into his
work.

I've tried reading them, I've tried listening to audio books. A small bit here
or there, a paragraph or a full page, will strike me as interesting with
excellent style (certainly attributable in part to excellent translations) but
as a whole, they all fall flat for me.

Given their popularity, I sometimes think the failure is mine, though I also
wonder how many people may just be riding the "Oh they're great!!" bandwagon
without actually reading the books themselves. Probably not a majority, I
would hope. I didn't enjoy it much but still managed to make it halfway
through "Windup Bird Chronicle" before calling it quits, so I suppose many
people go all the way to the end. (Although I read a synopsis of the rest of
the story and said to myself "Yeah, glad I missed that")

~~~
jamses
I wouldn't worry that it's your failure, you're just not into it.

I loved Windup Bird Chronicle. I struggled with 1Q84. I find the same thing in
every creative field (art, film, lit, games); a favourite
author/artist/director/company will release something I think is a real
stinker while everyone else praises it, and vice versa.

Of course it can help to build up a vocab/grammar/approach to appreciate
particular works or what something is referencing, but there are too many fish
you'll never even see to be worrying about one author. Just hunt down the
stuff you like and don't be afraid to give up halfway through if you're not
enjoying it. It sounds like you've already figured that part out.

~~~
hinkley
Interesting. That's the second one I read, but I put it down 5 chapters in and
never picked it back up. So it sits in my 'to read' pile. I even confiscated
the bookmark the last time I rearranged my books, because I'd have to start
over at this point.

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loosetypes
After having lived all my life in an area without real seasons, I have very
fond memories of listening to Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
while walking my dog regularly but aimlessly in a forest as the leaves began
to change.

It felt almost surreal, and paired quite naturally with Murakami’s dreamy but
lucid world building.

I haven’t read the original, and don’t understand Japanese, but the
translation certainly didn’t feel, to me, like a translation.

In 1Q84, a central character plays a role in rewriting a work, so the
translation process must be front of mind for Murakami. Perhaps Birnbaum is
his very own Tengo when adapting his works to English.

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9nGQluzmnq3M
Of all Murakami's books, the one that made the biggest impression on me was
"Underground", his non-fiction book consisting entirely of interviews with
survivors of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin attacks in Tokyo. It's simultaneously
fascinating and absolutely horrifying, and it goes into a lot of depth on the
lives of the people both before and after the attack.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Murakami_book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_\(Murakami_book\))

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jerrysievert
as a Murakami fan (both Hiroku and Ryu), I have to admin that a lot of the
feeling of the novels come from the translator. I've been a bigger fan of
Birnbaum than Rubin, which led me to attempt to find Birnbaum's translation of
Norwegian Wood, hoping that I'd like it better.

Unfortunately, no Birnbaum Norwegian Wood for me, but reading Haruki's books
put me into an interesting state of enlightenment. Contrasted, Ryu's books
bring in a dark whimsical side which is also enchanting.

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takahisah
Whenever I read about Murakami novels being translated, I'm reminded of his
writing process for his first novel, "Kaze no uta (The Wind Song)". He wrote
the novel in English first, and translated that English version into Japanese.
His reason being "if it is English, my vocabulary is not that great, so I'm
forced to write in short sentences, which creates this natural rhythm. Kind of
like an 8 beat." [1]

Being bilingual, I often find myself pondering whether I should write
something for myself in English or in Japanese for tasks such as note taking
or journal/blog entries for myself. More and more, I'm finding that my writing
in English is clearer, and more to the point. Not only that, but my thinking
is structured in a more productive way, so I can write at a faster pace.

This was not meant to be a comparison of languages. We have enough of those
discussions with programming, why would we talk about Natural Languages and
risk angering a whole nation, instead of just Java programmers. Maybe my
Japanese is no longer at the level of my English. But when somebody like
Murakami also says that he wrote his first novel in English because it was
easier for him, I feel there might be something there besides my English being
better than my Japanese. Something worth exploring at least.

There are many great things about Japanese writing, the kanji characters bring
about conciseness to the writing. I can glance at a page and quickly get a
sense of the contents from the face of the characters much easier than English
text. The characters feel closer to pictures. I also love the style of the
"Bunkobon", which is a smaller sized book, which can fit inside a pocket. I
used to carry those everywhere with me and pull it out when I had a moment.

The novels and stories are great. People like Haruki and Souseki and Ranpo are
my heroes.

I guess my Kokugo teacher would have liked for me to mention the beautiful
poetry that arises from Haiku and the seasons, but those things are no longer
practical use to me.

On the other hand, there are also many mental blocks and barriers that I face
when writing Japanese. Finding the right Kanji characters is one thing. That's
probably attributed to my poor memory of kanji characters. Another thing is
sentence endings: Desu/masu and dearu/da. The Desu/masu is a more respectful
tone. Dearu/da is authoritative and sometimes regarded as casual. So now in
addition to wondering whether I should write in the first person or third
person, I have to worry whether my reader will be offended by my writing.

Anyway, would love to hear from other multilingual people on their views of
language preference and differences.

[1] This was from an interview he did with a magazine called "Kaie", The New
Yorker also mentions this [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-
in-translat...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-
translation)

~~~
fttx_
For what it's worth, my partner also generally prefers writing in English.
They also really like kanji, but generally seem to find that English more
easily enables precise expression of meaning. For instance, they find English
better for navigating bureaucracy, or communicating specific requirements to a
contractor.

