4 ms·

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

by wk_end 6y ago

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 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.html http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/murakami/complete.h...
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > That’s not a translation, whatever the publisher is calling it! Abridged translations have been pretty normal in the publishing world, in fact this is a tradition that goes back centuries. Think of authors who made a big splash across Europe in the Renaissance and early modern era: Cervantes, Chaucer, Boccaccio. They were usually read in abridged versions, not the full work.
  - andi999 6y ago
    This leaves me totally confused. How can rearranging chapter order reduce wordcount? Also I find the argument a 1379 page novel is 61 pages too large not believable (but who knows; well ppl who can read japanese would know if there wad offensive content)
fenomas 6y ago
> I've often wondered how much of my opinion I could chalk up to translation. Whenever I think about this I'm reminded of a book of Voltaire stories I once read, where the translator's note ended: "...but mostly I've tried to say out of Voltaire's way, for I find that he speaks very good English". It stuck in my mind because I kept thinking how hard it is to imagine an EN↔JP translation with a similar kind of note. I'm no expert but my gut feeling is that the translator's style plays a bigger role for highly dissimilar languages, since "just staying out of the author's way" isn't really an option. On the other hand, some years ago Murakami did a JP translation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. I'd read the original a bunch of times so I was really curious to find out what Murakami would do with it, how different it would be, etc. But everywhere I checked, it seemed to be very much a rote, practically word-for-word translation, to the extent that it seemed flat and overly explanatory to me (as a non-native reader). It felt more like he'd gone to pains not to leave any imprint on it. But of course Murakami isn't mainly a translator, so maybe I'm reading too much into this.
dynamite-ready 6y ago
> I've often wondered how much of my opinion I could chalk up to translation. I think I understand your point, but I reckon a good translation is far from hearsay. That said, I have never taken a single book, and read multiple translations of it. Perhaps someone has, and can determine how big a difference an individual translator has on the work of the original author... But I've read a handful of Murakami books now, and this post made me think about that. Most recently, I'd read 'Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki', as translated by Phillip Gabriel, and 'Norwegian Wood', translated by Jay Rubin. Now every book is different of course, but while the stories are different, all the Murakami books tend to rely on a number of tropes, which seem to appear in all his books (at least the one's I've read), no matter who translates them... Strong female characters, especially supporting characters. Explicit, but not overt, references to sex. Fleeting, but highly edifying references to classical music. Numerous references to drink... It felt like I was reading the same author, for sure. Hard Boiled Wonderland was my first Murakami... The odd conjoined narrative made me think of Final Fantasy 8 a lot for some reason (which also had a strange twin narrative). I thought the book was at it's best when he was trying to work out what was happening to him...

by wk_end 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> 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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.html http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/murakami/complete.h...
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > That’s not a translation, whatever the publisher is calling it! Abridged translations have been pretty normal in the publishing world, in fact this is a tradition that goes back centuries. Think of authors who made a big splash across Europe in the Renaissance and early modern era: Cervantes, Chaucer, Boccaccio. They were usually read in abridged versions, not the full work.
- andi999 6y ago
  This leaves me totally confused. How can rearranging chapter order reduce wordcount? Also I find the argument a 1379 page novel is 61 pages too large not believable (but who knows; well ppl who can read japanese would know if there wad offensive content)

fenomas 6y ago

> I've often wondered how much of my opinion I could chalk up to translation. Whenever I think about this I'm reminded of a book of Voltaire stories I once read, where the translator's note ended: "...but mostly I've tried to say out of Voltaire's way, for I find that he speaks very good English". It stuck in my mind because I kept thinking how hard it is to imagine an EN↔JP translation with a similar kind of note. I'm no expert but my gut feeling is that the translator's style plays a bigger role for highly dissimilar languages, since "just staying out of the author's way" isn't really an option. On the other hand, some years ago Murakami did a JP translation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. I'd read the original a bunch of times so I was really curious to find out what Murakami would do with it, how different it would be, etc. But everywhere I checked, it seemed to be very much a rote, practically word-for-word translation, to the extent that it seemed flat and overly explanatory to me (as a non-native reader). It felt more like he'd gone to pains not to leave any imprint on it. But of course Murakami isn't mainly a translator, so maybe I'm reading too much into this.

dynamite-ready 6y ago

> I've often wondered how much of my opinion I could chalk up to translation. I think I understand your point, but I reckon a good translation is far from hearsay. That said, I have never taken a single book, and read multiple translations of it. Perhaps someone has, and can determine how big a difference an individual translator has on the work of the original author... But I've read a handful of Murakami books now, and this post made me think about that. Most recently, I'd read 'Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki', as translated by Phillip Gabriel, and 'Norwegian Wood', translated by Jay Rubin. Now every book is different of course, but while the stories are different, all the Murakami books tend to rely on a number of tropes, which seem to appear in all his books (at least the one's I've read), no matter who translates them... Strong female characters, especially supporting characters. Explicit, but not overt, references to sex. Fleeting, but highly edifying references to classical music. Numerous references to drink... It felt like I was reading the same author, for sure. Hard Boiled Wonderland was my first Murakami... The odd conjoined narrative made me think of Final Fantasy 8 a lot for some reason (which also had a strange twin narrative). I thought the book was at it's best when he was trying to work out what was happening to him...