Murakami Haruki on translation, writing

Last month the Mainichi Shimbun published a series of articles based on a lengthy interview with Murakami Haruki. In addition to being a famed writer, the man is an accomplished literary translator, with Japanese versions of works from Truman Capote, Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and J. D. Salinger to his name. (See the end of this post for links to all five articles, in both Japanese and English.)

One thing I found interesting was his statement in the first article that old translations have an expiry date. The changing nature of the Japanese language means that classic foreign books benefit from retranslation every half-century or so:

Murakami says the “use-by” date on translations means they have a “50-year limit” of effectiveness because of changing writing styles in Japanese. Murakami says that the flood of works translated into Japanese during a literature boom here in the 1960s are now reaching their “use-by” dates.

On my shelves I have a number of translations of ???? [Hyakunin Isshu], the 100 poems compiled by Fujiwara no Teika around eight centuries ago. Murakami’s words ring true when you compare a relatively modern translation from Steven Carter or Joshua Mostow with H. H. Honda’s 1957 One Hundred Poems from One Hundred Poets, which turns the 31 syllables of each Japanese poem into not-so-elegant rhyming quatrains in English. (Of course it’s possible to go back to Clay MacCauley’s 1917 Hyakunin-Isshu (Single Songs of a Hundred Poets), available online, and see that traveling still farther back in time doesn’t necessarily mean a journey deeper into the world of English poetic devices inappropriately applied to Japanese verse.)

Genji Monogatari is one work that’s been translated numerous times over the years. Maybe there are other Japanese books out there whose English translations are nearing their read-by dates, and translators should start preparing updated versions of them for a twenty-first-century readership. Well, at least translators who have the financial luxury of wrestling with words and phrases for hours on end, rather than maximizing their output per unit of time. As Murakami points out in the second article:

“Translating from English into Japanese is like solving a math problem,” he says. “Just like there are some math problems that people can spend an entire day trying to work out, it’s possible to spend a long time thinking about why particular words are used the way they are. Some people are suited to this and others aren’t. But I like that kind of thing.”

Murakami’s interview, written up in five parts:

  1. ????????????????????????????????????????????????? (translated as Haruki Murakami opens up about translating America’s literary giants)
  2. ???????????????????????????????????????????? (translated as Murakami says American contemporary classics ‘really significant’ for his writing)
  3. ??????????????????????????? (translated as Murakami’s next epic poised to become his biggest ever)
  4. ???????????????? ?????????????????????????????????? (translated as ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ helped inspire Murakami to write for his daily bread)
  5. ????????????????????????????????????????? (translated as Murakami aims to find harmonious balance between globalism and regionalism)
Posted by Peter Durfee on 06/03 at 05:31 PM

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