The readings this week were informative because they gave the perspectives of different translators via the interviews, and also showed how one translator's interpretation can differ from another's. In the "How Haruki Murakami's '1984' Was Translated into English" article, I found it interesting that Philip Gabriel translated only four pages per day aka 80 pages per month. I wonder if he has a regular work schedule. He also discussed the intricacies of translating suffixes (-san and -kun), and I would like to see cases in which it was difficult to determine the level of intimacy between two characters. Also, many of the articles mentioned the fact that translating Japanese into English is like "giving away the punch line" because Japanese verbs are at the end of the sentence whereas after a subject in English. I never thought of it that way, but I'll definitely take this into account when translating.
In "Lesser Mysteries of Translation," I learned that a translator should never overpower the voice of the source author. It reminded me of Marie Kondo's translator, who never tried to overpower Kondo. Regarding the differing translations between Birnbaum and Jay Rubin, I actually prefer Birnbaum's translation because Rubin's sounds robotic in the sense that it sounds too perfectly translated. Birnbaum makes me feel the emotion Murakami couldn't express in English, so I was very surprised to read that Murakami actually tried to stop working with Birnbaum. In the "Found in Translation" reading, I agree that translating puns is extremely difficult not only in Japanese but any language. In the interview with Emmerich, I found it interesting how he stated that if Murakami had released his novels in a different order, starting with 1Q84, for example, would have prevented him from reaching the level of success he has today. Granted, I started 1Q84, and it is seriously long.
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