9/14/2020 : Comments

I found Lesser's attachment to Birnbaum interesting in that it seemed to me that she was almost reading Murakami's works for the Birnbaum translations. She seems extremely drawn to his style of translation, which I felt ironic considering she begins by talking about how translators are like shadows and that there's a careful balance between expressing the original author's voice and letting your own slip through. I especially found a connection with Lesser's attachment to Birnbaum because of my love of Japanese voice actors, who in some ways are like translators in that there's a careful balance between playing a character and retaining your own voice. So while I found myself a little miffed by Lesser's rejection of Rubin (probably because I've now met him and therefore have some bias), I found myself understanding of Lesser's preference for one translator, just as I have my preference for some voice actors

For the second piece, one part that especially stuck out to me was how J. Philip Gabriel translated 猫の手も借りたい. I think it's both genius and humorous to incorporate a paw pun given the context of the story. I also found it cool that Gabriel had the opportunity to reach out to Murakami himself and actually discuss translation with him. 

I think it's stunning to see just how differently people perceive Murakami in Japan and elsewhere. For me, Murakami was always just a "popular author" who my father adored and my mother didn't like. I knew he was well known and just thought that was how it was everywhere; I didn't think that his perception was different in Japan. I think it's interesting too to note that the order in which books are published so heavily influences an author's audience. 

When I read the fourth article, my first thought was "I admire his work ethic," and as I read further, I found myself agreeing with his point about how difficult it is to translate puns and suffixes. When I translate my own Japanese short stories to English (or vice versa) I always find that portion difficult to translate, especially when it comes to casual / formal speech between friends. I hope this class will help me for when I go back to translating since I'd like to improve it. 

PS: Sorry for the late submission! I completely forgot to write comments.