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Abstract
Tim Parks has included Haruki Murakami among the group of authors writing ‘dull global novels’, a perception that is in part the result of an exclusive focus on English-language translations of Murakami. By turning attention to translations in other languages, this essay reveals a more nuanced and complex picture, showing that depending on where and by whom he is translated, Murakami in fact emerges differently than in English, and arguing that his writing is perhaps not so ‘dull’, after all. After briefly describing the history of Murakami translations in North America, the essay examines the history of translations in East Asia, using the example of greater China, where the two main translators, Lai Ming Chu (Taiwan) and Lin Shaohua (China), produce strikingly different versions of his writing. The essay then goes on to trace the main patterns of Murakami translation in Europe and into some Middle Eastern languages and Persian. In Europe there is a gradual shift away from indirect translations through English toward direct translations from the Japanese, and a greater degree of collaboration among translators. The essay analyzes the effects of these changes, offering a few examples from Murakami’s latest novels.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
Notes
1 Based on the statistics provided in the Index Translationum maintained by UNESCO, at http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/.
2 Snyder refers here to Parks’s essay, ‘The New Dull Global Novel’ (New York Review of Books, February 9, 2010), in which Murakami is mentioned as one such author.
3 The same essay appeared online as ‘The Murakami Effect: On the Homogenizing Dangers of Easily Translated Literature’ at https://lithub.com/the-murakami-effect/.
4 It is telling that in his chapter on Murakami, when William Marling notes that, ‘Translation became so important in Murakami’s world that he assembled a corps of translators’, the only translators he has in mind are those working in English (Marling Citation2016, 128).
5 The three stories were ‘Kagami no yūyake’, ‘1980-nen ni okeru sūpāmākettoteki seikatsu’, and ‘Machi no maboroshi’. (Lai Ming Citation2015, 144).
6 In the early years as many as eleven other translators tried their hand at Murakami, including Liu Hui-chen, Huang Ch’i-mei, Fu Po-ning, Huang Ts’ui-o, Huang Chün-hao, Ch’en Ming-yü, Kuo Li-hua, Chang Huan-min, Li You-chung and Chang Chih-pin. See Fujii (Citation2007, 191).
7 Typically, publishers will authorize copyright sales for two Chinese editions, one in traditional (‘complex’) characters and one in simplified characters. The former is intended for readers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other Sinophone communities; the other is intended for readers in mainland China and Singapore.
8 Birnbaum’s translation for Kodansha of Norwegian Wood was not adopted for the international market; instead, Jay Rubin produced a new translation, published in 2000. The same is true of Birnbaum’s translations of the first two novels, which were retranslated for Knopf in 2015 by Ted Goossen.
9 Karashima points out that, tellingly, on the copyright page of End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland it says in small print, ‘Translated and adapted by Alfred Birnbaum with the participation of the author’. Further below is added, ‘The translator wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the editor Elmer Luke’ (Karashima Citation2018, 136).
10 Other translators include Richard L. Peterson, who translated the story ‘Ice Man’ for The New Yorker (10 February 2003), and, more recently, Christopher Stephens, who translated Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet Hayao Kawai (Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag, 2017).
11 For the last twenty-five years, Murakami’s works have been published in the UK by Hamilton, Penguin, Harvil Press and later Harvil Secker (part of the Random House Group since 2002). Karashima writes about the efforts of editor Christopher MacLehose to adapt Murakami’s works for the British market (Karashima Citation2018, 351–356).
12 These were Liu Hui-chen, Huang Ch’i-wen, Fu Po-ning, Huang Ts’ui-oh, and Huang Chün-hao. The publisher was Ku-hsiang.
13 For more information on the early Taiwan translations, see Lai Ming (Citation2015, 144–146).
14 Zhong Hongjie, Ma Shuzhan, Zhang Kongqun, Feng Jianxin, Hong Hong, and Li Jin (Fujii Citation2007, 191). Given that copyright laws were rather loose before China joined the Berne Convention in 1992, some translations done by these translators before that time were likely done without securing copyright.
15 ‘Murakami has entered into the marrow of my bones; I can almost touch his soul’. See Li (Citation2009).
16 For more information on Lai’s approach see Lai Ming Citation2015.
17 In fact, in the early years Hong Kong used to have its own Murakami translator, Ye Hui, based in Malaysia. Her style of translation is much closer to Lai Ming Chu’s than to Lin Shaohua’s (Fujii Citation2007, 200–202). Ye translated three books: Noruwei no mori and Hitsuji o meguru bōken (1991), and Dansu, dansu, dansu (1992). In the early nineties, Taiwan’s China Times secured exclusive rights to the traditional Chinese editions of Murakami’s works, meaning no more Hong Kong versions (Hillenbrand Citation2009, 720).
18 Other languages in which multiple translations of the same work exist include Portuguese (in Portugal and Brazil), Korean, Persian, and (as we have seen) English. The Spanish-language translations are done in Spain; it seems there are no translators working in Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America.
19 Such comparisons became even more popular in July 2018, when Lai Ming Chu’s translation of Kishidanchōgoroshi was declared ‘indecent’ in Hong Kong. The books could not be sold to persons under 18 and had to be sold wrapped in plastic with a sticker explaining that they included ‘material that may offend’ see Flood (Citation2018). A comparison of the Chinese and Taiwanese versions shows that Lin Shaohua did not cut any content, but simply avoided using the word ‘penis’.
20 I am grateful to Joo Hee Cho, Yoon Sun Yang, and Junsoo Kim for their help in gathering this information.
21 Murakami’s perception of the pattern that defined his early trajectory seems slightly different (and perhaps not quite accurate). In one essay, he wrote that his popularity (in terms of sales) took off first in East Asia before moving in the mid-1990s to Russia and Eastern Europe. Only later, he says, did his work catch on in Western Europe and the US (Murakami Citation2015, 284).
22 These translators were Jacques Westerhoven, Jürgen Stalph, Anna Zielinska-Elliott and Dmitry Kovalenin. Private communication with Jacques Westerhoven July 13, Ursula Gräfe July 14, 2018, and Dmitry Kovalenin July 11, 2018.
23 The first translations into Turkish by Nihal Önol of three Murakami novels (Noruwei no mori 2004, Nejimakidori kuronikuru 2005, Hitsuji o meguru bōken 2008) were done from French and published by Ekim.
24 I am grateful to Michal Daliot-Bul and Osnat Hadar for helping me gather this information.
25 Private communication with Michal Daliot-Bul, October 30, 2019.
26 Private communication, Shahin Modares, November 1, 2019.
27 I am grateful to Sunil Sharma, Sassan Tabatabai and Shahin Modares for helping me gather this information.
28 I am grateful to Bakry Kamal for this information.
29 Translation after Rubin (2005, 310).
30 Murakami himself engaged in indirect translation when he translated a novel by Dag Solstad through English in 2015.
31 A number of European translators report having had their editor refer to the English version in this way. Ursula Gräfe (German), Mette Holm (Danish) and the present author (Polish) confirm having had that experience.
32 This was confirmed by publishers from Bulgaria, Croatia and Albania. All three spoke of the difficulty of finding or unavailability of translators from Japanese. Private communication from Julia Petkova of the Bulgarian publisher Colibri, August 10, 2018; Boris Runjić, of Vuković & Runjić, Croatia, July 26, 2018; and Richard van den Brink and Flutura Açka from the Albanian Skandenberg Books, August 14, 2018.
33 Hijiya-Kirschnereit Citation2014, Rubin Citation2002, 276–277, Gräfe Citation2015, 164–165, Engetsu Citation2010, 597, 600–602.
34 As had previously happened occasionally: for example, with the German and Russian translations of 2001 Umibe no Kafuka, which both appeared in 2004, before the English 2005 version, or the German and Russian translations of the 2004 Afutādāku, appearing in 2005, two years before the English.
35 For more about the European translations of 1Q84, see Zielinska-Elliott and Holm (Citation2013).
36 This was the case with ‘Chris, from California’, the author of the blog Lost/Found in Translation https://lostfoundintrans.wordpress.com), who began posting his own translations of the first chapters of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki just a couple of months after the book’s publication. After a short while, however, he stopped and posted a comment about having been told to desist (that comment is no longer on the blog).
37 Malgorzata Burakiewicz, the editor at the Polish publisher Muza, reported that readers have occasionally contacted the publisher asking that the only two Murakami novels that were translated through English be retranslated from Japanese, because they ‘feel different’ from the rest, which have been translated directly. Personal communication, December 8, 2014.
38 Translators in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland confirm that such is the case in their countries.
39 I am deliberately setting aside here the question of how helpful an English translation is to a European translator working from Japanese. Practices vary. While some translators choose not to consult other versions, not wanting to be influenced, it seems that many also find it helpful, or at least reassuring, to have a text against which they can check their own work, whether in English or some other language.
40 Much has been written about the cuts to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, summarized by Jay Rubin in ‘Translating Murakami’, in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words and described by Karashima in his book). Many other works have also been shortened or heavily edited. For more on cuts to Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, see Holm Citation2015 and Karashima Citation2018.
41 Private communication from Maja Šoljan, July 13, 2018.
42 For more on the American practices of translating Murakami see: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/murakami/complete.html
43 This word was used to describe Murakami’s writing style in a BBC Radio 3 interview with Kawai Hayao, Kawasaki Kenko and Shibata Motoyuki, titled, ‘The Man Who Stank of Butter’, which aired on April 1, 2001.
44 Although on occasion it has also been described as characterized by ‘cultural scentlessnes’ (bunkateki mushūsei) (Yomota Citation2006, 35).
45 Both Lai Ming Chu and Lin Shaohua left the phrase in English in their translations.
46 See Shibata et al. Citation2006 and Japan Foundation Citation2008. For more information on the conference see: https://www.jpf.go.jp/e/project/intel/archive/others/murakami/index.html.
47 To read more on the Murakami translators collaborative, see Zielinska-Elliott and Kaminka (Citation2016).
48 For example, Philip Gabriel found a way in Umibe no Kafuka to reflect Mr. Nakata’s characteristic speech (which was also rendered in katakana). For more examples and details in 1Q84 translations, see Zielinska-Elliott and Holm (Citation2013).
49 First published in February 2017, the Dutch and Chinese (traditional character) translations of Volume 1 were out by December of that year; by April, translations had appeared in German, Burmese, Chinese (simplified characters), Danish, and Serbian. By June, Romanian was out. Spanish, Polish, French and English translations appeared in October 2018.
50 The word aranai was also used in language on the obi strip on the book’s cover, to jokingly advertise Mieko Kawakami’s ‘long interview’ with Murakami.
51 Private e-mail communications with Elbrich Fennema (July 29, 2018), Ursula Gräfe (August 3, 2018), Mette Holm (July 28, 2018) and Nataša Tomić (July 3, 2018).
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Anna Zielinska-Elliott
Anna Zielinska-Elliott studied in Poland and Japan, she is a translator of modern Japanese literature into Polish. Best known for her translations of Murakami Haruki, she has also translated Mishima Yukio and Yoshimoto Banana. She is the author of a Polish-language monograph on gender in Murakami, a literary guidebook to Murakami's Tokyo, and several articles on European translation practices relating to contemporary Japanese fiction. She teaches Japanese language and literature as well as translation and translation studies at Boston University, where she is the Director of the MFA Program in Literary Translation. She may be contacted at [email protected].