Murakami Translations

Unfortunately, I'm not that familiar with Murakami's work. I've only read one book of his, Kafka on the Shore, which was translated into English, almost two years ago. I was glad to read the interview with Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, as they briefly mentioned their experience with translating Kafka on the Shore. 

A core goal I've gathered from interviews of various translators, like Rubin, Gabriel, or Marie Kondo's interpreter Marie Iida, is to maintain the "voice" of the original author and to make it seem as though the translator was never there to begin with. I think this is most difficult when translating humor. So much comes into play in these cases, such as cultural or vocabulary differences between Japanese and English. I thought it was interesting what Rubin and Gabriel said about translating humor in Kafka on the Shore. The translated joke is a pun, playing on the words pause and "paws." I remember being particularly curious about this while I read the story because this pun fit the character quite well and made a lot of sense in the context of the story. The character who says this line is called Nakata, and he was involved in an accident as a child and has reduced mental capacity. As a result, he's portrayed as pretty quirky and strange throughout the story. Specifically, he has the ability to communicate with cats. Although the translated pun is slightly removed from the original meaning of the joke in Japanese, I thought it was nice that they were able to keep this humorous aspects of his character and his connection to cats. I wonder if there is a way to maintain humor across translation or if it must be explained through a note from the translator or something similar. 

I have not read the Japanese version of Kafka on the Shore, but after doing some research, I think the different depictions of Nakata from English to Japanese is pretty interesting. In Japanese, his name is written in katakana and that implication is lost in English. In the English text, certain words he says are spelled incorrectly. For example, ministry is spelt as minis tree. From what I've seen this is not in the Japanese text, and I wonder how the translator came to the decision to make this stylistic choice.  

Kenna Ward