1Q84

Bekah bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
Thu Jan 19 20:24:09 CST 2012


Murakami uses Jay Rubin 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Rubin
and
Philip Gabriel for translating 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Gabriel

They both worked on 1Q84.  

Also see: 
"How Haruki Murakami's '1Q84' Was Translated Into English"  by Philip Gabriel - it's got photos of the Japanese pages. 
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/how-haruki-murakamis-1q84-was-translated-into-english/247093/

It's a pretty fun little piece. 

Bekah


On Jan 18, 2012, at 6:36 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Did I write that he works with his English translators?, although no stories
> on whether that is specifically true for 1Q84...
>  
> So many large works, from Hamlet, Milton, Moby Dick, War & Peace, Against the Day
> have been said to be too long....
>  
> And lotsa forgotten ones were....
>  
> I, at this stage, will (mostly) trust Murakami...
> 
> From: Technopaegnion Tapinosis <technopaegniontapinosis at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 8:21 PM
> Subject: Re: 1Q84
> 
> There's definitely a lot lost in translation with this one. People
> who've read it in the original have said that the translations are
> overly simplified and even lazy, as well as adding in lots of new
> lines that explain things deemed too "japanese" but which are pretty
> lame additions that make everything seemed overly spelled out.
>  
> Right. That is my impression.
>  
> 
> And even from my limited knowledge I've spotted plenty of references
> to Japanese myth as well as characters and scenes from earlier
> Murakami novels.
>  
> My first shot at this novelist, so...
>  
>  
> I haven't read a review that tries to grapple with
> the ontological issues of the novel, which is essentially about two
> people writing each other (Tengo and Aomame are fictions created by
> one another), or the Little People metaphor which to me seems a direct
> comment on the culture of patriarchal violence, conformity, complicity
> and the sexual degradation of women and young girls in contemporary
> Japanese society - in fact the most political statement the author's
> ever managed.
>  
> The ontological, the two hands, Escher's hands, is ...well, interesting...and...I'm just speculating here, but maybe the styles bleed or blend. Don't know. This couold work seemlessly in the Japanese of the author and feel and read strange to me in English.
>  
> As mentioned by Mark, the author is fluent in the language and has excellent translators....so I don't know what to think.
>  
>  
> 
> All of this said, even given the mistakes in translation and reading,
> this is a long book that doesn't justify its length in English and I
> wouldn't recommend it particularly. You'd need to have an interest in
> Murakami and Japan to want to bother even trying to work out what's
> going on beneath the surface.
>  
> But something has hooked me....so
> 
> 




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