I was not surprised to know that Sidensticker had 45 different renderings for the verb omou, as it was something I experienced myself when translating Murakami's Ko-ro-kke. For example, when translating the verb i-tta, referring to the act of saying something, simply saying XX said YY feels quite under descriptive.
However, using 「言った」in Japanese literary work feels much more acceptable to me - most likely because the context carries much more weight, where who is speaking, how, and why is often left implicit (and acceptable in Japanese high context culture).
On the other side, in English, speech verbs are often expected to carry tone directly - making the user of the verb "said" feel plain and unexplained. This also corresponds with how in English, subjects are stated explicitly and avoids ambiguity - which becomes a challenge when translating from Japanese to English, as Seidensticker has mentioned.
I was also impressed with how Seidensticker made the deliberate choice to omit the word 国境 (ko-kyou, kunizakai) to avoid the risk of miscommunicaing author's original message - which I will
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