Thoughts on Readings

I think these articles have given me a lot to think about the meaning of translation.

Looking at the example Wendy Lesser gave, Rubin's translation is more literary and easy to understand, while Birnbaum's uses short sentences, which reminds me of the rhythmic way Japanese people speak, but it seems to take me longer to grasp the meaning (because I need to connect the sentences logically). This has made me wonder whether the acceptance of a translation is not only determined by the degree of authenticity, but also influenced by many mundane factors. For example, when reading on a noisy subway, I might prefer the simplicity of the former, while when reading quietly late at night, I might prefer the latter to experience Japanese art. Another example is Haruki Murakami's "End of the World And Hard-Boiled Wonderland," the title of which comes from Jay Rubin and is translated as "Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World" in Birnbaum's version. The Japanese title is "世の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド," so Rubin's translation is clearly more accurate. However, Birnbaum switched the order because the publisher wanted to increase Murakami's popularity in the United States, and the opening "End of World" was too common in bookstores. Chip Kidd for Knopf's choice of cover was also a significant factor in American readers' understanding of Murakami.

Translators like Jay Rubin, Alfred Birnbaum, and Philip Gabriel have all openly acknowledged that their versions of Murakami are not the same. Each is shaped by their own style. Rubin's English is cleaner and more concise, Birnbaum's language has a jazzy playfulness, and Gabriel's tone is more moist and emotive. I've read Lin Shaohua's Chinese translation, and I think it perfectly aligns with the loneliness and healing described by the Chinese students in the article. This point isn't mentioned much in the article, so I wanted to elaborate on it in this blog. Since Lin Shaohua favors traditional Chinese prose, his translations are more infused with the flavor of classical Chinese literature.

Finally, I'd like to share an article by Jay Rubin titled The Other World of Murakami Haruki. I'll link it here.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/1304279970/fulltext/A725D9030A944A8APQ/1?accountid=9676&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals&imgSeq=1

What caught my attention in this article was this paragraph:

Unlike traditional novelists, Murakami stubbornly insists that the images in his work are not symbols and that he himself does not understand their “meanings.” They come out of his unconscious, he says, almost like automatic writing, and any reader’s interpretation is as valid as his own. If A Wild Sheep Chase succeeds at all, he insists, it is because he himself does not understand what the sheep means. The very act of identifying a symbol and defining it, as far as Murakami is concerned, drains it of much of its potential power. He would prefer to leave it alone and let it do its work, undefined, in the mind of each reader.

Interestingly, during his lecture at UC Berkeley, he mentioned that he sometimes didn't understand Haruki Murakami's writing, so he would ask Murakami about it. However, Murakami was reluctant to discuss the deeper meaning of the works or engage in textual analysis, often telling him he was overthinking. Therefore, I think Murakami Haruki also strongly supports understanding his texts from different perspectives. Translation, as the retransmission of text, will inevitably incorporate the translator's own understanding, thus producing different styles of presentation, which does not contradict Murakami Haruki's own ideas.