Carpenter Comments - Oscar

Something that caught my interest in the interview with Carpenter was the fact that while the original author, Mizumura, was capable of English to the point of editing and improving a translation of her own book, she chose to stick with Japanese when beginning to create fiction. In a way, these two texts help to answer a question I had about earlier readings about Haruki Murakami and similar authors - they work so closely with their translators, and seem to be perfectly capable of writing in English, so why don't they?

The thought processes Carpenter describes in Jumping Into the Pond provides some insight, perhaps. Particularly the examples involving onomatopoeia, she highlights how differently you need to think about these types of phrases in order to differentiate the innate meaning they seem to elicit in native speakers - waku waku and doki doki could almost mean the same excited, but they are clearly different phrases meant for different, if adjacent, feelings. 

And perhaps this is why these authors choose to write in their home language - there's so much more that goes into these words than just dictionary definitions, and often the translator has to work very closely with the authors to fully grasp their intentions in order to act as the bridge between the two languages.