jakobitz's review against another edition
3.0
An insightful look behind the curtain of the publishing and translation work involved in bringing printed text to a global market; more specifically, a look at the translators and publishers that helped Murakami gain a foothold in the New York publishing sphere, spanning the eighties to the late nineties. At times engaging, and other times less so, this work is truly insightful as one ponders the complexities of memory as it relates to how we perceive history - memories are fraught with fallibility. Nonetheless, the author does due diligence in providing ample sources and references to try and provide a chronological journey through Murakami's early English publications. Having read this, I will no longer be able to read a translated work without thinking about the interpretive and editorial processes involved in it's creation. 3.5 stars
wrengaia's review against another edition
3.0
Karashima is a background presence in the tale he has told of Murakami’s rise to international success. The text is a collage of various interviews and letters; Karashima’s role as a ‘writer’ seems to have been not to offer analysis on the unfolding events of publication and translation but rather to be the arch-voice sewing disparate snippets and quotations together. So, while this is an enormously interesting book, its telling leaves rather a lot to be desired.
The complexity of publication, particularly in translation, is a hidden labour that cannot be surmised or understood from the finished product. Murakami’s reputation - that he is a solitary, long-distance running and somewhat stoic writer - does not at all take into account the complex teamwork behind his translated works. The extent to which the translators have overtly edited and changed his work for an English-speaking readership is quite remarkable, and a reminder of the importance of considering the role of the translator and the consequences of translation as a practice, whenever reading a translated work. I suppose, cynically, this book is perhaps meant to highlight the more ‘scheming’ parts of Murakami’s success - dropping his initial translator for Jay Rubin, or tactically switching publishers - but I think what came across instead was just an image of the publishing world as a world of ‘business’ like any other. Had Karashima offered any analysis, though, the impression may have been markedly different.
To summarise, this is an interesting book solely because its subject matter is so interesting. It is honestly quite badly written; I reached the end mourning for what could have been, had the same wealth of archival material been in the hands of a more competent or analytically minded writer. Nonetheless, a very interesting story for any fan of Murakami’s work.
The complexity of publication, particularly in translation, is a hidden labour that cannot be surmised or understood from the finished product. Murakami’s reputation - that he is a solitary, long-distance running and somewhat stoic writer - does not at all take into account the complex teamwork behind his translated works. The extent to which the translators have overtly edited and changed his work for an English-speaking readership is quite remarkable, and a reminder of the importance of considering the role of the translator and the consequences of translation as a practice, whenever reading a translated work. I suppose, cynically, this book is perhaps meant to highlight the more ‘scheming’ parts of Murakami’s success - dropping his initial translator for Jay Rubin, or tactically switching publishers - but I think what came across instead was just an image of the publishing world as a world of ‘business’ like any other. Had Karashima offered any analysis, though, the impression may have been markedly different.
To summarise, this is an interesting book solely because its subject matter is so interesting. It is honestly quite badly written; I reached the end mourning for what could have been, had the same wealth of archival material been in the hands of a more competent or analytically minded writer. Nonetheless, a very interesting story for any fan of Murakami’s work.
cthulhu_youth's review against another edition
3.0
It's good at what it does, but what it does is incredibly specific and not necessarily what it says on the blurb.
tinamayreads's review against another edition
5.0
WHO WE’RE READING WHEN WE’RE READING MURAKAMI by David Karashima is a compelling in depth look at the behind the scenes of bringing the English translations of Haruki Murakami’s early books to the US market.
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I have read and loved several of Murakami’s books so I was immediately interested to read this book. It was really eye opening to learn about all the hard work and passion that went into the English translations of his books. The research and interviews in this book give great insight into the translating and publishing world. It was really enjoyable to read this book which itself is also translated from the Japanese.
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It’s always a true marker for a good book when it inspires you to keep reading. Such is the case with this book. Halfway through reading this book I went to the library to borrow A Wild Sheep Chase.
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I’d definitely recommend this book to Murakami fans!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press via NetGalley for my early review copy!
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I have read and loved several of Murakami’s books so I was immediately interested to read this book. It was really eye opening to learn about all the hard work and passion that went into the English translations of his books. The research and interviews in this book give great insight into the translating and publishing world. It was really enjoyable to read this book which itself is also translated from the Japanese.
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It’s always a true marker for a good book when it inspires you to keep reading. Such is the case with this book. Halfway through reading this book I went to the library to borrow A Wild Sheep Chase.
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I’d definitely recommend this book to Murakami fans!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press via NetGalley for my early review copy!
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
I would have preferred the book to focus on more than just the US market ("American" is not synonymous with "Western"!), particularly since a major reason Murakami Haruki's international success reached its current height was the German translated fiction market, but I understand that the author David Karashima preferred to remain in the anglosphere. Still, the hyperfocus on the US-published translations, while expected, was frustrating.
Reading this book in conjunction with Jay Rubin's Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words was a singularly hilarious experience. I don't know if Rubin has ever read Karashima's book, but I'd love to know how he'd respond to it. Academic drama is incredibly entertaining. But I digress: Jay Rubin is currently the foremost Japanese-English translator of Murakami Haruki, although there have been a handful of other English-language translators in the many decades that Murakami has written and published novels, to say nothing of translators into different languages. (Apart from English translations, I've also read a couple of French-language versions of some of Murakami's novels, and those were translated by Corinne Atlan.) Rubin's translations notoriously have significant changes from their original Japanese versions, as Karashima notes, speaking of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:
Regarding The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which was published in Japan as three volumes (two hardcover volumes initially, with a third added later), Rubin cut roughly 25 thousand words in advance of the single-volume English-language publication. This is by no means exclusive to Rubin: English speakers have "series" of novels, with little distinction made between collections of loosely related stories (which would typically be considered distinct books) and continuations of the same story (which would typically be considered volumes of the same book). This difference of publication formatting goes beyond a single translator's (or team of translators') modifications to the actual text in question. A popular English-language series such as Harry Potter, for example, consists of seven separate novels with a combined page count of roughly 4 thousand. The average page count of each "volume" would therefore be around 570 pages. Compare that to Murakami's 1Q84, which was published in Japan as three volumes with a total page count of around 1420, for an average page count of roughly 470 each (the actual page count for the three volumes was closer to 550, 400, and 470, respectively). A book like Les Misérables, with a total page count of around 1.6 thousand, was originally published in several volumes, and continues to be—at least in French. The anglophone markets are different.
Reading this book in conjunction with Jay Rubin's Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words was a singularly hilarious experience. I don't know if Rubin has ever read Karashima's book, but I'd love to know how he'd respond to it. Academic drama is incredibly entertaining. But I digress: Jay Rubin is currently the foremost Japanese-English translator of Murakami Haruki, although there have been a handful of other English-language translators in the many decades that Murakami has written and published novels, to say nothing of translators into different languages. (Apart from English translations, I've also read a couple of French-language versions of some of Murakami's novels, and those were translated by Corinne Atlan.) Rubin's translations notoriously have significant changes from their original Japanese versions, as Karashima notes, speaking of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:
Rubin made the majority of cuts and changes at the end of Book Two and beginning of Book Three. He chose sections that he believed were “rendered almost irrelevant by Book Three” and rearranged material that he thought was not “meant to be as chaotic” as he had found it, and created a translation that he says was “tighter and cleaner” than the original. His abridged version left out chapters 15, 18, and parts of chapter 17 of Book 2; combined the first chapter of Book 2 with other chapters and moved the second chapter to later in the book; and removed chapter 26 (although, as Rubin himself has suggested, the editing is “much more complex” than that). Interestingly, the final paragraph of his Book 2 combines the final paragraph of chapter 17 with several sentences from (the deleted) chapter 18, creating an ending to Book 2 that has quite a different feel from the original Japanese.Rubin's translational methodology also differs from that of Murakami's previous Japanese-English translators:
Rubin seems to have approached his abridging of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle quite differently from the way [Elmer] Luke and [Alfred] Birnbaum approached the abridging of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. In the latter case, Luke and Birnbaum retained the overall structure of the book, cutting sentences and passages throughout the book to create a “tighter” text. With The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which Rubin suggests is “a compilation of self-contained short stories, its great power deriving from cumulative effect and variety than structural wholeness,” the translator seems to have been less constrained by concerns about the structural integrity of the work.And it isn't just Murakami. As I've previously discussed, similar processes of translators' or publishers' "editing" the texts they're supposed to be reproducing is by no means a Murakami-exclusive phenomenon: Kirino Natsuo's グロテスク, translated by Rebecca Copeland, had several major scenes removed entirely at the behest of the publishing house—incidentally also Knopf; Yokomizo Seishi's 犬神家の一族, translated by Yamazaki Yumiko, had various relevant details either omitted or changed for unknown reasons; Murakami Ryû's オーディション, translated by Ralph McCarthy, had some of its characters' names truncated (i.e., Shigehiko to Shige); Yokomizo Seishi's 本陣殺人事件, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, had various paragraphs rearranged—again the fault of the publisher, Pushkin Vertigo, not Heal Kawai herself, who is a brilliant translator; Murata Sayaka's 地球星人, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, had various anglicisms scattered throughout the otherwise reasonable prose; Kirino Natsuo (who really can't catch a break)'s リアルワールド, translated by Philip Gabriel, had several culturally specific concepts "localised" to unrelated English phenomena (i.e., ガングロ to Barbie Girl); Ogawa Yôko's 密やかな結晶, translated by Stephen Snyder, had its title changed drastically, thus shifting the focus entirely in the English version; Dazai Osamu's 人間失格, translated by Donald Keene, had its title similarly changed, thus changing the meaning of the entire novel; Kawakami Mieko's 乳と卵, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, almost completely removed the distinctive Osaka dialect that characterised the original novel's population; and the less said about what's been done to Lady Murasaki's 源氏物語, the better. And these are only a handful of examples restricted to English translations of Japanese novels.
Regarding The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which was published in Japan as three volumes (two hardcover volumes initially, with a third added later), Rubin cut roughly 25 thousand words in advance of the single-volume English-language publication. This is by no means exclusive to Rubin: English speakers have "series" of novels, with little distinction made between collections of loosely related stories (which would typically be considered distinct books) and continuations of the same story (which would typically be considered volumes of the same book). This difference of publication formatting goes beyond a single translator's (or team of translators') modifications to the actual text in question. A popular English-language series such as Harry Potter, for example, consists of seven separate novels with a combined page count of roughly 4 thousand. The average page count of each "volume" would therefore be around 570 pages. Compare that to Murakami's 1Q84, which was published in Japan as three volumes with a total page count of around 1420, for an average page count of roughly 470 each (the actual page count for the three volumes was closer to 550, 400, and 470, respectively). A book like Les Misérables, with a total page count of around 1.6 thousand, was originally published in several volumes, and continues to be—at least in French. The anglophone markets are different.
nadybl's review against another edition
Ce n'était pas ce que je m'attendais, alors je ne peut attribué des étoiles.
Je croyais lire sur la traduction, comme le style de chaque traducteur influence la traduction de Murakami. Mais c'est plutôt un rassemeblement de faits biographiques des différents traducteurs. Je ne suis pas trop intéressée par les biographies.
Il y a eu un bref passage sur l'utilisation de date (original) et de marqueur de temps relatif (traduction) que j'ai trouvé intéressant, mais il y en avait trop peu. Je n'ai pas terminé.
Je croyais lire sur la traduction, comme le style de chaque traducteur influence la traduction de Murakami. Mais c'est plutôt un rassemeblement de faits biographiques des différents traducteurs. Je ne suis pas trop intéressée par les biographies.
Il y a eu un bref passage sur l'utilisation de date (original) et de marqueur de temps relatif (traduction) que j'ai trouvé intéressant, mais il y en avait trop peu. Je n'ai pas terminé.