TRANSLATING
MURAKAMI: an email roundtable
From: Jay Rubin
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 8:43 PM
To: Gary Fisketjon; Philip Gabriel
Subject: Re: An email roundtable: Translating Murakami
The cutting
done on WIND-UP is a complex matter. The more you look
into it and into the question of revision, the more
you realize there is no single authoritative version
of ANY Murakami work: he tinkers with everything long
after it first finds its way into print. I once heard
that Willem de Kooning would occasionally follow a painting
of his to the gallery and revise it on the wall, and
Murakami's willingness to fix his stuff reminds me of
that.
I did virtually
all the cutting on WIND-UP, but I would have done none
at all if Knopf hadn't told Haruki that the book was
too long and would have to be cut by some number of
words (I think it was around 25,000 words). Afraid that
they would hire some freelancer who could wreak havoc
on the novel, and filled with a megalomaniac certainty
that I knew every word in the book--maybe better than
the author himself--after having translated all three
hefty volumes, I decided to forestall the horror by
submitting my manuscript in two versions: complete,
and cut. Knopf took my cut version pretty much as is
(which no doubt saved them a lot of work and expense;
like Phil, I was not recognized as an editor in anything
other than the notice in the front of the book).
Having recently
completed Book 3, Haruki felt incapable of cutting that,
but he had enough distance from Books 1 and 2 to mark
many passages for elimination--many SHORT passages that
didn't add up to much in terms of word count. I included
most--BUT NOT ALL--of his cuts as part of my cut version
(in some, I thought he had taken out important passages),
and of course sent the entire cut version to him. Later,
when the paperback version of the Japanese text appeared,
I found that Haruki had incorporated into that many--BUT
NOT ALL-- of the cuts he had suggested for the translation,
so the hard cover and paperback versions in Japanese
are different from each other.
(For example,
there is no reference to the illustrator Tony Takitani,
a character from an earlier Murakami story, in either
the translation or the Japanese paperback. Obviously,
Haruki had enjoyed throwing the name in as an in-joke,
then thought better of it during the process of revising
for the cut translation, which he then carried over
into the paperback.) Haruki did NOT, however, adopt
the large cuts made for the translation into the Japanese
paperback, though I have not done a systematic comparison
of the two. Another different text is the British version
from Harvill, which has British spellings and expressions.
An energetic graduate student could have a field day
tracking down all these differences, though it would
probably be a waste of time. I do think, though, that
if THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE outlives its time and
becomes part of the canon fifty years from now, a re-translation
will be needed, and scholars can have a fine time screaming
about how Jay Rubin utterly butchered the text.
As for Japanese
editors, you're right, Phil, they don't edit-not the
way Knopf and The New Yorker do.
From:
Philip Gabriel Sent: Monday, December 18,
2000 5:28 PM |
From:
Jay Rubin Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000
5:23 AM |
From:
Philip Gabriel Sent: Wednesday, December
20, 2000 12:17 PM |
From:
Jay Rubin Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000
8:43 PM |
From:
Jay Rubin Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000
10:21 PM |
From:
Jay Rubin Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2001
8:22 PM |
From:
Philip Gabriel Sent: Tuesday, January 9,
2001 8:22 PM |
From:
Fisketjon, Gary Sent: Tuesday, January 16,
2001 2:14 PM |
From:
Philip Gabriel Sent: Jan. 18, 2001 |
From:
Gary Fisketjon Sent: Thursday, January 18,
2001 5:50 PM |
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