A recent “article of note”, in the terminology of Arts and Letters Daily, focusing on Haruki Murakami on the eve of October 25, the release date of his monumental 1Q84 in the US (I never realized the book was not officially existing until today, considering many, and in many languages, pirate e-book versions already available on the Internet), contains the word “translator” (or its derivatives) not once, but quite a few times. It appears both natural and remarkable that translation as such would deserve being repeatedly mentioned in an article on a translated book. However, it is not specifically the translation of the book which Sam Anderson, the author of “The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami” in New York Times refers to when writing about (and interviewing) the enigmatic Japanese writer.
“The relationship … is far more complicated than I ever could have guessed from the safe distance of translation”. “The act of translation — shuttling from one world to another — …is in many ways the key to understanding Murakami’s work.” “You could even say that translation is the organizing principle of Murakami’s work: that his stories are not only translated but about translation.” Yet, it was another instance of the key word “translator” which drew my attention and sort of got me going.
“Murakami speaks excellent English in a slow, deep voice. He dislikes, he told me, speaking through a translator.”
In my own experience, he is certainly not the only one. Quite often, when doing an interpreting job, I hear the starting apology of the person I translate for (negotiator, lecturer, presenter…) about his/her not speaking the language of the counterpart, thus having, regrettably, to resort to an interpreter. There is a certain consolation to reflect that each profession results from the need to compensate for deficiencies and insufficiencies of the others (was it not Plato who observed that the division of labor lies in the natural inequality of humanity?), but nevertheless… It is certainly not unusual to dislike something you can do only through a proxy. So, if you earn money as a principal’s proxy, how to cope with the principal’s dislike (i.e. justify yourself, for this matter)?
The answer may be not far to seek. “When Murakami sat down to write his first novel, he struggled until he came up with an unorthodox solution: he wrote the book’s opening in English, then translated it back into Japanese. This, he says, is how he found his voice.” “(Murakami’s) entire oeuvre, in other words, is the act of translation dramatized”. It might sound a little bit artsy, but I am growing fond of the word “transcreation”. It is certainly the added value when it comes to something outside the mere need to overcome constraints and deficiencies of somebody who just doesn’t speak the language of his/her audience. Actually, transcreation is something that I have been doing for many years, not necessarily only when working with advertising or PR agencies. (Remember the slogan “Better than the original”.) It is something which boosts your morale or gives you some justification, if you need to guard yourself against likes and dislikes of your customers.
Well, no need to dramatize things. Our reality is far more prosaic. Another quotation from the above article brings me back to facts and figures: “Some bookstores are planning to stay open until midnight on (the) release date, Oct. 25. Knopf (the publishing house) was in such a hurry to get the book into English that they split the job between two translators, each of whom worked on separate parts.” Split the job… Such a hurry… Worked on separate parts… Sounds more familiar, doesn’t it?
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