Reflections 3/28

 

The five articles we had read for this week are all very enlightening and thought-provoking in both the translation front and the publishing front. 

It is fascinating that Karashima digs so deep into the process that Murakami’s work first got published in the New Yorker. His research into this process is indeed very informative, and I was stunned to learn that Wind Up Bird Chronicles underwent so many edits of sexual content. I wondered why sexual content was toned down in an American magazine? It says in the article that editor William Shawn would shy away from including any content that relates to bodily function other than crying. (A tangential question: Was menstruation also censored back then?) I just find this concept hard to understand, as America is known for openly discussing a variety of topics. 

It was neat to learn that one of the appeals A Wild Sheep Chase has to American readers was its shared middle class sensibility between the Japanese and American culture, and that the book isn’t too Japanese for global audience to understand. This sense of global appreciation of a work surely is beneficial to authors in terms of winning over a bigger, more international audience. However, it seems slightly toxic to me that authors are forced to abandon some unique idiosyncrasies of a certain language and culture to ease the burdon of translation for a smooth publishment in English to win the global audience, an issue Tim Parks discusses in his article.  

“More importantly the language is kept simple. Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of the importance of avoiding word play and allusion to make things easy for the translator. Scandinavian writers I know tell me they avoid character names that would be difficult for an English reader.”

What seems doomed to disappear, or at least to risk neglect, is the kind of work that revels in the subtle nuances of its own language and literary culture, the sort of writing that can savage or celebrate the way this or that linguistic group really lives.

It makes sense that publicity in English matters a lot–it is the Lingua Franca, after all. But is such a global sensibility worthwhile to obtain if it sharpens the edges of every other unique culture? 

Jiayi