On June 9 Vintage Books released a trailer for the English language translation of Colorless Tazaki Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage, which is to be released on August 12. It can be found you YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvhithmKWV4&feature=youtu.be
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteI am the editor of the Slovak edition of Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, which should be published in Fall 2014 (I think we manage to catch the mid September) and luckily I googled up your blog a few days ago and had a very happy time while reading it and simultaneously working on the text, thinking about Tsukuru Tazaki, discussing several things on the book and japanese culture as well with our translator Dana Hashimoto, who lives in Japan for more than 20 years. I really enjoyed your thoughts on how to translate the names of the main characters: in our book they will be translated as well, we used the adjectives to express the colours, mostly for these reasons: 1. the colours are crucial for the whole story and 2. using the adjectives made the text more accessible for the Slovak reader than the Japanese words/names, even though the full names (and the nicks) are listed and explained in the beginning of the book; there was an option to use Slovak nouns, but it made it sound a bit childish at the end. The characters are called in Slovak: Modrý (Blue), Červený (Red) - for the boys - and Biela (White) and Čierna (Black) for the girs. Tsukuru himself is called Bezfarebný Cukuru Tazaki (Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki).
The book should be entitled in Slovak: Bezfarebný Cukuru Tazaki a roky jeho putovania.
It would be also nice to have the colours appear on the book cover - I pretty much like the UK design using 4 circles and the white background. I think it perfectly matches the feeling of the group of the five friend, they tightly linked relationship - it is a pretty important line for the story and it express it´s fatal influence on life of the main character - and the propperness, cleaness and simplicity of the image simply copies the style of the used language (at least the one of the Slovak translation:-))
I am looking forward to seeing what would our book look like...
However, thank you for writing down your thoughts - they were both: enjoyable and helpful!
Darina Zaicová
Thank you! I am sorry to respond so late. I have been traveling in the summer and only noticed your comments now. I have read them with great interest. I think the effect of translating the names in Polish and Slovak must be similar.
ReplyDeleteI would love to get in touch with the Slovak translator. Could you ask her to contact me? She could respond to this comment or contact me at azelliott@gmail.com.