Finnish and Turkish Translations of Killing Commendatore Released

Two more new translations of Killing Commendatore appeared in November: the Finnish and Turkish versions.

The translator of the Turkish version is Ali Volkan Erdemir, and the publisher Doğan Kitap. The publisher page lists the number of pages as 848, so that clearly is a two-volume edition, as is the case with the English language version.

The Finnish translation, by Juha Mylläri, was published by Tammi. One of the online reviews said that the book is 800 pages long (thank you, Google Translate!), which means that the book must also include both volumes.

The second volume of my Polish translation came out last month from Muza. Here is the cover:

Brazilian, Portuguese, and Swedish Translations of Killing Commendatore

 


Rita Kohl's Brazilian Portuguese translation of Killing Commendatore is coming out on November 23 from Alfaguara. Also in November, a Portuguese translation through English by Ana Lourenço and Maria João Lourenço will be released by Casa Das Letras. It seems that the Brazilian title refers to the "assassination" of the Commendatore, while the Portuguese one to his "death." It also appears that the Portuguese cover is using the mainland Chinese design (shown on the right).

 

Above are the covers of the Swedish translation from Norstedts by Vibeke Emond. The first volume came out on October 17, and the second one will be appearing in February 2019. It seems that all three cover designers have opted for the red, white and black color scheme.

It is very exciting that so many European translations are coming out more or less at the same time as the English translation. Things have really changed starting with 1Q84, which was the first Murakami novel to came out in a number of European languages before the English translation appeared.

Commendatore Translates Itself!

The Spanish and English translations of Killing Commendatore appeared this week. The Spanish translation, by Fernando Cordobés and Yoko Ogihara, came out from Tusquets Editores. Interestingly enough, the translators' names are not mentioned on the publisher's page.  

The English translation, by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen, came out from Knopf in the US and Harvill Secker in the UK today.  A Washington Post review by Charles Finch also didn't find it expedient to give the translators' names. No doubt the book keeps translating itself. 

In his review, Finch says that in this book Murakami "gets the balance right." He writes:

Perhaps this lies in its exhilarating portrayal of how it feels to make art. In long, powerful passages, Murakami describes painting with the intensity of what seems like just-concealed autobiography. ...One could argue that the realism of such scenes saves “Killing Commendatore” from its flights of outlandishness; conversely, it’s possible that only in the calm madness of his magical realism can Murakami truly capture one of his obsessions, the usually ineffable yearning that drives a person to make art. 

Another review, by Johanna Thomas Corr in The Guardian, is not as positive. Corr doesn't mention the translators, either... She writes:

The novel spins wide, exploring ideas about art, grief and rebirth with echoes of Alice in Wonderland, Don Giovanni, Bluebeard’s Castle and an 18th-century story by Ueda Akinari about a mummy who comes back to life. The result is an exhausting epic that is at once more absorbing than it deserves to be and less profound than the author intended. 

Later this week or next week, we will get the French translation by Hélène Morita (both volumes) from Belfond (October 11), the Italian translation of volume one by Antonietta Pastore from Einaudi (October 16), and the Polish translation of volume one by Anna Zielinska-Elliott from Muza (October 15). Volume two of the Polish translation will be published in November. 

More Translations, More Covers

A Romanian translation of Killing Commendatore came out from Polirom in Iuliana Oprima's translation. Another translation that will be appearing soon is the Catalan version which is coming out in 60 days from Empuries.

Also, the cover for volume 2 of the Polish translation of Killing Commendatore has been released. The paintbrushes from volume 1 (on the right) have been replaced by knives and swords (or are they swords?).

As far as I know, volume 1 is coming out in October and volume 2 in November.

 


On another topic -- I missed the publication of two more translations of Shokugyō to shite no shōsetsuka: the Italian translation by Antonietta Pastore from Einaudi (2017) and the Romanian version by Andreea Sion published by Polirom (2016).

The English translation is yet to appear. I have seen different versions of the possible English title including Novelist As a Profession and Novelist As a Vocation.

      

Murakami’s Newest Novel Deemed “Indecent” in Hong Kong

Murakami’s newest novel, Killing Commendatore, has been classified as "Class 2” indecent material by the Hong Kong Obscene Articles Tribunal. Indecent material is defined as including “violence, depravity and repulsiveness.” The Tribunal’s decision means that Killing Commendatore was removed from the Hong Kong Book Fair last week.  It can now only be sold in bookstores if the cover is wrapped and features a notice warning about its contents, with access restricted to those over the age of 18. The same is true of libraries — no readers under 18 may borrow the book. 

The decision was made public on July 12. Since then articles have appeared in the Japanese press by people puzzled by the decision. Readers have commented that some Murakami books were “much worse” in terms of sex scenes, asking why this one should be restricted. One might also ask why the decision is coming only now, when the book came out in Taiwan in December 2017 and in China in March 2018.

Here are links to articles in Yomiuri and Nikkei. The story was also featured in yesterday’s Guardian and South China Morning Post. 

On the surface of it, this seems pretty outrageous: censoring a book in this day and age? But in fact, this is not the first time this has happened to a Murakami book. In 2011, after “multiple" complaints from parents, Norwegian Wood was taken off a reading list at a high school in New Jersey, as reported by the Guardian in this article. The sex scene between Reiko and her student was described as a “drug-fueled homosexual orgy.” 

Of course this was just one school, as opposed to a whole “Special Administrative Region,” with a population of 7.4 million. One can imagine that the decision will probably greatly help the book’s sales China and elsewhere!

 The picture above comes from the Nikkei article quoted above, apparently showing the Hong Kong censor's warning sticker on the wrapped edition of Commendatore.  Observant followers of this blog will recognize the cover as that of the Taiwan edition of the book, in Lai Ming Chu's translation. I have looked around the internet for pictures showing the sticker on the mainland translation by Lin Shaohua, but so far have not found any.  I suspect this is because the Chinese edition published in Taiwan is more widely available: it seems that most Hong Kong readers prefer Lai's to Lin's  renditions.   

More on Visualizing Translation

I have just finished correcting my translation of Killing Commendatore. As I was working on it, I formed certain images of different characters in my mind. Every reader does that; some seem to think of different celebrities that the characters remind them of, others create their own, original mental images. I have happened across some of those images on the internet. Here are a few examples.

The first is a collage of images from a Twitter post by Takuma Moriwaki, who visualized all the characters in the book as different Japanese celebrities, mostly actors and singers. Starting from the top left and going clockwise: the main character - the nameless painter (Ken'ichi Matsuyama), Wataru Menshiki (Kōichi Iwaki), Marie Akikawa (Nana Komatsu), Masahiko Amada (Gaku Hamada), Komichi (Mana Ashida), Yuzu (Yuriko Yoshitaka), Tomohiko Amada (Yūya Uchida), and Shōko Akikawa (Kumiko Akiyoshi).

Yūya Uchida was mentioned as a model by another blogger (https://komyushou.com/mennshiki-wataru), but for Menshiki (not Tomohiko Amada), which I wrote about in a post from October, 2017.

Finally, here are two images that are meant to represent Marie Akikawa, the mysterious and beautiful thirteen-year-old girl. The first image was posted by kayokotsu here, and the second was posted on Twitter on March 6, 2017 by mk19781106. These two prove once again how very differently the same character can be imagined by different readers!

Polish Cover for Volume One of Killing Commendatore Released

The cover of the Polish translation of Killing Commendatore was just released. It features paint brushes, as the main character is a painter. The literal translation of the title is "The Death of Commendatore" because I couldn't come up with a graceful way to render "koroshi" (killing) in Polish. "Zabicie" (killing) sounded awkward, so that left me with "morderstwo" (murder), which seemed too morbid, or  "zabójstwo" (manslaughter), which sounded like discussing a criminal case. So I decided to go with "death," feeling unhappy about betraying the author,  but unable to help it. 

The book will be published by Muza in October. 

New Murakami Cover by Chip Kidd Released

Knopf has released the cover for the American edition of Killing Commendatore. The designer is Chip Kidd, who has designed other Murakami hard covers.
Here is the link to an article by Lila Shapiro about the cover on vulture.com.  She writes: "[W]hen readers walk into a bookstore and see a freshly printed hardcover copy of one of his U.S. editions, they often find themselves inexplicably drawn in by the gravitational force of an obscure astronomical entity." According to Shapiro, this is "mostly because of Murakami's writing" but also "because of the art of Chip Kidd." The article also quotes Kidd as saying that, "I'm translating what I think he's trying to get across. ... In that sense, it's very presumptuous on my part."

The article describes how this final cover design is in fact a second design. Without having read the book (as the English translation was not yet available), Kidd had first designed a different cover (pictured below).  However, Murakami asked him to rethink the design once the English version was made available to him. This was apparently the first time in their 25-year-long working relationship that he redesigned a cover at Murakami's request.

Below on the left is the image of the first draft, which seems much more disturbing than the final draft, perhaps because it refers more literally to the "killing" in the title. Kidd himself apparently realized that it was "too lurid." So he came up with a new design for the jacket, which apparently features a hole in the middle. Under the jacket the blue of the cover "gives way to dark night." Below on the right you can see the image under the jacket.  For more details on the potential meaning of the design and the designer, you can read the article here.

The novel will be out in English translation by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen on October 9th and can already be preordered on Amazon.

Turkish Translation of Hear the Wind Sing Is Out

The Turkish translation of Murakami's first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, originally scheduled to appear in December, came out in May. The publisher is Doğan Kitap and the translator Ali Volkan Erdemir, who is currently working on the Turkish translation of Killing Commendatore. Google Translate tells me that the title means "listen to the song of the wind." 

Here is a link to a very interesting interview with the translator (you can Google Translate), who kindly mentions this blog:

http://t24.com.tr/k24/yazi/ali-volkan-erdemir,1765

Serbian Translation of Killing Commendatore Came out on April 19

The Serbian translation of Volume I of Killing Commendatore appeared on April 19 from Geopoetika. The translator is Nataša Tomić. Nataša tells me that no specific date has been set for the release of Volume II yet.
Here is a link to the publisher's page and a brief description:
https://www.geopoetika.com/book.php?id=4288

 

Also, the image of the British cover has been released on Amazon.co.uk. No sign of the American cover yet. 

"Fruit Dropped to the Ground by a Squirrel": Myanmar Translator of Killing Commendatore on Translating Through English

The Myanmar translation of Killing Commendatore came out in January. The translator's name is Ye Mya Lwin. Here is the picture of the cover and of the translator holding the book (Zon Pann/The Myanmar Times). 

An article in Myanmar Times published on March 23 tells the story of the translator and of the publication of Japanese literature in Japan. Apparently, the following Murakami books are available in Burmese: Sputnik Sweetheart, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, What I talk about, when I talk about running, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, Pinball, 1973 and South of the Border, West of the Sun.

Ye Mya Lwin has translated over 70 books from Japanese, including Soseki's Botchan, books by Kawabata, and Burmese Harp by Michio Tateyama, which apparently became widely known in Myanmar. The article explains that Ye Mya Lwin couldn't find a published for Botchan, so he financed the publication himself in 1995 by selling his wife's gold chain!

He is quoted in the article as saying: 

“Books written by Asian writers can’t be perfectly translated by translators from the West because Asian culture totally differs from that of west. ... Direct translation [from Japanese to Burmese] is like eating a fresh fruit on a tree while translating a book already translated in English is like eating a fruit dropped to the ground by a squirrel.” 

On this last point, I could not agree more with Mr Ye!

You can read the whole article here.

English Translation of Killing Commendatore in October? Volume One in Danish already in May!

The date for the publication of the English translation of Killing Commendatore keeps changing. I posted in January that it was to appear in September 2018. Later it changed on Amazon to November. Now both Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, as well as the Random House page announced a new date for the publication of the English translation of Killing Commendatore: October 9. The book can already be preordered. Looking at these temporary covers, I can't help wondering why the title is not "Killing the Commendatore."

And here are the beautiful cover designs for the two volumes of the Danish translation by Mette Holm. Volume I is to appear from KLIM on May 24, and Volume II on October 18 of this year.

                 

Chinese Translation of Killing Commendatore Took Only 85 Days, Says Lin Shaohua, the Translator

The mainland Chinese translation of Killing Commendatore will be released on March 10 from Shanghai Translation Publishing. It is already possible to preorder the book -- and those who do will receive a free copy of a new edition of Norwegian Wood that was published in 2017 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the book's publication.

The initial print run is to be 700, 000 copies. Below is an image of the book, which, like the original Japanese version, will be published in two volumes. One wonders why the English title was put on the cover.
                                 

What makes the story of this translation amazing is the speed with which the translator, Lin Shaohua, completed the work. Lin has been translating Murakami for many years. Among his credits are Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1973, Dance, Dance, Dance, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart, Kafka on the Shore, All God's Children Can Dance, The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, South of the Border, West of the Sun, A Wild Sheep Chase, After Dark, along with many essays, travelogues, etc. 

In an article found in the online journal Pengpai, Lin describes how he worked on the book. Apparently he took himself out to the countryside and, working every day armed only with a stack of paper and a ballpoint pen, managed to finish translating the 1050-page book in 85 days!  While I can see how this could be done -- Lin's pace works out to about 12.5 pages per day -- in my case, life often seems to get in the way of translating and I am only in the middle of Volume Two myself.  This is a case of true dedication. Lin said that, after he was done, his brain was fine but his hand hurt (and this is another amazing part -- a translator writing in longhand!), and the editor offered to send him some Chinese medicine. The article can be found here.

German Translation of Killing Commendatore out Today!

The German translation of the first volume of Killing Commendatore, Murakami's latest novel, came out today from Dumont. It is titled Die Ermordung des Commendatore and was translated by the excellent Ursula Gräfe. Lucky German readers!

The cover is beautiful; readers who are Facebook users can see what is hidden under the dust jacket here: https://www.facebook.com/dumont.verlag/videos/1598203360226905/


                                

English Translation of Killing Commendatore to Come Out on September 18th

Mette Holm, the Danish translator of Murakami, who always manages to stay on top of the all the Murakami news, let me know yesterday that the publication date of the English translation of Killing Commendatore was announced on amazon.co.uk. The novel will be translated by Ted Goossen and Philip Gabriel and will be published in the UK by Harvill Secker. Presumably the American version by Knopf will appear on the same day. The book can already be preordered, but no cover image is available yet.

Here is a the screenshot from Amazon.co.uk. The book's appearance in September was also announced on Financial Times Book Preview 2018.

While the website does not specify this, one is led to assume that, as in the past, the original multi-volume work will appear in one volume in English.