Translating Haruki Murakami

This blog is meant as an open forum where translators of Haruki Murakami can share ideas and discuss solutions to problems encountered in the process of translating his works. It was launched by two translators of Murakami into Norwegian and Polish, Ika Kaminka and Anna Zielinska-Elliott. Some of us have collaborated in the past, and many of us are in touch regularly by e-mail, but the publication of the new novel in 2013 served as a catalyst for the creation of an online translation blog.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

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/

Sunday, January 7, 2018

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.