Plural? Singular? Translation Problems with "Men Without Women"

I have recently begun translating  Onna no inai otokotachi (2014), and have been talking to other translators who have already finished it about issues that came up for them, among them how to translate the title. The problem is that otokotachi is "men" in plural, but onna is "woman" in singular. 
There are also potential number-related translation difficulties with sentences like:  その世界ではあなたは「女のいない男たち」と呼ばれることになる。(p. 276)

In the preface, Murakami states explicitly the the title is not meant to be a translation of Hemingway's short story anthology, Men Without Women. He says that if he had wanted to translate that title, Onna nuki no otokotachi would have been closer to the spirit of the original. There is also a Japanese translation of the Hemingway's anthology titled Otoko dake no sekai. However, it is worth noting that on the website of Murakami's European agent, Curtis Brown, the title is given as Onna no inai otokotach/Men without Women, as if the English title - identical, in fact, to Hemingway's -- had been decided. Although, as I have said in one of the earlier posts, it is hard to predict whether the book will come out in English as a short-story anthology, since three of the six stories have already appeared in the New Yorker. 



I haven't decided yet what the Polish title will be, but I will probably opt for something similar to the English, "Men Who Have No Women" or "Womenless Men." In thinking through this, I have been in touch with three translators: Ursula Gräfe (German translation, 2014), Lai Ming Chu (Taiwanese translation, 2014) and James Westerhoven, the Dutch translator,  whose translation is to appear at the beginning of 2016. 

Here is the beautiful cover of the German translation. As you can see, Ursula Gräfe went with "Frauen" in plural, so her title means something like "Of men who have no women." Apparently using "woman" in singular would not have worked in German. I suspect it would not work in Polish, either. 

But James Westerhoven says it is possible to manage this awkward combination in Dutch. He has kindly agreed to share his reflections on this blog :  

"I discussed the Dutch title with the Dutch publisher at some length. At first they were planning to call it Mannen zonder vrouwen (Men without women), because they had the impression that Murakami had written the book with Hemingway’s title in mind, as a kind of homage to the older writer. But after reading his foreword, in which Murakami writes that his title is similar to but his intention different from Hemingway's book, and also after reading the title story, in which the formula ‘mannen zonder vrouw’ occurs regularly in context and in which it would have been grammatically impossible to write ‘men without women’, my editors agreed with me. So the final title is Mannen zonder vrouw, literally: Men without Woman, which of course makes no sense at all in English.

"Let me explain the subtle difference in Dutch. ‘Men without women’ simply states that a number of men are unaccompanied by women. Whether those women ‘belong to’ these men is immaterial, because the women are not really important. That is what Hemingway intended to convey in his title, and that is how the Dutch translator of Hemingway’s book translated the title — and quite properly so. But ‘men without woman’ suggests that several men (say four) all have one woman (so four women), who ‘belongs to’ her man but is absent for some reason. And because all the men in these stories are to all intents and purposes monogamous, they only have one woman, even if they bed more than one."

In case of the Taiwanese translation, the issue was not whether to make the word onna singular, but whether to make otokotachi singular, or rather, unspecified.  Lai Ming Chu, the Taiwanese translator, described it like this: 

"One characteristic of Chinese is that it can use the singular to encompass the plural. When I handed in my translation of Onna no inai otokotachi (Chinese title: Meiyou nüren de nanrenmen 「沒有女人的男人們」), the editor told me that they wanted to remove the pluralizing suffix-men 們, which would make the title Meiyou nüren de nanren, meaning either “Men Without Women,” “Man Without Woman,” or “A Man Without A Woman,” with no clear sense of singular or plural or definite/indefinite. Indeed, in general, this might be the preferred translation, and would likely be the title if the book had originally been written by a Chinese author. But in this instance, such a translation did not make sense: The title story describes the relationship between two men and one woman, with particular emphasis in the text on the two lonely men. Use of the plural form was thus unquestionably indicated, especially as the short story collection describes several different men (not to mention that the plural suffix –tachi is there in the original Japanese title). Moreover, translating the title as Meiyou nüren de nanrenmen and emphasizing the plural form calls attention to the difference with what would sound “natural” in Chinese, and makes a distinctive impression upon the reader. After some explanation, the editors finally agreed to go along with my suggested title. It was just one word, but it made a big difference."

The mainland Chinese translation of the book, (the cover is pictured on the left) was done by a team of six translators, led by the main Murakami translator, Lin Shaohua.  It is titled exactly the same as the Taiwanese version, and also the same as the Chinese title of Hemingway's Men Without Woman (on the right). 

The Spanish translation appeared this month. It is titled Hombres sin mujeres, that is, "Men without women." As was the case with Tsukuru Tazaki, the name of the translator is not given on the publisher's page:

http://www.tusquetseditores.com/titulos/andanzas-hombres-sin-mujeres, but I have found it on Goodreads. It is Gabriel Álvarez Martínez. 

The book will appear in the Swedish translation by Eiko and Yukiko Duke in May 2015. The title is Män utan kvinnor, which, Google Translate tells me, means "Men without women." 

English Translation of New Murakami Story in this Week's New Yorker

This week's New Yorker (February 23) published a translation of the story "Kino" from Murakami's newest anthology, Onna no inai otokotachi. The story was translated by Philip Gabriel. This is the third of the six stories from the book that has appeared in English: "Yesterday," also translated by Philip Gabriel, was published in June 2014, and "Scheherezade," translated by Ted Goossen, appeared in October.  It makes one wonder if the whole anthology will be translated into English and come out as a book, or whether the remaining three stories will continue appearing in the New Yorker every four months or so.

That it will be done this way seems likely for another reason: English is not listed as one of the languages for which the rights have been sold for Onna no inai otokotachi on the Curtis Brown webpage (Curtis Brown is Murakami's agent for Europe).  Here is the list:

So far, only one short story collection by Murakami appeared "unchanged" in English: after the quake (Kami no kodomotachi wa mina odoru, 2000), which came out in 2002 in Jay Rubin's translation. The other anthologies of Murakami short stories -- The Elephant Vanishes (1993, Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin, trans.) and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, trans.) -- both included stories selected from several different Japanese anthologies, chosen by the translators and the author.

                     

(The middle illustration is by Merlin, the photographs in the first and third are by Michael Marcelle. )

This is how "Kino" starts: 

To read the whole story, go to: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/kino

Murakami Advice Page Opened Today

As was reported by many sources around the world, the Haruki Murakami advice corner website, called "Murakami san no tokoro," opened today.  The address is: http://www.welluneednt.com. The site is illustrated by Masaru Fujimoto.

Under the トップ tab on the left is an explanation from Haruki Murakami about how he suddenly felt like getting in touch with his readers after almost a decade. He promises to glance at all the questions himself (rather than have an editor or assistant do it), but explains that since the site is open to everybody, he expects a lot of questions and will not be able to answer them all. He apologizes to readers who will be disappointed.

There is also a section called 質問はこちら [Have a question? Click here]. After clicking, we find a set of "house rules," which explain that all questions have to come belong to one of four categories. Here they are:

 In English they would be something like this:
1. Questions or advice I want to ask of Mr. Murakami
2. Something I want to tell Mr. Murakami
3. My favorite places, my least favorite places
4. [Things] related to cats or the Yakult Swallows [a professional baseball team]

There is also a limit of length: 1200 characters.
After reading the "House Rules," one can click on  質問を送る[send a question] and after filling in one's "pen name," age, gender, e-mail address, and occupation (not required) one can type in a question. The House Rules also warn that some of the questions and answers will appear on the webpage and may in the future be published, so readers have to be prepared that their "pen names," age, etc. will also be made public.

So how about asking a question?  The whole website is in Japanese.  One may guess that, since he knows English, Murakami may perhaps also consider answering a question asked in English, but that response may well be in Japanese. This does seem to be a unique opportunity to ask a famous writer a question. As far as I know, Murakami is one of very few writers -- perhaps even the only writer of his stature -- who engages in this kind of online exchange with readers.

Some people will no doubt dismiss the whole thing as a marketing trick, but I personally disagree.  It's hard to imagine that Haruki Murakami really needs to worry about getting more publicity: he has a huge number of faithful fans, after all.  At least at first glance (no questions have appeared yet), this website does seem to be exactly what he says it is, a chance to get in touch with readers and find out what is on their minds.

Haruki Murakami Will Respond to Readers Questions Online Starting on January 15

Once again, for the third time - as far as I know - Haruki Murakami will be responding directly to readers’ questions on a webpage, this one to be opened on January 15, as was announced by his publisher, Shinchosha, on January 5.

In the past Murakami has answered readers' questions, most famously on a page opened by Asahi Shinbun called "Murakami Asahido."  According to a January 6 article in Asahi Shinbun, Murakami felt that after a long break, he wanted to interact with readers again, and made a sudden decision to create the webpage, the first time he has done so in nine years.  The website will be called "Murakami-san no tokoro," or, "Mr. Murakami's Place."

This is the announcement on the Shinchosha site: http://www.shinchosha.co.jp/murakamisannotokoro/

The web address has not been released yet, but the announcement makes it clear that the site will be open for a limited time starting "on the afternoon of January 15th." Under the announcement in Murakami's writing (or so we assume) it states: "I am waiting for your questions. Haru." It seems that the readers are encouraged to ask anything, about "their worries, etc."

According to a related article at time.com, the spokesman for Shinchosha said that fans will have until the end of January to ask questions, and Murakami's responses will appear on the website during the following two months, until the end of March. 

In the past, Murakami's exchanges with readers have been published in four books, which are quite interesting and valuable for anyone hoping to get a glimpse of the real person behind the author, who provides answers to questions from people struggling with all kinds of personal problems or asking totally surreal things. Murakami never loses his cool and responds in a witty, kind, and caring way. Here are the covers of the books:

                        

                          
        


Perhaps this readers' forum will also lead to a similar publication in the future.

Phil Gabriel's Translation of Murakami's Speech on the Meaning of Walls

The Guardian has published a translation of Murakami Haruki's speech given at the Welt Prize award ceremony. Murakami talks about the role of walls in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but also mentions the "wall-and-egg" speech he gave in Jerusalem.

Here is a short teaser:
"Sometimes it seems to me that we destroy one wall only to build another. It could be an actual wall, or an invisible wall that surrounds the mind. There are walls that tell us not to go any further from where we are, and walls that tell others not to come in. One wall finally collapses, the world looks different, and we breathe a sigh of relief, only to discover that another wall has been erected in another part of the world – a wall of ethnicity, of religion, a wall of intolerance, of fundamentalism, a wall of greed, a wall of fear. Are we unable to live without a system of walls?"

 Escape from reality … Haruki Murakami. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

You can read the whole speech here.

Haruki Murakami Studies Center Set Up in Taiwan

On September 22 this year, a center for Haruki Murakami Studies 村上春樹研究センター
was established at Tamkang University in Taiwan. In Chinese it is called 淡江大學村上春樹研究中心 (Danjiang daxue Cunshang Chunshu yanjiu zhongxin), and the English name is "Center for Murakami Haruki Studies in Tamkang University." 

This is what the logo looks like:

And here is the link to the Center's website:
http://www2.tku.edu.tw

An article published by the Japan News on November 6 says that, "The center’s goal is not only studying Murakami’s works as literature, but also comprehensively studying the economic effects and social influence brought about by those works." The Center, headed by Professor Tseng Ch'iu-kuei 曾秋桂, is also planning to organize international symposia on Murakami's writing.

Here is a picture from the opening ceremony:

Tamkang Times (http://tkutimes.tku.edu.tw/dtl.aspx?no=30321)

Motoyuki Shibata, the renowned translator of American literature, gave a lecture at the ceremony, and he can be seen in the above picture (eighth from the right).  Also shown (far left, in white) is Lai Ming-chu, the Taiwanese translator of Murakami's works.

To read the whole Japan News story, go to: http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001695726.

Murakami Receives the Welt Literature Prize and Expresses Support for Hong Kong Protesters

Haruki Murakami received the Welt Literature Prize on November 8 in Berlin. In his acceptance speech, which came on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he expressed support for the Hong Kong protesters, comparing their situation to that of Palestinians in Gaza and of  East Germans, formerly separated by the Wall.

This is not the first occasion when Murakami has spoken during an awards ceremony about political issues. When he received the Jerusalem Prize in 2009, he gave a famous speech about "the egg and the wall" (read it here), and in Barcelona, when receiving the Catalonia (or: Catalunya) International Prize in 2011, he spoke in the aftermath of the Great Tōhoku earthquake about the corporate greed and problems born from using nuclear energy in Japan. You can hear the speech here and read the English translation here.

Many newspapers have reported about the Berlin speech, including the South China Morning Post published in Hong Kong, which quoted him as follows:

A world without walls can be created “in the quiet but sustained effort to keep on singing, to keep on telling stories, stories about a better and freer world to come, without losing heart,” he said. “We can see [a world without walls] with our own eyes – we can even touch it with our own hands if we try hard. I’d like to send this message to the young people in Hong Kong who are struggling against their wall right now at this moment.”

The Japan Times also published a story about the event.  Die Welt, which awarded the prize, published a longish article describing how Murakami reminisced about the first time he came to Berlin thirty years ago and watched a performance of The Magic Flute in East Berlin. The story also mentioned a surprise appearance by Patti Smith, apparently a great Murakami fan. Unfortunately, the story failed to mention the name of his main translator, Ursula Gräfe, or the names of any of the other German translators of Murakami, although Ursula was present at the ceremony. It is as if the books have translated themselves! Let me applaud Ursula's work here. As far as I know, she has translated six of Murakami Haruki's novels, a number of stories, and the "running book." It seems that it deserved at least a brief mention... You can read an interview with Ursula here.

  

New Reviews of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki in the American and French Press

A long review of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki appeared in the October 23 issue of the New York Review of Books.   Authored by writer and translation studies scholar Tim Parks, the review, titled, "Charms of Loneliness," begins this way: 

"In considering the life and work of Haruki Murakami it’s good to keep a sharp eye on the relationship between individual and community, on questions of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and abandonment." 
Although it cannot be called an enthusiastic review, it definitely merits the attention of all readers of this blog.  Parks criticizes dialogues for their "solemnly static tone," and dismisses similes and metaphors as being "invariably portentous." Noting that the novel offers an "intriguing core story of how an adolescent idyll went badly wrong," he characterizes Tsukuru's pilgrimage as "the story of a woefully prolonged adolescence," and ends the review with the tantalizing, and highly ironic, phrase: "There is talk of the Nobel."

You can read a longish part of the article (or the whole thing, if you are a subscriber) here.

In contrast to NYRB, The New Yorker eschewed a full review of the book, limiting itself instead to a single paragraph under "Briefly Noted."

The French translation of Tsukuru Tazaki, by Hélène Morita, came out in early September.  A review by Françoise Dargent, "Haruki Murakami, le blues de l'homme invisible" [the blues of an invisible man], came out in Le Figaro on August 28th.  It begins with the words, "Le dernier Murakami est arrrivé" [The latest Murakami has arrived]. The reviewer believes that Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki belongs to the genre of lyrical realism. 

Here is a longer fragment of the review:

Le dernier Murakami est arrivé. Au Japon, la nouvelle fut annoncée à l'aide de haut-parleurs par des libraires surexcités. S'ensuivit une ruée en magasin qui vit s'envoler les exemplaires de L'Incolore Tsukuru Tazaki et ses années de pèlerinage. Le voici qui fait étape en France, où les lecteurs ont fini par digérer les trois tomes de 1Q84. En comparaison, cet opus signe le retour du Japonais à une forme de normalité avec un seul livre. Finis les mondes parallèles, les sauts dans le temps et les créatures étranges, Tsukuru Tazaki est un homme au demeurant banal, un ingénieur de Tokyo qui vit sagement à notre époque. Il n'en changera pas tout au long du récit, s'autorisant comme seuls glissements temporels des flash-back sur son passé récent pour mettre le lecteur au parfum de ce qui le hante.

You can read the whole thing here.

Also, here is a picture of a poster advertising a play titles Nuits Blanches based on Murakami's story "Nemuri" ("Sleep," or "Sommeil" in this case), taken by my friend, Miljko, in Paris.

Haruki Murakami Wins Welt's Literaturpreis for 2014

It was announced on October 3 that Haruki Murakami will be the recipient of this year's Die Welt literary prize. The prize, established in honor of Willy Haas, who founded Die Literarische Welt in 1995, has been awarded annually since 1999 to international authors by the literary supplement of the German weekly.  Among past recipients are Philip Roth, Amos Oz, Imre Kértesz, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Franzen. Murakami will apparently travel to Berlin to accept the prize on November 7. 

Die Welt published a long article announcing the prize, in which Richard Kämmerlings talks about Murakami's biography, his writing style, and his newest novel [Tsukuru Tazaki].  He also refers to the new anthology of stories [Onna no inai otokotachi], which will be coming out in German later in October as Von Männern die keine Frauen haben -- before the English translation appears, as Kämmerlings stresses ("In der kommenden Woche erscheint im Dumont Verlag ein neuer Band mit Erzählungen von Murakami auf Deutsch, noch vor der englischen Übersetzung"). 

The article features pictures of both beautiful covers and Ursula Gräfe is listed as the translator underneath each of them, but there is not one word about her in the article. It would seem pretty obvious that it must be partly owing to her great translations that the jurors for Die Welt decided to give the prize to Haruki Murakami!

 You can find the whole article here. 

'Tis the Season to Bet on Nobel...

Long-time readers of this blog will no doubt remember the stir created last year by rumors that Haruki Murakami might win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which I reported on here.  With the announcement of this year's prize just days away, once again there is a fair amount of buzz about the same thing. On September 30, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Brenda Cronin, who writes that, "guessing who will win the Nobel Prize in literature is an exercise skimpy on data and heavy on gossip and guesswork. But that hasn’t stopped handicappers from making a book on the contest." UK bookmaker Ladbrokes says that the odds on Murakami are five-to-one. 

The article also includes this amusing illustration, portraying this year's frontrunners in the literary Nobel race: left to right, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth.

You can read the whole article here.

The Guardian -- which quotes the odds as being 4:1 -- also published a piece about Murakami's Nobel chances.  Author Alison Flood mentions Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o as the other favorite, but the rest of her list differs from the one quoted by the Wall Street Journal: it includes Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, Syrian poet Adonis, French writer Patrick Modiano, Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, and Austrian author Peter Handke.  Only American author Philip Roth is on both lists. You can read the article here.

It would of course be exciting for us, his translators, if Haruki Murakami were to win the prize. At the same time, I feel that part of his charm is that he is the perpetual "outsider," and as a Nobel Prize winner that would cease, and he would instead become the ultimate "insider," enshrined forever in the world's literary pantheon.

You can watch the Nobel Prize announcement on Thursday, October 9 at 1 pm (CET) or 7 am (EST) here.

The Release Date of The Strange Library Is Approaching

There is more and more being written about The Strange Library, as journalists eagerly expect its release in December. The Guardian offered an "exclusive preview," showing six pages of text and colorful illustrations from the British edition. A number of other sites, such as Open Culture, have reposted it.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2014/sep/18/haruki-murakami-illustrated-the-strange-library-exclusive-preview

On the CMYK page (belonging to Vintage Design), one can read what appears to be a text written by the book designer, whose name I was unable to find anywhere (if any readers know it, please write a comment below). What the illustrator has to say is really interesting; here is one passage:

The text of The Strange Library is fully illustrated throughout, with a variety of drawings, images, illustrations, and photographs; and they are taken from a wealth of printed sources; from a 1950s cookery book to Birds of the British Islands, 1907, a book on popular astronomy from 1894 to a Victorian book on Locks and keys.  The majority of the illustrations were sourced from old books I found in the London Library. Founded in the 1840’s, the library is a labyrinth crammed to the ceiling with treasures on seemingly every subject. The metal stacks date from 1890s and are a marvel of architecture, steel grille floors allowing you to see to other floors above and below. Here are housed the books in Science and Miscellaneous, our favourite sections for the sort of research we did. 
My picture researcher and I became literally lost in its corridors! There was a great sense of achievement when we pulled out a hidden gem that matched a particular line or part of Murakami’s text. I was interested in how the style of illustration plates and printing techniques evoked a certain period. My favourite was the almost fluorescent colours found in the plate section of a 1950’s German cookery book. For some pages like that of the caterpillars, I had to carefully amalgamate images from different sources. Only two illustrations had to be commissioned for the book as we just couldn’t find images for doughnuts or a ball and chain.

To read the whole thing go to: http://vintagebooksdesign.tumblr.com/post/98295389741/thestrangelibrary-harukimurakami

An article about the book's release appeared in the New York Times. The author, Alexandra Alter, wrote this about the graphic aspect of the American edition:

Knopf is fleshing out “The Strange Library” with full-color art throughout in a lavish volume designed by Chip Kidd, Knopf’s associate art director. Mr. Kidd said he drew on his own collection of vintage Japanese graphics as inspiration for the design.
Here is a YouTube video in which Mr. Kidd explains how he designed the American version of 1Q84:

As far as I know, no illustrations from the American edition have been released so far except, for the cover image. 
To read the whole NYT article, go to: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/new-96-page-murakami-work-coming-in-december/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Murakami's First Two Novels to be [Re]translated and [Re]published in Dutch and English

Haruki Murakami's first two novels, 「風の歌を聴け」 (Kaze no uta o like, 1979) and 「1973年のピンボール」 (1973 nen no pinbōru, 1980) were first translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum in 1987 and 1985, respectively, and published by Kodansha International for release in Japan only as Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. 
Here are the pictures of my own well-used copies.

A new English translation by Ted Goossen is to come out next fall. The Guardian published an article about the release, which you can read here.

In fact, both novels have already appeared in translation in some other languages quite a long time ago. The Chinese translations were done by Lin Shaohua, the Taiwanese/HK version by Ming-Chu Lai, the Korean by Yun Songwon, and the Russian by Vadim Smolenskiy.

This year, my own Polish translation (below left) came out in May, and the Dutch translation by James Westerhoven is to appear in January 2015. It is already being featured on the webpage of Atlas Contact, the Dutch publisher.

          

In Polish, English, and Dutch the two books are being published together as one volume. Haruki Murakami wrote a foreword to the new English translation, which James Westerhoven was still able to include in the Dutch version, but it was too late for the Polish version. 

A few words about the titles. As Jay Rubin writes in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words (31-32), the Japanese title of Kaze no uta o kike was  inspired by a line from Truman Capote's story, "Shut a Final Door": "So he pushed his face into the pillow, covered his ears with his hands, and thought: Think of nothing things, think of wind." 

The Polish title literally means "Listen to the Wind's Song" (pretty much a literal translation of the Japanese title).  James Westerhoven told me the following about the Dutch title: "it means "Listen to the Wind," because 'hear the wind sing' would mean that the wind is rising and there is probably going to be a storm."

1973 nen no pinbōru seems straightforward at first, but if you look at the two covers above carefully, you will see that the word "pinball" is not to be found on either. The Polish says "flipper" and the Dutch says "flipperen." This is because in both countries, for some reason, pinball machines are named "flipper" for the two elements at the bottom of the machine that the player uses to flip the ball away and back into action, which are called "flippers" in English.  According to James Westerhoven, the Dutch title literally means something like "Playing Pinball in 1973."

James also offered the following explanation about the Dutch book: "If you take a good look at the cover, you’ll see that the righthand cover has Luister only and the lefthand cover has Flipperen, and on the spine they have both, but both reading from opposite directions. That is because Atlas Contact are producing it as a so-called ‘upside-down’ or ‘turn-around’ book. When you’re done reading one novel, you have to close the book, turn it upside down, and begin again on page 1 for the second novel. Sounds like hell for the compositor/printer, but it’s an interesting concept."

An Array of New Translations of Tsukuru Tazaki

Darina Zaicová, the editor of the Slovak edition of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, sent me her comments about the blog [thank you!] and said that the Slovak edition is to be out in the middle of September. The book was translated by Dana Hashimoto and will be published by Slovart. On the right is an image of the Slovak cover from the publisher's page. 

Curtis Brown, Murakami's agent for Europe, has also posted covers of the other editions expected to come out soon. Those are the Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese translations. 

On the left is the cover of the Portuguese edition, which is to come out at the end of September from Casa das Letras. The translator is Maria João Lourenço, who has translated many Murakami books from English. Interestingly, the cover looks just like the German cover [below]. The editor, Marta Ramires, who kindly agreed to answer my questions, told me that they loved the German cover and thought it might work in the Portuguese market.  

On the right is the Danish cover. The book (Den Farveløse Tsukuru Tazakis Pilgrimsfærd), translated by Mette Holm, will be published by Klim on October 10.  

The Norwegian version, above, to be published by Pax, has been translated by Ika Kaminka and Magne Tørring. I wonder what they decided with the nicknames in the end? We remember from Ika's post in June that she was wondering whether to translate them, but Magne was strongly against it.  

On the left is the Brazilian Portuguese cover. According to Curtis Brown, the publisher is Editora Objetiva. The name of the translator apparently has not been released yet, but the book is to come out in November. Also, it seems that the Brazilian Portuguese title -- O Descolorido Tsukuru Tazaki e seus Anos de Peregrinação -- is different from the Portuguese title, where Tsukuru Tazaki simply became a "boy": A Peregrinação do rapaz sem cor ("The peregrinations of the boy without color"). 

The Bangkok Post reported that the Thai edition of Tsukuru Tazaki is coming out soon. They also gave the name of the translator: Muthita Panich (I took the liberty of reposting the cover pictures from her Facebook page). Looking for the publication date, I found at readery.co that the book is to come out on September 13, 2557! Thailand uses the solar calendar, Suriyakhati, in which years are counted in the Buddhist era, 543 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar.

The Strange Story of the Strange Library

Announcements have started popping up on the internet that a new book by Haruki Murakami, The Strange Library, is to appear in English on December 2. The translator is Ted Goossen. The cover photograph (left) comes from Amazon US, which describes the book thus: "A lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plot their escape from the nightmarish library of internationally acclaimed, best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination."
Lindesay Irvine writes about the book for the The Guardian. After briefly summarizing the story he quotes Liz Foley, publishing director at Harvill Secker: “We are very excited to be publishing a special illustrated edition of The Strange Library as an unusual gift book for Christmas. Murakami’s imagination is unique and this is a

                                 wonderfully creepy tale that is sure to delight his fans." 

Irvine also mentions that the announcement explains the mystery of "Strange Library" cards that were handed out to people waiting in line to get into the "Murakami event" during the International Book Festival in Edinburgh last month.
The photograph, included in the article, comes from a tweet by Michael Reeve:
"Someone is handing out #strangelibrary cards to the Murakami queue. No-one knows what they're for. 5:27 AM - 30 Aug 2014 London, United Kingdom"

It seems like a brilliant idea for creating interest in the new book!

To read the whole Guardian article, go to: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/02/haruki-murakami-new-book-in-english-in-december-the-strange-library

Amazon.co.uk posts the image of the British cover and the following description:

'All I did was go to the library to borrow some books'.

"On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library finds himself wondering how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire. He pops into the local library to see if it has a book on the subject. This is his first mistake. Led to a special 'reading room' in a maze under the library by a strange old man, he finds himself imprisoned with only a sheep man, who makes excellent donuts, and a girl, who can talk with her hands, for company. His mother will be worrying why he hasn't returned in time for dinner and the old man seems to have an appetite for eating small boy's brains. How will he escape?"

Here are the links to the publishers' announcements:
Knopf (for the American edition): http://knopfdoubleday.com/2014/09/02/knopf-to-publish-new-short-novel-by-haruki-murakami/
Harvill Secker (for the British edition): http://vintagebooksdesign.tumblr.com, where you can also see a picture of people lining up in Edinburgh in front of Waterstone's bookstore, where the Murakami event took place.

It is worth pointing out that in this case, as with other recent publications, the English translation is not the first to appear in a European language. Fushigi na toshokan already appeared in German last year in Ursula Gräfe's translation as Die unheimliche Bibliothek. The illustrations were done by Kat Menschik.  Here is a picture of the cover:

Other internet sites announcing the release of The Strange Library in English say that the book appeared in Japanese in 2008, giving the impression that this is a fairly recent work (see: Entertainment and Shortlist).  In fact, there is a much longer history to this novella, going back over 30 years.

The first version of the story was called Toshokan kitan [Strange Tales from a Library] and was originally published in six parts in a magazine called Torefuru in 1982 (June through November). The following year, it was included in the 1983 anthology Kangarū biyori [Perfect Day for Kangaroos].
Twenty-two years later, in 2005, Haruki Murakami revised the novella and published it under a different title Fushigi na toshokan [The Strange (Mysterious, Amazing, Wondrous) Library] as a picture book [絵本].   Three years after that, in 2008, the book was published again with a slightly different cover, beautifully illustrated by Maki Sasaki. Here are pictures of a tax collector from the Ottoman empire and of the Sheep Man.

                         

Since it had to be transformed from a novella into a story for a picture book, Murakami revised it. The story has become shorter, the language simpler, and the original six longish chapters turned into twenty six very short ones. However, the story line is not that different.

Japanese Wikipedia gives two examples of how the language was changed in order to become appropriate for a picture book (絵本に相応しい言葉遣い), which might be read by children (or not).
1. オスマン・トルコ帝国の収税政策 ("tax collection policies of the Ottoman empire") changed into オスマントルコ帝国の税金のあつめ方 ("ways of collecting taxes in the Ottoman empire"), and 2. 禁帯出 (in-library use only) became 貸し出し禁止 (cannot be checked out).

Readers of this blog will know already that Murakami often revises his works, both short stories and novels, before they get re-issued as pocket editions or get included in Zensakuhin [Collected Works]. Some notable examples of stories that were considerably changed during revisions are Mekura yanagi to [,] nemuru onna (published in English in 2006 as Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman in Philip Gabriel's translation) or Bāto Bakarakku wa o suki? [Do You Like Burt Bacharach?, 1982] which became Mado [Window, 1991] and in Jay Rubin's translation was included in The Elephant Vanishes. Some of these changes are very small, others extensive.