More About Dialect and the Chinese Translation by Lai Ming Chu

Lai Ming Chu kindly sent in her comments elaborating on dialect-use-related matters in the Chinese (Taiwan) version of "Yesterday." She wrote:

"To translate a dialect into any other language is not easy — it is, in fact, a challenge. I tried to do it in different ways, but did not get a satisfying result.  In Chinese, dialect is too complicated.  The difference between Peking speech and Nanking speech is not similar to the difference between Tokyo speech and Osaka speech, in Japanese.

In the Chinese language, we can use different dialects to read the same simple sentence; magically it will sound very different, because each character’s pronunciation and accent are different in different dialects.  So finally, I realized that there was no need to translate it [i.e. it was enough to say that Kitaru is speaking in Kansai dialect for the reader to read it differently].

I agree with the opinion of Edward Seidensticker and I also admire the translation of Philip Gabriel:

 “Yeah, for sure,” Kitaru replied in his heavy Kansai accent."

More on Dialect Translation

In the previous post I wrote about my doubts as how to translate kansai-ben (Kansai dialect) in Murakami's story, "Yesterday."

After looking at other language versions, I discovered a range of choices made by other translators:  some did not differentiate between Kitaru's and Tanimura's speech, others differentiated somewhat, and then there were those who decided either to use an existing dialect or invent one. 

Clearly, there is no correct answer here! 

On the one hand, one can argue that a dialect (or some form of differentiation) should be used in order to reflect the impossible-to-miss difference in Kitaru's kansai-ben speech; on the other hand, one can also make the case that using an existing dialect ends up localizing the translation in a way that readers may find hard to accept.  

Let's look at a few examples to see how different people have handled this difficult challenge.

Here is the fragment (quoted in the previous post) translated into German by Ursula Gräfe (hers is I believe the first European translation - Dumont 2014):

 »Kitaru iste ein seltener Name«, sagte ich.
 »Ja, ziemlich selten«, erwiderte er.
 »In der Baseballmannschaft von Lotte gibt es einen Werfer, der so heißt.«
 »Ach ja, der. Wir sind nicht verwandt. Aber bei einem so seltenen Namen könnte es doch trotzdem sein, dass es da irgendwo eine Verbindung gibt, was?«
(Von Männern, die keine Frauen haben, p. 50)


Ursula used a gentle touch here. She showed the difference between the two styles of speech by adding was? at the end of Kitaru's second line.  To further highlight Kitaru's idiosyncratic speech habits, she also used ja? at the end of many of Kitaru's sentences in the rest of the story. She explained: 
"I intended to give Kitaru's speech an emotional quality, which relates stronger to the person he is talking to than it generally would be the case. Also "ja?" und "was?" create a rising intonation. This in combination with the use of so-called "modal particles" (like "doch" - blue in the last sentence of the quote) would give - or so I hoped - the impression of a casual politeness. German modal particles - like sentence-final particles - mark the speaker’s mood or attitude towards the statement expressed. Also they create a common basis for continuing a conversation by the speaker’s appraisal of the mutual knowledge. Both features are characteristics of spoken German and seldomly used in written language."

Next, let's look at the Spanish translation by Gabriel Álvarez Martínez (Tusquets 2015):

—Vaya apellido más raro, Kitaru, ¿no? —dije.
—Sí, la verdad es que es bastante raro —dijo Kitaru.
—Había un lanzador en el Lotte Orions que se apellidaba igual.  
—Ah, sí, lo recuedo. No, no tiene nada que ver conmigo. Aunque es un apellido tan poco común que quizás estemos emparentados. (Hombres sin mujeres, p.56)


My friend Noemí Martín Santo, a scholar of Spanish literature who also knows Japanese, tells me that Kitaru does not use any dialect here. She also suggested that, had the translator chosen to use a dialect, it would have been possible to have used Andalusian, though she acknowledged that doing so would have caused other kinds of complications and potential misunderstandings. 

Here is a quote from the Taiwanese translation by Lai Ming Chu (Reading Times, 2014):

「木樽這個姓好稀奇啊。」我說。
「喔，是嗎，相當稀奇吧。」木樽說。
「羅德隊有一個投手也姓木樽。」
「哦，那個啊，跟我們家沒關係。因為這種姓很少，所以說不定在什麼地方有一點點關係。」
（《沒有女人的男人們》, p. 62)

Lai Ming Chu told me that she decided not to make Kitaru's speech different in any way, but to simply rely on the explanation in the narrative that he speaks in a "perfect Kansai dialect."  

Now, for the Danish version. Mette Holm (Klim 2015) translated these four lines like this: 

“Kitaru er da ikke noget almindeligt navn,” sagde jeg.

“Nej, det’ det ik’,” svarede han med kraftig kansai-dialekt.

“Baseballholdet Lotte har en pitcher, der hedder Kitaru.”

“Ja, men vi er ik’ i familie. Eller hvem ved, der’ ik’ mange

med det navn, så måske er der en forbindelse.”

Mette said she was inspired by the way Mr. Gamfield spoke in Oliver Twist! Apparently her editor had suggested that she consult the Dickens work, although her Kitaru dialect is "less exaggerated." 

She wrote to me: "I invented my ‘accent’ – and I did it with a lot of abbreviations … using apostrophes instead of letters. And I left out the verb in several places. At first I did more – but then I simplified it and did it very consistently."

The two lines Kitaru says in the above exchange would look like this in standard Danish (the syllables marked in blue were shortened).

“Nej, det er det ikke,” svarede han med kraftig kansai-dialekt.

 “Ja, men vi er ikke i familie. Eller hvem ved, der er ikke mange

med det navn så måske er der en forbindelse."(Mænd uden kvinder, p. 42)

Mette tells me that critics' were divided on this. One critic, Søren Kassebeer, liked the book very much, but wrote this about "Mette's dialect": 

En tekst, som han i øvrigt har forfattet på den japanske dialekt kansai-ben, som han har lært sig selv og konstant ævler løs på (og hvis den dialekt lyder meget specielt på japansk, så er det ikke rigtig lykkedes den dygtige oversætter at få den oversat til noget overbevisende dansk, men det er måske også umuligt, for man kan jo ikke lade en japaner tale jysk, vel?) [Berlingske, 7 September 2015]

In the translation kindly provided by Mette: "Part of Murakami's text is written in the Japanese dialect kansai-ben, which Kitaru has taught himself and he is always always blabbering in that manner.  If the dialect sounds very characteristic in Japanese, the skilled translator did not manage to translate it into convincing Danish, but perhaps it is also impossible, because you cannot let a Japanese speak Jutlandish (a Danish dialect), can you?"  

He did give the book 5 out of 6 possible stars though.

However, another critic, Christian Møgeltoft, wrote:
(in Mette's translation)
"I never get tired of praising Mette Holm’s faithful way of transferring Murakami’s imaginative prose into Danish. There is no doubt that the guy is good in his own language, but in Danish he is unequalled. The writer would be happy to see his ideas incarnated so convincingly. As a translator, Mette Holm is living proof that male writers without a mediation of a wise woman are an unfulfilled race." (Jyllands-Posten, 8 September 2015) 

(Note the nice word-play on the title of the book!) 
Møgeltoft also gave the book 5 out of 6 possible stars.

You can't please everybody all the time, but as long as we manage to please some people some of the time .... 

More posts on translating dialect to follow!

How to Translate Dialect

In the newest anthology of short stories by Haruki Murakami, there is a story titled "Yesterday." It tells of two friends.  One, originally from Kansai, moves to Tokyo to go to a university there and within a few weeks starts speaking like somebody born and raised in Tokyo. His friend, Kitaru, born and raised in Tokyo, speaks in Osaka dialect, and a pretty rough version of it (kanari diipu na) at that. It turns out that Kitaru is an avid fan of the Hanshin Tigers, a Kansai baseball team and that he had studied and learned the dialect not to feel out of place when he went to games and, surrounded by fans from Osaka, wanted to join them in cheering on his favorite team.

The fact that he speaks the Osaka dialect is an important part of the story and has an alienating effect. Kitaru is rather short, small-boned, and has noble features, so when he opens his mouth the contrast is really striking. I wasn't sure how to handle this in translation.

The usual wisdom in translation studies is to not even try translating a dialect, because one ends up localizing it in the wrong place and the effect can be comical.


Edward Seidensticker referred to this issue in remarks he made years ago about his translation of Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters):

"I did try to differentiate between Tokyo speech and Osaka speech. I think it was not a good solution. I rendered Osaka speech in a formal kind of English, without contractions, without any "don'ts" and "wasn'ts," and to emphasize the contrast I introduced more contractions than necessary in Tokyo speech. Someone from Osaka -- it was quite a while after the translation came out -- told me I should have done just the opposite. He said that Osaka speech is a speech of abbreviation and Tokyo speech is not. That had not occurred to me, but it is true. In standard Tokyo speech, all of the markers, the the-ni-o-ha, the postpositions, are there. They may be only vestigially there, but they are there in a Tokyo sentence. A lot of them are left out in an Osaka sentence. Therefore I should have had the exaggerated contractions in the Osaka part. But the experiment was a complete and utter failure for the simple reason that nobody even noticed what I have done." (Cited in Donald Richie, Words, Ideas, and Ambiguities:  Four Perspectives on Translating, pp. 76-77.)

Having read the above, I felt a little disheartened not knowing what to do about translating Kitaru.

Let's look at the first conversation between the two male students appearing in the story:
      「木樽というのは珍しい名前だよね」と僕は言った。
      「ああ、そやな、かなり珍しいやろ」と木樽は言った。
　  「ロッテに同じ名前のピッチャーがいた」
      「ああ、あれな、うちとは関係ないねん。あんまりない名前やから、まあどっかで
       ちょこっと繋がってるのかもしれんけどな」(p.68)

It is clear from the very first words that Kitaru "sounds different." This is how this conversation was rendered by Philip Gabriel:

“Kitaru is an unusual last name,” I said one day.

“Yeah, for sure,” Kitaru replied in his heavy Kansai accent.

“The Lotte baseball team had a pitcher with the same name.”

“The two of us aren’t related. Not so common a name, though, so who knows? Maybe there’s a connection somewhere.” ("Yesterday," The New Yorker, June 9, 2014)

From this short fragment, it seems that Gabriel did what Edward Seidensticker wished he had done: put more contractions in the Osaka speech. I did not have that option in Polish, since Polish doesn't really use contractions. I briefly considered making up a dialect, but did not feel equal to it. After a lot of hesitation and looking at some other translations, I decided to try an experiment, which I will describe in the following post.

The Norwegian Translation of the First Two Murakami Novels

I have neglected to announce the appearance this year of the Norwegian translation of Kaze no uta o kike and 1973 nen no pinbōru. The translator was Yngve Johan Larsen and the publisher is Pax. Here is a picture of the cover along with a photo of the translator, who seems to be relatively new to the Norwegian translations of Murakami (a list of other works and translators can be found here).

I notice that, as in Polish and Dutch, the word for pinball (or pinball machine) seems to come from the word "flipper."

A Follow-Up Explanation About the New Essay Collection

James Westerhoven, the Dutch translator, confirms that apart from the six essays published in Monkey, one essay (#12,  『物語があるところ・河合隼雄先生の思い出』) was published in the 2013 Summer issue of Kangaeru Hito. The remaining five essays are brand new.

James also send me the following information, which might be helpful to translators who will be working on Kaze no uta o kike and 1973 nen no pinbōru:

"Murakami’s foreword to Listen/Pinball is an abbreviated and revised version of the second essay, 「小説家になった頃」.  “The contents are essentially the same, but in the foreword Murakami drops a few paragraphs. In the book he adds a few names for the benefit of Japanese readers, changes the name of a Hiroshima Carp player from Sotokoba to Takahashi (Satoshi) and doesn’t mention the title Pinball 1973 anywhere, but essentially the essay in the book is the same as the foreword, only a couple of pages longer.”

Thank you, James!

New Murakami Essay Collection Published Today

A collection of essays by Murakami Haruki titled Shokugyō to shite no shōsetsuka (A Novelist by Profession) hit the bookstores today under an arrangement aimed to combat the growing online sales figures by vendors like Amazon.co.jp and to bring customers back to large and small neighborhood bookstores.

Kinokuniya, the large bookstore chain, apparently has bought 90,000 copies of the 100,000-copy first print run of the collection.  They plan to sell about half the books in their bookstores and distribute the rest to other bookstores, leaving few to be sold online. Kinokuniya is taking a risk, since under the current agreement it will not be able to return unsold copies to the publisher. However, given that the author is Murakami Haruki, they are probably not too concerned about possible losses.

You can read more about this story on the Japan Times page (in English) here or on the Mainichi Shinbun page here, or watch a video (in Japanese) here or here.

Some essays in the collection have been previously published in Shibata Motoyuki's literary magazine, Monkey, but the book also includes "150 pages" of new material. Here is the table of contents copied from the page of the publisher, Switch.

目次

第一回　小説家は寛容な人種なのか
第二回　小説家になった頃
第三回　文学賞について
第四回　オリジナリティーについて
第五回　さて、何を書けばいいのか？
第六回　時間を味方につける──長編小説を書くこと
第七回　どこまでも個人的でフィジカルな営み
第八回　学校について
第九回　どんな人物を登場させようか？
第十回　誰のために書くのか？
第十一回　海外へ出て行く。新しいフロンティア
第十二回　物語があるところ・河合隼雄先生の思い出
あとがき

I have just looked through my issues of Monkey and found the first six essays, which would mean that the remaining six are new, unless I am mistaken.

   

On the publisher's page, we also we find the following promise:

いま、世界が渇望する稀有な作家──

村上春樹が考える、すべてのテーマが、ここにある。

自伝的なエピソードも豊かに、待望の長編エッセイが、

遂に発刊！
Which in free translation means:
"It contains all the topics that Haruki Murakami, the unique, universally loved writer, thinks about. This long-awaited essay collection, full of autobiographical episodes, has finally been published!"




As it is a book of essays, and not a novel, this collection will probably not cause a translation-rights-buying frenzy, but I am sure it will be published in many languages.

More Translations of Men Without Women

Three new translations of Onna no inai otokotachi, Murakami's last year's short story anthology, will be coming out in the next few months. The first one, the Danish translation by Mette Holm will be published next week by Klim. Notice the beautiful golden bug on the cover! The reason for the bug is that the Danish version (as well as the two described above)  will include the story "Koi suru Zamuza" ("Samsa in Love"), which can be read as a a sequel to Kafka's The Metamophosis. (You can read it on The New Yorker page here.) 

The story was not included in the Japanese anthology Onna no inai otokotachi, but was written by Murakami for his book of translations of short stories about love, titled Koishikute (2013).

http://klim.dk/bog/maend_uden_kvinder.htm

My Polish translation will be published by Muza in October. The cover design follows Muza's established design for the Murakami series, with the author's name written vertically, but seems to also play on the motif of the Japanese flag. I understand that Muza is considering redesigning the whole series though. 

http://muza.com.pl/literatura/2153-mezczyzni-bez-kobiet-9788328700918.html

The third translation that will appear soon will be James Westerhoven's translation into Dutch. The translation is being done in collaboration with Elbrich Fennema and will be published in February 2016 by Atlas Contact. James explained to me that the book will also be available in a limited deluxe edition at the cost of 100 euros. He also kindly translated the text announcing this edition on the publisher's page:

‘Limited, numbered deluxe edition. The seven stories of Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women as seven individual booklets in one slipcase, in a very special design. Each booklet has its own cover, created especially for this edition by internationally acclaimed designers and artists such as Joost Swarte, Floor Rieder, and Pieter Van Eenoge.’

The cost will be 100 euros. 

http://www.atlascontact.nl/boek/mannen-zonder-vrouw-1/

There are a few passages and words in this anthology that have created some difficulties for me and some of the fellow translators. I will discuss them on this blog in the coming weeks.

Reviews of the English Translation of Wind/Pinball Overlook the Translator

The appearance of the English translation by Ted Goossen of Murakami's first two novels Wind/Pinball was followed by many reviews in the American and British press. Here are a few quotes and links.

 


Last Sunday's NYT Book Review features a very positive review by Steve Erickson, first published online on August 12th.

The only passage indirectly referring to translation (or does it?) is this:

 "Crossing Kafka and the Beatles with Kenzaburo Oe (not an early Murakami fan), adding dashes of noir and science fantasy and creating an irresistible amalgam of East and West, Murakami sometimes has been odd man out to both: English-speaking readers may find it even less convincing than have the guardians of Murakami’s native culture when, for instance, he writes that something “blew my mind.” But authenticity is the enemy of audacity, and Murakami’s atomic sensibility characterizes world literature. Don’t tell the rest of the country, because it may blow their minds, but American fiction plays catch-up."

The Guardian published a review by Ian Sansom on August 13th.

Sansom clearly hasn't done his homework thoroughly, however, because he refers to the "40+years of the stellar career" (Murakami published his first book in 1979, which is 36 years ago). There is not a word about the translator or translation, except a brief mention of Ted Goossen's name.

Sansom calls the books "super-elliptical pop-noir" and praised them thus: 

What keeps the reader engaged are the Murakamian swerves, the long shots, the non sequiturs and the odd adjacencies. The books all read as if Raymond Chandler were writing scripts for David Lynch to direct with Yasujirō Ozu: super-elliptical pop-noir for the twentysomething well-to-do.

The Huffington Post published a review by Steven Petite on August 4th.

Petite seems to have liked the books, but he also does not find it necessary to refer to the translation. He praised the books saying:
With that, he delivers a reading experience that causes personal reflection, thoughts larger than ourselves, and consequently, the way we handle all of the big, external ideas within our 
                                 own, internal minds.  

And here is the link to the Publishers Weekly review.

The author (unnamed) likes the books and says:
Elegiac, ambient, and matter-of-fact in their strangeness, these two novels might leave casual readers wondering what all the fuss is about. But for the rest of us, this may be the ultimate bit of Murakami arcana, both elevating his other books (including A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance, Dance, the sequels) and serving as two excellent, though fragile, works in their own right. 

Another Review of Wind/Pinball and the Italian Translation of Men without Women

In her July 23 review of Wind/Pinball, which appeared in the Independent online, Arifa Akbar calls the novellas, "appetisers from the kitchen table," referring to the fact that Murakami wrote them at home late at night after getting back from work (this was many years ago, when he ran a jazz bar). Akbar's opinion of the language of the books differs greatly from Matthew Adams's, quoted in the previous post. She writes: "What stands out in both books is the writing, beautiful in its simplicity, and also the deadpan humour and one-liners." Here is a link to the review.

In other Murakami translation news, the Italian translation of Men without Women, by Antonietta Pastore, appeared last week. The Italian title Uomini senza donne also uses "women" in plural -- I am referring here to an earlier discussion about singular vs. plural in this title (see the posts of March 29 and March 6).

The Introduction to Wind/Pinball Already Available Online

The introduction written by Murakami for Wind/Pinball: Two Novels, which is being released by Knopf on August 4, is already available online here:
http://lithub.com/haruki-murakami-the-moment-i-became-a-novelist/
In it, Murakami talks about how he became a writer and puts his two earliest novels in a broader context by explaining their inception -- an interesting read!

And here is an early review by Matthew Adams:
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/book-review-windpinball-two-novels-by-haruki-murakami
The reviewer mentions the name of the translator, Ted Goossen, and says that the books are "a great treat," but then -- as is so often the case in these situations -- proceeds to comment on the writing style, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the words he read were Ted Goossen's, not Murakami's: "But anyone expecting a high standard of writing from these books will be disappointed. Their dominant mode is that of cliché: characters “sweat like a pig”; have “time to kill”; gaze with “bleary eyes”; complain that they are “dead tired”; endure rain that is “freezing cold”; sit in cars that are “stifling hot.”  There may be clichés in the original, but if you are going to comment on the use of clichés in a review of a translation from a language as different from English as Japanese, wouldn't it make sense  to refer to the fact that one is commenting on the language of the translation?

"I very often feel I’m writing original—almost original—fiction" Says Jay Rubin About Translation

An interview with Jay Rubin by Nikkitha Bakshani recently appeared in the online literary magazine, The Rumpus. As regular readers of this blog will know, Rubin is a scholar of Japanese literature and one of the best-known American translators of Murakami; what some of you may not know is that he is also the author of a new novel, The Sun Gods. 

In the interview, occasioned by the publication of his novel, he explains how he became interested in Japanese and discusses his views of translation as "writing original -- almost original -- fiction."

Picture from Goodreads.com

I'm pasting the first question and Jay's answer to whet your appetites and hoping that The Rumpus will forgive me.

The Rumpus: What drew you to studying Japanese language and literature?

Jay Rubin: In my second year at the University of Chicago, I assumed I was going to be either an English or a Philosophy major, and I had about one free quarter where I thought, “Why don’t I do something non-Western, as this could be my last chance?” It just so happened that there was an Introduction to Japanese Literature course available in that quarter.

The professor would bring in not just the English translations that we were reading, but also the originals. He would read from the original and give literal translations. He gave the class a strong impression that as much as we were enjoying these translations, we’d enjoy them far more in the original.

I decided right there and then I was going to study Japanese. At the time, I was selling ice cream from a truck. I remember having my Japanese books with me, and on break, I would practice writing characters on banana skins.

To read the whole interview, go to: http://therumpus.net/2015/07/the-rumpus-interview-with-jay-rubin/

Here is also a link to Jay Rubin's recent review of Juliet Winters Carpenter and Mari Yoshihara's translation of Mizumura Minae's The Fall of Language in the Age of English. 

Greek, Icelandic and Croatian Translations of Tsukuru Tazaki

I have previously failed to note three new translations of Tsukuru Tazaki, all from last year.

The first is the Icelandic translation by Ingunn Snædal published by Bjartur.

The second one is the Croatian translation, which came out in November 2004 from Vuković & Runjić. The translator, Maja Šoljan, has translated a number of Murakami novels; her Croatian translation of After Dark, titled Kak padne mrak, won the 2009 Kiklop Prize for the "translation of the year." However, since she also seems to translate extensively from English (Jeffrey Eugenides, Alice Munro, Philip Roth, etc.), it is not clear whether the translation of After Dark was a direct translation from Japanese or an indirect translation from English. I have contacted the publisher and am waiting for their reply. 

The third new translation of Tsukuru Tazaki is the Greek version by Maria Argyraki, which appeared last October from Psychologios.

The New York Times Review of Murakami Audio Books

On May 15, the NYT Book Review published a review of the audiobook versions of The Strange Library and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. The review is by Daniel Handler, a novelist, who writes that the audio versions "turn out to be the perfect way to experience this strange entry into Murakami's own strange library." (You can buy the audiobooks here or here - Audible.com, shown in the pictures.)

Handler notes that there is "no discernible reason I have devoured every one of his [Murakami's] books, often late into the night. And I am hardly alone," but by the end of the piece he comes up with a statement that, in my opinion, quite aptly expresses the charm and quality of Murakami's writing:

"Murakami does not conform to our ideas of plot or structure, nor does his language conform to any admirable characteristic; he does not conform to expectations about Japanese literature, or translated literature, or arguably even literature at all. All he conforms to is our expectations of Haruki Murakami, and it may be that this little puzzle — equal parts logic problem and joke — is exactly what makes him so mesmerizing."

However, what is most unusual about this review is that it repeatedly refers to translation. As most translators reading this will know, it is rare to find any mention of translation in most reviews of Murakami; reviewers feel at liberty to comment at length on Murakami's style, seemingly unaware that they are not, in fact, reading the original, but a translation, and that what they are really commenting on is the style of the translator.

Handler does not commit this error.  When listening to readings of the books, Handler is quite well aware that what he is hearing are not Murakami's words, but the the words of Ted Goossen and Phil Gabriel, respectively. When talking about Murakami's writing style, he says:

            As for his language — well, most of us New York Times readers are receiving Murakami in 
            translation, but even so there’s little to indicate we’re missing some grand linguistics in the original. 
            His language is accessible, plain-spoken, even banal, perhaps purposefully so.


He follows with this statement:
           Of course, it can be argued that reading Murakami in English — as with any author in translation — 
           is inevitably a filtered experience, and that the act of translation has already interfered with the 
           genuine text. Certainly I’ve puzzled over this — my favorite Murakami novels were all translated by
           Alfred Birnbaum, but who knows what that means? 

This is clearly a thoughtful reviewer! We wish there were more like him.

His comment, that the reason he may have liked Alfred Birnbaum's translations may have had to do more with Birnbaum's style rather than Murakami's, reminds us of an essay by Wendy Lesser, "The Mysteries of Translation," in which she also says she prefers Birnbaum's version of Norwegian Wood to Jay Rubin's translation. If you are a subscriber to The Chronicle of Higher Education, you can find her essay here.  If not, you can always read her book, Why I Read, where she writes about the same issue in Chapter 6.

Another option for those wishing to compare the style of the two translators would be to look at the first chapter of Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, translated by Rubin, and the short story, "The Wind-Up Bird and the Tuesday Women," from The Elephant Vanishes, translated by Birnbaum.