Need a good advocate for the Nobel Prize?

Congrats to Abdulrazak Gurnah, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021!
And condolences to millions of Harukists who believed that the prize
this year would go to their favourite Japanese author, Haruki Murakami.

It is a well-known fact that writers of non-European languages need a
good advocate, namely an adept translator for making it onto the short
list for the Nobel Prize.

E.g. without Edward Seidensticker who did crafty jobs in translating
Yasunari Kawabata’s books, the author would have been not awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature, they say.

I read once “Snow Country” in German, Kawabata’s masterpiece. In its
translation, the culture-rich texts are all understandably translated
but sound too flat or rather prosaic for me.

But I am not telling that Murakami is missing good translators. If not,
his works would not be read so widely around the world. Only once I read one of his early works in German. And it was an eye-opening experience.

Murakami’s writing style is said to mimic tones typically used in
#translations of foreign books (翻訳調）”. When a make-believe-translation
is translated into another language, it magically lose its pretence of
translation. How paradoxical!

#translations  #translator #literature #japanese