My comments on readings - Maya

 Michael Emmerich - I had always wondered how Japanese to English translations seemed to appear in front of the international readers. Since I believe that it is a translator's job to convey the feeling of the original work to the audience, I believed it would be hard to translate a lot of literary work from Japanese, a language with many nuances. Hence I wasn't as  surprised like Emmerich when I read the comments of students from the US. However, I would have assumed that the translations gave a glimpse of how Murakami felt like in Japanese, but I guess the difference in nuances doesn't only come from the language, but also from the culture a reader (and author) was born in. It may be harder to understand the feel of Murakami if one hasn't associated themselves and "gained" nuances of Japan and its language.

Found in Translation - There were many things that I appreciated a lot in this interview. For example, I completely agree with Jay Rubin, who thinks that people should read the original work/learn the language rather than the translation. I think it is quite similar to watching movies and anime in their original language with subtitles, rather than the English voice over. I also really liked this quote: "...you're not trying to explain the original, but recreate it so that it works in all the same gut levels." I always subconsciously knew that when translating but since my translation "works" were usually about explaining one person to another, I never considered how it may be in literary works. I was also surprised since I didn't know Murakami was a translator himself, but I guess that makes sense since he is unusually adept in Western culture while writing his works. 

How Haruki Murakami's '1Q84' Was Translated Into English - First and foremost, I would love to read Gabriel's work of Oe Kenzaburo since I quite liked the author's style when I read it in Japanese and see if the feeling of the literary work is the same as when I read it in Japanese. I also beliebe that I should read 1Q84 in English since the books seem to be translated by different translators, so I think it would be very educational and interesting to read all 3 books and compare different styles of translators. Also this one quote peaked my interest: "There's a generalization out there that Japanese is somehow imprecise or vague compared to English." I'm not sure if I agree with it or not since I believe that Japanese is a language with many nuances, but I'm not sure if that counts as being imprecise or vague. I think it may be about how a person interprets the word, but as Gabriel has said, it isn't that hard for people to come up with the same interpretation, so I guess I do agree with Gabriel here. One last thing about this interview is that although a translation may be better than the original work, I think it is rare and something that should not happen since translation is merely a tool to convey how the author has conveyed their literary work. I think it would be a breach of translation boundary if the translated work was better than the original work. 

The Mysteries of Translation - One can definitely understand whether a literary work has been well translated or not. Reminds me of the last book that I have read in Turkish; Dead Souls from Gogol. I must say, that was one of the worst translations I have ever read. The translation kept interrupting the flow due to interesting word choices and sentence structure. I am not sure what I want to bring into my comments on this article but it reminded me of the book that I have read, so I wanted to put it out there first. 

At first, I didn't understand what Lesser had meant by liking Birnbaum more, but as she gave us the examples, the difference between Rubin was quite big, I must say. It is true that Birnbaum's work sounds much more delicate and elegant,  but I can not say anything further than this since I have not read the original work. If the original work has the same feeling in my gut, then Birnbaum has done a superb job. However, if the original work is much closer to Rubin's then I must say I do not like Birnbaum's translation even if sounds fantastic. I still maintain that a translator's job is to merely translate the feeling that the original work is giving, rather than adding something to it, so as I said before, if Birnbaum's style is much more prominent than Murakami's style, then I would put my vote on Rubin's work.