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A comment on The Intricate Translation Process for a Murakami Novel. Parent comment

Re:The Intricate Translation Process for a Murakami Novel by tsimionescu on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @06:44PM (#24426766)
Just to present another view, I enjoy Murakami's books despite agreeing with you that the style seems pretty flat (I've read some in English and some in my native Romanian, but I didn't notice any big differences of style, though I have no idea how well either translation holds up to the original Japanese).

The thing that keeps me coming back to his work are the stories themselves, I am usually quite curious how events will unfold, and I do find that, despite remaining mysterious, there is some sense of revelation.

On the other hand, I still prefer other works of magical realism, especially those by Marquez and Rushdie - of which I feel both have a much more interesting style to their writing.

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Re:The Intricate Translation Process for a Murakami Novel by Mediterraneo10 on Thursday September 10, 2020 @06:27AM (#24430857)
Aren’t like half of modern Japanese books in Romanian – including some Murakamis – translated by Angela Hondru? Her output is so prolific that I suspect she doesn’t get that much time to polish the prose, and so it is no surprise if the result feels a bit flat. (I don’t blame her for that; I have also worked in literary translation and I know that deadlines are always much shorter than one would like.)
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