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Comment by tastyham | Hacker News Reader

I love some foreign authors like Murakami, but I always wonder what I'm losing in the translation and how much is the translator impacting the writing.

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For what it’s worth, I have a friend who is a native speaker of Japanese and a fluent English speaker of 40 years, who loves Murakami and has read a number of his books in both English and Japanese. She says the translations are spot on and extremely well done.

Haruki murakami is also fluent in English (he lived in Boston area for years) and is very involved in his books ranslations into English. I have no idea about his translations into other languages.

I’ve read all his books in English. I’m a big fan of his fiction but not crazy about his non fiction.

Agreed. There are multiple translations of de Assis's major works into English, and they are remarkably dissimilar, so that is a hint right there as to how the translation process is itself an art form. (My tastes guide me to the earlier translations, which are slightly less forensically precise but far more readable and musical to the ear.)

"The translation process is itself an art form."

Without question. I have also read books in several different translations and it is remarkable how different they can be from each other. In his notes, one translator said there is no such thing as "translating" a book from one language to another, what you are really doing is rewriting the book in another language.

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