Translators on Translation

It takes a translator to know a translator, or at least so it seems in the case of author Haruki Murakami, Harvard Professor of Japanese Literature Jay Rubin, and visiting scholar and Professor of American Literature at the University of Tokyo Motoyuki Shibata.

The three top professional translators are resident at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies this academic year. And they’ve taken the opportunity to get together to talk about literature and translation and to collaborate.

Thus far, Shibata has collaborated informally and formally on translations with Rubin and Murakami, who calls him a “genius” of translation. A translator of contemporary American authors like Paul Auster, Shibata says that the three of them have a very “unusual relationship” because of their extensive collaboration. Plus, Shibata has visited Rubin’s Japanese translation class frequently. And Rubin and Murakami have planned to play some squash.

The three concur on many facets of translation. “We three are the kind of translators that stay as close to the text as possible,” Shibata says. And they seem to agree that one cannot translate a work that one doesn’t love. Murakami and Shibata say they have only ever translated works they love, and Rubin has passed over work of Murakami’s that he did not feel a strong affinity for—a move that with a less understanding author could have been disastrous.

“Jay Rubin has been pretty frank about it. Whenever Haruki’s new book doesn’t appeal to him he says so openly and that seems to be working well,” Shibata says.

Rubin translated “Murakami’s “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” which earned him acclaim in the U.S. But Murakami has more than one translator: Alfred Birnbaum, who translated much of Murakami’s early work, and Philip Gabriel, who translated Murakami’s latest big hit in English, “Kafka By the Shore.”

But Shibata says that Rubin always gets first pick when it comes to Murakami’s material. “As far as Haruki is concerned, Jay always gets the first say. If he likes it, he gets to translate it,” he says.