Reading Response (Matt)

Within all of the readings, something that I found in common was the topic of keeping the same feeling and tone that the writer initial had within the translated text. One thing that I found interesting was how the editor for "1Q84" had the two different translators between Rubin and Gabriel. Gabriel talks about the differences in translation style in the "How Haruki Murakami's '1Q84' Was Translated Into English" article, and I found that it was interesting that the editor tried their best to smooth out the nuances between the two writers translation styles, in particular Gabriel usually used more contractions compared to Rubin, and in the final edit, his section did have less contractions.

The articles also talked about the cultural differences and meanings that could get lost in the translations. That's why I admire that for the translation of Murakami's works, they tried to keep everything as close to the original meaning as possible since they know the importance of the cultural values that it could hold. It was interesting to learn that since Murakami had such a large western influence that could be seen in his works, some things like pun or jokes could be more feasibly translated by the translators.

Lastly, I did not realize how long was needed to translate something like this. In the article "How Haruki Murakami's '1Q84' Was Translated Into English", Gabriel touches on the fact that he would try to translate 4 pages a day which translated to about 10 months for him to have a first draft of the translation, and then having to go over it for a couple months just revising what he had initially written. The time and effort needed to tackle tasks like this was something I had not realized.