And merely reading English, I miss the active involvement of the re-creative process. It's crazy, because I know English far better than I will ever know Japanese, but even though I am a slow reader of English, I can never make myself slow down quite enough to savour the imagery the way I have to when translating Japanese. Because I squeeze every bit of juice out of a Japanese text when trying to recreate it in English, mere reading in my own language never quite measures up. I have been translating Japanese fiction into English for 35 years, and spending so much time in this slow, painstaking but exciting process seems to have done odd things to my synapses. Because the story was written in such dense language, I got to sit there watching samurai flicks in my head for days at a time instead of the 20 minutes it will take the reader when my translation comes out next year. I recently translated a samurai story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the author of Rashomon, and it was thrilling. Translating a humorous paragraph can make your day. In the case of a blood-soaked scene, this can mean a lot of excruciating days at the computer.Įrotic scenes can be excruciating in other ways. You stay with the text far longer - probably longer than the author ever did. And the kind of active involvement required in the translation of literature takes time. It may be possible to translate technical documents passively and mechanically, but not literature. When you translate, you do not just passively absorb what's on the original page, you get actively involved in imagining every detail the author put in there - every sight, sound, smell, touch and taste - and in finding the right words for them in your own language.
![close my eyes close my eyes](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.1128118496.8889/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.jpg)
If you're translating, though, and you close your eyes, that soldier starts hitting you with his rifle butt until you open them again. If it really grosses you out as a reader, you can make it go away. I'm not saying that translating a text is more intense than writing it to begin with - after all, the author had to imagine every detail he put into the scene - but it's safe to say that translating is the most intense form of reading you can do.
![close my eyes close my eyes](https://www.quotemaster.org/images/ce/cea6be44f2da012c033c0615401fd313.jpg)
I, on the other hand, had to translate it, which is much slower. Of course, he had it easy: he just had to write it. I once tried to talk to Murakami himself about this passage, but he refused: it was just too sickening, he said. I am occasionally reminded of the experience when I see people hiding their eyes at a violent film.
![close my eyes close my eyes](http://unquote.li/images/screens/en-ona3jn2wgb-quote-louis-aragon-square.jpg)
Unlike the narrator, Lieutenant Mamiya, I did not have the luxury of closing my eyes - even for an instant - as I worked on it. I remember living with this chapter day after day as I translated it from Murakami's gruesome Japanese into (I hope) equally gruesome English. This is just the beginning of the passage in Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle in which a Japanese espionage agent is skinned alive by a Mongolian army officer. He bore the pain without a whimper - at first. But it hardly mattered: eyes open or closed, I could still hear Yamamoto's voice. He went on hitting me until I opened my eyes. When I did this, one of the soldiers hit me with his rifle butt. I hope this turns your stomach a little: "His men held Yamamoto down with their hands and knees while he began skinning Yamamoto with the utmost care.