Whose Work Do We Read, Author or Translator? - A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro and Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino カズオ＝イシグロと東野圭吾

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

Fans of mystery books always look for good mystery books. If you are interested in not necessarily murder mystery books, but mystery books with a literary bent, I recommend A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro because it contains a mystery. 

I wrote a post about the mystery about a year ago, asking the reader if my understanding is correct. Basically (spoiler alert: don't read this post if you haven't read the book and plan to read it), the story was about two pairs of mother and daughter and one mother (i.e., the protagonist) looks back on her life and starts to talk about a sad story of her own. The mystery is whether these two mothers are the same person because at one point while reading this book in English, you would find the two pairs almost completely overlapping.

And the problem or reason I wrote about this book one year ago is that you wouldn't be able to see that mystery if you read this book in Japanese due to a linguistic difference between English and Japanese. Japanese speakers usually omit the subject if they think that it's self-evident and this often causes a problem in translation as follows:

'"In any case," I went on, "if you don't like it over there, we can always come back.... (underlined by the writer of this blog)"' - A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

The problem is that the underlined part is translated into Japanese that "行ってみて嫌だったら、帰ってくればいいでしょ," which can be re-translated into English that:
 ".... if (no subject) don't like it over there, (no subject) can always come back."  

The Japanese sentence has no subjects, so those reading this novel in Japanese generally assume that both subjects are the same, i.e., you or we, and in any case, they would be deprived of a chance to find this subtle change in the subject from "you" to "we" and to suspect (or realize) that the two mothers are the same single person. (For more details, please read this post.) 

I have recently received a comment and found that the commenter, who is Japanese and read this book both in English and Japanese, felt the same way. She also gave me a very interesting link to another blog on which people discuss the generally the same issue, i.e., whether the two pairs of mother and daughter are the same.

Personally I believe that Etsuko is Sachiko and I wouldn't have enjoyed this novel if I had read it in Japanese because I love mysteries. But I also know that without the knowledge the novel is still enjoyable, so the most important issue here is not which interpretation is correct (i.e., whether Etsuko and Sachiko are the same person or not), but that Japanese readers are deprived of the opportunity to enjoy this mystery.

As a translator, I understand the difficulty of translation and have no intention of criticizing the Japanese translation. So, I want to talk about another interesting thing related to translation.

I've read several novels by Keigo Higashino, a Japanese very famous and popular mystery writer, but I read them all in English. It's only because the author’s work isn’t available in digital format. I bought Journey Under the Midnight Sun, Malice, Salvation of a Saint and enjoyed all of them in English. But this contradicts my belief, "Direct communication is better than indirect one." So, one day I decided to read his another book in Japanese in paper form and went to a book store.

But I bought none because I felt embarrassed when reading the beginning of his another novel in the store. I didn't or still don't know why. Then, I realized that maybe part of the joy of reading the three books came from the translation? I went home and found they were all translated by the same translator, Mr. Alexander O. Smith. Thank you Mr. Smith for your translations and for making me realize that translation is very important. I'm gonna keep working hard to be a translator like you....

イシグロカズオ氏の「遠い山並みの光」について以前書いた記事に、verde arbolさんという方からコメントをいただきました。私が思っていたこと（悦子と佐知子は同一人物）をverde arbolさんもお感じになられていたようで、問題意識を共有できてとてもうれしく感じました。ブログってこういうところに書く喜びがあるんですね。

他の記事にも書いておりますが、私は翻訳を生業としております。ただ、文芸ではなく、もっとお固い、解釈の余地が少ない分野でお仕事しています。とはいえ、日本語と英語の行き来には日々考えさせられることが多く、やりがい、そして広がりを感じます。そうです。英語が少しでもできるようになると世界が広がります。私がこのブログを英語と日本語の両方で書いているのも世界を広げたいからです。いつか、このブログが日本語と英語の両方が行きかう場になればいいなと願っています。

そこで今日は翻訳ネタをもう一つ。実は私はミステリーが好きで、そういう意味でもイシグロ氏の「遠い山並みの光」はとても楽しめたのですが、ある書評で東野圭吾氏の「白夜行」がやはり殺人トリックよりも人の心に焦点を当てた良質のミステリーであることを知り、読もうとしたのですが、なんと、氏の本は日本語電子版がない。そこで自宅ペーパーレス化を推進する私としては仕方なく翻訳電子版を買いました。いや、面白かった。最後の方なんか、一気読みでした。その後も2冊続けて東野氏の英語電子版を楽しみました。

ところが、私の信条に「コミュニケーションは間接ではなく直接の方がいい」というのもあり、「やはり、日本語で読もう！」とある日、本屋に立ち寄り、東野氏の別の本を一冊手に取り、開いて、でも戻してしまいました。冒頭の日本語が恥ずかしく感じられて、読めなくなってしまったのです。（決して東野氏を批判しているものではありません！）その時思ったんです。もしかして私は東野氏とその翻訳者の共同作品を楽しんでいたのでは、と。家に帰って確認したら、読んだ3冊は3冊ともAlexander O. Smith氏の訳でした。Smithさん、ありがとう。翻訳の大切さを改めて認識しました。私ももっと頑張ってあなたのような翻訳者になります！