Gabriel's notes on a page of the original Japanese version of 1Q84

When translating 1Q84 and other Murakami works, do you feel any obligation to be respectful of the voice and feel of Jay Rubin's and Alfred Birnbaum's translations? Do you feel that you all are creating Murakami's English oeuvre, and that it ought to feel unified, or are you more focused on each book in isolation?

I admire Jay's and Alfred's translations, but I just do my own thing, my own take on what Murakami should sound like in English. We each have our own styles--Jay, for instance, tending to use fewer contractions than I do. I'm the only one of the three Murakami translators who's worked with the other two translators on projects. When Alfred and I did Underground, and Jay and I did Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, we didn't try to intentionally create anything unified, but with 1Q84 the editor, at least, did try to smooth out any major differences, which makes sense since it's a single novel. Because my portion of the novel came last, the editor had by then decided how to handle certain stylistic points, so I went along with them. (Thus, to get back to the earlier point, my part has fewer contractions than I usually use.)

You've mentioned that the nuances of Japanese food are sometimes obscured in translation. What else gets lost or warped?

I hope nothing important gets obscured in translation, of course, though in 1Q84 even the title itself presents a challenge since in Japanese the number 9 is pronounced "kyuu." Also some day-to-day things that Japanese take for granted were difficult--the nuances of how one addresses another person, the suffixes (-san and -kun in particular) that are affixed to names, and the level of intimacy they convey. Not to mention plays on words.

Jay Rubin, in Making Sense of Japanese, broaches the stereotype that Japanese is more imprecise and mysterious than English.

There's a generalization out there that Japanese is somehow imprecise or vague compared to English. I don't buy it. Japanese communicate as well as anyone, and a writer like Murakami—though the overall atmosphere of his work may be dreamlike or surreal at times—lays out his ideas clearly.

Is there a Western language that's at all analogous in structure and cadence? German, in that the verbs come at the end?

It's unlike any other language I've studied, and I've studied Russian, Chinese, French, and German. With Japanese verbs coming at the end I sometimes feel that translating Japanese into English is like giving away the punch line.

Did Murakami resist or revise any parts of your translation?

At one point Jay, Murakami, and I got into the question of the nickname of one of the cult's security detail. I originally called him "Skinhead," thinking of a menacing right-wing figure, but Jay preferred "Buzzcut." Murakami said he liked the latter—the military connotations it carried—so that's what we went with.