I’m very pleased to announce the launch of a new course at the Tender Leaves Online Academy.
Translations of Murakami is a case study taught by Miho Kinnas. In the course, she considers several issues in relation to translations of Murakami Haruki – both translations of his work into English and his translation of English works into Japanese.
Miho is a poet and translator between English and Japanese. She and I have co-translated a book of poems by Ikuko Tanaka together. Her poetry, translations, and book reviews were published in various journals, and The Belletrist Magazine nominated her poem "End" for The Pushcart prize in 2018. She has led poetry workshops based on haiku and renku at Pat Conroy Literary Festival, Harvard Art Museum, Shanghai Literary Festival, Life-Long Learning of Hilton Head, Bluffton Book Fair, USCB, Beaufort County Schools, and Montessori May River. Her creative works, as well as workshop material, often include her translations from various works of literature.
Miho’s careful investigation of the translations of Murakami leads to many insights that will be useful to translators working in any language pairing. I’m very excited that she is launching the series of case studies that we plan to offer at the online academy. In each of these short courses, we will examine a particular work or author in translation as a way of exploring important issues literary translators must deal with.
The topics Miho considers in Translations of Murakami include
the question of translating titles
the basic principles Murakami uses in his translation and how he implements them
how much freedom a translator has when dealing with the source material
translating short stories
publication of translations
We hope that this course will prove useful to both emerging and established translators. I have very much enjoyed the course myself, and as always, I found that Miho offers insights that help me be a better translator.