Anna Zielinska-Elliott

Translating together: Collaboration between European translators of Haruki Murakami

While it is not uncommon for translators and authors to work together in an Internet forum or special seminar, independent collaboration between translators of the same author is rare. This paper presents an example of collaboration among several European translators simultaneously working on the same books, each translating into a different language and sharing ideas in real time during the translation process. Greatly facilitated by the Internet and social media, this arrangement first took shape in 2011 during the translation of 1Q84 and has continued through the translation of Murakami’s subsequent works. The greatest novelty of this model is its horizontality and lack of hierarchy. It does not involve the author, but a group of translators, each working on his or her own language version, and among whom a sense of community can develop. The paper gives examples of the issues discussed and solutions passed from translator to translator.

Keywords: collaboration, Murakami, multilingual

Biography

 

Anna Zielinska-Elliott is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Japanese Language Program in the Modern Languages and Comparative Literature Department at Boston University. She has a PhD in Modern Japanese Literature and an MA in Japanese Studies, both from the University of Warsaw, and an MA in Japanese Linguistics from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Her recent translation-related publications include (with Mette Holm) “Two Moons over Europe: Translating Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84” (2013) and “Yōroppa no honyakushatachi wa kō miru” (This is How European Translators Look at It) (2013).