On December 25th, the first volume of "Haruki Murakami's Lai Mingzhu Translation Series" opened for pre-sale.
Since the "Murakami craze" swept the Chinese world in the 80s, Lin Shaohua and Lai Mingzhu have always been the two most important Murakami translators in the Chinese world, and their influence has long crossed the boundary between simplified and Chinese traditional. For book lovers, Lin Shaohua's translations are more familiar to them, and his distinctive translation style has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but at the same time, many readers are also loyal fans of Lai Mingzhu's translations. For more than a decade, the debate about the two styles of translation has been incessant, which has made more Murakami fans curious and eager to see Lai's translations – and so Shanghai Translation Publishing House is determined to make this happen and provide readers with more translation options.
Many readers who love Lai's translations affectionately refer to her translations as "Mingzhu style", believing that her language is lively and agile and can convey the characters appropriately. This is especially true in the dialogue between the characters: she is accustomed to retaining the modal words in Japanese, making the dialogue more natural and more in line with the temperament of the youth. The translator mentioned in a past interview that before she became a translator of Murakami's works, she used to work in an advertising agency, and often had to imitate the tone of her boss to write speeches for her boss, so she gradually developed the ability to imitate the tone of other people's speech.
The style of translation is also closely related to the translator's own translation philosophy: "Since Murakami's words are so different, we should try to keep his original flavor, so that readers can understand what Murakami's style is......" Lai Mingzhu once used coffee as an analogy to talk about his views on translation, "Coffee has different brands and different aromas, as a translator, you should try to express the original flavor of different coffees like colorless transparent boiled water." ”
Lai Mingzhu
Lai Mingzhu is not only the translator of Murakami's works, but also the first person to introduce them to Taiwan, China. Born in 1947, Lai Mingzhu and Haruki Murakami are the same age and are influenced by the same Eastern ideological background and Western culture, so they feel that they have many common interests with Murakami and can resonate with his works. In 1982, Haruki Murakami just published his third novel, "The Adventure of Sheep Hunting", which became famous in the Japanese literary scene with its unique writing style, and was named the title of "Japan's literary standard-bearer in the 80s". Haruki Murakami's short stories, which he liked very much, were given to the magazine, and since then the door to Haruki Murakami's literature has been opened to readers in Taiwan.
It is understood that the usual practice for the introduction of foreign literature is that the publishing house first signs a copyright contract with the author, and then looks for a suitable translator and entrusts the translator to translate. This time, Shanghai Translation Publishing House also needs to contact both the author and the translator to apply for authorization when publishing Lai Mingzhu's translated works.
However, this determination was not easy to achieve. From the first time the idea was proposed to the Japanese rights holder, to the final formal signing of the agreement, the Shanghai Translation Publishing House went through at least five years of negotiations, proposing to the Japanese side every year and rejecting it every year, on the grounds that the practice of publishing two translations at the same time was "unprecedented", and it was not until June 2021 that the Japanese side was finally impressed by the publisher's persistence and sincerity for many years and agreed to the authorization. Talking about the difficulty, the editor in charge of this set of works sighed: "Although the process is difficult, we have always been optimistic, because Murakami has been repeatedly telling us in the 2017 book "Assassination of the Knight Commander": 'We must break the concept'. We should have done it. ”
After receiving the approval of the Japanese side, Shanghai Translation Publishing House immediately contacted the translator Lai Mingzhu by email to tell her about the ins and outs of the whole project and its significance. The editor bluntly said that in the days of waiting for the translator's reply, the mood was always very worried: if the translator did not agree, then five years of hard work would be wasted. Luckily, Lai, who rarely reads emails, replied in the affirmative after only five days, saying that she was happy to meet the reader, and then several rounds of negotiations between Shanghai Translation Publishing House and her copyright agent, The Times Press, the publisher of Murakami's works in Taiwan, went well, and the contract was signed quickly.
The reporter learned from the publisher that about this cooperation, Lai Mingzhu sighed in a letter to the editor: "Following Junichiro Tanizaki, I feel very lucky to be able to continue to have a relationship with 'Shanghai Translation' with Haruki Murakami. In addition, she also said that if the time permits, her health allows, and she looks forward to coming to Shanghai next year to meet readers.
In the publication plan of Lai Mingzhu's translation of Murakami's works, Shanghai Translation Publishing House will first release Murakami's ten most important novels, and divide them into the first and second series in the order of publication year: the first series was officially launched on December 25, including "Song of the Wind", "Pinball Toys in 1973", "Sheep Hunting Adventure", "The End of the World and the Cold Strange Land", "Norwegian Wood" 5 works; Sputnik Lover", Kafka by the Sea.