A short history of my relationship with translations

My visit to a new city is usually accompanied by a visit to a local bookstore, which in turn is usually accompanied by a book purchase. My stay in Houston this weekend was no exception, when myself and an old friend went to this uptown bookshop for a quick browse. Now I had Haruki Murakami on my mind when I entered the place -- I had heard much about him from Amazon and other such erudite sources -- and when I saw Kafka on the Shore in the bargain section, I picked it up without much hesitation. I did not know at the time that Mr.Murakami was a Japanese writer writing in Japanese -- in my naivete, I had thought of him as another Kazuo Ishiguro, only better. The book I had bought was a translation.


I was eighteen when I first attempted to read a translation -- I had picked up The Godfather excitedly, having heard much about it from everyone I knew. However, about a quarter of my way through the first ten pages, I was confronted with an velleity to stop reading, and, a few minutes later, I had already returned the book to its dusty corner in my rotating bookshelf, feeling, as I did, vaguely puzzled. Here was a critically acclaimed book that had been turned into an even more (if possible) critically acclaimed movie; a colossus that bestrode the literary world with hubris; a book to which all of us, according to one critic at least, apparently owed something -- and I hadn't liked it. Clearly this must signify some sort of personal flaw -- after all, most others couldn't get enough of it, and seemed to put it before any others they may have read. It was only much later did I come to know that Mario Puzo, the author, had written the book in Italian, and that it had been translated into English by some worthy who clearly paid more attention to the story than the style he imparted to it.

Since then, I have found a similar intolerance within me for books "translated into the English". The Name of the Rose. Doctor Zhivago. The Bhagavad Gita. It did not matter how important the book, or how high its reputation; if the author was not a native speaker, I would not buy it.

Or, at least, that was my resolve until three days ago, when I purchased Kafka on the Shore by accident. Now I am stuck with a book that is sure to disappoint in at least one category, and it remains to be seen whether it will make up for this shortcoming by excelling in others. Until then, I wait with breath bated and lips tightly pursed.