From zero...

Lately I’m back into translation work. Not that I left it for a while, in fact, once you are a translator, you’re always alert to the way people translating things – unnecessarily novels, subtitles, formal letters or other type of manuscript but to the extent of sign boards on the road or shops’ names (yeah call us crazy, or, maniac or whatever you like) but that’s the thing about translators. There could be a lot of reasons for us to be super alert to translations but as for (amateur) me, I like to learn and improve my translation skills and one way to do so is to see other people’s works.

So, here I’m going to share one of the books I’ve read last year, in 2014; a book by Nobel Prize Nominee, Haruki MURAKAMI, 'Onna no inai otoko-tachi' which is a compilation of 6 short stories. I’m not going to give a review on the book so let’s skip to the excerpt that I think is interesting. To give you the picture of the story, this chapter is about a wealthy cosmetic surgery’s specialist physician who is in love with a woman. As the story goes on, the chapter which is told in narration by an author, who happened to become a friend to the specialist elaborate and describes his life as a biography. The specialist, who inherited the clinic from his father, has almost everything he needs except, perhaps, a true love? He never married nor engaged to any woman in his life but keeps changing his partner regardless of single ladies to married ones until he met this one special woman – a married woman. His perception of love suddenly changed and he began to suffer when that special woman left him one day. He began to feel the emptiness he never felt before. He began to doubt his life purpose – his wealth and everything. The excerpt below is a conversation between the author and the specialist. I leave the original in Japanese on top with my translation follows at the bottom of each conversation.

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「独立器官」

「失礼ですが、谷村さんはそんな風に考えたことありませんか？もし自分からものを書く能力が取り去られたら、自分はいったいなにものになるのだろうと？」

"Excuse me but have you ever thought like that, Mr. Tanimura? What would've you become if your ability to write was taken away from you?"

僕は彼に説明した。僕は出発点が「なにものでもない一介の人間」であり、丸裸同然で人生を開始した。ちょっとした巡り合わせでたまたまものを書き始め、幸運にもなんとかそれで生活できるようになった。だから自分が何の取り柄もなく、特技もない、ただの一介の人間であることを認識するために、わざわざアウシュウヴィッツ強制収容所みたいな大がかりな仮定を持ち出す必要はないのだ、と。

I explained to him; My starting point was, "From no one but just a mere human", my life began with barely nothing but zero. With just a little bit twist of fate that happened by chance, I began to write and how lucky I am to survive my life with that. So, I think it's unnecessary for me to bring up a huge assumption like Auschwitz concentration camp in order to make me realize that I'm the one with no strength, no specialty but mere a human.

*Auschwitz concentration camp (Nazi's)

Photo source : Google Inc.

「女のいない男たち」著者／村上春樹