Interesting. I suppose that makes sense, in a way.
Legolas Send a noteboard - 03/01/2011 07:51:41 PM
One of Mishima's pet obsessions was how much was lost/twisted in translation. He was incomfortable with the whole idea of translation he thought a betrayal, and greatly mistrusted translations from the Japanese he believed wasn't understood well enough by western translators, and as he couldn't judge himself of the results... English was the sole western language he could read more or less fluently, so eventually he announced these approved/revised English translations would be considered his original for westerners, and all further western translations had to be done from them.
It's unusual for an author to have the clout to make such decisions, though, isn't it? Tolkien exercized a similar amount of control over his translations, but I don't know of many other authors who do or did.
Some scholars don't agree with Mishima that the English translation are all that great and put his reading skills of English into question (some local specialist of Japanese litterature wrote an article on this years ago, pointing with examples how much he thought Mishima's prose had lost from the translation from English instead of a direct Japanese to French translation, especially now that there are really excellent French-Japanese translators), so I guess one day (once he gets into the public domain, probably) new translations from the original Japanese will surface, a bit like has happened with the new French translations of Dostoievsky (but not with results as "dramatic" as that - or as Kundera's early novels, I'd expect).
That'd be an interesting matter to look into... shame I don't speak Japanese.
Yukio Mishima - Spring Snow
01/01/2011 09:33:55 PM
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02/01/2011 11:52:30 PM
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That really does sound interesting. *NM*
02/01/2011 11:54:42 PM
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Re: Yukio Mishima - Spring Snow
03/01/2011 07:29:06 PM
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Interesting. I suppose that makes sense, in a way.
03/01/2011 07:51:41 PM
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