Translating Murakami

2011-04-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

This morning my current japanese teacher, Albert Nolla, gave a conference about his work translating Haruki Murakami into catalan. I really admire him as a teacher, and it was an honour to hear him share his opinions about an author I love so much.
Being a literary translator, regardless of the languages your translate from or to, must be an incredible experience. Most people I know say it's not worth the effort because the pay is terrible. That may be true, but I'd much rather live in a tiny room with a big supply of instant noodles than live in a huge house with a car, TV, etc, if that means I can earn a living doing something I enjoy. I don't know why people are so into huge cars and TVs, sometimes it seems like they consider them not a commodity, but a necessity. Or people who take for granted you must have kids and a family to really have a life. Anyway, the point is I think literary translation is cool, and I admire Albert Nolla for dedicating his knowledge of japanese to translating novels. He's a teacher too, of course, which is one of the signs that you can't really live off that kind of work. But hey, teaching japanese is, in my opinion, much more rewarding than teaching...dunno, anything else. Not just japanese of course, but languages that aren't compulsory, languages that sudents want to learn. You can tell, in every japanese classroom I've been in, that students want to learn it, of course. They're not forced to. So the classroom becomes a pleasant space where the teacher is never harrassed or bullied. Which is good, of course.
I've lost track of what I was talking about. I tend to follow my train of thought when writing, I apologise. Then again, nobody's reading this ahahahahjadhfjkahdk

If I ever learn enough japanese, I'd love to translate japanese literature. Something about japaese literature grabs me by the heart. Something similar happens with japanese, chinese and korean cinema (and that of other east asian countries). I love the imagery, the sounds, the silences, the dialogues. I've always been terrible at explaining why things move me, or why I find certain things to be deep and meaningful. Most of my friends like "meaningful" or "deep" movies and books to be logical, or rational. "So and so movie is really deep, because this is a symbol of man's torment, and then all of this is a metaphor of the moral decline of...". I love metaphors and symbols. But I don't like it when anything that can't be classified as one or ther other is instantly worthless. "Why do I want to read a novel which makes no sense?". Why is sense so important? Do you understand your dreams, do you know literally what they mean? Do you even think they have ONE literal meaning? Why has meaning got to be explained with words? When I listen to a song I love, it is meaningful, it moves me. What does it mean? "Rationally", it means nothing. An instrumental piece of classical music can move you to tears. Would it be so difficult to treat movies and novels in the same way? Sometimes a novel moves you on a deep level, you feel it to be a movie that conveys a very profound meaning. But it conveys it in the same way that a song does. I know a lot of people would just laugh through their noses upon reading this, and think I'm trying to defend my lack of intelligence. They can condescend as much as they feel like it.

2011-04-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to get really frustrated about my english.
A few years back I was able to speak it and write it fluently, but nowadays it takes me a lot more effort to get coherent sentences out, and everything I say has a strange accent to it. It feels odd to lose an ability you once used to be "realtively" good at. In a way this is why I'm writing this blog, just to get some practice. I never write anymore these days, and I can tell that's one of the main problems. I used to write constantly on forums and to friends on chats and stuff, making sure I spelt stuff correctly, using punctuation, etc.
Obviously, living in Barcelona is one of the reasons I've lost that "native edge" that, for example, my cousins' english has. That's normal, if you live in a catalan speaking country all your life, all your friends speak catalan, you use catalan and spanish in school and university, etc...well, this is what happens. Right now, I feel very uncomfortable writing this, like I'm forcing it out of me when it used to be so easy...
All my life I've considered myself to be half english, half catalan. Now, I can still speak and write correctly, to a certain degree, but I assure you this blog I'm writing would never come out of my mouth on the spot. Conversations with my dad now make me feel pretty stupid. I'm at a loss for words all of the time, he has to help me out and guess what I'm trying to say, I blurt out sentences so gramatically incorrect I can see his face flinch (flinch? Forgotten the proper word...), and in some cases I resort to catalan, a language he understands perfectly. It's very embarrassing. I can tell he's also surprised at my inability to have a perfectly ordinary conversation that, when I was 12, I could handle with no trouble.
It feels, for the first time in my life, like I'm not bilingual any more; I'm a catalan student of english as a second language. Which is fine, as long as I learn with time! It's as if I've drawn to a halt these last two years, and then from the halt started to move backwards.

When I was 12 I used to post on forums a lot, expressing my opinion on complicated topics, and other times just holding light conversations about videogames or whatever else. Apart from blogging, I'd like to pick that habit up again.

For some incomprehensible reason, my jaw hurts whenever I speak/think in english. Why is that? It's so odd. I think the more I think about it the more stressed I get. I should just relax and write something every day to practice.

TO THE BEACH

Translating Murakami