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by hkmurakami 1825 days ago
Coincidentally there was a recent article covering Haruki Murakami's translators. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/haruki-m...

In my personal experience being a native speaker of both languages and having read some of his books in both languages, the translators take great care to preserve the reader's experience. I have great respect for their work.

1 comments

Interestingly, Murakami actually wrote (at least) his early works in English, after he found that writing in his native Japanese he was channeling too much other Japanese authors as well as the classical style of the time. His English was more plain, so he ended up with this relatively simple style that is now his trademark. He translated them back to Japanese for publication.

(source: Murakami wrote a couple of essays on his writing career)