Anna Elliott’s Talk on “IQ84” at Harvard
Next TUESDAY, Oct. 2, MLCL’s own Anna Zielinska-Elliott will be speaking on a panel at Harvard on non-English translations of the novel “IQ84” by Murakami Haruki.
For those of you who don’t know, Professor Elliott has been Murakami’s translator in Poland for many years. Most recently and miraculously, she managed to complete her translation of his massive novel IQ84 before it appeared in English and while teaching a full load of Japanese courses at BU! She has also recently published (also in Polish) a guide to Tokyo for Murakami fans.
I hope that many of you can attend and show Elliott-sensei your support! The event is free and open to the public.
Here’s the info:
October 2 (Tuesday), 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Porte Room (S250), Second Level, CGIS South Bldg., 1730 Cambridge St.
Challenging the Hegemony of English: Translating Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 in Europe
Novels by Haruki Murakami have been translated into over forty languages. This panel gathers three of his European translators to discuss translating his work into languages other than English. Focusing upon Murakami’s latest novel, 1Q84, published in several languages before the English translation appeared in fall 2011, the panelists focus on issues of shifting tense, unusual speech patterns, and strategies for handling the English expressions and American references that appear natural in English, but stand out in other European languages, as they do in Japanese. They also consider how the process of translation was altered by the absence of a “hegemonic’ English version and whether the European versions (French, German, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Polish) are in fact more ‘faithful’ to the original Japanese in creative ways.
Mette Holm, translator of IQ84 to Danish
Ika Kaminka, translator of IQ84 to Norwegian
Anna Zielinska-Elliott, translator of IQ84 to Polish
Reischauer Institute presentation