Yoko Ogawa is one of Japan’s most popular and critically acclaimed writers, and her work in English translation has appeared in The New Yorker and Harper’s. This success has resulted in invitations to the New Yorker Festival, the PEN World Voices Festival, and to numerous other literary prize ceremonies and university campuses—all of which Ogawa has declined. This talk examines the experiences of a translator asked to “speak for” a writer and the ways in which this act parallels and shapes the act of literary translation in the context of the commercial publishing industry. Who and what forces determine the nature of the “original”? What gives a translator “authority” to speak? How do commercial forces and aesthetic standards interact to shape—or deform—the “foreign” text? And what is the role of the translator in negotiating the conflict between foreignizing and domesticating practices in translation? This talk is based on ethnographic research in the Japanese and US publishing industries and examines the careers of Ogawa and Haruki Murakami in English translation.
Stephen Snyder’s research focuses on modern and contemporary Japanese fiction, translation theory, and literary translation. He has translated works by Yoko Ogawa, Kenzaburo Oe, Ryu Murakami, and Miri Yu, among others. His translations have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Granta. He is currently the Dean of Languages Schools and Kawashima Professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College.
Interested in participating in the translation workshop? Please contact Sayuri Oyama to request a copy of the short story by Yoko Ogawa to prepare an English translation prior to the workshop.
Sponsored by Japanese Studies, Modern Languages and Literature Faculty Group, Literature Faculty Group, and the Dean of the College