ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This paper aims to examine and analyze the important roles of English translators in the successful reception of the English translation of Murakami Haruki's novels. While the success of Murakami Haruki's novels is quite phenomenal in many parts of the world as being translated into more than 40 languages with their extreme success in the US, England, Germany, Italy, Korean, etc., the roles of the English translators of Haruki's works can not be underestimated. This paper has found that the success of Murakami Haruki lies in the two major factors: author and translators. First, the author's unique narrative mode differentiates him quite characteristically from other Japanese writers with heavily Western culture-influenced themes and styles. This thematic closeness and familiarity with Western culture has been effective in helping Western readership feel less strange to the extent that Western readers could feel like they are reading a work written by a Western writer. Second, Haruki's novels have been all translated into English by native target language translators, most of whom are college professors teaching Japanese literature in American colleges. These translators not only translate Murakami Haruki's novels successfully into English, but also, more importantly, have played a pivotal role in establishing the readership of Haruki's novels by introducing and teaching the works in college classrooms, presenting academic papers or writing books about the author, contributing articles to newspapers or magazines about the author, interviewing the author for media coverage. Through this, Murakami Haruki has been perfectly domesticated inside and outside the text for American readership. Effective reception of literary works from minority culture into a hegemonic language requires more than a good translation. The successful reception of Murakami Haruki in the US publishing market demonstrates a critical importance of domestication strategy in translation, initiated by target cultural systems including translators, publishers, professors, and media, and this provides a pivotal direction for the globalization of Korean literature as well.

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