Novels in translation

[dickens]

I started reading The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Juni'chiro, (translated to English by Edwin Seidensticker in 1957) this weekend. The book is set in the late 1930s in Osaka.

It took about 50 pages to figure out what seemed wrong to me. The characters are too direct. It doesn't read like other Japanese works I've read which translate at least some of the indirect communication style. It reads like an English or American novel with character and place names switched to Japanese.

Changing conventions for Japanese to English translations perhaps? I can't seem to find any other translations of this book so I can't compare directly.

Comments

[lexiphanic.livejournal.com]

I also read that book (not sure if it's the same translation) and also found it odd. Something seemed flat about it, which I'm sure is a result of the translation. I have a Japanese friend who read the book in a literature class in high school, and I had wondered why it was important enough for that status in Japan, but clearly the act of translation has stripped some of the layers out.