#this is (again) a choice without any value judgment. this isnt a moral choice. there's nothing wrong with reading what's accessible.

[kaurwreck]

I'm a completionist by nature and had a brief rush of excitement (always dangerous for my bank account) when I saw that these works were going to include those that have never been published in English before. But, upon closer look, there are several red flags with this translation project that are worth noting.

Neither the translator nor editor appear to be native English speakers (based on additional research), and even the Amazon overview could have used some copy editing. (I explain why this may matter for Japanese to English translations below.)

The alphabetic arrangement is also a choice that is worth scrutinizing since the works won't follow the chronology of Dazai's style development, authorial voice, or literary eras; instead plucking each story from its context, genre, and thematic value to place them against each other arbitrarily. This may obscure the meaning and intent of the stories for readers like myself, who rely on those frames of reference for deeper comprehension.

The translator and editor's other titles include books that are closer to marketing concepts pitched by book packagers, like "101 Directors Everyone Should Know" and "The Ultimate K-Pop DIY Book."

The translator's German translations of Osamu Dazai's works were self-published this year on Amazon, and when you search the translator's name, the results return only references to these books and a German-language obituary for an elderly German woman.

The above, taken together with the lengthy number of planned volumes promised in the Amazon overview, suggest the works are likely to be machine/AI translated, maybe with some copyediting. The timing is especially suspicious to me since OpenAI launched GPT-4o in May 2024, the key features of which are tailored to and marketed for machine translation.

This isn't to discourage reading independent translations or translations from non-native speakers, and it isn't to dismiss the immense value of more accessible literature. However, the challenges with translating Japanese to English (and vice versa) aren't merely grammatical but philosophical and cultural.

From Eight Ways to Say You: The Challenges of Translation by Cathy Hirano:

More than grammar, however, it is the differences in writing style that are a challenge for the translator, because these reflect differences in cultural perspective and ways of thought. The most obvious differences between Japanese and English writing styles are organization and tone. My English composition classes in high school taught me that English is supposed to flow in a linear fashion, from introduction to body to conclusion, and that statements should be supported by logical explanations. Even in literature, a book works toward a climax and then a conclusion. In contrast, Japanese composition appears almost circular, and although it has its own logic and organization, it is very different from how I learned to write in school. Whereas in English we stress clarity, in Japanese subtlety is preferred. The Japanese writer dances around his theme, implying rather than directly stating what he wants to say, leaving it up to readers to discern that for themselves. He or she appeals to the reader’s emotions rather than to the intellect, and tries to create a rapport rather than to convince. The Japanese reader, in turn, is quite capable of taking great leaps of imagination to follow the story line. Direct translations of English into Japanese, therefore, often appear crude and abrasive, insulting the reader’s intelligence with their bluntness, while direct translations of Japanese into English are often frustrating to read because they come across as emotional, even childish, and without any point or conclusive ending. Although they may be faithful to what is actually written, this type of translation fails to achieve its purpose because it does not convey the author’s intended meaning. It is worth noting that there is considerable controversy about this issue among translators themselves and among authors being translated. Although translation should convey the meaning, and not necessarily in precisely the same words, there is a very fine line between translating and tampering with or rewriting the original text.

These challenges are especially salient when translating literature:

Literature, however, is another matter, because to both the reader and the author the form is as important as the content. I must strive to remain true not only to the essence, but also to the style and tone of the writer in the source language while at the same time render it in a way that is understandable to someone from a very different culture and way of thinking. It is a balancing act, requiring sensitivity and intuition, a combination of humility, vigilance, and arrogance. I say humility because as a translator I must be willing to accept that the author comes first, and that even if I don’t agree, or think that I can say it better, the author is always right. Moreover, it is dangerous to assume that I understand, and thus I must be constantly vigilant.

...

Arrogance and humility may appear to be contradictory, but I need a certain amount of arrogance to believe that I have the ability to become the author in another language. If, for example, you give ten excellent translators the exact same passage to translate, you will invariably end up with ten excellent, but very different translations. Which one of those is “right”? I am terrified of reading my translation after it has been published because I know that I will find errors, omissions, or things that I would now say differently. I need that arrogance during the translation process to sustain me to the finish. Otherwise I would be paralyzed by doubts.

Typically, translators address these challenges through a three-way consultation process: first consulting with the original language author for more details about the author's intent regarding specific words or concepts within a text, and then consulting with an editor native to the target language culture for suggestions on where additional description could be naturally woven in as briefly and unobtrusively as possible. For works written by late authors, translators will consult academic scholars of the author who are native to the author's language culture or even the late author's friends and family.

The effort undertaken isn't effort wasted; even subtle changes can make an enormous difference in the work's rhythm, tone, meaning, structure, comprehensibility, and voice.

That said, independent translators and publishers are often very good at what they do. Further, not every translator approaches the process the same, or as I've described above. I'm particularly fond of Ryan Choi's Ryuunosuke Akutagawa translations. He considers himself largely self-taught and doesn't have a degree in the field or any academic post. In an interview, he described his process as follows:

In my case, the process of translation inevitably begins as a great big mess. It takes a lot of time for me just to learn how to read whatever it is I’m translating; while reading through something for the first time, I’m already looking up words and references and taking notes and doing a very rough mock-up in English. Only after mastering the original do I feel comfortable leaving it behind and allowing myself—within reason—to drift and work on my words alone. It’s only through this long, laborious process that an authorial voice emerges. I don’t hear the voice from the start. It’s discovered and chiseled over time.

In the same interview, Ryan Choi also spoke to the abstractions inherent in Japanese to English translation and to the version of the work ultimately being received by readers of translated literature:

Written symbols aside, syntactically and morphologically speaking, English and Japanese—relative to each other—are worlds apart, and one of the effects of this distance on the process of translation is the increase in gray space between the two—i.e. the number of defensible interpretations of a sufficiently complex sentence—compared to language pairs whose syntactical structures hug each other more closely.

...

Ask two painters to paint the same scene and you’ll get two remarkably different results. In the end, every translator has their own feel for rhythm and sound, just as every painter has their own feel for color, line, and shade, and a translation too can be judged in more than one way—if a reader has no knowledge of the original language they take the translator at their word and judge the translation on the basis of the text before them, as in the parable of the man in his colorless room, learning of color only through books by people with direct experience of them.

In other words, if you're seeking out translated literature specifically to engage with those authors (who they were, their commentary, their literary voice, where they fit into and how they thought about their era's cultural zeitgeist) and you don't speak the original language, you are placing immense trust in the translator.

It's worth being fussy, measured, and deliberate about the translations you read to understand an author or work; it's the difference between a conversation and hearsay.

Dazai Osamu's Works (Volume 1): The complete works of the Japanese author in several volumes

Translated by Erika Strohbach

In (planned) twelve volumes, all of Dazai's well-known works are published in English. The volumes are organised in the order of the Latin alphabet according to the original Japanese titles.

Many of the works have never been published in English before! A mission to make them accessible to more people.

This (Volume One) book contains the stories:

A. Autumn (ア、秋 / A, Aki)

About Love and Beauty (愛と美について / Ai to bi ni tsuite)

Alt-Heidelberg (老ハイデルベルヒ / Alt-Heidelberg)

Rain at Tamagawa - Double Suicide (雨の玉川心中 / Ame no Tamagawa shinju)

My Older Brothers (兄たち / Anitachi)

Aomori (青森 / AOMORI)

Advice(或る忠告 / Aru chUkoku)

Morning (朝 / Asa)

Something Regrettable (あさましきもの / Asamashiki mono)

About "The Last Years" (「晩年」に就いて / "Bannen" ni tsuite)

Handsome Devils and Cigarettes (美男子と煙草 / Bidanshi to tabako)

A Little Beauty (美少女 / Bishujo)

Bizan (眉山 / Bizan)

Chance (チャンス / Chansu)

The Father (父 / Chichi)

The Little Album (小さいアルバム / Chiisai arubamu)

Canis familiaris (畜犬談 / Chikukendan)

Blue Bamboo (竹青 / Chikusei)

Chikyūzu (or World’s Map) (地球図 / Chikyuzu)

Chiyojo (千代女 / Chiyojo)

The Map (地図 / Chizu)