Boris Akunin gave the Sebald Lecture last week at the translation awards (see my previous mention), and a transcript is now available online, Paradise Lost: Confessions Of An Apostate Translator.
Lots of good stuff -- including this observation:
Lots of good stuff -- including this observation:
When I was translating Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion as it is known in the West), I had at hand the English translation -- very meticulous, authorized by Mishima himself. Everything was impeccably correct -- and yet still something was amiss.(For those of you keeping track, that's Ivan Morris who fell flat -- and I note that in his 1959 review of the translation in The New York Times Book Review Donald Keene seems to go out of his way not to address questions of the quality of the translation (not least by completely ignoring Morris' contribution -- but noting: "A fine introduction by Nancy Wilson Ross adds much to an American's enjoyment of the book" .....))
You see, Mishima is not a clever author, most of his ideas about life and society would leave you uninterested. Neither is he an especially gifted builder of plots. The story isn't his forte. With Mishima, the nuances are more important than the ideas he advances; Shade means so much more than Light. But his narration is so elegant, his style so powerful, that it makes up for the banalities and showing-off. There is plenty of shallowness in Mishima's works, but strangely it only increases the impression of genuineness and beauty. It turns into a melody that I can always hear when I am reading Mishima.
In the English translation this melody was silent.