The book was thus gaily dressed in English, by Catriona

Do books get lost in translation? What are some non-English novels you love and are there any that didn’t work over the cultural divide?

Includes the line "the knight
was thus gaily dressed in green"

This question turns me back into a linguist again. I'm almost entirely mono-lingual (although you'd be surrised how any people think a linguist speaks a lot of languages) so when I read a book in translation, I never feel confident about where the writer ends and the translator begins, much less who to blame if something's amiss. I suppose I could read multiple translations of the same work to try and make sure but, apart from Beowulf, I don't think I ever have. I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a couple of times, I suppose, but I probably preferred the Simon Armitage version because I really like Simon Armitage. (He's got a podcast called "The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed". How could you not love that? And anyway, the original Middle English is barely another langauge to start with.

So the honest answer to the first bit of the question is I don't know and it would take years of study to find out. 

But to turn to the second bit: I seem to have mostly read Japanese novels in the last couple of years, as far as translated works go. (And I'm not alone - see Eric yesterday.) Japanese novels translated into English are having a moment, I reckon. Why? Well, they're short. (It's not breaking news that I'm a Philistine.) I have no idea if all contemporary Japanese novels are short or if it's the short ones that get translated, but when I've picked one up in a bookshop it's never felt like a massive, off-putting, potential investment, of either time or money.

I would recommend The Bookshop Woman, by Nanako Hanada to anyone who likes biblio-fiction, anyone in the mood for something right between quirky and cozy, anyone who's ever used a dating app (or anyone like me who thanks her stars every day she's never used a dating app). It's about a young, separated but not quite divorced, almost homeless woman who decides to extend her beloved bookselling job into her social life by offering to find the perfect book for her (platonic) dates. 

A bit more cozy although still slightly odd is The Kamogama Food Detectives, by Hisahi Kashimai. In it, a man and his daughter offer to recreate iconic meals from their clients lives, tracking down elusive ingredients and recipes, bringing healing and closure. You've got to not mind a bit of feyness to enjoy this one. In some moods, I might have slapped it shut and gone to read about serial killers instead. But, as winter approaches, and with a fireside and an armchair . . . 

Not being able to pinpoint what was the writing and what was the transaltion was the only irksome thing about The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo. In translation, it's a straight-up Golden-Age detective story in form and in style. Which is to say, clues abound, the detective is a genius and the style is slightly stuffy and a wee tiny bit over-written here and there. But, for anyone who loves the classics in English but can't see reading them again because they're too familiar - more than this one Yokomizo is now available in English.

Fianlly, I think I might have included The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa, in last December's BOTY round-up. Which is to say, I recommend it without any hesitation to anyone at all. It's speculative fiction, I suppose, maybe horror in a quiet way. It concerns a dystopian society in which the memory police are banning things - roses and calendars are just two examples. The objects disappear and people forget that they ever existed. Except for a few (neurodivergent?) individuals whose memories remain. The novel is the story of a writer who is trying to finish her book before she loses all her memories and is hiding her editor, who is one of those who remember. (Maybe only writers would think this is a horror novel!)

The tense dread and mounting despair of The Memory Police remind me of another translated book I read, this time a French novel, that I've forgotten the title and author of (memory police been at me?), but would love to re-find. In this case, it wasn't a successful piece of work, but I've no idea if it was a flawed original or a poor translation. The reason it stuck in my mid was that it struck me as a waste of a premise. The narrator is . . . locked-in? I think he has been poisoned by something that has robbed him of speech and sight - possibly also hearing? - and has a few days to solve his own murder. See what I mean? It should have been incredible. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Cx