Zoom talk on June 13, 2021
Report by John Dougill
Few people manage to make a career out of literary translation, so those who do must be special indeed. One of them is Ginny Tapley Takemori, the award-winning freelance translator of Sayaka Murata’s worldwide sensation, Convenience Store Woman.
WiK’s Zoom manager and fellow translator, Lisa Wilcut, provided the questions for Ginny, who was open and fulsome in her answers, with an obvious concern to give the best advice she could. The incisive questions ranged over tricky translation problems as well as what Lisa called ‘the meta aspect’ to do with building a career and getting published.
In terms of translation, the speaker discussed such matters as how to convey the author’s voice, and what to do with loaded cultural words like kotatsu. In one example she cited a Sayaka Murata short story that began with the pronoun boku – seemingly simple enough, except that in Japanese it is gender specific and that mattered to the meaning of the story.
As it happens, Ginny started her career translating in a completely different language – Spanish. Study of Japanese followed at London’s prestigious SOAS and a distance learning MA with leading Japan specialists, Sheffield University, in-between which she took a job with Kodansha. This enabled her to get an understanding of the publishing industry as well as making useful contacts in the book world. It was a career path she thoroughly recommended for budding translators.
Following further questions by Lisa, Ginny went on to cover two important subjects, namely how to get permission from authors to translate works, and the separate but equally vital matter of how to get a publishing contract. As stepping stones along the way, Ginny recommended translating short stories for literary magazines.
Other topics that Ginny covered included the issue of social media and how best to use them. In terms of finding material, she suggested book reviews, browsing book shops, keeping up with prize winners and reading some of the many literary magazines in Japan. She stressed too the importance of having a personal connection to the material.
The recent boom in Japanese translated works, Ginny pointed out, is not a country specific phenomenon but part of a worldwide trend to greater acceptance of translated works. The trend has been furthered by a concerted campaign by translators, and as a result worldwide translations have increased from 3% of total sales to around 7%.
And to what did Ginny ascribe the global success of Convenience Store Woman? A top quality writer in Sayaka Murata. The appeal of social alienation as a theme to a generation of contract workers. Good PR from the publisher in Japan, followed by US marketing that created a buzz before the translation came out. Also in the UK a great design team at Granta, who even created promotion goods like T-shirts. There was one more factor in the book’s success which Ginny was too modest to mention – a great translation by a great translator.
Many thanks to Ginny for sacrificing her Sunday morning to give WiK a most informative and instructive talk. Earthlings is her latest translation of a Sayaka Murata novel, and we look forward to seeing where her translating skills will take her next.
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To see Ginny’s career record and 32 publications, take a look at her LinkedIn page and scroll down to Accomplishments.
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