Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda on the Act of Translating
In Conversation with Mitzi Rapkin on the First Draft Podcast
First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.
In this episode, Mitzi talks to Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda about her new translation of Yuko Tsushima’s Wildcat Dome.
Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!
From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: What is it like to hold this book in your head in two languages? Does it feel like the same book?
Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda: I don’t think it is. Yeah, I think at a certain point in the translation process you really have to just let go of the original. I mean, of course, I try to check my work, and I try to reread the original and kind of look at them side by side while I’m translating and while I’m editing and things like that. Especially if something sounds wrong in the English, I’m like, Okay, what was that in the Japanese? Sometimes I’m like, Okay, wow. I was really off with that,I need to really rethink this. But at a certain point in the editing process, you really have to let go of the original and just look at the English for what it is, because otherwise it just becomes too muddled. At a certain point it has to stand on its own as a work, because when people are reading Wildcat Dome in English, most people aren’t going to be reading it side by side with the Japanese, they’re just going to be experiencing the English. So, I have to really look at it as a work in English, and ask myself, does this work? Does this not work, you know? And that’s something that an editor is really helpful for too, you know, just like, does this work on its own? You know, regardless of what was in the original, maybe something that worked in the original is just not going to work in English, or it’s not going to work for this context. We have to make decisions about cutting or adding something for context. So at some point you really just have to kind of separate them.
***
Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda is a literary translator. Born in Tokyo, and raised in Texas, she is the co-translator of Ryke Akutagawa’s Kappa and the translator for Yuko Tsushima’s Wildcat Dome. She lives in New York City.
