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I've translated a lot of American literature into Japanese, and I think that what makes a good translator is, above all, a feel for language and also a great affection for the work you're translating. If one of those elements is missing the translation won't be worth much.

Haruki Murakami

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Haruki Murakami
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 12
Athletics Competitor
Essayist
Linguist
Novelist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Kyōto
Murakami Haruki
Feels
Missing
Translators
Great
Worth
Translated
Work
Literature
Translation
Much
American
Translations
Good
Language
Japanese
Think
Makes
Translate
Thinking
Also
Affection
Translator
Feel
Elements
Translating

More quotes by Haruki Murakami

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Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?
Haruki Murakami
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His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body.
Haruki Murakami
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My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. “Hold tight,” I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.
Haruki Murakami
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Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
Haruki Murakami
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If I choose to write about sheep, it's just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.
Haruki Murakami
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The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible.
Haruki Murakami
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In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.
Haruki Murakami
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Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling.
Haruki Murakami
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I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw it's fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.
Haruki Murakami
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She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Everytime we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw.
Haruki Murakami
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Mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.
Haruki Murakami
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Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?
Haruki Murakami
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What’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. That’s the feeling I have, as someone who’s felt this, who’s experienced it.
Haruki Murakami
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A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person
Haruki Murakami
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...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.
Haruki Murakami
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At least he never walked.
Haruki Murakami
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What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.
Haruki Murakami
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I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism.
Haruki Murakami
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But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.
Haruki Murakami
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If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage
Haruki Murakami