Lost in Translation?

My journey into international literature recently passed the two-month mark, and I’ve been taking stock of many lessons in a short time span.  I began with a simple premise: not enough women authors are translated into English, and those who are deserve more attention.  Though I organize the site by language and country categories and tags for readers, I approach authors as individuals rather than national representatives.  But there’s an issue I haven’t addressed: What happens when it doesn’t work?  What if a translation is an acclaimed international bestseller, but still feels like a misfire?  I encountered this dilemma last week with Jen Calleja’s translation of Marion Poschmann’s The Pine Islands.

At first glance, The Pine Islands seemed promising.  Widely celebrated as German author Marion Poschmann’s first work to appear in English translation, it ascended to the short list of the Man Booker International Prize last spring.  When I began reading, its whimsical elements proved an appealing, mildly humorous draw.  Gilbert Sylvester, an academic who specializes in the “representation of beards in film,” dreams that his wife is cheating on him.  While many people might simply go about their day after this experience, he picks a fight with her, abruptly leaves home, and flies to Japan.  The novel coupled a satirical approach to western academia with a common fantasy: What if I don’t go to work or home today, but just keep going until I end up somewhere else?

The narrative’s problems start when Sylvester lands in Japan.  On a train platform, he inadvertently prevents a Japanese student, Yosa Tamagotchi, from commiting suicide.  Initially, authorial distance is an effective tactic, gently mocking Sylvester’s bizarre motives.  But it backfires when applied to a Japanese character, turning him into a stereotype.  Even his surname sounds like the popular 1990s toy. He’s a “petrochemistry” student who worries that “his marks [are] good, but may not be good enough” and feels a paralyzing fear of exams.  As his parents only child, he is deeply concerned about disappointing them.  Along with Sylvester, he follows the pilgrimage of haiku poet Bashō across Japan, making his transformation into cardboard Japanese sidekick complete.

Sylvester’s racism is one of his many unpleasant traits, and it illuminates the lack of character development in this strange friendship.  When Tamagotchi disagrees with him about their travel destination, he thinks to himself, “Who did this Japanese youth think he was?”  After abruptly losing track of Tamagotchi, he marvels that he cannot locate him, despite having realized that the Japanese don’t all look alike.  In stark contrast to the nuanced portrayals of the narrator and Sensei in Strange Weather in Tokyo, these gaps felt at once negligent and ignorant.

So how can we react to this novel’s surface depiction of Japanese culture?  The Asian Review of Books attributes its oversights to Poschmann’s lack of knowledge, as she wrote the novel after a three-month stay in Kyoto.  I’m inclined to agree, but also recognize the value of authors who are willing to move beyond what they know.  After all, translation always involves risk. The translator takes on a text, the publisher distributes it (sometimes at considerable financial risk), and the reader chooses a book from a different language and culture.  But the sensitivity of cultural exchange requires extra effort with both experience and research.

While The Pine Islands fell far short of the mark for me, I still think it’s worthwhile to read it, especially for dialogue about its setting and characterization. Would you be willing to read this translation?

Marion Poschmann, The Pine Islands, trans. Jen Calleja
(Serpent’s Tail, 2019)

Photo Credit: shohji, Matsushima Bay, via Pixabay.