I started reading the book yesterday to do as others said on this thread and have an idea of how difficult the book is for me.
At least for me, the first few pages were really hard with a lot of new words, but it got progressively easier as the author style and vocabulary started making sense.
I will be contributing to the google sheets as well, I noticed the pages are slightly different than what I have on my kindle version, but I will do my best to stay close to the numbers shown.
Last but not least, I also bought the english version as gift to my partner and I see that the translation can be quite liberal. It can give you an idea of what’s going on if you don’t fully get the japanese, but it is not a word by word translation, sometimes whole sentences or paragraphs get reworded or taken out.
I’m looking forward to getting the club started later in the week!
I noticed this too! I wonder why a translator would choose to leave an entire passage out… Good food for discussion for us, at any rate! I have the Dutch translation and the English translation, so I look forward to cross-referencing everything.
I’ve actually seen this quite a bit in the days when I was reading ReZero both in JP and EN side by side. I was surprised how much things get left out for no apparent reason other than a difficulty in phrasing. (to be fair, I tried once translating and it was at least ten times harder than just reading JP)
In case you’re interested in hearing more from the translator, the Japan Times dedicated a podcast episode to her and her translation of コンビニ人間:
(Note: Japan Times has a paywall so that you can only read very few - 5 maybe? - articles per month, but ever since I subscribed for free, I did not hit the paywall limit any more)
This again? (Omitting was also mentioned heavily in Kiki’s book club.)
Hmm, first few pages of Polish translation seemed quite faithful, just rearranged.
But I did compare one Takemori’s English translation of Murata’s work - Clean Marriage translation is available for free on Granta’s website (I think they first published it in a magazine and then put it online) and I was reading short story collection 殺人出産 in which this one was included. So I did phrase by phrase comparison for fun. (I’m not planning on doing it for コンビニ人間, too much effort, but I’m curious about anyone else’s comparisons for any language.) And it also was mostly faithful, just rearranged…? But it had one weird mistake, it looked like the translator didn’t notice the passive form? I even consulted this mistake with a friend with better Japanese than mine and she confirmed that I’m right.
And it didn’t make sense for the plot, either, so I’m surprised editor didn’t notice it.
Hello everyone! The current plan is to start weekly live reading sessions during the second week of reading, during which we will read the previous week’s section. I expect that the format for the first session will be to rotate among volunteers with each reader reading about half a page (or to natural break points), with a pause after each reader for questions.
We might also consider breaking the sections in two and doing bi-weekly sessions. This would make each session more manageable time-wise and potentially allow more people (who can’t make the primary time) to participate. If these sessions are too short we might also consider having each reader break down and translate the section that they read (with the help of the group). I’ve found this style to be very fun and much more engaging than a straight read-through in the Yotsuba reading club, but the length of this text might prove prohibitive.
I think a lot will depend on the opinions and attitude of the people who show up to the sessions, and I don’t think we’ll know how quickly they will go until we give it a shot, so rather than setting anything in stone let’s meet for the first session and see how it goes. I’m also open to suggestions from somebody who has a bit more experience in read-aloud clubs than I do. For now let’s find a weekly time that works for everybody.
Please use this When2Meet form, and remember to select your timezone! Indicate all the times that you would likely be available. Specific dates are indicated for the first week but this will be a weekly occurrence, so be sure to select the weekly times that work as opposed to just what works for week-one.
We’ll use the Japanese Book Club discord for the reading session. Join the Discord here. When we have a reading session, everybody will join at the agreed on time just by entering the コンビニ人間 voice channel. Let me know if you have any questions regarding Discord. @seanblue, could you create a channel for us?
I created a voice channel and moved the text channel out of the archive section back to the main section. I also added a role so people can be color coded!
I have just bought the book at bookwalker and will try to read along. I hope I will be able to follow without buying a translation of the book. However it will be a little challenging during the first 4 weeks because of the overlapping with the other book club 博士の愛した数式.
In a weak moment, seeing the price of only 3.99 €, I bought the kindle edition of the German translation (“Die Ladenhüterin”), but I will try to read the original before checking the translation.
I just bought the kindle version of the book. I haven’t done anything related to Japanese in the past half year, but I’m determined to work myself through this one.
Since so many people are (wisely) starting the first section a few days ahead, I’ll go ahead and get the thread started early if I have some time later this afternoon. Can’t wait!
Aren’t you planning on reusing the existing threads, like the Kiki repeat club did? Or is that what you were referring to (i.e. post in that old thread to mark the start of the repeat club)?
I am so tempted to get the German translation now, not to understand better, but to improve my German. German is my native language (though I haven’t lived in Germany for decades), yet I would never have thought of a word like “Ladenhüterin”
It is, yes. But ‘shopkeeper’ sounds so very different to ‘convenience store woman’, for example. This highlights exactly what I love about reading original content (or trying to read, along with translation and interpretations). There is so much we can’t capture by simply substituting another word, and they each invoke their own connotations. I would have gone for ‘Kiosk Leute’
