I was only feeling a little lonely. A comparison of Alfred Birnbaum's and Jay Rubin's translations of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood.

Abstract

Whether to translate literally or freely has always been the big question when it comes to translating literature, and throughout time it has become clear that translators who observe different conditions also adopt different strategies, and ultimately come up with remarkably different products. The purpose of this thesis is to compare the different English translations of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (1987) by Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin, and clarify which translation methods they tend to lean towards in order to gain an understanding of how their choice of translation methods affects the result of their work. To gain the knowledge required for the thesis, a set of definitions of different translating methods and their usage by Peter Newmark will be used as an essential starting point and base of the work. Based on the translation methods lined up in Peter Newmark's book A textbook of translation (1988) it was possible to clarify that Alfred Birnbaum uses translation methods such as faithful translation and semantic translation, whereas in most cases leaning towards faithful translation, while Jay Rubin sticks to translation methods such as communicative translation, sometimes even free translation.