Wow, this is horrifying. I found this blurb about the English translation "version" of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles on the CompleteReview.

In a review in World Literature Today Yoshiko Yokochi Samuel writes that "the English version has been subjected to extensive cutting, undoubtedly under pressure from the publisher". This sad fact is now confirmed in Jay Rubin's Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, where he writes that it was "stipulated in Murakami's contract that the book should not exceed a certain length". Rubin, in fact, handed in both an abridged and a complete translation, but Knopf stuck to their ridiculous word-limit. May they suffer at the hands of the literary gods for their crimes against helpless readers and Murakami. But it's just another reminder, that when you read a book in translation you're getting screwed -- often far worse than you could even contemplate.

Word limit?! I'm feeling a little sick. Has anyone else read Rubin's account or otherwise heard about this?

i feel betrayed, lied to, and utterly destroyed. wind-up bird is my favorite; perhaps it is finally time to start learning japanese...

thanks for sharing this, i had no idea.

Yeah, I've always heard that there were parts cut, unfortunately.

I've also been trying to learn Japanese so I can someday read his books in the original language (as well as other Japanese lit) but I think it's going to take some time...

Argh!!!!! i feel betrayed, i think im gonna write a letter to the publisher and let them know how upset i am about that! that is BS excuse my french

I think in the same book there was an argument from a Finnish reader who was complaining that his version wasn't even translated directly from the Japanese, but from this abridged English version.

Yeah learning Japanese is definitely going to take many years and a lot of effort! In the meantime, I wonder if any requests on the part of us readers could influence subsequent publishers to release Rubin's complete translation. I mean, it may sound quixotic, but it's not totally out of the question. For example I remember reading that five different translations of Kundera's 'The Joke' have been published.

Really though, the mere concept that they cut down Murakami's magnum opus is truly, royally, mindbogglingly (stretching it with the adverbs) screwed up. Can you imagine the Smithsonian or the Tate or the Louvre cropping a painting by any of the last century's great painters? It's unthinkable. But Knopf did the equivalent to one of the world's greatest living novelists.

Here is Jay Rubin discussing the complexities of translating The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, including a fuller explanation of the cuts that were made in the American version.

From: Jay Rubin
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 8:43 PM
To: Gary Fisketjon; Philip Gabriel
Subject: Re: An email roundtable: Translating Murakami
The cutting done on WIND-UP is a complex matter. The more you look into it and into the question of revision, the more you realize there is no single authoritative version of ANY Murakami work: he tinkers with everything long after it first finds its way into print. I once heard that Willem de Kooning would occasionally follow a painting of his to the gallery and revise it on the wall, and Murakami's willingness to fix his stuff reminds me of that.

I did virtually all the cutting on WIND-UP, but I would have done none at all if Knopf hadn't told Haruki that the book was too long and would have to be cut by some number of words (I think it was around 25,000 words). Afraid that they would hire some freelancer who could wreak havoc on the novel, and filled with a megalomaniac certainty that I knew every word in the book--maybe better than the author himself--after having translated all three hefty volumes, I decided to forestall the horror by submitting my manuscript in two versions: complete, and cut. Knopf took my cut version pretty much as is (which no doubt saved them a lot of work and expense; like Phil, I was not recognized as an editor in anything other than the notice in the front of the book).

Having recently completed Book 3, Haruki felt incapable of cutting that, but he had enough distance from Books 1 and 2 to mark many passages for elimination--many SHORT passages that didn't add up to much in terms of word count. I included most--BUT NOT ALL--of his cuts as part of my cut version (in some, I thought he had taken out important passages), and of course sent the entire cut version to him. Later, when the paperback version of the Japanese text appeared, I found that Haruki had incorporated into that many--BUT NOT ALL-- of the cuts he had suggested for the translation, so the hard cover and paperback versions in Japanese are different from each other.

Wow -- where did you find this?

This is a section of an email discussion between translators of Japanese fiction. It is worth reading the entire exchange. The link is:http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/murakami/complete.html

Great link. Thanks!

GRAZIE Pamela.

This is one of the reason that I read mostly all English and American litterature in the original language - even when it's been translated to Danish. A lot of translations are abridged - and I think it's a disgrace that publishers think it okay to cut parts of books out like this.

Wow, that's awful. Wind-up Bird was a bit tedious for me, but it's still a shame to find that the translated version is a chopped up one of the original.

..I wonder what Murakami thinks himself, perhaps he is the one to encourage a new release of Wind Up Bird, he must have a little bit of clout by now, I hope so...

-Mike
“I think in the same book there was an argument from a Finnish reader who was complaining that his version wasn't even translated directly from the Japanese, but from this abridged English version.”

If memory serves this is at Murakami’s request. For the last few books at least. In a way he considers the English a definitive edition.

Also, ‘Wild Sheep’ has some specific changes/deletions from the original Japanese. So much so that Rubin mentioned re-translating it.

Nothing new in the world of translation, really. No need to get so worked up...

My wife reads Murakami in translation in Chinese, and she determined that my English copy of "Hard Boiled Wonderland..." was abridged because she couldn't find a specific incident that she remembered.

Globulon wrote: "My wife reads Murakami in translation in Chinese, and she determined that my English copy of "Hard Boiled Wonderland..." was abridged because she couldn't find a specific incident that she remembered." Well golly, I don't read Chinese (or Japanese either). I found the book sufficiently long and totally involving, so I guess the abridgment, presumably by Murakami, did not cause the flow of the book to be interrupted. I think I'm going to declare myself satisfied (and thankful) for the book he gave us in English. If he's happy with it, so am I.
Gerry

Gerald wrote: "Well golly, I don't read Chinese (or Japanese either). I found the book sufficiently long and totally involving, so I guess the abridgment, presumably by Murakami, did not cause the flow of the book to be interrupted. I think I'm going to declare myself satisfied (and thankful) for the book he gave us in English. If he's happy with it, so am I."

Murakami did not abridge the book. It was abridged by his translator in order to meet a word-limit set by his English language publisher, Knopf. Take a gander at message 7 or click the link provided on message 9.

Well, I enjoyed the book and as I'm not going to be able to learn Japanese any time soon... they say ignorance is bliss and in this case it is! Because there's little more we can do about it... apart from hope that maybe one day they'll publish a full version.