Uncovered Well

“Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.”

That snippet from the 1611 Authorised Version of the Bible (‘Translators to the Reader’) will serve as an introduction to this post in which I attempt to demonstrate to any bilingual readers out there, why I think Haruki Murakami manifests as a more interesting and stylistically adept writer, en Castellano rather than in the somewhat bland renderings of his prose in English.

It even features a rather appropriate mention of a well  — of signification —  something the Japanese author is known to have a bit of an obsession with.

In the English translation there is sometimes an apparent intent to simplify, though not being able to read the original Japanese, I can’t be sure if the more elaborate language in the Spanish is Murakami’s own.

And one might even attempt to argue that the latter language is the more inherently symbolically laden of the two here.  

Some relevant examples from The City and its Uncertain Walls...

 

ENGLISH: Time, no matter what, ticked away, ceaselessly.

SPANISH: El tiempo no se detiene, continúa tallando y desmenuzando la realidad sin descanso.

ENGLISH: A part of my heart remained still not fully known to me. A realm that even time cannot reach.

SPANISH: Dentro de mi propio alma, aún había numerosos territorios que desconocía por completo, territorios en los que ni siquiera en tiempo podía entrometerse.

ENGLISH: Or maybe I was just tired of being alone and wanted someone I could have a pleasant conversation with. But that wasn’t all there was to it. Intuition told me that.

SPANISH: Pero tal vez las cosas fueran, en realidad, mucho más prosaicas y solo me moviera el deseo de traicionar la indolente soledad diaria y de tener alguien a mi lado con quien conversar durante una de las muchas noches que pasaba en silencio.

ENGLISH: To take it a step further, I’d have to say that at this point I was bereft of any intentions or plans.

SPANISH: Yo mismo encajaba a la perfección en la categoría de quien apenas actúa bajo la luz de propósitos nítidos y definidos

ENGLISH: He insatiably crammed in knowledge, but it never was enough, since the world overflowed with an outrageous amount of information. Even with his special abilities, of course, there had to be a limit to one individual’s capacity. It was like scooping up ocean water with a bucket—though there might be differences in the size of the bucket.

SPANISH: La información surge sin descanso, como de un pozo sin fondo, y no importa cuán dotado esté uno para registrarla: su capacidad siempre se verá superada, sobrepasada por el caudal informativo. Es como querer achicar el agua del océano con una cubeta; no importa que la cubeta de una persona sea más grande que la de otra porque la limitación es obvia y similar para ambos.

(Notice how we even lost a Murakami well there?)