Losing personality : Exploring with a focus on formal speech how the register of Nakata Satoru in Murakami Haruki’s Umibe no Kafuka is affected when translated into English and Swedish

Sammanfattning: When reading a translated book or a dubbed movie, one might come to wonder if the translation conveys the characters’ personality traits identically to that of the original, and while ‘identical’ may not be achievable, ‘equivalent’ rather may be within the scope of a translator’s capability. Translation between languages as vastly different as Swedish and Japanese, or English and Japanese are bound to face greater difficulties than for example Swedish and English. Japanese dialogue can highlight register and idiosyncratic speech patterns in particularly unique ways. This case study investigates how this is done and handled in both English and Swedish by analyzing the dialogue of the main protagonist Nakata Satoru in the novel Umibe no Kafka by Murakami Haruki. Thus, two questions arise: “What distinguishing elements of Nakata Satoru’s register and formality make his speech unique in the original Umibe no Kafuka?” and “How are the distinct characteristics in the dialogue of Nakata Satoru maintained – or lost in the Swedish and English translations of Umibe no Kafuka?”. In pursuit of an answer to these questions, the original copy of Umibe no Kafuka, the English translation (Kafka on the Shore), and the Swedish translation (Kafka på Stranden) were analyzed and all sentences spoken by Nakata in chapters 6,16 and 20 were recorded and compared to the ST – or source text. The study ultimately found that the distinct characteristics in Nakata’s speech were many times in the English and Swedish translations ignored and that Nakata’s soft spoken, understanding tone was often overlooked in order to allow for the translation to flow naturally.