Self-Back-Translation by Haruki Murakami: A Self-Translator’s Perspective

Self-back-translation is an uncommon practice in which a bilingual author retranslates the already translated text of their writing back into original source language. A good example self-back-translation comes from one short stories by Haruki Murakami, renowned Japanese and translator, who back-translated English translation his story “Rēdāhōzen [Lederhosen]” published it as new version. This peculiar practise has led handful researchers to probe some ongoing debates studies perspectives—e.g., examine relationship between intralingual interlingual translation, originality translator’s (in)visibility, more. Asking questions such these, this paper examines nature purpose role general, particularly self-translator’s perspective, Murakami’s with another self-translator. The study found that much could get lost while going through filtration process self-back-translation, but be gained. Whether or end-product improvement text—i.e., sometimes exceeds original. why writers self-(back)-translate.