Recreating Worlds with Words: Translation as a Creative Practice

media release: Keynote by Ginny Tapley Takemori at 2024 International Conference on Japanese Language Education

How do we literary translators recreate the world(s) of the novels we translate? How do we bring a work written in one language and literary tradition alive for readers of a very different language and literary tradition? How do we retain the intent and spirit of the original while making it accessible for a new readership that is often unfamiliar with the culture it was originally written in? How do we navigate the publishing world(s) and the wider translation community? Join me on a journey through the creative practices of a working literary translator.

Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese authors. She is the prize-winning translator of Convenience Store Woman and other works by Sayaka Murata, and has also translated works by many other celebrated authors such as Kyoko Nakajima, Ryu Murakami, and Miyabe Miyuki. Her translations have appeared in Granta, Freemans, LiteraryHub, The New York Times, and a number of anthologies. She is also a member of Strong Women, Soft Power, a translators’ collective advocating for women in translation. She previously worked as an editor of translated fiction, nonfiction, and illustrated books at Kodansha International, and in Spain as a foreign rights literary agent and freelance translator from Spanish and Catalan.