Noriko Ogawa, who translated my book ‘Out of Silence’ into Japanese, has been giving concerts in Japan, from where she sent me this photo of our lovely Japanese editor from the publishing firm Shunjusha. Fumiko-san, our editor, had brought some copies of the Japanese edition to sell after one of Noriko’s concerts in Tokyo, and as Noriko mysteriously reported, ‘She brought thirty books and sold thirty-one!’
Perhaps this is a Japanese idiom, meaning that success was even greater than one had hoped, or perhaps Fumiko discovered that she had in fact brought along one more book than she had thought. In any case, I am going to adopt the phrase, ‘She brought thirty and sold thirty-one!’ as a useful saying in times of unexpected triumph.
Congratulations.
I’m curious to know what was the most difficult part of the translation process. Even something supposedly as ‘simple’ as translating from English to French actually is quite difficult.
Sorry for late reply. Yes, I believe the translation process was very long and complicated. You’d have to ask Noriko what the most difficult part was! She did tell me that because of the grammatical structure of Japanese, many of my sentences had to be ‘turned back to front’ in order for the correct emphasis to emerge in Japanese.