Convenience Store Woman

Here’s my problem with (some) translated books. The words may be accurate, sometimes even inspired – the opening pages of the English language version of Patrick Susskind’s Perfume offer stunning writing – but the dialogue sounds like it’s been cranked out by computer using Windows 3.1. Take this example from the above-mentioned book.

“What can a corporate slave loser like him do? I haven’t done anything wrong. If I take a fancy to a certain woman, then I’ll make her mine. Hasn’t that always been the tradition between men and women, handed down since ancient times?”

Nobody talks like this. Not even the shambolic, arrogant slacker who comes out with these words. There’s no feeling for speech. Reading this, you can’t believe that a thinking, breathing human being actually uttered such words. 

It’s something I’ve noticed a lot in the recent wave of Japanese fiction to land on our bookshelves. Stories about bookshops and cats and dogs and cafes. I’ve enjoyed the stories, but almost all the dialogue in all of them is stiff and unnatural. I might think that this is the way Japanese people talk, except that I’ve worked with two people from that country and neither of them sounded anything like the characters in these books. 

John Steinbeck’s advice about dialogue should apply: Say it out loud after you’ve written. Listen to how it sounds.

The book itself? I rather liked it. Even though I wonder whether the woman who found it ‘hilarious’ – see quote on front over – actually read it. But nobody talks like this.

Nobody.