“Translation wields enormous powers: the case of the translation of Kawabata Yasunari’s
novel Koto (古都, 1962) through German into Swedish”
Lawrence Venuti, in his influential work The Translator’s Invisibility, states that "translation
wields enormous power in the construction of national identities for foreign cultures" (Venuti,
1995: 19). It can be argued that the concept of a certain culture or literature abroad is created
through translations, starting with the selection of source texts and including both the way
they are translated (strategies like foreignization and domestication, as well as the
circumstances surrounding the translation) and how the translated texts are presented and
commented upon in the target culture. This presentation discusses Venuti’s ideas in the
context of translations of Japanese literature into Swedish, using examples from Kawabata
Yasunari’s novel Koto (古都, 1962) and its Swedish version Kyoto eller de unga älskande i
den gamla kejsarstaden from 1968. As was common practice at that time, it was not
translated directly from the Japanese, but through the German version from 1965: Kyoto oder
Die jungen Liebenden in den alten Kaiserstadt. Comparisions will also be made with the later
English translation, The Old Capital, from 1986.
Lisa Pääjärvi is a second year PhD student in Japanese. Her research project is about
translations of modern Japanese literature into Swedish.