* This was originally posted on my old blog on September 4, 2010.
* 筆者の以前のブログに2010年9月4日付で投稿された記事の再掲です。
As I like to play chess, I sometimes read books written by famous chess players. One such book that I've read recently is "How Life Imitates Chess
The book is about the power of tactical and strategic thinking that he has developed through chess, and he writes about how those ways of thinking can be adapted to real life. I found it very witty that he didn't title the book "How Chess Imitates Life" but "How Life Imitates Chess." I think this title strongly implies his love for chess and his attitude toward life. (Although Kasparov is not a native English speaker, he wrote this book originally in English with the help of an American ghostwriter.)
When I visited Amazon.com to buy this book, I ordered an English paperback edition without any hesitation as I knew that very few chess books are translated into Japanese due to the lack of popularity of chess in Japan. But that was not the case this time. It was after I finished reading it that I saw a Japanese translation for sale at a bookstore. I was glad, however, that I found the English edition prior to the Japanese one because the Japanese title on the cover was really terrible. It was translated as "決定力を鍛える
One of the possible ways to keep the original title untouched as much as possible might be to make use of katakana transliteration. This is actually very often done in translating titles of books, movies, songs, etc. into Japanese. However, it can also end up in making a ridiculous Japanese title. I saw a movie called "Saving Private Ryan" about ten years ago, and its Japanese title was "プライベート・ライアン
Translators (or publishers?), please put more care into title translation and think it out seriously. A good title is important as it can become the identity of the work.
