Discussion

@flavigula@sonomu.club 3 days ago

I have an English version of "The Memory Police".

@wim_v12e@tilde.zone 3 days ago

@flavigula Could you please check something for me.

Near the end of Chapter 13, there is a sentence (this is my own translation so it will be a bit different):

"The whole town was asleep. The only waking sound was his voice flowing to my ear."

This is followed by a section that starts more ore less as follows:

"When I'm looking at the snow, I somehow always think of sleep"
"... sleep?" After a brief silence, he repeated just that little word.
"Yes, odd, isn't it?"
"No, not at all," he said.
"It's not a very deep and complicated thought, just something plain and common. A thought that looks like a piece of half-eaten shortcake that someone left in the kitchen."
"..."

The sentence after it ends is something like

"Although the old man had done a really great job in constructing it, the
speaker system was still very basic, and any small twist of the tube or tilting of the funnel would make our voices distant."

Is that section in the English translation?

@flavigula@sonomu.club 2 days ago

That section is not in the English translation at all.

@wim_v12e@tilde.zone 2 days ago

@flavigula Thank you very much for checking, that is what I wanted to know. I suspected it wasn't, as I mentioned it to someone when discussing the novel, but I wasn't sure.

~3 more replies

@flavigula@sonomu.club yesterday

Is there any reason you can think of that they would not include that bit?

@wim_v12e@tilde.zone 20 hr. ago

@flavigula I have no idea, the passage is not controversial or anything. Most likely it was simply an oversight. I also don't know if there are any other passages missing, as I only found out about this one by accident.

#TheMemoryPolice
#YokoOgawa

@wim_v12e@tilde.zone 20 hr. ago

@flavigula This is my translation of the missing passage:

I put the funnel to my ear but no reply came, so I moved it again to my mouth.

"I put the shortcake in front of me and consider. Shall I eat it? Shall I throw it in the bin? Shall I feed it to the dog? When I'm looking at the snow, the image of me pondering like that in the kitchen floats up in my mind, suddenly and without any logical reason. The cake is of course completely covered in snow-white whipped cream. After staring fixedly at the snow for a while, before I realise it, the thought of shortcake has changed into the thought of sleep. That _is_ odd, isn't it?"
"It's not that odd, you know. That's what's called the workings of the mind. No matter how riddled with holes your mind is, you can still imagine things, can't you?"
"Crumbs of the spongecake, grains of powder sugar, the fork sticky with cream and all, gradually turn into a sleep-like dining table. I don't mean it's making me sleepy. It's the outline of sleep coming into existence. I'm still pondering: shall I take the sleep and put it in my mouth? Shall I throw it in the bin? Feed it to the dog?"
"So, what do you do then?"
"I don't know. I'm just pondering. I feel like I want to touch the cake and swallow it and go on somewhere deep into sleep, but I am also afraid because I think there might be no return from that place. The only thing I am certain of is that there is a leftover, half-eaten piece of shortcake beyond the snow."

@flavigula@sonomu.club 15 min. ago