TRANSLATION AND TRANSCULTURAL MEDIATION IN KAZUO ISHIGURO'S AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD

Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is more than a postwar Japanese narrative written in English. It is a subtle act of translation acrosslanguages, cultures, and moral sensibilities. This paper explores the novel through the lens of translation theory, arguing that Ishiguro performs a double translation: first, by transforming Japanese historical consciousness into English literary form, and second, by reinterpreting memory as a translated construct. Drawing upon the works of Walter Benjamin, Lawrence Venuti, and Susan Bassnett, this paper demonstrates how Ishiguro’s narrative exemplifies literature’s power to mediate between cultures without erasing their differences.