ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Unconsoled is approached from the perspective of intralingual self-translation, exploring the genesis of the novel’s narrative strategy of unnatural narration through an analysis of the Ishiguro Archive at the Harry Ransom Center. The analysis focuses in particular on translational shifts linked with the implementation of what Ishiguro describes as “dream techniques”, which aim to replicate dream logic in the fictional world. The strategies observed consist primarily in omission, shortening and implicitation, through the removal of rationalising explanations and of manifestations of the narrator’s surprise at the unlikeliness of the situations he encounters. The intralingual translation at work from the first draft of the experiment to the published novel thus gives the narrative a firmer anchoring in unnatural narration.
