Continuing with my reading of Underground by Haruki Murakami and comparison
with the translated version by Alfred Birnbaum.

The following passage:

>
> 就職先としてはやはりＪＲに人気がありました。僕はちがいましたけれど、新幹線の運転手になりたいというような人はけっこういましたからね。でも僕が卒業した当時はＪＲは人を採用していなかったので、一般的に西武、小田急、東急というところが人気でした。でもそういうところは沿線に住んでいないと入社できないというようあ制限が、わりとありました。あとそこでアルバイトした経験がないと駄目とかね。ええ、けっこう厳しいです。
>
>
> 僕はもともと地下鉄に行きたいと思っていました。営団もけっこう人気はあるんですよ。給与もほかに比べて悪くないですし、たとえば鉄道をやるつもりで入ったのにデパートに出向で行かされたとか、そういうのはありませんからね。

The translation by Alfred Birnbaum is as follows

> Japan Railways [JR] was the big thing to aim for in terms of jobs. So many
> guys wanted to be Shinkansen [bullet-train] drivers. **JR turned me down
> when I graduated** , but Seibu and Odakyu and Tokyu and other private lines
> were generally popular, although the catch was that you had to live in areas
> served by those lines to get the job. Yeah, pretty tough. I'd always wanted
> to work on the subway and the Subway Authority was pretty popular. The pay's
> no worse than anywhere else.

Isn't this translation a bit strange? I think it goes beyond the choice of
words and trimming down to the point of mistranslation. My personal
understanding of the passage is

> As for place to work for, as expected, JR was popular. **It was not the case
> for me** , but there were quite a lot of people who want to be Shinkansen
> train drivers. **However, when I graduated, JR was not looking to hire so
> generally, places like Seibu, Odakyu and Tokyu were popular**. However, for
> those places, surprisingly, there was a rule that you have to live along the
> train lines to be able to enter the company. Also, if you don't have
> experience working part time there then it's no good. Yeah, quite tough.
>
> From the start, I wanted to work for the metro. The Subway Authority too is
> quite popular, since the pay is not bad comparatively, and also there isn't
> anything like you entering the company intending to work on the train lines
> but end up being transferred to sales.

Since I am trying to learn Japanese by myself, I generally don't have anyone
to turn to to make sure that I'm on the right track so I resort to comparing
my reading with translation (asking questions on places like here takes quite
a bit of time to set up so I only use it sparingly and as a last resort), but
so far my experience with _published and sold_ translation like this has been
kind of bad. Is my understanding of the passage on track here? Again, thank
you for any help.
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translation
Is this a strange translation?
I agree with your interpretation and would go so far as to say the official
translation is not accurate.

The most plausible explanation I can think of is having overlooked the "人を" in
the sentence in question, resulting in "でも僕が卒業した当時はＪＲは採用していなかった" or "JR didn't
hire (me)". Japanese can often be ambiguous and without the "人を" it could be
interpreted either way.

In fact, it's certainly possible the text was translated at a different point
in time, i.e. the "人を" was actually added to the Japanese text _afterwards_
for clarification (of the Japanese). Frankly the absence of the statements
about part-time work or being bait-and-switched to a different job is also
quite suspicious; these could very well have been added afterwards too.
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answer