HARUKI MURAKAMI: TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH AND SPANISH

I have often explained my intellectual shortcomings in my language abilities. I must read most world literature in translation. And although I gratefully acknowledge translators' efforts in rendering originals into English and Spanish, I am still weary. I remember my reading of Dowstoweski´s The Idiot where the main character, Prince Mishkin, was el príncipe Mishkine. Why so? I finally discovered that the translation into Spanish was from French, not Russian. I had been reading a translation of a translation. In order to keep the sound of Mishkin, the French translator added an "e" to the name and the Spanish translator followed suit, unnecessarily.  In a recent post, I complained lightly about Murakami´s Norwegian Wood translation into English. As I speak no Japanese (and no Danish, Tagalog, Chinese, Korean, etc.), I decided to check Lourdes Portal´s rendering of that novel into Spanish. Both translations are suspiciously similar. I must venture that Lourdes Portal leaned heavily on Professor Jay Rubin´s English version. A translation of a translation.  I repeat I do not speak Japanese, but I know a bit about translations and translators and language mastery. (In my sophomore year I tried to learn Japanese with the Cortina method!)