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So I would like to translate a Japanese book into an Indo-European language (specifically, Russian) and I'm really not sure how to deal with the paragraph structure.

As you may know, Japanese literature is often written in numerous paragraphs, each containing just two-three sentences at best. I feel like if I keep the structure as is, it will result in an unnatural looking text because that's not how literature is usually written in my language. We tend to favor longer paragraphs and generally try to avoid making our texts too fragmented.

How do people usually approach this problem? Is it common for translators to simply follow the original structure or is it generally accepted that they should take some creative liberties and restructure the text in an attempt to make it appear more organized? Are there any papers on this?

Disclaimer: I've never done any professional Japanese to English translation before

I found the following in The Routledge Course in Japanese Translation by Yoko Hasegawa. Note that ST stands for source text and TT stands for translated text.

Between Japanese and English, an adjustment that is frequently called
for concerns paragraph breaks. Compared to Japanese, English writing
has significantly fewer breaks (K. Inoue 2004: 95); conversely,
Japanese writing utilizes frequent line breaks. One may even encounter
Japanese texts that place a line break after every kuten 句点 (｡). This
is due to the fact that the concept of paragraph has not been clearly
established in Japanese writing (Hojo 2004: 41). Let us examine
whether there is a discrepancy between STs and TTs in regard to
paragraphing. The following table compares the number of paragraphs in
the first section or chapter of the STs with their corresponding TTs.

Source Text                        Author      ST Par Translator       TT Par

After Babel                        George Steiner  20 亀山健吉            20

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  Lewis Carroll   17 矢川澄子            17

A Pale View of Hills               Kazuo Ishiguro  12 小野寺健            12

Saving Private Ryan                Max Collins     13 伏見威蕃            13

The Cop and the Anthem             O. Henry        48 大久保康雄          48

The Moon and Sixpence              Somerset Maugham 7 中野好夫             7

The Selfish Gene                   Richard Dawkins 32 日高敏隆他          32

『女形』                           三島由紀夫      13 Donald Keene        10

『キッチン』                       吉本ばなな      17 Megan Backus        11

『樹々は緑か』                     吉行淳之介      44 Adam Kabat          42

『中国行きのスロウ・ボート』       村上春樹        19 Jay Rubin           16

『春は馬車に乗って』               横光利一        36 Dennis Keene        34

『砂の女』                         阿部公房         7 Dale Saunders        7

『雪国』                           川端康成        48 Edward Seidensticker42

Clearly shown by this table is the fact that paragraph breaks are
maintained in English-to-Japanese translation, whereas they are likely
to be changed in Japanese-to-English translation. Moreover, when
paragraphs are adjusted, English TTs invariably have fewer paragraphs.
Although we do not investigate how paragraphs are combined in English
TTs, Japanese-to-English translators should be aware that such an
adjustment might be called for in order to produce quality TTs. (For
an excellent discussion of paragraph adjustment in translation, see
Hojo 2004: 41–59.)

References mentioned in the excerpt:

• Inoue, Kazuma 井上一馬. 2004. Inoue Kazuma no hon’yaku kyDshitsu 井上一馬の
  翻訳教室. Chikuma Shobo




• Hojo, Fumio 北條文緒. 2004. Hon’yaku to ibunka – Gensaku tono “zure” ga
  kataru mono 翻訳と異文化―原作との<ずれ>が語るもの. Misuzu Shobo.