A lack of unity in terms of translation in <I>Saigoku-rissi-hen</I> translated by Masanao Nakamura

Abstract

Saigoku-rissi-hen by Masanao Nakamura is one of the most famous translations of the Meiji era in Japan. Self-Help, the enlightening original, was written by Samuel Smiles. When Nakamura returned to Japan from England in 1868, he was given a copy of Self-Help by his British friend, H. Freeland. Self-Help was widely read in the 19th century in the West. At that time, Saigoku-rissi-hen and another example of an enlightment text, Gakumon-no-susume written by Yukichi Fukuzawa, were both million-seller books in the Meiji era in Japan.Comparing Saigoku-rissi-hen with the original Self-Help, we can observe many omissions and free translations. This is because Nakamura judged some contents unsuitable and others difficult to translate. This was an inevitable result of Japanese-to-English literary translation in Japan considering the basic level of cross-cultural and technical understanding prevalent at that time. From Saigoku-rissi-hen, we can understand Nakamura's painstaking efforts to achieve an accurate word-for-word translation.In his translation, Nakamura used many Japanese words for one English word; that is, his work shows a lack of unity in terms of translation. For example, he used two terms for “chemist” and three terms for “chemistry”. However, he never used “seimi (gaku)” which was a general term for “chemistry” in use at that time in Japan. Nakamura was originally a scholar of Chinese classics so he disliked the term “seimi (gaku)” which was a mere transliteration of the Dutch, “chemie”. As a scholar of Chinese classics, he probably wanted to set great value on the meaning of Kanji characters.In Saigoku-rissi-hen, we can find another example of a lack of unity. He used six terms for the word “school”. The modern school system started in 1872 in Japan and as a result Nakamura did not know what “school” was when he published his translation. He, therefore, used many different terms for “school” by exercising his imagination.Masanao Nakamura, one of the most famous Enlightment scholars in the Meiji era, tried ha ugh his translation of “chemistry” and “school”.