Cover not available
Part of
A World Atlas of Translation
Edited by Yves Gambier and Ubaldo Stecconi
[Benjamins Translation Library 145] 2019
► pp. 55–80

Chapter 3
Japanese conceptualizations of ‘translation’

Chinese characters were a crucial factor shaping translation praxis and attitudes in Japan, providing the foundation for a procedure (performed textually or mentally) known as kanbun kundoku (‘Japanese reading of Chinese text’) that allowed direct understanding of Chinese texts. This largely bypassed ‘conventional’ Translation for a millennium and led to an acceptance of a hybrid written language. The arrival of European languages in the sixteenth century and vernacular renditions of Chinese novels from the seventeenth century introduced a parallel trajectory resembling ‘conventional’ Translation. Translations have had a major impact on Japanese knowledge, literature and the language itself, although it was not until the late nineteenth century that literary translation began to be conceived of as an art. Despite shifts over time, the predominant thread has been a source-oriented approach, and translative language has long constituted an accepted, even desirable, register because of its association with ‘superior’ source cultures.
Keywords: Chinese characters, kanbun kundoku , source-oriented approach, translative language, gloss translations, commentarial translations, intralingual translations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The impact of script: Translation as transposition and gloss reading
  • 3.Languages as fluid entities
  • 4.Introduction of European concepts of Translation
  • 5.The premodern professional norm with Dutch
  • 6.Translation as scholarly mining and interpretation
  • 7.Vernacular renditions of Chinese works
  • 8.Intralingual translations
  • 9.Inter-register translations
  • 10.Imitation as creativity
  • 11.Micro-level amalgams
  • 12.Translation as a two-stage process
  • 13.Moving ‘mainstream’
  • 14.Collaborative and surrogate translating and translator (in)visibility
  • 15.The allure of opacity
  • 16.The scope of ‘Translation’ in Japan
  • 17.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.145.03wak
References (56)
References
Abel, Jonathan E. 2005. “Translation as Community: The Opacity of Modernizations of Genji Monogatari .” In Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood (eds), 146–58. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Anesaki, Masaharu. 1960. “Kirishitan shūkyō bungaku.” In Kirishitan fūdoki—bekkan/ kenkyūhen, edited by Murakami Naojirō and Shinmura Izuru, 8–24. Tokyo, Hobunkan.Google Scholar
Bourdaghs, Michael. 2002. “Mystery Plane: Sakamoto Kyū and the Translations of Rockabilly.” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies 3: 38–50.Google Scholar
Carpenter, John T. 2008. “Chinese Calligraphic Models in Heian Japan: Copying Practices and Stylistic Transmission.” In The Culture of Copying in Japan: Critical and Historical Perspectives, Rupert Cox (ed), 156–95. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 1998. “Causes, Translations, Effects.” Target 10 (2): 201–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chung, Juliette Yueh-Tsen. 2004. “Eugenics and the Coinage of Scientific Terminology in Meiji Japan and China.” In Late Qing China and Meiji Japan: Political and Cultural Aspects, Joshua A. Fogel (ed), 165–207. Norwalk, CT: EastBridge.Google Scholar
Clements, Rebekah. 2015. A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fogel, Joshua A. 2013. “Translation, Nationalism, and the Vernacular in the Development of East Asia Modernity.” In Towards a History of Translating: Volume III On Translation History, Lawrence Wang-chi Wong (ed), 277–91. Hong Kong: The Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Hasegawa, Michiko. 2009. “Mizumura Minae Nihongo suibō-ron e no gimon.” Shokun 41 (5): 128–38.Google Scholar
Hayek, Mattias, and Annick Horiuchi. 2014. Listen, Copy, Read: Popular Learning in Early Modern Japan. Leiden; Boston: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hida, Yoshifumi. 1973. “Kindaigo kenkyū no shiryō.” Bungaku/ Gogaku 66: 45–60.Google Scholar
Howland, Douglas. 2002. Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth- Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation, Reuben A. Brower (ed), 232–39. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jannetta, Ann. 2007. The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge and the “Opening” of Japan. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kabashima, Tadao. 1980. Bunshō kōseihō. Tokyo: Kōdansha Gendai Shinsho.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Stefan. 1996. “Translations of Christian Terminology into Japanese 16–19th Centuries: Problems and Solutions.” In Japan and Christianity: Impacts and Responses, John Breen and Mark Williams (eds), 8–29. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katō, Shūichi. 1994. “Hon’yaku no susume.” Asahi shinbun March 22, 1994, evening edition, 11.Google Scholar
Kazama, Seishi. 1992. “Utsushibumi no sekai – Ban Kōkei no chosaku o megutte.” Bungaku 3 (1): 54–74.Google Scholar
Keene, Donald. 1987. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Kim, John Namjun. 2010. “Politics as Translation: Naoki Sakai and the Critique of Hermeneutics.” In The Politics of Culture: Around the Work of Naoki Sakai, Richard F. Calichman and John Namjun Kim (eds), 52–71. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Levy, Indra. 2006. Sirens of the Western Shore: The Westernesque Femme Fatale, Translation, and Vernacular Style in Modern Japanese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. “Introduction: Modern Japan and the Trialectics of Translation.” In Translation in Modern Japan, Indra Levy (ed), 1–12. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miller, J Scott. 2001. Adaptations of Western Literature in Meiji Japan. New York: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagashima, Daisuke. 1993. “Bilingual Lexicography in Japan: The Dutch-Japanese to the English-Japanese Dictionary”. World-Englishes 12 (2): 249–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakamura, Shinichirō. 1980. “Hon’yaku no bungaku-teki imi ni tsuite.” Bungaku 48: 1–14.Google Scholar
Nakayama, Akihiko. 2001. “‘Hon’yaku’ suru/sareru ‘Kokugo–Nihongo’”. KAN 4: 152–162.Google Scholar
Nohara, Kayoko. 2018. Translating Popular Fiction: Embracing Otherness in Japanese Translations. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 1998. “Foreignization and/vs Domestication Strategies in Japanese Translation: The Linguistic and Cultural Embedding in Popular Literature.” Paper presented at CETRA Research Seminar in Translation Studies.
Rowley, G. G. 2000. Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sakai, Naoki. 2009. “How Do We Count a Language? Translation and Discontinuity.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 71–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sakakibara, Kankyō. 2000. “Hon’yaku to wa nanika: Meiji no hon’yaku-ō: Morita Shiken o yonde.” Hon’yaku to rekishi 2: 1–3.Google Scholar
Satō, Miki. 2008. “Eibungaku hon’yaku no ‘hon’yaku kihan’ ni kansuru hitokōsatsu: Eigo seinen-shi ni mirareru eibungaku kenkyū oyobi shakai shichō to no kankei kara.” Doctoral dissertation. Hokkaidō Daigaku.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand. 1959. Course in General Linguistics (Cours de Linguistique Générale). Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Reidlinger. Translated from the French by Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library.Google Scholar
Schwermann, Christian; Steineck, Raji C., ed. 2014. That Wonderful Composite Called Author: Authorship in East Asian Literatures from the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century. Leiden; Boston: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shimada, Shingo. 2002. “Constructions of Cultural Identity and Problems of Translation”. In Identities: Time, Difference and Boundaries, Heidrun Friese (ed), 133–50. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Shinkuma, Kiyoshi. 1996. “The Relationship between Japanese Translations of English Literature and the Creation of Modern Japanese Literature.” The University of Toledo.Google Scholar
Shirane, Haruo. 2014. “Mediating the Literary Classics: Commentary and Translation in Modern Japan.” In Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000–1919, Benjamin A. Elman (ed), 129–46. Leiden; Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Shumuta, Natsuo. 1982. “Jibun no hon’yaku taiken kara.” Hon’yaku. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 184–93.Google Scholar
Sugimoto, Tsutomu. 1988. “The Inception of Translation Culture in Japan”. Meta 33 (1): 25–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Suh, Serk-Bae. 2013. Treacherous Translation: Culture, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Korea and Japan from the 1910s to the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Suter, Rebecca. 2008. The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki Between Japan and the United States. Cambridge (Massachusetts); London: Harvard University Asia Center. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Suzuki, Chikara. 1995. Watashi no hon’yaku dangi. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha.Google Scholar
Tamaki, Yuko. 2009. “Contemporary Publishing Strategies in Japan: The Role of the Literary Agent”. TTR XXII (1): 119–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2nd revised edition: 2012. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London/New York: Routledge. 2nd revised edition: 2008. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
von Schwerin-High, Friederike. 2004. Shakespeare, Reception and Translation: Germany and Japan. London/New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Wakabayashi, Judy. 1998. “Marginal Forms of Translation in Japan: Variations from the Norm.” In Unity in Diversity? Current Trends in Translation Studies, Lynne Bowker [and others] (eds), 57–63. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
. 2005. “The Reconceptualization of Translation from Chinese in 18th Century Japan.” In Translation and Cultural Change: Studies in History, Norms and Image-Projection, Eva Hung (ed), 119–45. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. “Translating in a Forked Tongue: Interlinear Marginalia as a Creative Heteroglossic Device in Japanese Translations.” Translation and Interpreting Studies 1 (2): 3–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “An Etymological Exploration of Japanese Views on ‘Translation’.” In Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond, Judy Wakabayashi and Rita Kothari (eds), 175–94. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yanabu, Akira. 1978. “Hon’yaku no mondai.” In Nihongo kenkyū no shūhen, edited by Itani Jun’ichirō et al., 130–153. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar
. 1982. Hon’yakugo seiritsu jijō. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar
. 2008. Yanabu-shi intābyū “Michi fukakai no deai kara hon’yaku ga hajimaru.” Hon’yaku kenkyū e no shōtai 2: 1–10.Google Scholar
Yokota-Murakami, Takayuki. 1991. “Translating Literature, Love, and Sexuality: Negotiation of the Ideologies in Early Modern Japan.” In Translation and Modernization: Proceedings of the XIIIth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Theresa Hyun and José Lambert (eds), 71–80. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press.Google Scholar
Yoshitake, Yoshinori. 1959. Meiji/Taishō no hon’yaku-shi. Tokyo: Kenkyūsha.Google Scholar
Yukawa, Shirō. 2002. “Nihon no shoseki shijō ni okeru hon’yaku bungaku juyō e no hitokōsatsu: shoseki katarogu no Doitsu bungaku gensakushamei hyōki ni kanshite”. Okayama Daigaku Daigakuin Bunka Kagaku Kenkyūjo Kiyō 13: 49–67.Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Saito, Mino & Miki Sato
2023. Introduction. In Tsūji, Interpreters in and Around Early Modern Japan [Translation History, ], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir
2022. Translation Historiography. Slovo.ru: Baltic accent 13:1 ► pp. 14 ff. DOI logo
Poupard, Duncan James
2021. Writings on the wall: powerful inscriptions in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Asian Anthropology 20:3 ► pp. 210 ff. DOI logo
ESEN, Esin
2020. THE EXTRALINGUISTIC FACTORS ON THE INTRALINGUAL TRANSLATIONS OF ‘PERSON REFERENT ELLIPSIS’ IN CLASSICAL JAPANESE. Elektronik Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 19:75 ► pp. 1148 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.