Double seminar on the history of modern linguistics and Sinology in Japan as seen from the perspective of translation

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14.15-15.15 Andrew P. Nelson 

Found in Translation: Understanding Late Meiji Constructions of Language through Scholarly Interpretation

Crafting a narrative in The Study of Language in Japan (1976) that would be repeated over the next half century, Toshio Doi depicts the history of Japanese linguistic scholarship as purely imitative. “The study of language and languages in Japan since the nineteenth century,” he writes, “has been advanced as a continuous series of responses to (it would be safe to say, it has been a continuous acceptance of) Western dogmas and doctrines that came in succession into this country” (p. 279, 1977 edition). He describes Japanese scholars as “quick to take in any thoughts or theories that came from abroad” and describes linguists in particular as having “made their debuts through their translation works from some Western or other linguistic writings” (p. 106, 283). Subsequent contributions on Japanese scholarship in general histories of world linguistics similarly cite the proliferation of translations as evidence for mimicry. But what exactly was being translated, and how? 

This presentation closely examines translations of European linguistics texts by three linguists of the late Meiji period (1868-1912): Kanazawa Shōzaburō 金沢庄三郎 (1872-1967), Hoshina Kōichi 保科孝一 (1872-1955), and Kindaichi Kyōsuke金田一京助 (1882-1971), all graduates of the same newly founded linguistics program at the Tokyo Imperial University College of Letters. I compare three pairs of texts: Arsène Darmesteter’s Life of Words as the Symbol of Ideas (1886) and Kanazawa’s translation, Kotoba no inochi ことばのいのち (1897); William Dwight Whitney’s (1827-1894) Life and Growth of Language (1875) and Hoshina Kōichi’s translation, Gengo hattatsu ron 言語発達論 (1899); and Henry Sweet’s (1845-1912) The History of Language (1900) and Kindaichi’s translation, Shin gengogaku 新言語学 (1912). In a rare overlap, Hoshina also translated a large citation from The History of Language for inclusion in a lecture at Waseda University, published as Gengogaku 言語学in 1902, allowing for a three-way comparison between two translations and their identical source text. I contextualize the in-depth analyses of translation alongside with the translators’ own original writing and broader intellectual discourse about language at the time.

Extrapolations, omissions, and subtle differences in word choice allowed these three translators to match the message to their own concepts of language. At turns, they reversed the cause and effect relationship between linguistic structure and language change; deracinated the science of language from the pursuit of Indo-European protolanguages in favor of a more universalist approach; and downplayed dynamism as an inherent quality of language in favor of a timeless representation. In this presentation, I offer a method for employing translation analysis as a tool for historical excavation that can operate simultaneously to illuminate the meanings inhabiting translated texts and clarify the norms and practices of translation in a scientific genre.

Biography

Andrew P. Nelson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at St. Olaf College. He earned his doctoral degree in Japanese from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University, with PhD minors in both history and linguistics. His doctoral research, which was supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Fulbright Program and involved two years of investigation at Hitotsubashi University, applies methods from linguistics and translation studies to elaborate the concepts of language in currency among intellectual circles in late Meiji period Japan.

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15.30-16.30 Yuya Gunji

Unrestricted “Furigana” in Hybrid Chinese-Japanese Translation: The History of Furigana and the Legacy of Hiraoka Ryujo’s Hong Lou Meng and Shibata Tenma’s Liaozhai Zhiyi

In this seminar, I explore the shifting understandings Chinese language and literature in modern Japan by focusing on the distinctive functions of furigana (small Japanese kana characters added to Chinese kanji characters to show their Japanese pronounciation) in Chinese-Japanese translation. After introducing a number of translation practices that made use of furigana in unconventional ways, I will focus in particular on the work of Hiraoka Ryujo 平岡龍城 (186?-1940) and Shibata Tenma 柴田天馬 (1872-1963), whose translations of the Qing dynasty literatury works Hongloumeng紅楼夢 and Liaozhai Zhiyi 聊斎志異, respectively, exemplify distinctive approaches to Chinese-Japanese translation.

I became interested in these two translators because, during the early 20^th century, when Japan’s modernization based on Western models had already advanced considerably, they sought to reconcile two seemingly divergent traditions: the time-honoured intellectual tradition in East Asia centered on Literary Sinitic (kanbun 漢文) and the movement toward a more vernacular written language associated with Westernization. They gave this attempt at reconciliation a distinctive textual form through their hybrid translation styles. It was, above all, their unconventional use of furigana that made this distinctive style of writing possible.

By examining these practices, I hope to shed light on the diverse textual and stylistic experiments that took place during the process through which not only Japanese representations of Chinese language, but also Japanese writing and literary style in general gradually converged toward their modern familiar forms. More broadly, I will use furigana as a lens through which to explore how East Asian intellectual traditions encountered and interacted with the linguistic and cultural models of the modern West.

Biography

Yuya Gunji is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University. His research explores the influence of classical Chinese on Japan, with particular emphasis on the development of Japanese translation styles and the activities of Sinologists in modern Japan. He studied at Beijing Normal University and Peking University.