『天路歴程』邦訳史(一)

The first translation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in Japanese appeared in 1876. It was published serially in a Christian weekly magazine called Shichi-ichi Zappo. It is actually a retranslation of the immortal dream story in Chinese translated by William C. Burns, a British missionary to China, published in 1853. In 1878 the serialized translation was published in book form. There are several points of interest in this translation,and to consider and discuss them is our chief aim. First of all there is the problem of the identity of the translator. One of the few editions of the book has an imprint which says the translator's name is Kiho Sato, but now it is almost certain that the real translator was Shunkichi Murakami, chief editor of Shichi-ichi Zappo. I add here other evidence which I hope will strengthen, if not confirm, the conjecture that Murakami was the translator. However,it should be remembered that it was Kiho who edited the serialized story into a book. In his preface, Kiho tells how he did his best to edit it and raise the money necessary for its publication. One of the things he did was to translate a number of Chinese verses which Murakami had left untranslated. Another of his contributions is his marginalia to the text, which show his real interest in Bunyan's dream story. Kiho also tried to make improvements on the punctuation used in the original serialized version, though without much success. At that time most Japanese writing had no punctuation at all, and it was only years later that punctuation was generally introduced. Punctuation was used to make it easier "for women and children" to read the story ; but throughout, it was a case of trial and error. It is all the more interesting because we can see the process of groping for better forms of punctuation. Altogether, we may conclude that, though the honour of being the translator must go to Shunkichi Murakami, Kiho Sato should be remembered as one who did much to promote the popularity of the first translation of The Pilgrim's P

rogress. Without his zeal and efforts it might have been buried unread for many years to come. How good is the translation? Since this is a retranslation, we must of course compare it with the Chinese version, but sometimes it is necessary to refer to Bunyan's own words and expressions. Some mistakes as well as some happy renderings are discussed. Finally names of people and places in the story are considered. Since it is an allegory, translation of these names is a matter which requires the utmost care. The Japanese translation adopts in most cases Chinese names as they are, but, it must be noted, they are actually Japanese names in that the latter are printed in kana alongside the former, and are supposed to be read accordingly. There are few cases of purely Japanese nomenclature. All in all this first translation of The Pilgrim's Progress, despite its shortcomings deserves our appreciation as the worthy harbinger of a number of translations to follow.