Abstract
This paper examines Futabatei Shimei’s translations from Russian into Japanese from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, during the period of the so-called genbun itchi (言文一致) movement. During this period, the traditional writing language variety, bungo (文語), was replaced by a new writing variety based on the spoken language, kōgo (口語); the first and most influential work written in kōgo was a translation from Russian by Futabatei.
We will investigate how kōgo was developing structurally by comparing his first two kōgo translations from Russian, and how it was developing functionally by following his whole translations. The paper takes a linguistic approach in order to investigate how Russian was used to promote the replacement of bungo by kōgo in Futabatei’s translations.
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Notes
- 1.
Only the beginning part of Kokuryūkōhan no yūfu (黒龍江畔の勇婦 The heroine of the River Amur), the translation from Elec’s Amurskaya geroinja (The heroine of Amur), is written in bungo.
- 2.
The page and line number of the tables in this chapter are from: Aibiki (two versions), Meguriai and Kigū (Futabatei 1981a), Svidanie (Turgenev 1963a), Tri vstreči (Turgenev 1963b). Pages in Aibiki, Meguriai and Kigū are printed in two columns, and the letter “o” and “u” after the page number in those works means ‘over (column)’ and ‘under (column) respectively.’ The number after the page number in Turgenev’s works, for example 2 of (260.2), indicates the line number.
- 3.
In these tables the verb sidet’ and sest’ are included. The former is ‘be sitting’ and the latter ‘sit.’ The verb dosidela, < dosidet’, inf. in 5 in b contains the root ‘sidet’’ and means ‘be sitting until a certain point in time.’
- 4.
Strictly spoken, the first zashite-ita in case 3 (2.3a) is the translation of the adjective nepodvižnom (immovable) (underlined with a dotted line) but in this context one can also interpret it as a translation of the verb sidela (< sidet’).
- 5.
According to Nihon Hōgen-dai-jiten (Great Dictionary of Japanese Dialects 1991, 1515), the verb tsukunamu is pervasive in the prefectures Shimane, Hyōgo, and Yamaguchi, and on the island of Shikoku. Futabatei had lived in Shimane during his childhood, where he had probably learned the expression.
- 6.
The verb po-sidel < posidet’ (inf., ‘sitting for a while’) in Table 4: 4 also contains the root sidet’ (see also footnote 7).
- 7.
All the Russian and Japanese example sentences in this paper are translated by the author because in published translations the text structure is often intentionally changed so that the translation itself can become a literary work and they are therefore not always adequate to linguistic analyses, and also because I sought to keep a stylistic consistency among the translations in this paper.
- 8.
According to Mulisch, for example, the present forms of the copula (est’ and sut’, see below) are seldom used, “hauptsächlich im wissenschaftlichen oder publizistischen Stil bei Definitionen und Aufzählungen” (mainly in a scientific or journalistic style for definitions and enumerations) (Mulisch 1996, 285). A ‘scientific’ or ‘journalistic’ style could be interpreted as a non-colloquial style.
- 9.
Beside the copular function the verb est’ has two other functions: one is an impersonal expression of existence, which corresponds to constructions “there are/there is …” in English, e.g. Est’ ešče dva-tri soseda (There are another two or three neighbors.) (Turgenev 1963c, 274). Constructions of this type sometimes include a locative phrase like ‘in Russia’, e.g. V Rossii est‘ tri preobladajuščie tipa soldat … (In Russia there are three main types of soldier…) (Tolstoj 1951, 34) and so on. The other function is an idiomatic use of est’, e.g., to est‘ (‘that is’). These two kinds of est’ were not taken into consideration here.
- 10.
Such text patterns were also found in the Edo period. In some texts from Edo-literature the prolog was written in bungo (mainly in the kanbun-style) while in the main text the spoken language was used.
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Hoozawa-Arkenau, N. (2014). The Role of Russian in the Dissolution of Diglossia in Japan: Translations by Futabatei Shimei. In: Árokay, J., Gvozdanović, J., Miyajima, D. (eds) Divided Languages?. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03521-5_13
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