『天路歴程』邦訳史(三)

The third translator of The Pilgrim s Progress was Koki Ike. He was the first man to translate the Second Part of the book as well as the First. He was a "new-style" poet of the age, and his keen sense of words helped him much to make his rendering racy and charming. A close examination, however, shows he is by no means invulnerable. He also left out a great number of passages in the Second Part. Unshu Matsumoto, the fourth translator, for the first time used the colloquial style throughout, and all who came after him followed suit. However, his translation and that of the next translator, Shigeo Masumoto, leave much to be desired. Katsuhisa AOYOSHI, who comes next, was the only one who gave to his book a title other than Tenro Rekitei (borrowed from the Chinese translation) ; his title was Junrei no Tabi, which comes nearer in sense to The Pilgrims Progress. Those who followed were Toshio IKEYA, Takeo Ono, Sofu TAKETOMO, Yasuo OKUBO, and myself. Each translation except mine is examined and commented on in this paper. One hundred and one years have past since the first translation appeared. It is high time for us to look back and see what we have done. I hope this study will prove to be a small contribution in this field