TRANSLATION AS A WAY OF EDUCATING THE NATION. THE CASE OF MEIJI JAPAN
TRANSLATION AS A WAY OF EDUCATING THE NATION. THE CASE OF MEIJI JAPAN

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to assess the educational value that translation had in the process of modernization, of the promoting Western culture in Japan. We do not dwell on linguistic aspects of translation, but rather on the choice and content of translated literature. Beginning in the Meiji Era, Japan had a unique approach to translation, which aimed to disseminate reading and foreign culture among all the social classes, and which eventually made it a Great Power of translation (hon’yaku taikoku). Translation may have shortcomings, as some foreign concepts cannot be perfectly translated and understood even today, because the context of those original terms gets lost in translation. Another approach would be to learn about foreign cultures directly in the foreign languages, and this has been the case in many European countries, but such an approach can have the fallacy of ultimately being too elitist, as one cannot impose the learning of foreign languages on the same scale as the one on which one can disseminate translations. To prove this point we have attempted a comparison between Romania and Japan on their road to modernization at the turn of the twentieth century.

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