Professor Matsuoka's Review

REVIEW

Mitsuharu Matsuoka
(Associate Professor of English, Nagoya University)

Just to let you know, Tatsuhiro Ohno's Japanese translation of Sylvia's Lovers was published just on Christmas Day. Japanese Gaskellians could have received a better Christmas present. Needless to say, the author of his primary concern is Elizabeth Gaskell. He is a Gaskell addict. He had been very scrupulous in the choice of diction for the publication for the past few years. This book has an 142-page expounder, which consists of Gaskell's genealogical tree and chronological record, of the novel's summary, writing details, and revised chronicle, and of the translator's paper on wave imagery. Personally I think the best part of the expounder is Gaskell's chronological record. It occupies 70% of the expounder. He ranged over 25 books as well as John Chapple's Letters, Gerin's biography, and Uglow's. As you can imagine, his chronological record is all the more welcome and useful to Japanese Gaskellians because they have difficulty examining all of them in English.
The paper on waves in Sylvia's Lovers is convincing enough. His papers are always characterised by their effective use of charts or graphs. How I wish you could have a look at the curved line he drew to show how Sylvia and Philip feel in their hearts along the plot. Last but not least, he deployed several kinds of strategies in translating. To take a concrete example, he made use of the Kumamoto dialect in order to put the Yorkshire dialect into vivid Japanese. It was really successful. He is now working for Kumamoto University and Kumamoto is also his birthplace. He moved from Ehime University to Kumamoto University some years ago just as Soseki Natsume, the most famous novelist in Japan, did a century ago. Soseki studied English literature in London for a couple of years. You can see him on the Japanese 1,000 yen banknote. Just like Dickens on the British 10 pound note. Tatsuhiro is a promising scholar as Soseki Natsume. "Soseki Museum in London," if you are interested, is at http://www.dircon.co.uk/soseki-museum/info.html. No Japanese scholars could have translated Sylvia's Lovers better, I can tell you. Tatsuhiro closes his postscript to the translation by saying, "I wrote my graduation thesis with this novel. I was unable to refrain from tears while reading it on. I must have identified with Philip." I have to add that he is a singer-songwriter off campus. He has written a lot of lyric poems. If you read any Japanese, you are expected to access his lyrics page. The URL is http://www.let.kumamoto-u.ac.jp/eng/ohno_sng.htm.
5/2/98