Mori Ōgai and the translation of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman

Abstract: Mori Ōgai’s (1862-1922) 1909 translation and the subsequent theater production of Henrik Ibsen’s 1896 play John Gabriel Borkman was in many ways instrumental in the formation of Japanese Meiji-era shingeki theater. Through his career as a translator, Ōgai’s translation approach shifted from one of decreasingly relying on domestication techniques to staying more faithful to the source text through use of foreignization techniques and arguably towards what has been identified by Eugene Nida and Jin Di as dynamical equivalence or equivalent effect, respectively, in drama translation. In this project, Ōgai’s translation of John Gabriel Borkman is examined using a set of categories peculiar to drama translation, as proposed by Chinese scholars Xu and Cui (2011), again based on the theories of Nida and Di. The categories are intelligibility, brevity, characterization and actability. The results from the analysis are used to do a qualitative analysis of Ōgai’s approach to drama translation. Results from the study indicate that Ōgai put large emphasis on the intelligibility of the play, and perhaps over the aspects of brevity, characterization and actability. However, wherever the brevity aspect seems not to be in violation of any of the other aspects, Ōgai seems to have tried to adhere as close as possible to the source texts in terms of speaking length.