How to translate 'Let us go then, you and I' in Japanese

December 7, 2010 7:12 AM

What is the better Japanese translation for the first line of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?

The line is "Let us go then, you and I"; I have been given それでは行こう，あなたと私と, and found そら、君と僕で出かけようよ、online. Which would sound the best in Japanese? Or would it be something completely different?

posted by Spanner Nic to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

それでは行こうよ seems to capture the spirit of it the original, though adding あなたと私と ('you and I'), while a more literal translation, sounds kind of stilted.

そら、君と僕で出かけようよ also works, but the tone feels (to me, at least) a little casual and chatty, which doesn't really suit the gravity of the rest of the poem. This translation also uses 出かけよう which has more of a 'let's go out!' feel, rather than 行こう, which is simply 'let's go,' which seems closer --- in both spirit and literal meaning --- to Eliot's phrasing.
posted by Tiresias at 7:20 AM on December 7, 2010

I also prefer れでは行こう. However, I would keep the あなたと私と. "You and I" is also unnecessary in English, and I think the line would be missing something without it.

Not only do 僕 and 出かけようよ sound too informal for the poem to me, I'm also not sure what that last よ in 出かけようよ is doing... there's no need for emphasis there.
posted by equivocator at 5:17 PM on December 7, 2010

Best answer: The answer to this question depends on your preference. With poetry especially, it is kind of foolish to ask who has the "best" translation — you might use "best" as a shorthand for "most universally critically acclaimed," but even then, it's often the case that one translation is very good at conveying the imagery of the original, another the mood, a third the sonority, etc. etc.

Here's another translation, that renders the line "それでは行こうか、きみとぼく". Here are some more:

• じゃあ行こうか、きみとぼくと (Iwasaki Soji 岩崎宗治)
• さあ行こう、君と僕 (Tamba Kikui 丹波菊井)
• さあ、いっしょに出かけよう、君と僕と (Ueda Tamotsu 上田保)
• それでは行ってみようか、君も僕も (Fukase Motohiro 深瀬基寛)
• さあ行こう、君と僕と (Ayukawa Nobuo 鮎川信夫)

If you want to take a straight-up majority, it's clear that iku is the most favored verb for "go" and kimi to boku (to) the preferred form for "you and I." But there isn't much agreement on the finer details. Ueda Tamotsu is well-known as one of Eliot's first major supporters in Japan, so maybe his version is the way to go. But then again Iwasaki Soji's version is newer, it came out just a few months ago as far as I can tell (and in Iwanami Bunko, a relatively prestigious mass-market literary imprint, at that), so maybe he has a better handle on the weight of scholarship and the taste of today.

My personal opinion is that そら and じゃあ are both too light (although, arguably じゃあ is justified as a translation into contemporary Japanese — as a reader who knows the original, I am seeking a translation into equivalent Japanese, which would by necessity be more stuffy and less colloquial, like the English of the poem is when viewed through the prism of the English of 2010)... and that それでは is too considered. I would go with one of the ones that starts with さあ. I have my doubts about including a か because the English is "let us go" not "shall we go?" I think that あなたと私 feels too much like a direct translation. For 出かける vs 行く, I lean towards the latter, but given that the next line refers to the sky I can accept 出かける ("go out").

All things considered, I prefer Ueda's version best... at least of this first line. But I am not sure about the rest — for example, just scanning Ueda vs major competitors Iwasaki seems to do a better job of retaining the order of the lines/images. But should we prioritize this? etc. etc.
posted by No-sword at 8:34 PM on December 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

Just to clarify, I didn't mean to call you foolish for asking this question. I just meant to say that unless you arbitrarily designate a way of quantifying translation quality, questions of relative quality degenerate into arguments over taste very quickly. (Even something that everyone seems to agree on, like that "あなたと私" is stilted, might be defensible — maybe it's part of a broader conception in which the translator intentionally avoids 君 and 僕 to get some distancing effect.) In any case, I didn't mean to be personally insulting and I apologize for the pomposity.
posted by No-sword at 8:42 PM on December 7, 2010

Response by poster: Oh, please don't apologise, there's no way anyone could take that as an offense. Not speaking Japanese, I can't really judge which is the best answer, so I'll go for the most erudite; thank you everyone!
posted by Spanner Nic at 2:44 AM on December 10, 2010