著者

松村 恒

出版者

大妻女子大学

雑誌

大妻比較文化 : 大妻女子大学比較文化学部紀要 (ISSN:13454307)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.9, pp.103-119, 2008

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Stories of Nasreddin Hoca, a trickster in West Asia were transmitted beyond the borders of races, nations, and language areas. Collections of those stories were compiled in various ages and various areas. This complicated fact made it difficult to identify the original name of this trickster and to place and date of the original form of this story collection. In Japan, putting aside some sporadic selected translations before the War, it was Masao Mori who provided a Japanese translation of a bulk of Nasreddin Hoca stories for the first time. This translation stimulated folklorists to refer to Hoca stories in their comparative studies. In this meaning the value of Mori's contribution cannot be estimated small, but there remain some problems. The first: Mori selected as basic texts for his work some popular publications which are incidentally kept at the Oriental Library. The second: he did not note at all which story of which book each story was translated from. The reader cannot examine his translation referring to the original Turkish text. The third: the translator did not give consecutive numbers to each stories, and this treatment produced a difficulty in quoting stories. The fourth: he provides some good information on Hoca stories, which had not been known well until then. However his explanation is not based on the result of prior Western scholars' research for more than half a century. Expected names, e.g. Wesselski or Decourdemanche, are not mentioned. After Mori's work, one of the oldest materials became accessible. It is the so-called Groningen Manuscript, on which Burrill carried out a pioneering work(1970). jThis study includes the facsimie of the MS, a modern Turkish text, an English version and some notes. This work provided great convenience and should be given high appraisal. However the Turkish version is not a diplomatic transposition of the original Ottman text or a modern Turkish translation. The English version does not correspond accurately to the Ottman text or to the Turkish text. From the standpoint of word order, Japanese has some advantage compared to English. For these reasons it is still of some significance to make a new word-to-word translation in Japanese.