Abstract
This paper will focus on Chambers’s Information for the People and the project to translate it organized by the then education ministry in the early Meiji period when Japan opened its doors to the world and underwent the turbulent times of so-called civilization and enlightenment. First, in order to locate the translated texts historically, the author traces the changes of institutions where translating was carried out in 19th century Japan. Then the governmental translation project is outlined before analyzing three texts lexicogrammatically to highlight evidence of translational acts under the assumption of imaginary equivalence between the two asymmetrical languages. The postcolonial scholar Tejaswini Niranjana maintains that translation into English has constructed a distorted image of the ‘East’, in particular India. This paper explores, in turn, translation from English in the context of Japan’s modernity.
https://ror.org/00x194q47 
