Abstract
This paper examines the Japanese translations of two textbooks of English Grammar used in the higher education in the Meiji period. The original textbooks are Quackenbos's First Book in English Grammar and Pinneo's Primary Grammar of the English Language, For Beginners. Both of these were translated into Japanese under the same title Eibunten Chokuyaku. The translation of the former was published by Daigaku Nanko(present University of Tokyo) and that of the latter by Keia Gijuku(present Keio University). These textbooks were widely used and there are various versions of translations published during the Meiji period. In this paper, thirteen different translated versions of each textbook are compared with respect to translation of the English tense system. Both Quackenbos and Pinneo explain English has six tenses in the indicative mood. Quackenbos, for instance, postulated present, imperfect(past), perfect, pluperfect, first future and second future. Since the Japanese tense system with only three morphological distinctions(present, past and future) is simpler than that of English, some new tense forms, therefore, must be created in the Japanese translation. It is shown that these newly created tense forms are consistently used in the Japanese translation of the two textbooks. Assuming that linguistic styles are generally identified by the sentence ending forms, it is claimed that the newly created tense forms constitute important elements that determine the Obun Chokuyakutai(the style of translating English).
