The Speckled Band

The Speckled Band is one of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When I first read its Japanese version as a junior high school student, it was pretty much disappointing because I guessed the murder weapon correctly in the early stage of the novel. 

One day, when twenty years had passed since then, I realized that the childhood disappointment was caused by a gap between Japanese and English. That was when I was reading 翻訳の基本 [Basics of Translation], a Japanese essay on mistranslation, by Takao Miyawaki. The author was a renowned Japanese literary translator, whose works mostly consisted of mystery novels. 

He writes in the essay: 

非業の死を遂げた人物が、臨終の言葉に、speckled bandとつぶやく。これはどういう意味だろう、と誰もが不思議に思う。speckledは「斑点のある」だが、bandには、包帯、紐、帯、筋、縞、楽隊、集団、とさまざまな意味があり、不可解な雰囲気が盛り上がるのだ。

もちろん、それは原文で読んだときのことで、翻訳では、最初から、「まだらの紐」とつぶやいたことになっている。仕方のないことだが、やや雰囲気に欠けると言わざるを得ない。

[A person who dies a violent death mumbles in her dying moments, "speckled band." Any reader would probably wonder what that means. The word "speckled" means covered with small spots, while "band" has various meanings including a bandage, a string, a belt, a streak, a musical group, and a group of people. And the ambiguity of the word fuels the mysterious atmosphere of the story. 

Of course, that's only when you read the original. In the Japanese version, the victim blatantly says, まだらの紐, or spotted string. It's inevitable to translate that way, but I have to say that the translation ruined the atmosphere in the original.] 

That's right. There is no exact Japanese equivalent of "band", so the translator had to use the word "紐", which, in most contexts, refers to a long thin material used for tying things together unlike its original word. That has made it easier for readers to deduct the truth behind the dying message. When I first saw the translated phrase, the first thing came up to my mind was that rope-like creature which could potentially be a deadly weapon.