ABSTRACT
The pioneering figure in the study of translation and the modern Japanese language since the 1970s, Yanabu Akira (b. 1928) has written many of the seminal texts in this field, as can be seen from the annotated bibliography at the end of this volume. The following selections represent one of his most recent essays, “In the beginning was the Word,” and the first and last chapters from Translation Words: Formation and Background (Hon’yakugo seiritsu jijō, Iwanami Shinsho, 1982), his most widely read and frequently cited work.1
