決して降伏しない kesshite kōfuku shinai Never Surrender
決して降伏しない (kesshite kōfuku shinai), never surrender, now renders Churchill's we shall never surrender of June 1940, but the Japanese sentence was in print first: a 1921 translation of Victor Hugo has exiles standing in the breach 決して降伏しない決心で, resolved never to surrender.
Abstract
決して降伏しない, never surrender, is the Japanese of Churchill's we shall never surrender, which closes his speech of 4 June 1940 after Dunkirk. The Japanese does not render Churchill: it is an ordinary Japanese sentence, and its oldest print is a 1921 translation of Victor Hugo, nineteen years before the English was spoken.
Overview
The sense. Never surrender is Churchill's, June 1940. The Japanese is a plain negative, a resolution, not a shout.
The words. 降伏 kōfuku, surrender: 戦いに負けたことを認めて、相手に従うこと, to admit defeat and submit, the word of 無条件降伏; first cited from the 続日本紀 for 740 [1]. 決して kesshite with a negative is never.
The text in English. The plain negative is what a rendering keeps: 決して降伏しない is a resolution, as we shall never surrender is.
The historical record
1921. Churchill's sentence, already Japanese. We shall never surrender closes the speech of 4 June 1940 after Dunkirk [2]. The Japanese sentence does not render Churchill; it predates him. Its oldest print is a translation of a French author a generation earlier: 決して降伏しない in a 1921 Hugo, in a speech about exiles standing in the breach 決して降伏しない決心で, resolved never to surrender [3]. Ordinary Japanese, in print before Churchill said it in English.
What is not a source. The Hugo page is the oldest print of an ordinary Japanese sentence, not a translation of Churchill. The sentence has no author.
A reading
The pleasure here is the order of events: the Japanese was in print in 1921, in a translation of Hugo, before the English was spoken. What renders Churchill today is a sentence Japanese already had for the same resolve.
Notes
- Churchill's date. 4 June 1940, the House of Commons.
References
- 「降伏」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/降伏-63085
- Winston Churchill, "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" (4 June 1940), International Churchill Society. https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-1946-churchill-in-war-and-peace/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/
- ヴィクトル・ユーゴー, ユーゴー全集, 1921, scan 440. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1718764/1/440