Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuches (1881) is an unfinished posthumous novel that was originally planned to have two volumes, but only had the first ten chapters of the first volume finished. The novel has a story very unlike that of a typical novel, enough to make one doubt that it was written in the 19th century at all, wherein two retired clerks venture beyond their skills and pursue various fields of study, such as agriculture, pedagogy, science, and literature, and then they go through a repetitious formula in which they struggle with one field and then give up on it to pursue another one. Now, that may sound boring, but strangely enough, as you immerse yourself in the story, it gets extremely funny. It is consistently hilarious. Furthermore, when you read it carefully, you find that the episodes are more than mere nonsense comedies and that they deal with important matters regarding the history of 19th century knowledge. And this is because Flaubert is known to have read over 1,500 books and to have written detailed notes as he read them to write this encyclopedic novel. In my translation, I aimed to properly translate the vast terminology of this unique novel and used notes to elucidate the context of the science history of the setting. I also implemented variations in the prose to prevent the translation from falling into any excessive dullness, and worked hard to replicate the novel’s unique eccentricity. It was my first literary translation, and it was certainly no easy task for me, but when I think about it now, I have a feeling that I spent a very profound several years with the pleasant company of Bouvard and Pécuches.