Introduction

It is claimed that foreign women in Japanese translations use perfectly feminine language, which is not really used by Japanese women (Nakamura 2012: 9–11). In fact, quantitative and qualitative analyses have demonstrated that female characters’ speech is likely to be represented as overly feminine in Japanese translation, whatever their personalities in the original texts. This tendency is seen in the texts of various literary genres such as classics , contemporary novels, children’s literature, as well as in the subtitles of films adapted from texts of these genres (Furukawa 2016a). In addition, it is interesting to note that, when considering gender influence on the use of feminine language, male translators are more prone to render female characters’ speech with feminine language than are female translators (Furukawa 2016b).

This feminine language is called “women’s language” in Japanese and it has been a norm in society for over a century (Nakamura 2001: 208). Therefore, as Miyako Inoue points out, the ideological function cannot be ignored:

If we recognize women’s language not as mere gender difference in language, but as a mode of the broader social formation and of the constitution of the subject, historically and politically bound up with other domains of cultural practice, then we need to recognize the productivity of discourse… (Inoue 2006: 15)

If we take Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (Even-Zohar 2012) into account, translated texts are regarded as a part of the Japanese system, and representation in translated texts is inevitably related to various aspects of Japanese society such as historical or political aspects (Even-Zohar 2012: 167). Locating this view within gender issues in the Japanese context is particularly important because female speech in Japanese literature is considered to be a representation of how women are supposed to speak in society (Nakamura 2007: 49–52). In fact, a female translator, Kaori Oshima admits in her article ‘Onna ga Onna wo Yakusutoki’ (When a Woman Translates a Woman) (Oshima 1990: 42–43), that she is likely to use feminine language when she translates female speech or writing, being influenced by feminine ideals. In addition, Yoko Tawada (2013: 9), a Japanese novelist and poet, writes that it was once pointed out to her by an editor that female characters’ speech in her novel sounded too feminine, though Tawada does not use women’s language in conversations. She then adds that it may have happened because she wanted to differentiate female speech from male speech. This means that Tawada relied on a stereotype of women when creating female speech. As these examples show, the use of women’s language is influenced by social expectations of women, and Japanese literature, including translated texts, functions as a mediator of gender ideology in Japanese society. Thus, I have suggested elsewhere (Furukawa 2016b) that female speech can be “de-feminized” in order to modify gender representation in Japanese translation.

In a Western view, feminist translation is often expected to emphasize the femininity of women writers or characters in translation to make women visible to the audience (Simon 1996; von Flotow 1997). However, because Japanese translation has overly feminized the representations of women, and the convention has become a norm within the literary system, the opposite approach is needed in the Japanese context . As Sherry Simon (1996) and Luise von Flotow (1997) suggest, if we become aware that representations in translated texts are influenced by gender ideology , on the one hand, and that such representations themselves influence our thoughts on female ideals in society, on the other, then, if we change the representations in translation and the approach to the act of translation, literary translation may be able to change the social expectations of women. As a result, the social position of women might be raised to where it should be.

In practice, nevertheless, it seems difficult to realize de-feminizing translation because of publishers’ or readers ’ expectations of translated texts. The case I intend to explore in this chapter is one in which a translator intended to de-feminize a female character’s speech in the Japanese translation but the attempt was hindered to some extent in the published version. Hence this chapter will investigate this case by exploring the following two questions: (1) what did the translator intend, but fail, to do? and (2) what were the causes of the failure? I encountered this case when the translator Yu Okubo mentioned, in personal conversations, that it did not seem easy to achieve de-feminizing translation in reality although he agreed with the idea in theory, and then introduced this case.

The case is the Japanese translation of The Yellow Face, written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1893. It was translated in 2008 by Yu Okubo, a male Japanese translator. This case is worth investigating because it serves to illustrate how norms have influenced the translator, the translation process and the product. The investigation will help make it easier to locate translated texts within the Japanese cultural and social sphere. This research will also explore whether de-feminizing translation is possible, and, if it is, how it can be realized.

This chapter will first analyze Okubo’s first and final draft , and the published version, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in order to see how far the shadow translations are de-feminized and the accepted version is feminized. Henceforth, a “shadow translation” in this chapter means a text behind the published version; that is, an unpublished translation. After the data analysis, I present an interview with the translator to explore what happened in the translation process, and how translational norms in the Japanese literary system affected him in his practice. Through the investigation, this chapter attempts to describe the translational phenomena and norms in Japanese translation from a feminist perspective.

This investigation adopts a process- and product-oriented descriptive study approach , focusing on the translations, as was proposed by Gideon Toury (2012: 4–8, 18–25), and intends to understand the texts as “facts of target cultures” (Toury 2012: 23). For this purpose, it deals with a single case. A case study is defined by Robert Stake , one of the pioneers of case study research, as “the study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity within important circumstances” (Stake 1995: xi). However small the number of instances is, an intensive investigation will nevertheless enable us to have “tentative ideas about the social phenomenon … and ‘how it all came about ’” (Swanborn 2012: 3).

The Yellow Face in Japanese

The Yellow Face is a Sherlock Holmes story about a man who is in doubt about his wife. When the protagonist Grant Munro notices that his wife Effie visits a house secretly at midnight, he becomes suspicious about her behaviour and the possibility of her having an affair. He investigates the house and finds a mysterious yellow face in the window of the house. Then he asks Sherlock Holmes to reveal the truth .

Okubo’s translation of The Yellow Face is a retranslation of the text translated by Otokichi Mikami in 1930. Mikami’s translation was published with the title Kiiro na Kao (literally, The Yellow Face) in The Complete Collection of the World Detective Stories, Vol. 3. This collection comprises twenty volumes and was published by the Tokyo-based publisher Heibonsha. Though the book itself is now out-of-print, this translation is freely available online at a Japanese digital library called Aozorabunko.Footnote 1

In 2008, nearly eighty years later, Okubo re-translated The Yellow Face and published it with the title Tsuchiiro no Kao (literally, The Sallow Face, Okubo 2008a) as an audio book from Panrolling, another Tokyo-based publisher. Because it is an audio book, the audience is relatively small. According to Okubo (2015a), it sold in small numbers of about 1000. He said that the readers are mainly in the 20–50 age bracket, and that there are more male readers than female. When translating the story, the translator Okubo tried to modify some archaic expressions seen in Mikami’s translation. Moreover, he intended to de-feminize the speech of the protagonist Effie because he was aware of the over-feminizing convention in Japanese literature, and did not want to support the convention (Okubo 2015a).

Following our conversation mentioned above, Okubo and I corresponded via email. He sent me an early draft which attempted to de-feminize Effie’s speech and the final version which ended in a shadow translation . As for the published version, I purchased a copy of the audio book and transcribed it. In addition, Mikami’s translation was downloaded from the Aozorabunko website for a comparison with Okubo’s translations. After analysing these texts, I held an interview about the translation and its process with Okubo in the following year.

A Text Analysis

This chapter now turns to the actual text analysis. This analysis is conducted on the following four texts as stated above: Mikami’s translation, Okubo’s early draft , Okubo’s final version and the published translation. According to Okubo (2015a), he made several different versions when developing the early draft into the final version. Okubo sent the draft to the director of the project, Takeshi Sasaki, who is a voice actor himself, and they discussed it two or three times via email. In addition, a female voice actor, Yoko Asagami, who plays the part of Effie, read aloud the translation and sent an email to him with some suggestions for changes. Okubo adopted some of the suggestions when finalizing his translation. Then when Sasaki and Asagami recorded the audiobook, they modified Okubo’s final version without asking Okubo for permission. As a result, Okubo’s final version ended in a shadow translation because it was not accepted and published as it was.

The analysis is conducted on the use of sentence-final particles, which are representative of feminine language in Japanese . By adding a sentence-final particle, speakers of the Japanese language are able to index the level of femininity or masculinity in their utterances. For instance, when stating the meaning of “I’ll sleep” in Japanese, there will be several options: “neru wa” (I’ll sleep + particle “wa”: strongly feminine), “neru no” (I’ll sleep + particle “no”: moderately feminine), “neru” (I’ll sleep: neutral), “neru yo” (I’ll sleep + particle “yo”: moderately masculine), and “neru zo” (I’ll sleep + particle “zo”: strongly masculine). The analysis focuses on this feature of the language, and collects the use of sentence-final particles from the speech of the female protagonist Effie, classifying them into five categories according to Shigeko Okamoto and Chie Sato’s methodology (1992: 480–482): (1) strongly feminine, (2) moderately feminine, (3) strongly masculine, (4) moderately masculine and (5) neutral sentence-final forms with no gender indexing.

Mikami’s Translation and Okubo’s Early Draft

First, I will report on the quantitative analysis of Mikami’s translation and the early draft of Okubo’s translation to see how far Okubo succeeded in de-feminizing Effie’s speech. For this analysis, all of Effie’s speech was collected by hand, and the sentence-final particles were classified into five categories as indicated above. From the result shown in Table 1, the most remarkable difference between the two texts is the decline in feminine forms. The percentage of feminine forms dropped by 20.37 percent in Okubo’s early draft compared to Mikami’s translation. When exploring the breakdown of feminine forms, the percentage of strongly feminine forms considerably decreased from 40.00 percent to 8.64 percent. The decrease of 31.36 percent is remarkable. On the other hand, the percentage of moderately feminine forms increased by 10.99 percent from 21.11 percent to 32.10 percent. Okubo tries overall not to use feminine forms in Effie’s speech as much as Mikami did, and relies on moderately feminine forms instead of avoiding strongly feminine forms. Neither translation uses masculine forms in the speech, and the rate of neutral forms rose by 20.37 percent from Mikami’s translation to Okubo’s early draft corresponding to the decline in feminine forms.

Table 1 Percentage of gendered sentence-final forms (Mikami’s translation and Okubo’s early draft )
Full size table

Let us see how Okubo de-feminized Effie’s speech in the draft through a qualitative investigation of an actual sentence. This is a passage extracted from the story, and the original sentence says “I have not been here before” (Conan Doyle 2007a: 685).

(1) Original (685): “I have not been here before.”

Mikami (n.p.): 私、今までここへ来たことなんかありません わ。

     (Watashi, imamade koko he kitakotonanka arimasen- wa.)

Okubo’s early draft (n.p.): ここに来たのは初めてだけど。

     (Koko ni kitanoha hajimetedakedo.)

When comparing the Japanese translation of the sentence in Mikami’s translation to that in Okubo’s early draft, both have almost the same meaning. However, Mikami’s translation makes a politer impression on readers. There are chiefly two reasons for this. First, Effie in Mikami’s translation uses the combination of the polite form of “ない” (nai) (be not), “ありません” (arimasen), and the strongly feminine sentence-final particle “わ” (wa). This usage is one of the most contested features of women’s language (Kobayashi 2007: 42–66). Thus, by using the expression “ありませんわ” (arimasen-wa) (have not been), Effie in Mikami’s translation shows that she is sophisticated, polite, formal and feminine. On the other hand, Effie in Okubo’s early draft uses neither a polite form nor a feminine sentence-final particle, and says “初めてだけど” (hajimetedakedo) (it was the first time, though). Moreover, the use of the conjunction “だけど” (dakedo) (though) has the effect that Effie speaks to her husband casually and feels easy with him.

The second feature is that Mikami’s translation does not omit the first pronoun “私” (watashi). This use is contradictory to the general rule in Japanese conversation where first-person pronounsFootnote 2 are likely to be omitted unless it will cause a misunderstanding without them (Masuoka 2014: 170). If we indicate our presence with a first-person pronoun in every sentence we utter, it will give the impression that the speaker is polite and formal. Politeness is one of the characteristics of women’s language (Inoue 2006: 2), and the use makes Effie in Mikami’s translation more feminine than in Okubo’s, although the use of the first-person pronoun is not presented in the quantitative data in Table 1, in which the focus is the sentence-final particles alone. In addition, some people may find the frequent use of the first-person pronoun too formal, or to be closer to a written style than a spoken style.

Okubo’s Early Draft and the Final Version

As the next step, Okubo’s early draft is compared to his final version to explore whether he made any changes in the translation process. This analysis was conducted under the same conditions as above, and the result is displayed in Table 2. In the final version, Okubo further reduced the percentage of feminine forms from 40.74 percent to 37.04 percent. If we explore the breakdown of feminine forms, there is no change in the use of strongly feminine forms and the percentage of moderately feminine forms dropped by 3.7 percent from the early draft to the final version. Okubo uses no masculine forms in Effie’s speech in either of his translations. As a result, the use of neutral forms slightly increased.

Table 2 Percentage of gendered sentence-final forms (Okubo’s early draft and final version)
Full size table

Here is an extract which shows how Okubo removed a feminine sentence-final particle from his translation. For the translation of the sentence “… My child survived” (Conan Doyle 2007a: 691), Okubo used the moderately feminine sentence-final particle “の” (no) in his early draft, and Effie says “生き残ったの” (ikinokotta-no) (survived). However, he omitted the particle in the final version and used the expression “生き残って” (ikinokotte) (survived), a variation of the normative form “生き残った” (ikinokotta) (survived). The expression “生き残って” (ikinokotte) sounds rather unfinished as a sentence and indicates that Effie leaves something unsaid. Moreover, it sounds more gentle than the normative form “生き残った” (ikinokotta), which is a clear declaration. Therefore, Effie in Okubo’s final version still sounds gentle to some extent. Nevertheless, Okubo’s final version is less feminized than his early draft, which used the moderately feminine sentence-final particle “の” (no).

(2) Original (691): “… My child survived.”

Okubo early draft (n.p.): 子どもは生き残った の。

       (Kodomo ha ikinokotta- no.)

Okubo final version (n.p.): 子どもは生き残って。

        (Kodomo ha ikinokotte.)

Okubo’s Shadow Translation and the Accepted Translation

Lastly, the final version (the shadow translation ) is compared to the published translation (the accepted translation) to see how Okubo’s intention of de-feminizing translation was hindered and how far the accepted version was feminized. This analysis also applies the same conditions as the previous studies. The result in Table 3 shows a slight growth of 4.93 percent in the percentage of feminine forms: from 37.04 percent to 41.97 percent. As for the breakdown of feminine forms, there is again no change in strongly feminine forms, and only the use of moderately feminine forms has increased. Furthermore, neither uses any masculine forms. Thus, we see that the director Sasaki and the voice actor Asagami turned Okubo’s translation into a slightly feminized one. Despite Okubo’s intention of de-feminizing translation , the published translation hampered his intention.

Table 3 Percentage of gendered sentence-final forms (Okubo’s final version and published version)
Full size table

If we analyse the published version qualitatively, the Japanese translation of the passage analysed above “… My child survived” (Conan Doyle 2007a: 691) regained the moderately feminine sentence-final particle “の” (no) in the published version, and Effie says “生き残ったの” (ikinokotta-no) (survived) as follows.

(3) Original (691): “… My child survived.”

Okubo published version (n.p.): 子どもは生き残った の。

        (Kodomo ha ikinokotta- no.)

Moreover, although Okubo’s early draft and its final version do not use a sentence-final particle in the sentence “… Our whole lives are at stakes in this …,” the published translation uses the moderately feminine sentence-final particle “の” (no) in some sentences (see Example 4). Overall, the published version tends to use more feminine particles than Okubo’s early and final versions as indicated in the quantitative analysis.

(4) Original (685): “… Our whole lives are at stakes in this. …”

Okubo early version (n.p.): あたしたちふたりの人生がかかってる。

        (Atashitachi futari no jinsei ga kakatteru.)

Okubo final version (n.p.): あたしたちふたりの人生がかかってる。

        (Atashitachi futari no jinsei ga kakatteru.)

Okubo published version (n.p.): あたしたちふたりの人生がかかってるの。

        (Atashitachi futari no jinsei ga kakatteru-no.)

Above, all the quantitative data are displayed in Table 4. It is worth noting that the percentage of feminine forms in the published version, 41.97 percent, is actually higher than that in Okubo’s early draft , 40.74 percent. The percentages of strongly feminine forms are the same, so the frequency of moderately feminine forms has risen in the published version. Even though the published version is much less feminized than Mikami’s translation, it is not in accordance with Okubo’s intention. Furthermore, it is important to remember that the modification was made without Okubo’s agreement .

Table 4 Percentage of gendered sentence-final forms (translations by Mikami and Okubo)
Full size table

An Interview with the Translator

We have seen what happened to Effie’s language use in the translation process through the quantitative and qualitative investigation so far. This section will explore how and why it happened through the interview with the translator Okubo. The interview was held in Japanese and the questions and answers have been translated into English by the author.

Question (Q):  :

Who changed the final version?

Answer (A): :

The director and the voice actor Takeshi Sasaki and the voice actress Yoko Asagami. The changes were made when they were recording the audio book, and I wasn’t there.

As mentioned in section “A Text Analysis”, the changes were made in his absence. Even though Okubo discussed the text with Sasaki and Asagami by e-mail, Okubo did not have a chance to make any objection to their final decision.

Q: :

Why do you think it happened?

A: :

When I was translating, Effie’s speech style seemed neutral. But for the voice actor (and the director) and the voice actress, it may have seemed too strong. It is a norm that female characters use feminine sentence-final particles in Japanese literature. In such a world, it is neutral to use feminine sentence-final particles, and if we don’t use them, the text will look foregrounded. I wouldn’t have known how strong the norm was if I hadn’t attempted the de-feminizing translation .

Okubo used the word “neutral” here. This word can be interpreted as “normative” in this context , thus the sentence can be paraphrased as “… it is a norm to use sentence-final particles, and if we don’t use them, the text will look foregrounded.” As Toury (2012: 61–77) argues , the act of translation is restricted by norms, and translators are never free from these influences. Norms are what society accepts as appropriate and they influence translators to a considerable extent in their decision making. For instance, norms can encourage translators to avoid colloquialisms and use elevated style in their translations for educational reasons. A study on the French, German and Spanish translations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Jentsch 2006) shows that all translators rendered one of the characters, Hagrid, who is distinguished from others by his “less-educated and uncultured” (Jentsch 2006: 195) accent, into the language with “normal vocabulary and syntax” (ibid.). Although this strategy is probably to avoid offending speakers with a particular accent, as Jentsch assumes, it may also be to teach children proper vocabulary and syntax rather than improper forms.

In the context of this example, the translational norm is concerned with how women are expected to behave or speak in Japanese society, which is the target culture. What Okubo pointed out here is that if he had not followed the norm, the text would look unnatural to the audience. As discussed in the Introduction, and as Okubo stated in the previous sentence, the over-feminizing convention has become a norm in Japanese literature. A passage in Minae Mizumura’s 2002 novel Honkaku Shousetsu (A True Novel) may serve as a good example to illustrate how strong the norm in Japanese literature is. In the story, a man describes a woman’s speaking style as follows, “… her language use which we only find in novels …” (Mizumura 2016: 239, my translation). Although, ironically, both the man and the woman are also characters in the novel, this expression indicates that readers take for granted that female characters’ language is overly feminized, and that there is a clear discrepancy between literary language and real-life language. Okubo’s answer supports the understanding, from the translator’s side, that the convention of feminizing women’s speech in Japanese translation is deeply rooted in society.

Moreover, he noted the function of sentence-final particles to indicate the gender of speakers in Japanese literature. If we use them in dialogues in a novel, whether original or translated, it is easy for the readers to identify the gender of the speaker, or who the speaker is. Tawada (2013: 9) mentions this point in the Introduction. In English, for instance, it is not always easy to recognize it from the dialogues themselves. Thus, sentence-final particles can be a useful tool for readers. In the case of audiobooks, it will also be useful for voice actors and actresses to prevent them from becoming confused which dialogue is uttered by which character .

Q: :

How did you feel when you noticed that the text had been changed?

A: :

I am a professional translator and don’t take a stand against it. However, I realized how disappointing it was when I noticed the changes.

Some may think that he is not a professional translator if he did not object to the publisher’s decision. If he was hired as a professional translator, then he should have claimed the validity of his strategy and should not have accepted the decision easily. When this case was presented at an international conference, there was in fact a comment like this. He added a reason as to why he did not object to the decision.

A: :

If it is an audiobook and some changes are to be made after the recording, it will cause an additional cost and the publication process will become longer. So translators understand the situation and that some changes could be made during the recording process in their absence. I think that my position as a translator would not have become worse even if I had made some objections. However, I know that we cannot always give priority to our translation strategies and I consider my decision not to say a word to the publisher “a professional judgement.” Even so, I was very down when I saw the changes because it means that my intention had not been conveyed to the voice actors Sasaki and Asagami clearly.

In the Japanese publishing world, it is not common to make an objection to publishers’ decisions since translators want to avoid losing their contracts. In this case, Okubo said that he did not accept the decision readily and explained the intention of de-feminizing Effie’s speech before accepting it. Even so, he did not know of the changes that were made in the final stage of the publication process until its publication. In this sense, the publisher held absolute power over the translator.

Q: :

Do you think it is impossible to de-feminize female speech in translation?

A: :

There will be some ways to do it. But to make it happen, the power of translators and original texts is absolutely necessary. I will look for a text that I can try it out with in the future. But women’s language (the use of feminine sentence-final particles) is a powerful enemy.

As shown in the previous question, publishers have more power than translators in the decision-making process. Even so, if a translator is powerful enough in the literary world or in the target culture, such as Haruki Murakami or other celebrity translators, there will be a way to insist on the validity of their translation strategy. Or, if a translation is being awaited by the target culture, such as the Harry Potter series, the situation might be different. In this sense, Okubo stated “the power of translators and original texts is absolutely necessary.”

In the last sentence, Okubo described women’s language as “a powerful enemy.” This is a strong expression. However, in this particular case, the convention of the use of feminine sentence-final particles stood in his way and made the publisher “correct” his translation so that the translated text follows the norm . Thus, it is understandable that he sees the convention as an opponent to be faced.

A: :

After translating The Yellow Face, I became hesitant about de-feminizing women’s speech and set myself a kind of a limit. In fact, in the next translation Kuchibiru no Nejireta Otoko (2008b), a Japanese translation of Conan Doyle’s The Man with the Twisted Lip (2007b), I translated the utterances of Dr. Watson’s wife and her friend in a very feminine way. The feminine language use actually surprised me when it was published. For a while, I did not try to go against the convention at all.

Though he said “I will look for a text that I can try it out with in the future” in the previous answer, he also confessed that he had started hesitating to challenge at the same time, as displayed above. In fact, his choice of language use became conservative enough to surprise even himself.

Example 5 is an excerpt of the wife’s speech at the beginning of the story . She is talking with her friend who is visiting her house. These two sentences use the strongly feminine sentence-final particles “よ” (yo) and “かしら” (kashira), which Okubo seems to have avoided in Effie’s speech. The frequency of feminine particles in this utterance is considerably higher than those in his translation of The Yellow Face. From this example, we can see the backlash against de-feminizing translation that Okubo experienced.

(5) Original (521): “It was very sweet of you to come…

    Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?”

Okubo (n.p.): いつでも大歓迎よ。…

ジェイムズには先に寝ててもらった方がいいかしら?

    (Itsudemo daikangei-yo…

    Jeimuzu niha sakini netetemorattahouga ii-kashira?)

Seven years after the translation Kuchibiru no Nejireta Otoko, and after the interview, Okubo tried a de-feminizing translation strategy when translating an interview with Terryl Whitlatch, a creature designer and concept artist. The interview is included in the Japanese translation of her book Science of Creature Design: Understanding Animal Anatomy (Okubo 2015b). He tried to use women’s language as little as possible, and the translation was accepted without any opposition . According to Okubo, there are two reasons for this acceptance. For one thing, the gender of the editor is female; for another it is an art book. One of the voice actors for The Yellow Face is female and it would be hasty to draw the conclusion that female editors are more willing to publish with less feminized speech. However, the gender of the book editor may have affected the translation strategy. Furthermore, the book genre may be an important factor in realizing de-feminizing translation . As cited above, Japanese audiences are accustomed to reading over-feminized language use in female characters’ speech in novels, and it may cause a sense of discomfort to the reader more when it is tried in novels than in other genres.

However, even in literature, there may be some positive developments. Natsuki Ikezawa, one of the most prominent novelists in Japan, praises a translation for its de-feminizing strategy. The translation has been published in his own edition of a complete collection of world literature . In the very first part of the novel Howards End, three letters written by the female protagonist Helen are presented. Ikezawa writes about this passage that it does not use women’s language and yet it fully expresses the original character’s thoughts and the style of the original text (Ikezawa 2008: 498–499). He also describes women’s language as “decoration to make sentences like young women’s” (Ikezawa 2008: 499, my translation), which sounds somewhat disapproving of women’s language. He has won many literary awards in Japan and is also well known as a poet and a translator. If more statements by influential people like this appear and promote public awareness of this ideologically encouraged convention, the over-feminizing convention may be able to make a gradual shift towards de-feminizing.

Some Implications of This Shadow Translation

This chapter has investigated the case of the Japanese translation of The Yellow Face through both the quantitative and qualitative analysis and the interview with the translator. And three points have been drawn from this investigation.

First, there was actually a translator who had an uncomfortable feeling towards the over-feminizing convention in Japanese literature. Because the over-feminizing convention has long been a norm in Japanese literature, readers and translators are likely to take it for granted. As a result, female characters’ speaking style is exaggeratedly feminine despite the discrepancy with real Japanese women’s language use. Even so, the existence of a person like Okubo, who objected to the norm and actually challenged it, has a significant meaning. It is also worth highlighting that the translator is male, not female.

Second, the interview with Okubo revealed that the influence of the translator was limited in the translation process. Even though he had the intention and took the relevant action, it was not easy to de-feminize female characters’ speech. This fact implies that the position of translators in the Japanese literary system does not allow them to have an advantage over publishers, and over the norm .

Third, the act of translation was restricted by norms not because of the translator, but because of other agents such as the director and voice actor in this case. It seems that Okubo’s intention was hindered because of “the expectations of readers of a translation (of a given type) concerning what a translation (of this type) should be like” (Chesterman 2016: 62, emphasis in original). However, there is no empirical clue that readers actually expect a certain language use in translated texts. It is possible that the expectations of readers that publishers assume are not the same as the expectations of actual readers. Thus, more research will be needed to explore what readers exactly expect of translated texts.

This research sees translation from a feminist perspective and considers that language use in translations is influenced by gender ideology , and that the language also influences women in how to behave or speak. As Even-Zohar (2012) claimed , translation does not exist alone but is located within various systems such as social, cultural, historical or political systems. Therefore, it is essential to place translation within a larger context . If we consider literary translation as representative of the widespread ideas in society, translations can be used as a tool to protest the ideas and to raise women’s position in society. As von Flotow puts it, “translation, it can be argued, is as intentional, as activist, as deliberate as any feminist or otherwise socially-activist activity” (2011: 4). To make translation a “socially-activist activity,” it is important to change our perceptions towards the representations of women and the language use in translated texts.Footnote 3