Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia [1 ed.] 9781788740227, 9781788740234, 9781788740241, 9781788740258

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New Trends

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T r a n s l at i o n S t u d i e s Vol. 27

Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia

Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko Uchiyama (eds)

Peter Lang

New Trends

in

T r a n s l at i o n S t u d i e s

‘Rich in detail, this is a welcome and well-researched addition to the body of writing on translation in Asia and a must-read introduction for anyone interested in learning more specifically about the diversity of translation practices in historical and contemporary contexts in China, Taiwan, Japan, and North and South Korea.’ – Judy Wakabayashi, Professor of Japanese Translation, Kent State University, and co-editor of Asian Translation Traditions (2005) This edited volume showcases essays revolving around diverse translation discourses and practices in China, Korea and Japan. Knowledge transfer and cultural exchanges have historically flourished in East Asia and translation functions as an important social, cultural and political tool to this day. The essays in this volume discuss a wide range of historical and contemporary subjects, each examining distinctive translational activities and foregrounding their cultural significance in their respective time and place. They give a voice to various translational traditions in East Asia, where regional particularities and interlinkages are in effect. The contributors bring together different areas of expertise, such as the history of translation, political activism and translation, literary translation, transcreation and the translation profession. Nana Sato-Rossberg is Chair of the SOAS Centre for Translation Studies and convenor of the MA in Translation at SOAS, University of London. Her current research interests include cultural translation, translation in oral societies and cultures, Japanese translation studies history, and novelization as translation.

Akiko Uchiyama is a Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland, Australia.

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Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia

New Trends

in

T r a n s l at i o n S t u d i e s

Volume 27

Series Editor:  Professor Jorge Díaz Cintas

A dviso r y Boa rd: P r o fesso r S us a n Ba s s ne tt Dr Lyn n e B owk e r P r o fesso r Fre de ric C ha ume P r o fesso r A line Re ma e l

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia

Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko Uchiyama (eds)

PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd. ISSN 1664-249X ISBN 978-1-78874-022-7 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78874-023-4 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-78874-024-1 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78874-025-8 (mobi) © Peter Lang AG 2019 Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom [email protected], www.peterlang.com

Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko Uchiyama have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this Work. All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed.

Contents

List of Tables   vii Acknowledgements   ix Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko Uchiyama

Introduction   1 part i  Translation in Historical and Political Contexts

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Peter Kornicki

1 The Origins and Development of Translation Traditions in Pre-Modern East Asia   9 Sharon Tzu-yun Lai

2 Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987   29 Nana Sato-Rossberg

3 The Emergence of Translation Studies in Japan in the 1970s   53 part ii  Women Translators and Women in Translation 75 Akiko Uchiyama

4 Translating as Writing: Wakamatsu Shizuko’s Empathetic Translation as a Creative Literary Art   77

vi Theresa Hyun

5 Translating/Transforming Women in North Korea: Traditions, Foreign Correspondences and the Creation of the Socialist Woman in the 1950s and 1960s   99 part iii  New Media Translation

125

Thomas Kabara

6 The Cultures of Professional Subtitling and Fansubbing: Tradition and Innovation in Audiovisual Translation in Japan   125 Yeong-ae Yamashita

7 A Gender-Based Analysis of the Translation of South Korean TV Dramas in Japan   149 Xiaochun Zhang and Minako O’Hagan

8 Transcreation in Game Localization in China: A Contemporary Functionalist Approach to Digital Interactive Entertainment   181 Notes on Contributors   205 Index   209

Tables

Table 2.1: Examples of banned translations. Source: The Catalogue (1964)   35 Table 2.2: Hong Kong and Taiwan editions of translations from China after 1949   40 Table 2.3: Examples of new translations produced in Hong Kong   42 Table 7.1: Keywords: ‘illegitimate child’ (Episode 13)   160 Table 7.2: Keywords: ‘without giving you up’ (Episode 19)   161 Table 7.3: Episode 19   163 Table 7.4: Examples of the translation of Korean casual language from a mother–son dialogue into onna kotoba in Japanese (Episode 13)   166 Table 7.5: Examples of Korean polite language translated into casual language in Japanese (Episodes 19 & 13)   167 Table 7.6: Patriarchal context (Episode 4)   169 Table 8.1: Script of the cinematic trailers – The Burning Crusade (2007)   194 Table 8.2: Cinematic trailers – Mists of Pandaria (2012) [emphasis added by authors]   194 Table 8.3: In-game text: names of potions in Perfect World   196

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Dr Penny Bailey (The University of Queensland) and Jamie Tokuno (Mutual Images Association) for their help with proofreading and style editing.

Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko Uchiyama

Introduction

A characteristic of translation studies is its integrative view of translators, readers, publishers and other players, together with their motivations and expectations, through the consideration of social, cultural, historical and political factors. This indicates the importance of local context in translation studies research. Although the discipline largely developed in North America and Europe, there is also a growing interest in translation in other parts of the world. However, it often appears that this interest in ‘non-Western’ translation studies is not matched by sufficient research work to explore regional particularities and diversity. To address this bias, it is useful to begin the discussion by asking what ‘translation studies’ constitutes in each region and culture. We believe that this question can be meaningfully addressed only after having established a shared platform showcasing the diversity of backgrounds and approaches to translation. This volume is intended to contribute to the development of such a platform for the discussion of translation in East Asia by presenting research in translation with its distinctive regional voices, while also maintaining a dialogue with ‘Western’ translation studies. East Asia has a rich tradition of translation. As Peter Kornicki explains in this volume, knowledge transfer and cultural exchange were historically active in East Asia, originating from the translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese. Translation in China’s neighbouring countries centred around the Chinese source texts, including Buddhist scriptures transmitted to China from India and Chinese Classics. This played a significant role in shaping the languages and cultures of Korea and Japan. At the turn of the twentieth century, China, Korea and Japan came under Western influence as the colonial powers imposed their presence in Asia. The paradigm of translation activities shifted, with a heightened focus on European and North American source texts. Although the three countries had their own experiences of modernization, these were also interrelated on different levels. In more recent

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years, the circulation of knowledge and innovative ideas in different modes has advanced and diversified, extending to areas such as fashion, popular culture and the entertainment industry. Translation practices in East Asia have flourished against such a background. They appear in various forms and styles, depending on the translational requirements for each situation. By examining the characteristics and features of translation through time and space, one can explore the dynamics of translation practised in East Asia. The contributors to this volume bring together different expertise and perspectives in translation studies, such as translational activities with a political slant, literary translation, the professional translation industry and transcreation. This volume makes these diverse voices available in the English language, our current lingua franca. Research on translation in East Asia is often reported in local languages, and is therefore not readily accessible to the international readership. Such language barriers must not be ignored, but they are too often glossed over. Because regional primary sources will never be fully accessible to interested international research communities whose research areas lie outside that particular region (those primary sources warrant life-long study of and immersion in the source culture), case study type material with a focus on translation is possibly the next best option for international researchers to access these sources. There is merit in conducting such studies without unduly confounding the presentation of the sources to be used in developing theoretical concepts that may be specific to translation in each region. One might wonder whether enough works of this kind are available – for historic and contemporary primary sources from East Asia, this is certainly not the case. Many important primary resources remain unexplored in regional archives even within the local research communities, and documentation of such sources in English is rare. Yet, this is so vital for the discussion of area-based translation and translation studies, considering social, historical and political differences between regions, as well as differences in belief, religion, social conventions and so on. Without understanding these contexts and local translation practices, how do we discuss translation theory relevant to each region? By presenting these primary sources together with their cultural and historic contexts in English, this volume aims to contribute to the discussion of translation studies in East Asia among the community of international

Introduction

3

researchers. It is designed to provide audiences who are interested in translation in East Asia with access to the rich and distinctive cultures of the region. It emphasizes aspects of translation and translation studies where the particularities of East Asia and its regions are especially pronounced. This includes research methods. East Asian cultures generally put stronger emphasis on tradition and practice rather than theoretical constructs. The writing style of research in translation in East Asia therefore tends to be descriptive and nuanced. Such ‘descriptive’ research can offer the advantage of making it accessible and interesting for non-expert audiences as well. The shared platform that we aim to contribute to can further explore theoretical approaches in translation studies. Translation practices in East Asia developed in cultural backgrounds that differ from those in Western contexts. How the translators, readers, publishers and other players operate, as well as their motivations and expectations, are all subject to local factors. The concept of translation, the role translation plays in society, and the status of translators are often different from those in Western contexts. Research in East Asia can therefore offer distinctive and different perspectives from those in Western-oriented translation studies and can also explore whether translation theories of Western origin are relevant when discussing translation in China, Korea and Japan. This would contribute to more inclusive discussions in the field of translation studies overall.

Background of the book This volume is derived from the first East Asian Translation Studies (EATS) conference held in 2014. Nana Sato-Rossberg and Gloria Lee jointly started to plan the conference on East Asian Translation Studies in 2011. It took three years to get off the ground, but finally the EATS conference premiered in 2014 in the UK, followed by the second EATS conference in Tokyo in 2016. Five of the eight contributors to this book were presenters at the first EATS conference. Sato-Rossberg and Lee encountered a challenge at this conference that is often unavoidable at international conferences but will require careful consideration in the longer term. Scholars who research

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translation in East Asian languages often do not give oral presentations or publish their work in English. However, due to the lack of a common language in this region, the conference’s official language had to be English. This is not ideal, because participation in the conference is inevitably limited to those who speak English. As a result, many participants were working on only one East Asian region or on translation between one East Asian language and a Western language, usually English. When compiling this volume, this limitation was addressed by including one chapter that examines TV-drama subtitling from Korean into Japanese. This chapter was originally written in Japanese and has been translated into English. It seems vitally important to promote the translation of research materials in order to increase the volume and diversity of translation research – after all, we are working in the field of translation studies. All other papers in this volume were written by the authors in English.

Organization of the book The book consists of three sections, all of which feature translation and translation studies in East Asia. In the first part, ‘Translation in Historical and Political Contexts’, the phenomena addressed by the authors are specific to the history and political developments of countries in East Asia. ‘The Origins and Development of Translation Traditions in Pre-Modern East Asia’ by Peter Kornicki offers a historical overview, focusing on translation activities in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam up until the end of the nineteenth century. This chapter operates as an introduction to this volume by providing the context in which later translation traditions developed, as well as laying out regional particularities and interlinkages. It discusses the translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese, followed by the examination of translation activities in the neighbouring countries, in which the source texts were almost exclusively in the Chinese language. Sharon Tzu-yun Lai examines multiple cases of pirated translation in ‘Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987’, focusing on the historical background and the political factors

Introduction

5

which gave rise to this phenomenon. During this period, piracy supported the interests of Taiwan’s new political leaders. However, after the identity of the translator and the temporal and spatial context were erased, translation was conceived as nothing more than a decontextualized output. Looking at translation as a political act, Lai brings our attention to the significance of tracking down the ‘true history’ of translation – that is, the ignorance of history must be redressed before the translators and their works can be properly examined. Nana Sato-Rossberg investigates early developments in translation studies in Japan in ‘The Emergence of Translation Studies in Japan in the 1970s’. Based on an analysis of the forgotten and recently rediscovered Japanese journal 『季刊翻訳』Kikan hon’yaku [Quarterly Translation] (1973–1975), she describes the academic understanding of Japanese translation studies and its scope in this early phase, compares it with current positions, and explores why Japanese academia and translation practitioners became estranged in the 1980s, when translation studies in Japan faded into the background. Sato-Rossberg argues that, due to cultural differences, market powers similar to those which drove the rise of translation studies in Europe had entirely different implications in Japan. From her discussion, the contours of translation studies specific to Japan and wider East Asia become apparent. The second part, ‘Women Translators and Women in Translation’, highlights the roles and motivations of women translators. In her ‘Translating as Writing: Wakamatsu Shizuko’s Empathetic Translation as a Creative Literary Art’, Akiko Uchiyama examines one of the earliest translators of Western literature in Japan, Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864–1896), who is known as the first translator of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886). Wakamatsu is described as an active agent of translation who consciously chose works to translate that she thought would convey her way of thinking. Her translation was motivated by her wish to contribute to women’s education and moral development in society. Uchiyama argues that Wakamatsu’s empathetic engagement with the original, based on her literary aspirations, enabled her to produce translations that attracted critical acclaim. The other chapter in this section, ‘Translating/Transforming Women in North Korea: Traditions, Foreign Correspondences and the Creation of the Socialist Woman in the 1950s and 1960s’, offers a rare insight into a country

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that is often described as one of the most reclusive in the world. Theresa Hyun examines translations and original writings by and about women to investigate the role translations played during the formative phase of socialist North Korea. Hyun’s research reveals how their translations contributed to the creation of the socialist woman ideal in the 1950s and 1960s. She also discusses the influence of North Korean government policies on the woman ideal, which imposes on women double roles of the traditional wife and mother and the worker outside the home enlisted to build the socialist nation. The third part, ‘New Media Translation’, covers the rapidly developing area of new media translation. The authors analyse audio-visual material in their particular East Asian context or from their local perspectives. Addressing an exciting recent topic, Thomas Kabara writes about ‘The Cultures of Professional Subtitling and Fansubbing: Tradition and Innovation in Audiovisual Translation in Japan’. He compares amateur and professional subtitling cultures and practices in Japan, with a focus on differences in the concept of translation between these groups. While fansubbing in Japan is a niche phenomenon, professionals are more monopolistic and business-oriented, giving rise to ‘star’ translators. Yeong-ae Yamashita employs a gender-based analysis to investigate a number of characteristics that have become intrinsic to the process of subtitling Korean TV dramas for a Japanese audience. Her essay highlights an interesting transformation of characterization when Korean drama narratives are translated into Japanese. Yamashita examines how the Japanese version obscures the complex patriarchal family structure in Korean society and to some extent distorts the image of characters in the drama. The final chapter, ‘Transcreation in Game Localization in China: A Contemporary Functionalist Approach to Digital Interactive Entertainment’, is co-authored by Xiaochun Zhang and Minako O’Hagan. Because China has received only little attention in the area of video game localization research so far, the primary aim of this paper is to introduce aspects specific to the Chinese context. Zhang and O’Hagan then operationalize the concept of transcreation in the framework of the functionalist approach.

part i

Translation in Historical and Political Contexts

Peter Kornicki

1 The Origins and Development of Translation Traditions in Pre-Modern East Asia

abstract Translation in East Asia has a long history and has its origins in the need to translate Buddhist texts into Chinese. This happened well before the development of vernacular writing systems in neighbouring societies, so techniques were developed in some of them that resulted in oral or mental translations rather than written. The subsequent invention of scripts in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere made written translation possible, but the source texts were almost exclusively imported Chinese texts. This survey examines translation traditions in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam up to the end of the nineteenth century, when English was becoming the dominant source language for translation.

Who is Ha-li Bo-te, or, for that matter, Haeri Potŏ? The Japanese version, Harī Pottā, gives the game away, for they are, of course, the Chinese, Korean and Japanese incarnations of Harry Potter. The Chinese, Korean and Japanese translations of the entire series of Harry Potter books seem to be emblematic of the dynamic translation practices of contemporary East Asian societies, which range from technical and non-fiction translation to the translation of literature from many languages, including children’s literature. But translation in East Asia is more than a matter of translating from Western languages, for equally emblematic is the fact that the novels of Murakami Haruki are available in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese translations. Some modern translation practices can be traced back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when translation from Western languages began in earnest, but what was being translated then was rarely literature and was more often practical, instructional or informative. In the pages that follow I trace the history of translation in East Asia back to its beginnings, in order to lay bare the context in which later traditions developed. I shall mostly focus on China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, but

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shall occasionally mention other societies that no longer exist, such as the Tanguts, for the transmission and translation of Chinese texts was a universal phenomenon in pre-modern East Asia. My focus will be on the translation of texts rather than documents or other forms of translation, and the endpoint will be the second half of the nineteenth century, when translation from Western languages became widespread. The crucible in which early translation traditions were formed was Buddhism. Unlike many other world religions, Buddhist teaching was not only tolerant of translation but also encouraged it for the transmission of the word.1 At first, of course, before Buddhist teachings were committed to writing, translation was oral, and the oral origins of many Buddhist sūtras are reinforced by the opening words, ‘Thus have I heard’. But at least from the first century ad onwards Buddhist teachings were being transformed into scriptures in various languages and scripts, and it was in the form of written texts that Buddhist teaching first reached China. Written texts posed huge problems for the transmission of Buddhism to China: the scripts and the languages were unfamiliar. The need for translation was obvious at the time; Sengyou 僧祐 (445–518), a monk who compiled the oldest surviving bibliography of Buddhist texts, stated that, ‘With translation, transmission is possible; without translation, obscurity is the result’ (Cheung 2006).2 Buddhist texts reached China mostly via the Silk Road; some were carried home by Chinese pilgrims on their way back from Nālandā and other monastic centres in India, while other texts reached what is now the northern part of Vietnam by sea. The process by which Buddhist scriptures as well as commentaries and other texts were translated, and often retranslated, into Chinese covered many centuries. It involved the active collaboration of monks from India and Central Asia, some of whom settled in China and acquired sufficient command of Chinese to be able to contribute to the translation project. The earliest Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures date back perhaps to the second century, but the three main periods of translation activity came later: 1 2

Much of this chapter is based on Kornicki (2018), where more extensive discussion and further references can be found. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (1924–1932), #375, 12.653c17-18. Chu sanzang jiji 出三藏記集, in Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, #2145, 55.5b27.

The Origins and Development of Translation Traditions in Pre-Modern East Asia

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the first lasted from the end of the Han dynasty (206 bc–220 ad) in 220 up to the sixth century, the second coincided with the Tang dynasty (618–907), and the third came at the beginning of the Song dynasty (960–1279). The political geography of China changed from dynasty to dynasty, and translation activity largely followed the political shifts. During the first period, the translations contained unmistakable traces of vernacular forms of Chinese, as non-Chinese translators lacked a classical education and were unable to avoid colloquialisms (Zürcher 2013, 422–6, 513–37, 560–3). In spite of the linguistic difficulties, it was during this period that Kumārajīva (344–413), who came from the Silk Road kingdom of Kucha, and his team of translators, took some of the key texts of Buddhism in East Asia, such as the Diamond Sūtra and the Lotus Sūtra, and transformed them into Chinese texts which had both literary and vernacular elements. By the early sixth century, a sufficient quantity of texts had been translated to be able to speak of a Tripiṭaka, or ‘canon’, of Chinese Buddhism, but it is important to remember that this was a canon of Chinese making, rather than a translation of an imported canon. The ordering and arrangement of the translated texts represented a Chinese attempt to impose order on a vast body of texts, and in this sense the Chinese Buddhist canon was a Chinese creation (Wu 2015). During the Tang Dynasty, the quantity of translations grew, and texts which were thought to have been inaccurately translated earlier were retranslated. It was at this time that Chinese translators came to the fore, the most famous being Xuanzang (600–664), who travelled to India in 629 and came back in 645 with sufficient knowledge of Sanskrit to be able to translate them himself. Buddhism fell into disfavour at the end of the Tang but it recovered and after a gap of more than 100 years a third phase of translation activity took place in the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). More than a thousand texts were brought from India then, and substantial numbers were translated into Chinese at the Institute for the Translation of Sūtras (Yijing yuan 譯經院), which was established by imperial command in 980 at the capital Kaifeng (Sen 2002). Needless to say, none of the imported manuscripts which were translated into Chinese have survived, so we now have no means of ascertaining the nature of the manuscripts translated, or even, in many cases, the language and scripts in which they were written. Furthermore, many Buddhist scriptures

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now survive only in the form of their Chinese and/or Tibetan translations, so there is no source text with which to compare the translations. What we do know is that, as a result of the linguistic problems, of the lack of Chinese translators with the requisite linguistic expertise, and of the need to ensure the accuracy of the translations, the act of translation involved team-work, and each translation went through a succession of stages for drafting, checking, editing and polishing. This process was a characteristic of Buddhist translation in China, and it was not dissimilar to the ‘translation by committee’ and intensive checking undertaken by the teams of scholars who produced the King James Bible (Campbell 2010; Hung 2005; Cheung 2006). Some texts were retranslated in later centuries, which suggests that originals in Sanskrit or in other languages remained available in China, or had at least been preserved in Chinese copies. In this way Buddhist scriptures were transmitted to China and, over the course of many centuries, were translated into Chinese. What is remarkable is that the process largely came to a halt in China. This is not to say that Buddhist scriptures were not transmitted to other parts of East Asia, but they were always transmitted in the form of the Chinese translations, with the result that Buddhism reached neighbouring societies in Chinese garb. Rather, what came to a halt was the continuous process of translation, for the Chinese translations that formed the Chinese Buddhist canon remained standard throughout East Asia until the twentieth century (Kornicki 2018). The obvious explanation for this is the fact that in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and other societies in East Asia there were no scripts for inscribing the vernaculars when Buddhist texts were first transmitted. But that is perhaps an inadequate explanation, for it was precisely the desire to translate the Buddhist scriptures that lay behind the development of scripts with which to inscribe vernacular translations in Tibet in the seventh century and in the Tangut (Xi Xia) empire in the eleventh century (Kwanten 1977, 1989; van Schaik 2011; Scherrer-Schaub 2012). The fact is that there was no similar move in societies further to the east, like Japan, Korea, Vietnam or the Khitan and Jurchen empires, and vernacular scripts were much later to develop there. The explanation for this difference probably lies partly in the lack of exposure in those societies to non-logographic scripts, and the

The Origins and Development of Translation Traditions in Pre-Modern East Asia

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consequent difficulty of relativizing the Chinese script, and partly in the prestige enjoyed by Chinese Buddhism during the Sui and Tang dynasties. The lack of vernacular scripts and therefore of means with which to inscribe translations did not, however, mean that there were no vernacular renderings of Chinese Buddhist scriptures until modern times. On the contrary, techniques evolved for reading Buddhist scriptures in the vernaculars, but orally. We know this because readers in early Korea and Japan left traces of their vernacular readings in the form of dry-point glosses and later of written glosses. Dry-point glosses are marks made in paper using a stylus or the blunt end of a brush in order to reorder the Chinese text so as to suit Japanese or Korean word order and to indicate the syntactic relations between the elements of the text. These marks, which are invisible to the naked eye, give us the first signs of vernacular translation in Japan and Korea, but this form of translation had two peculiarities: it was oral rather than being fully inscribed, and it was a ‘bound’ translation, meaning that the vocabulary was bound to that of the original rather than being replaced by vernacular equivalents (Kornicki 2018: 166). This kind of translation was probably practised in other societies apart from Japan and Korea. Indeed, the earliest known example comes from Beishi 北史 [The History of the Northern Dynasties], which was completed in the mid-seventh century: here it is recorded that in the oasis city of Gaochang (Karakhoja), which lay on the Silk Road, students read the Analects and the Classic of Filial Piety in their own ‘barbarian’ language. No hard evidence in the form of glossed texts survives, but it is evident from this case that Chinese texts were being subjected to vernacular reading by the seventh century (Beishi 1974, 97: 3215). The origins of this kind of practice are now lost, but in East Asia it is now widely accepted that it was transmitted from Korea to Japan in the seventh or eighth century by monks of the Huayan 華厳 [ J. Kegon; K. Hwaŏm; Flower Ornament] school of Buddhism (Kornicki 2018, Chapter 6). In Korea this technique is called sŏktok kugyŏl 釋讀口訣 or hundok 訓讀, and it is evident that Chinese texts were being subjected to vernacular reading by the seventh century. This is clear from the biography of the monk Wŏnhyo 元曉 (617–686), which states that he interpreted the Six Classics in the vernacular, and from the biography of Confucian scholar Sŏl Ch’ŏng 薛聰 (650–730), which states that

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he ‘read the Nine Classics in the vernacular’.3 Dry-point glosses were in use in Korea by the seventh century to indicate how a Chinese text should be understood in Korean, and later a range of inked symbols were used to indicate grammatical relationships and abbreviated characters were used to transcribe vernacular elements such as Korean grammatical inflections and particles. From the thirteenth century onwards, the technique of vernacular reading began to give way to an alternative way of reading Chinese texts known as sundok kugyŏl 順讀口訣. This technique retained the order of the characters in the original text and did no more than add pronunciation glosses and connective words in Korean at the end of phrases. The result enabled a text to be read aloud, but it was not understandable as Korean and therefore cannot be considered to be even a ‘bound translation’ (Kornicki 2018: 170–1). In Japan, kundoku 訓読 [vernacular reading] became the default method of reading Chinese texts. As in Korea, several different techniques were used to mark a text for vernacular reading in Japan. One was dry-point glosses; another was okototen 乎古止点, an array of dots, dashes and other symbols which were placed around characters in Buddhist texts to indicate their grammatical function; and a third was the system of numerals and reordering signs now known as kunten 訓点. These provided the reader with the means to reorder the Chinese text to suit Japanese syntax, and from the beginning of the seventeenth century they were routinely included in printed editions of Chinese texts, frequently in combination with furigana 振り仮名 glosses that provided the Japanese pronunciation of words written in Chinese characters and okurigana 送り仮名 glosses that provided verbal and adjectival inflections. It should be mentioned here that the ‘bound translations’ that resulted from the operation of kundoku techniques in Japan resulted in texts that made no concessions to readers’ understanding in terms of vocabulary, for the vocabulary of the original was retained intact. Furthermore, the translations departed from other forms of Japanese prose writing in a number of ways: they tended to lack indications of tense or aspect, they mostly lacked honorifics and they ignored normal Japanese practice for recorded speech by retaining the Chinese order.

3

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō #2039, 49.1006b09; Lee (1993–1996), 1: 122.

The Origins and Development of Translation Traditions in Pre-Modern East Asia

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Techniques of vernacular reading resulting in ‘bound translations’ were practised elsewhere in East Asia apart from Japan and Korea. There is documentary evidence that the Uyghurs, the Khitans, the Jurchens and the Vietnamese practised vernacular reading at various stages, but for the most part evidence in the form of glossed texts is lacking (Kornicki 2018, Chapter 6). What needs to be emphasized here is that in all cases vernacular reading constituted an act of interpretation and was not merely a method of reading Chinese in the vernaculars. Decisions had to be made about how the source text was to be understood and glosses attached accordingly. Although vernacular reading was widespread outside China as a technique for reading Chinese texts and although it gave rise to the practice of ‘bound translation’, this was not the only form of translation to be found in pre-modern East Asia. Within China, the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit and other languages had been extensively undertaken up to the Song Dynasty, but the translation of texts from other languages was rare until the sixteenth century, when European Jesuits resident in Beijing were active translators. Translation from texts written in Japanese or Korean was nonexistent until modern times. On the other hand, the translation of Chinese texts to accommodate the needs of other linguistic communities within China was far from unknown. The earliest known example is that of the Xiaowen emperor (r. 471–499) of the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534). He is said to have had a translation of the Classic of Filial Piety made into the language of the Xianbei, a Mongolic nomadic people living in his realm. However, nothing is known of a Xianbei script and it may be that Chinese characters were used phonographically to represent the Xianbei language (Sui shu 1977, 32: 935; Hung 2005). The same practice was followed under the so-called alien dynasties, the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1206–1368) and the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1911), when China was ruled by speakers of other languages. In 1307 the Mongol emperor ordered that a Mongolian translation of the Classic of Filial Piety be made and then printed, and in 1329 an office was established for the translation of ‘Confucian texts’ into Mongolian. The dynastic history of the Yuan Dynasty contains in fact many references to the translation of Confucian texts (de Rachewiltz 1982; Miya 2006, 31–2).4 From these it is

4

Yuan shi 元史22: 486, 24: 544, 25: 265, 26: 578, 88: 2223, 137: 3311, 181: 4172.

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clear that during the Yuan Dynasty Lienü zhuan 列女傳 [Biographies of Women], Daxue 大学 [Great Learning], and Zhenguan zhengyao 貞觀政 要 [Essentials of Government in the Zhenguan Era] were translated into Mongolian. These, unfortunately, have not survived, unlike the translations of the Classic of Filial Piety (Fuchs 1946). The Manchus overwhelmed Ming China and founded what became known as the Qing dynasty in 1644, but even before that they were translating Chinese legal, military, historical and other texts into Manchu. After the Manchus had conquered China, there was greater interest in the Chinese Classics, for they constituted the foundation of the examination system, which the Manchus made no attempt to discontinue. Bilingual ManchuChinese editions were used in Manchu education, and since their titles indicated that they came with the imperial imprimatur as well, they served the political end of asserting and legitimizing Manchu rule. The state sponsorship was apparent in the very fact that translations of the Four Books and Five Classics were made, and the imperial imprimatur in the fact that official editions had titles commencing Han i araha [made by the emperor] (Durrant 1977: 52–4). Unlike the Japanese and the Koreans, the Manchus did not incorporate Chinese characters into their written language, so Manchu translators had two choices when dealing with Chinese vocabulary: either to transliterate Chinese words in Manchu script or to translate the concepts using Manchu vocabulary, and both strategies were used. Most of the Manchu translations took the form of parallel texts, but by no means all Manchu translations were accompanied by the original text, particularly in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Standalone Manchu translations of the Classic of Poetry (1654), the Classic of Filial Piety (1727) and other works were published, and these were probably intended for Manchus who had not yet mastered literary Chinese. Other stand-alone translations include several Buddhist sūtras (eighteenth century) and some works of Chinese vernacular fiction (Huang 2010, 7, 11–12, 114, 146–51, 166–8). Amongst the latter, a translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, printed in 1650, was one of the earliest and it was followed by many manuscript translations. A translation of the Plum in the Golden Vase survives in an edition printed in 1708 (Gimm 1987; Elliot and Bosson 2003). The act of translation into Manchu began with the title. This contrasts sharply with practice in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, where translations of

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Chinese texts carried the original untranslated titles. Thus, editions of the canonical Four Books carried the Manchu title Duin bithe [four books], rather than the corresponding Chinese characters. More problematic was the Classic of Filial Piety, for there was no equivalent of ‘filial piety’ in Manchu, so the title read Hiyoo ging bithe [The Book of Hiyoo ging]: Hiyoo ging was a Manchu transcription of Xiaojing, the Chinese title of the Classic of Filial Piety as heard by Manchu ears. The employment of indigenous vocabulary to replace Chinese as far as possible marks a major difference between Manchu translations and practice in Japanese and Korean vernacular reading and even translations. The strategies adopted under the ‘alien dynasties’ were mirrored in other East Asian polities, including the Khitan, Jurchen and Tangut empires, although very few translations are now extant. The head of the Khitan Academy in 1044 translated Chinese historical works into Khitan (Liao shi 1974, 103: 1450). The Jurchens actually established an office for the translation of the Classics in 1164, and by 1189 the Classic of Changes, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Analects, Mencius, and other works such as the Records of the Grand Historian and the History of the Tang Dynasty had been translated into Jurchen. Not one of these translations survives, even though it is recorded that a thousand copies of the translation of the Classic of Filial Piety were printed (Jin shi 金史 [History of the Jin/Jurchen dynasty] 1975, 8: 184–5; Miya 2006, 65–6). The Tanguts (Xixia), whose empire lasted from 1038 to 1227, wrote their language without any admixture of Chinese characters, like the Manchus but unlike the Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese. They therefore had either to transliterate or to translate Buddhist and Confucian terminology into their own language. Tangut translations were made not only from Chinese texts but also, sometimes, from source texts in Sanskrit, Tibetan or Uyghur, and consequently Buddhist terminology used in these Tangut translations varied according to the language of the source text (Kychanov 1984: 377–8). Many Tangut Buddhist translations are extant, some of them printed, but the Tanguts also translated the Essentials of Government in the Zhenguan Era, the Art of War and other military texts (Galambos 2015). Let us now return to China, where the practice of translating texts of external origin resumed in the late sixteenth century when the Jesuit mission began to produce texts in Chinese, including some translations. In 1607, for

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example, Matteo Ricci published a Chinese translation of Euclid’s Elements and after the Manchu conquest of China this was translated into Manchu for the convenience of the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661–1672) (Engelfriet 1998: 132–3; Hung 2005: 92–3). After the dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1777, Jesuit translation activity came to an end, and it was only after the Opium War that there was a resurgence of translation activity in China. This was at first directly connected to the perceived threat from the Western powers, and included translated excerpts from English-language newspapers and translations of books on world geography and international law (Wong 2005: 111–15). In Japan and Korea, by contrast, translation was dominated by Chinese source texts. The first written translations in Japan were in fact transcriptions of vernacular readings of Chinese texts, such as the Lotus Sūtra and the Confucian Analects. There was even, as early as the twelfth century, a vernacular transcription of the Ōjō yōshū 往生要集 [Essentials of Rebirth], a text written in Chinese by the Japanese monk Genshin (Kimura et al. 1994; Nishida 2001, 14–17, 30–5, 49–54; Nozawa 2006, 3–6, 16–21). Although these transcriptions were mostly faithful to the vernacular reading traditions, there were some vernacular written renderings that departed from the original in the interest of making the meaning clear. These transcended the limitations of ‘bound translations’ generated by glosses, and they did so in order to deal with the problem of vocabulary that was being used in antiquated or unfamiliar senses. This is the case, for example, with a kana version of the Lotus Sūtra from the early twelfth century which survives in fragmentary form (Nozawa 2006; Kornicki 2016b). It is also true of a kana version of the Essentials of Government in the Zhenguan Reign, which survives in a manuscript of 1595 and was probably produced on order for the shogun’s consort in the late twelfth century. This version retains much of the original vocabulary, as was normal for vernacular readings generated by glosses, but adds pronunciation glosses (furigana) to the retained characters and replaces difficult phrases in the original with vernacular paraphrases. The transcription of the Analects mentioned above shows a similar preference for words of Japanese origin rather than Chinese words in Japanese pronunciation. Interesting though these experiments are, translations like these and transcriptions of vernacular readings were limited to a very small number of texts.

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Although the number of transcribed vernacular readings was never high, from the fourteenth century onwards a new kind of vernacular text began to make its appearance, and these are known as shōmono 抄物 [manuscript digests]. Most of them relate to Chinese Classical and medical texts, and they consist of lecture notes or commentaries prepared largely to meet educational needs. These manuscripts tend to be written in the colloquial Japanese of the day, and were mostly compiled by teachers for their own use. Amongst the large number of extant ‘manuscript digests’ are several from the sixteenth century on the Changhen ge 長恨歌 [Song of Everlasting Sorrow], a poem composed in 809 by the celebrated poet Bai Juyi (772–846) on the tragic death of Yang Guifei (719–756), the concubine of emperor Xuanzong. These all included a complete translation of the poem, and in the very early seventeenth century innumerable editions of these vernacular versions were printed, both typographically and xylographically (Kunita 1976; Kunita 1984, 452, 507–9, 895–6). The number of sixteenth-century manuscript copies and their rapid transition into print in the seventeenth century suggest that the roots of seventeenth-century translation activity, which we shall turn to shortly, lie in the ‘manuscript digests’ of the previous century, that is, in the desire to explicate Chinese texts in the vernacular. In the early seventeenth century, a translation of a Ming bedchamber manual was printed in Japan under the title Subtle Discussions between the Yellow Emperor and the Plain Lady (Kōso myōron 素妙論). The translator was Manase Dōsan 曲直瀬道三 and his translation was remarkable because, far from being a ‘bound translation’ tied to the vocabulary of the original, it was written in simple Japanese with a preponderance of kana rather than characters, so that even words of Chinese origin like the name of the Yellow Emperor himself were spelt out in kana rather than reproduced in Chinese characters (Machi 2014: 173–6). It goes without saying that the translation replaced the original, unlike glossed texts for vernacular reading which retained the original. Although vernacular reading remained the standard way of reading literary Chinese texts in Japan, resulting in the production of oral or mental translations, some Chinese texts were translated into Japanese during the Edo period (1600–1868). In the seventeenth century Hayashi Razan translated many Chinese works, including The Essentials of Government of the Zhenguan Era, which he translated in 1651 for the juvenile shogun. Razan’s

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translations departed from vernacular reading practices for he inserted explanatory phrases into his translations and replaced difficult vocabulary in the original with more familiar Japanese expressions (Kornicki 2013, 2016). Although few Japanese undertook to translate Confucian texts after Razan, many other Chinese texts certainly were translated, mostly in the seventeenth century. Amongst them were Chinese conduct books for women, such as Nü jie 女誡 [Admonitions for Women] ( Japanese translation in 1652), Lienü zhuan 列女傳 [Biographies of Women] (1655) and Nü si shu 女四書 [The Four Books for Women] (1656), and the Korean conduct book in Chinese, Samgang haengsilto 三綱行實圖 [Illustrated Guide to the Three Relations] ( Japanese translation in 1660) (Kim 2010; Clements 2015, 127–30). One of the most prolific translators was Okamoto Ippō (1686–1754), the younger brother of the famous dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon. He produced a large number of vernacular translations of medical works, including one of Shisijing fahui 十四経絡発揮 [The Routes of the Fourteen Meridians and Their Functions], a fourteenthcentury Chinese tract on acupuncture. Okamoto Ippō’s edition, printed in 1693, breaks the original up into short passages, which are equipped with glosses for vernacular reading, and then he provides a translation and/or explanation of the meaning. Of all the books imported from China the only category that was systematically and extensively translated into Japanese was the vernacular fiction of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Novels like The Water Margin or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were written in vernacular Chinese, for which a knowledge of literary Chinese alone was insufficient. Japanese publishers therefore usually presented them to the reading public in the form of translations and later in the form of adaptations that shifted the setting to Japan (Nakamura 2011, 209–20). Two other kinds of translation were practised in Japan. The first was intralingual translation from much earlier forms of Japanese. Ise Monogatari 伊勢物語 [The Tales of Ise], Genji Monogatari 源氏物語 [The Tale of Genji] and several early poetry anthologies were translated into a more comprehensible form of Japanese in which literary Japanese was sometimes mixed with colloquial expressions. Some of these were intended to make the original more approachable and were therefore akin to commentaries in intent (Clements 2015).

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The second was translation from Dutch books that had been imported by the Dutch East India Company through their outpost in Deshima (Nagasaki). These were not the first translations from European languages, for the Jesuits had in 1593 printed a translation of Aesop’s Fables and in 1596 a translation of Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ (Clements 2015, 142–4). Beginning in the eighteenth century, knowledge of Dutch reached the point that translation became possible, but it should be noted that although the source texts were all in Dutch some of them were in fact translations into Dutch from other languages, including English, French, German and Latin. The Japanese translations were thus relay translations, and some of them were made not into Japanese but into literary Chinese: the most famous instance of this is Kaitai shinsho 解體新書 (1774), a relay translation of Kulmus’ Anatomische Tabellen via the Dutch translation Ontleedkundige Tafelen. Most of the translated texts were medical or scientific in nature, though in the first half of the nineteenth century there were increasing numbers of translations of books on military technology or on foreign countries (Clements 2015). The critical encounter with the Western powers in the middle of the nineteenth century led to a surge in what Clements has termed ‘crisis translation’. Some of these translations were made from literary Chinese works, such as Wei Yuan’s Haiguo tuzhi 海國圖誌 [Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms], a detailed account of Western nations produced in response to the Opium War, which began to appear in Japanese translation in 1854 (Clements 2015, 203–4; Kornicki 2018, 293–6). At the behest of the government, translations were made from newspapers published in Dutch or Chinese in the 1860s, but from the 1870s the source languages for all kinds of translation were more likely to be English, French, German and even Russian rather than Dutch or Chinese. And although medical and scientific works continued to be translated, they were joined by legal, geographical, religious and literary translations in growing numbers (Yanagida 1961). The trajectory of translation in Korea is very different. Translation via vernacular reading was practised at least from the seventh century, but written translation only became common once the han’gŭl alphabet was invented in the middle of the fifteenth century. It is true that the idu script consisting of abbreviated characters made it possible to write Korean, and in 1395 the Ming legal code was printed in a Korean edition in which idu was used to translate the entire text into Korean (Chang 2003). Such cases were few,

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however, and the invention of han’gŭl made a decisive difference: within fifteen years it had been used to translate Chinese texts, the first being a relay translation of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra via the Chinese translation Shoulengyan jing, which was printed in 1461 (Yun 2003, 1: 45–52). Many other printed translations followed, and for several centuries the most common use of the new alphabet in print was in the form of translations. The translations were either printed above the upper margin of the page (i.e. outside the perimeter of the text) or, when they came within the perimeter of the page, vertically indented by one space so as to be lower down the page than the Chinese source text which invariably accompanied the translation. Thus the translation was presented as auxiliary and subordinate to the Chinese. These bilingual books, known generically as ‘vernacular explanation books’ (ŏnhaebon 諺解本), usually take the form of bilingual books giving the Chinese text first, followed by a translation, referred to as a ‘vernacular explanation’. Many of them provided vernacular explanations for the Chinese classics, but others provided vernacular explanations for conduct books or for home-grown texts in literary Chinese, such as the Illustrated Guide to the Three Relations. The Illustrated Guide to the Three Relations consists of a number of anecdotes from Chinese and Korean history that epitomize desirable moral virtues and the edition that was published in 1490 included a translation in the upper margin. The translation includes Chinese characters (each of which has the Sino-Korean pronunciation added) as well as han’gŭl, but when a new translation replaced it in 1579 it was in han’gŭl alone, with no Chinese characters (Oh 2013). In this and other cases the kings of Korea actively encouraged the production of translations. Many of the early translations were of Buddhist texts, but before the end of the fifteenth century other Chinese texts were also being translated: in 1483, for example, King Sŏngjong ordered that han’gŭl be used to translate the Yuan-dynasty poetry manual Lianzhu shige 聯珠詩格 [String of Poetic Jewels] and the collected works of the Song-dynasty poet Huang Tingjian (1045–1105). The works of other poets such as Du Fu (712–770), one of the greatest Tang poets, were also printed in hybrid editions, in his case in 1481 (Yi 2003).5 In spite of the importance that the Four Books and the Five

5

Chosŏn wang jo sillok 朝鮮王朝實録 [The veritable records of the Chosŏn dynasty], Sŏngjong 14 [1483].7.29.

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Classics had in education and intellectual life in Chosŏn-dynasty Korea, they were not among the first texts to be produced in handy hybrid editions, and it was only at the end of the sixteenth century that the Four Books, the Classic of Filial Piety and other canonical works were produced. The reason for the delay was the concern that translating such texts necessitated choosing one interpretation rather than another and then fixing it in stone (Traulsen 2016; Kornicki 2018). In the seventeenth century a number of more practical editions appeared which featured a Chinese text written in Korea and an accompanying translation. These included a book on equine medicine, a book on measures for famine relief and a military training manual. Others followed in the eighteenth century, including one on forensic medicine which was adapted from a Chinese manual, and another containing translations of the Four Books for Women (Yun 2003, 145–54, 187–94, 195–204, 219–26; Yun 2007, 221–7). The translations in ‘vernacular explanation books’ included some elements of the vocabulary of the originals, but they were not ‘bound translations’. The retained Chinese characters were provided with a Sino-Korean pronunciation gloss underneath, but Chinese characters were not retained for their own sake and many elements in the source text were replaced by vernacular vocabulary. This had the consequence that the vocabulary became dated and the translations had to be revised: when the bilingual edition of Du Fu’s poetry was reissued in 1632, a revised translation was provided (Yi 2003). The vernacular Chinese fiction of the Ming and Qing dynasties was much appreciated by the intelligentsia in Korea as elsewhere in East Asia, and much of it was translated, but not in ‘vernacular explanation’ books. Instead, the translations circulated in manuscript, and they tended to be entirely in han’gŭl (Pastreich 2015). Unlike Japan and Vietnam, Korea had no direct contact with Europeans until the second half of the nineteenth century, so it was only then that translations from Western languages including the Bible (first complete translation in 1892) were made (Kiaer 2017: 17–18). As in Korea, translation in pre-modern Vietnam usually took the form of bilingual editions combining a literary Chinese source text with a rendering in the Vietnamese nôm script either in the lower register of the page or added interlineally in smaller size. In Vietnam, however, translation using the nôm script became a pawn in political disputes. In the early fifteenth century, Hồ Quý Ly (1336–1407) sought to make nôm the official script

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and a start was made on translating the Chinese Classics into Vietnamese. Following the Ming invasion in 1407, this decision was reversed. Again, in the late eighteenth century, scholars like Lê Quý Đôn (1726–1784) attempted to disseminate Confucianism by making abridged versions or translations. One example is his Tứ thư ước giải 四書約解 [Abbreviated Explanation of the Four Books], in which each phrase of the original is followed by a translation in nôm and then some simple notes in literary Chinese (Nguyễn 2014). During the Tây Sơn rebellion of 1788–1802, Vietnamese written in nôm replaced Chinese for the purpose of administration and the examinations, and the Classics were translated into Vietnamese, but this was again reversed for official purposes during the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1887) (DeFrancis 1977, 31–43; Taylor 2005; Dutton 2006, 28). A peculiarity of Vietnamese translation is that much of it is in the form of verse. One of the earliest examples is Chỉ nam ngọc âm giải ghĩa 指南 玉音解義 [Explication of the Guide to Jewelled Sounds] (c. 1641). This consists of Chinese expressions with their nôm equivalents in verse (Phan 2013). Verse translations became common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly in the form of bilingual editions consisting of Chinese texts accompanied by translations. Examples include canonical works such as the Classic of Poetry and the Classic of Filial Piety, works of popular Buddhism and conduct books for women, but the same approach was also used for the law codes (Trần and Gros 1993, 1: 691, 777, 853, 889). On the other hand, this pattern was not usually followed in the translations of Christian doctrinal works produced by French missionaries active in Vietnam (Chan and Landry-Deron 2004). By the end of the nineteenth century translation activity was undergoing a major transformation in East Asia. It was becoming more intensive, it was focused increasingly on source texts of recent European or North American origin, and it encompassed a wider range of texts, from legal and scientific texts to works of fiction and poetry. The China-centric pattern of translation was coming to an end, but it was still to be some time before inter-Asian translation became common again.

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and M. Eggert (eds), The Dynamics of Knowledge Circulation: Cases from Korea, pp. 113–39. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. van Schaik, S. (2011). ‘A New Look at the Tibetan Invention of Writing’. In I. Yoshiro, M. Kapstein and T. Takeuchi (eds), New Studies of the Old Tibetan Documents: Philology, History and Religion, pp. 45–96. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Wong, L. (2005). ‘From “Controlling the Barbarians” to “Wholesale Westerization”: Translation and Politics in Late Imperial and Early Republican China, 1840–1919’. In E. Hung and J. Wakabayashi (eds), Asian Translation Traditions, pp. 109–34. Manchester: St Jerome. Wu, J. (2015). ‘The Chinese Buddhist Canon through the Ages: Essential Categories and Critical Issues in the Study of a Textual Tradition’. In J. Wu and L. Chia (eds), Spreading Buddha’s Words in China: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, pp. 15–45. New York: Columbia University Press. Yanagida, I. 柳田泉 (1961). Meiji shoki hon’yaku bungaku no kenkyū 明治初期翻訳文 学の研究 [Translated Literature in the Early Meiji Period]. Tokyo: Shunjūsha. Yi, H. 李浩權 (1976). ‘Tusi ŏnhae chungganbon ŭi hanbon kwa ŏnŏ e taehan yŏn’gu’ 杜詩諺解重刊本의版本과言語에대한研究 [A Study of the Printed Copies and Language of the Reprinted Edition of Tusi ŏnhae], Chindan hakpo 震檀學 報, 95, 135–64. Yuan shi 元史 [History of the Yuan/Mongol Dynasty] (1976). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Yun H. 윤형두 (2003/2007). Yet ch’aek ŭi han’gŭl p’anbon옛책의한글판본 [Books Printed in Han’gŭl in Old Times] (2 vols). P’aju: Pŏm’usa. Zürcher, E. (2013). Buddhism in China: The Collected Papers of Erik Zürcher, ed. J. Silk. Leiden: Brill.

Sharon Tzu-yun Lai

2 Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987

abstract In the period of Taiwan’s martial law (1949–1987), it was illegal to publish translations penned by translators living in Communist China. Fifty years of Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945) had only recently come to an end; the local population lacked familiarity with Modern Chinese, the new official language. As a result, few local translators were versed in Chinese; thus, many of the translations circulating in Taiwan came via Hong Kong, pirated from versions published in China. In total, some 600 translated titles from China were pirated in Taiwan with the names of at least 380 translators being erased. This paper aims to describe the political and linguistic reasons for this large-scale, decades-long piratic practice in translation, as well as the consequences thereof.

1. Introduction Throughout the history of translation, piracy has been found to have occurred in almost every era. It is not rare for a translator to have copied or edited an existing translation, only to claim it later as his or her own. However, the piracy of translation in Taiwan, especially during the martial law period (1949–1987), is unusually widespread. The pursuit of illicit profits was the usual incentive; piracy in Taiwan, on the other hand, was done for political reasons. In fact, this piracy was legally sanctioned, even compelled by the government of Kuomintang 國民黨 [the Nationalist Party of China, hereafter KMT]. As a result, more than 1,500 translated titles printed in Taiwan have been found to be pirated. About 600 Zhongzi shu 種子書

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[seed book],1 the source versions of those pirated titles, have been located by the present author. In total some 380 translators’ names were erased and replaced by an ‘editorial department’ or, worse, by fabricated names. This paper aims to describe the political and linguistic reasons for, and consequences of, this large-scale, four-decades-long piracy in translation. I would like to argue that the mass piracy of translated titles was an integral part of the KMT’s scheme to re-colonize the Taiwanese people; elucidation of this government-inspired piracy, together with the clarification of authorship for those translations affected, is expected to contribute to the post-colonial decolonization of Taiwan. This paper is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the historical, linguistic and political reasons for Taiwan’s dependency on translations from China and for the erasing of the translators’ names. The second part is a description of the pirated translations, including when and where they were produced, the route of transmission and the different stages of pirating. The third part addresses some consequences of mass pirating before a conclusion is drawn.

2. From Japanese to Mandarin: Restoration or re-colonization? In 1945, Taiwan saw the end of the Second World War and, along with it, the end of Japanese colonization that had lasted for half a century. Six million Taiwanese people, regarded for fifty years as subjects of the Empire of Japan, changed identities overnight. They became citizens of a new country, the Republic of China (ROC), established on the other side of the Taiwan Strait during the Japanese colonial period. Although most Taiwanese people at that time were descendants of immigrants from south China, the ‘reunion’ with China was less than amicable, with one of the most contentious issues being language. 1

This term was used by Wang Rong-wen, the co-founder of Yuanjing 遠景publishing house in Taipei, during a May 2012 interview with the present author, in reference to banned Mainland China translations, from which translators’ names were purged, and which then became the basis of multiple reprinted versions. He confirmed that pirating of the pre-1949 translations was quite common in the industry during the martial law period.

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987

31

When Japan occupied Taiwan – a concession from their triumphal conclusion of the war against the Qing Dynasty in 1895 – Chinese people were not unified under a single spoken language, despite sharing a common writing system, the literary system. Taiwan, until then a part of the Qing Dynasty, saw its people writing indistinguishably from other Chinese, while at the same time speaking Minnan 閩南 (South Fujian dialect) or Hakka 客家 (a Guangdong dialect). Colonial rulers then made Japanese the official language in Taiwan during their occupation of the island. By the end of the Second World War, Taiwanese people spoke Minnan or Hakka in private settings, Japanese in public settings, and wrote in both Japanese and classical Chinese. At that time few Taiwanese could understand Mandarin, the official language of the ROC, let alone write in modern Chinese, which is based on Mandarin. Hu Shih (1891–1962),2 one of the main proponents of the movement to modernize the Chinese language,3 once said, ‘Mandarin is the most widely used dialect in China. Over seventy-five per cent of the population, covering ninety per cent of the land, can speak Mandarin. From Beijing to Nanjing, from Harbin to Kunming, people all speak Mandarin’ (Hushi koshu zizhuan 胡適口述 自傳 [Reminiscences of Hu Shih] 1981: 171). According to Hu Shih, since most Chinese could already speak Mandarin, simply ‘writing down what you say’ would be sufficient to produce a text in 2

3

In this paper, the Romanization of people’s names follows the preferred spelling, if any, of the referenced persons themselves. For example, Hu Shih 胡適, if Romanized per the Pinyin system, would be ‘Hu Shi’, but Hu himself uses the Wade-Giles system of spelling of ‘Hu Shih’, which thus has been adopted for this text. Some Hong Kong authors have chosen Cantonese pronunciations, such as Tong Te-kong 唐德剛, for the Romanization of their names. In Mandarin, the name would be Romanized in the Pinyin system as ‘Tang Degang’. The present author has retained their original Romanization, where applicable, instead of Pinyin out of consideration for those who might wish to locate the sources. This movement, inspired by the genbun itchi 言文一致 [unification of speech and writing] movement in Japan, aimed to narrow down the gaps between written and spoken languages in China and establish a new system of written Chinese. Since there are many dialects in China, the ROC made Mandarin (based on the dialect in Beijing) the official language of China in 1912. Around 1917, Hu Shih and others started to promote the use of vernacular Chinese (Mandarin) over literary Chinese in writing. Since 1922, all textbooks in elementary schools in China have been written in vernacular Chinese instead of using literary Chinese.

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written modern Chinese. The crux of the problem, however, was that the ancestors of the Taiwanese people came from Fujian and Guangdong, the two provinces that fell just outside the Mandarin Zone depicted by Hu Shih. Thus, upon ‘restoration’ in 1945, Taiwanese people were linguistically disadvantaged in at least three ways compared to their counterparts in China: 1. Seventy-five per cent of mainlanders spoke Mandarin, whereas Taiwan was outside the Mandarin zone. 2. The movement to modernize the Chinese language began in 1917 when Taiwan was still a colony of Japan. Taiwan was excluded altogether from the language modernization movement. Students in China had been educated in the official language of modern Chinese since 1922, whilst Taiwanese students never received any formal education in modern Chinese. 3. After 1937, the colonial government launched a Japanization movement and banned the use of written Chinese in newspapers. Compulsory education in Japanese was implemented in 1943. A natural consequence of this was the habituation of most of the population to the reading and writing of Japanese by the 1940s. Due to the language gap, some historians of literature have argued that the socalled ‘restoration’ was actually an act of ‘re-colonization’, that is, Mandarin speakers from China settled in Taiwan and dominated non-Mandarin speakers (Yeh 1987; Peng 1991; Chen 2011). Immigrants throughout history have been compelled to learn the language of their host country, whereas the colonized have been forced to learn the language of the colonizer. The definition of colonialism by Osterhammel (2005: 16) could be applied to post-war Taiwan: ‘rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule’. The mainlanders, who came to Taiwan after 1945, also believed in their own cultural superiority and were eager to ‘educate’ the Taiwanese, despite Taiwan’s population having been educated in Japanese for decades and being arguably more modernized than the average Chinese of that time.4 4

In 1945, Taiwan’s enrolment ratio for school age children was over eighty per cent (Wu 2011: 290), whereas the literacy rate of China in the 1940s was below twenty per cent (Wang 2000).

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987 33

Under such conditions, it is not at all surprising that few Taiwanese translators, from any source language into modern Chinese, could be found in post-war Taiwan. In order to remedy the modern Chinese literacy gap, many contemporary Chinese titles, published on the mainland, were imported to Taiwan for didactic purposes. Robinson (1997: 31) once said of translation that it acts ‘as a channel of colonization, parallel to and connected with education and the overt or covert control of markets and institutions’. Although Robinson was describing translation between unequal languages, translation piracy in Taiwan was also used in this way as a channel of colonization: the dominating Mandarin speakers from China used these Chinese language translations as a means to ‘re-educate’ the Japanese-educated Taiwanese.5

3. Translations from China banned It is understandable that most translated titles in post-war Taiwan would have been rendered by translators in China, but why were their names erased? The reason was mainly political. During the short period between 1945 and 1949, many books in Chinese, including translations, were imported from China, along with 1 million mainlanders who came along with the ROC government or KMT regime to Taiwan. Some Shanghai publishers also came to Taiwan to set up branch offices. However, when the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the KMT regime in Taiwan became a settler state. According to Weitzer (1990: 24), a settler state is ‘founded by migrant groups who assume a superordinate position vis-à-vis native inhabitants and build self-sustaining states that are de jure or de facto independent from the mother country and organized around the settlers’ political domination over the indigenous population’. The 1 million mainlanders were not only cut off from their

5

Of course, Japan was also a colonizing power in Taiwan and during its period of rule there were also translations from Japanese into traditional Chinese, and vice versa, but this issue is beyond the scope of the present paper.

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homeland, they now had to determine how to rule 6 million Taiwanese who could barely speak and write in the settlers’ common language: Mandarin. Before 1949, the KMT government had sought to turn Taiwanese people into its citizens as quickly as possible. They openly burned books written in Japanese, stopped the importation and sale of books from Japan and banned the use of Japanese in the media (Tsai 2010: 28; Tsao 2011: 416). At the same time, the government promoted Mandarin wholeheartedly at the expense of Taiwanese local languages, which included the humiliation and punishment of students who spoke in their mother tongues at school. After 1949, at the commencement of the martial law period, the government also banned books from the mainland. From 1952 to 1958, the Taiwan Provincial Government and Taiwan Garrison Command Headquarters frequently confiscated books written by contemporary authors and translators living in China. According to Chajin tushu mulu 查禁圖書目錄 [The Catalogue of Banned Books] (hereafter The Catalogue) issued by the above-mentioned institutions, 124 translated titles, including Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, Monte Cristo and War and Peace, were banned in the 1950s. The third paragraph of the second article of Regulations of Newspapers, Magazines and Books During Martial Law Period in Taiwan Province was cited as the reason for the prohibition of each title: ‘pictures and texts to promote Communism’ (The Catalogue, 1964). In other words, these books were rendered by translators who were still living in China. For instance, there were several Chinese translations of Romeo and Juliet, but not every one of them was banned. The banned translation was done by playwright Cao Yu (1910–1996). The rendition by Zhu Shenghao (1912–1944) was not banned because the translator had died before 1949 and there was no evidence that he had ever supported Communism. Another translator Liang Shih-chiu (1903–1987) came to Taiwan with the KMT government, and his translation was praised. Ironically, although the United States provided support to the KMT regime in many ways, many translations of American literature were also banned, simply due to the fact that they were translated by translators living in Mainland China. Such banned titles included translations of The Scarlet Letter, Walden, The Prince and the Pauper, as well as the works of several contemporary writers such as William Saroyan and John Steinbeck. Table 2.1 lists some translations that were banned during this period.

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987 35 Table 2.1:  Examples of banned translations. Source: The Catalogue (1964) Title and author Romeo and Juliet (1597) by William Shakespeare

Translator

Date and Place Date of of Publication Ban

Cao Yu (1910–1996)

1947, Shanghai

1954

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift Fan Quan (1916–2000)

1948, Shanghai

1956

Faust (1808) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Guo Moruo (1892–1978)

1947, Shanghai

1953

Father Goriot (1835) by Honoré de Balzac

Fu Lei (1908–1966)

1946, Shanghai

1954

The Captain’s Daughter (1836) by Alexander Pushkin

Sun Yong (1902–1983)

1947, Shanghai

1952

Selected Tales of Poe (1842–1843) by Edgar Jiao Juyin Allan Poe (1905–1975)

1949, Shanghai

1956

The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexandre Dumas

Jiang Xuemuo (1918–2008)

1948, Shanghai

1958

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë

Li Jiye (1904–1997)

1936, Shanghai

1954

David Copperfield (1849) by Charles Dickens

Xu Tianhong (1907–1958)

1943, Guilin

1952

The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Han Shiyan (1908–1987)

1942, Shanghai

1954

Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau

Xu Chi (1914–1996)

1949, Shanghai

1958

Madame Bovary (1856) by Gustave Flaubert

Li Jianwu (1906–1982)

1948, Shanghai

1955

First Love (1860) by Ivan Turgenev

Fong Zikai (1898–1975)

1947, Shanghai

1956

War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy

Gao Zhi (1914–1960)

1948, Shanghai

1957

Nana (1880) by Emile Zola

Wang Li (1900–1986)

1947, Shanghai

1954

The Prince and the Pauper (1881) by Mark Twain

Yu Di (1904–? )

1948, Shanghai

1958

36

Sharon Tzu-yun Lai Title and author

Translator

Date and Place Date of of Publication Ban

In Dubious Battle (1936) by John Steinbeck

Dong Qiusi (1899–1969)

1946, Shanghai

1954

The Time of Your Life (1939) by William Saroyan

Hong Shen (1894–1955)

1949, Shanghai

1952

This table represents only a part of the banned list. Regardless of the date or language of authorship for an original work, the reason for banning was a rather simple one; namely, the translators were still alive and living in China.6 Indeed, Taiwanese at that time had few reading choices, as they had been educated in Japanese for decades, but the Japanese books that they could read were now burned and banned. Just as they were learning to read modern Chinese, all books from the mainland were banned. The only reading materials available to them were texts written by exiled writers who came to Taiwan with the government. However, as mentioned before, the government was eager to turn Taiwanese people into its loyal citizens. How, then, could the government promote the Mandarin language without giving readers access to the large number of books published in the mainland? The answer was simply to erase the names of the writers and translators. It was even mandated by the Ministry of the Interior on 11 September 1959: ‘The works written or translated by authors who are supporters of Communism or were left behind in Communist-controlled areas, if originally published before 1948, and proved valuable, can be reissued without the names of the authors or under a new name’ (Tsai 2010: 108, my translation). In a word, the language gap necessitated the use of titles translated by mainland translators, whilst their pirating was initiated and even encouraged by the KMT government.

6

In some rare cases, translated titles issued in Taiwan were also banned, such as the 1959 banning of Ningen no jōken 人間の条件 [The Human Condition] by Gomikawa Junpei (1916–1990). As all three translators resided in Taiwan, the reason for banning may have been the author’s left-wing political leanings.

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987

37

4. A sketch of the ‘seed books’ Not every banned title in The Catalogue was pirated. If a publisher planned to reissue banned titles, they had to erase the translators’ names one way or another. In fact, in order to avoid any potential political fall-out, publishers just erased all translators’ names whether they were listed in The Catalogue or not. Currently we have located 598 seed books that have yielded 1,470 pirated titles. On average, each seed book was pirated two and a half times, while some popular seed books were pirated more than twenty times under different names. For example, the translation of Gone with the Wind by Fu Donghua (1893–1971) was pirated at least twenty-three times. Figure 2.1 shows the decades in which the seed books were first printed in China. 250 200 150 100 50 0 Titles

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

37

204

231

82

16

19

9

Figure 2.1: Print dates of seed books by decade.

Most of the seed books were first printed in the 1930s and 1940s. However, eighty-two titles were first published in the 1950s, indicating that even in the Cold War period, translated works still found their way to Taiwan. The flow of seed books from Mainland China ebbed in the 1960s and 1970s mainly as a result of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Many publishing houses

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and universities there were shut down, while hundreds of translators and writers were killed, jailed or forced into labour reform in remote country areas. Since the translation of foreign literature almost ceased in China during this tumultuous period,7 there were few seed books available for Taiwan to pirate. In fact, not a single seed book from China was printed between 1963 and 1975.

5. The main route: Shanghai – Hong Kong – Taiwan Hong Kong played an important role in the migration of books out of Mainland China. According to Tsai (2010: 80), in the early 1950s, 90 per cent of the books in Chinese circulating in Taiwan were imported or smuggled via Hong Kong. This paper argues that Hong Kong played a role in Taiwan’s piracy of books in the following ways: 1. By reissuing Shanghai editions before 1949: Some Shanghai publishers had Hong Kong branches, such as Qiming 啟明 and Sanmin 三民 publishers. After 1949, those Hong Kong branches continued publishing their Shanghai titles, many of which became the source of pirated editions. It is very difficult to estimate the number of such titles, since there is no way to confirm whether the source of a pirated title was a pre-1949 Shanghai edition or post-1949 Hong Kong edition. Take Zeng Mengpu’s translation of The Three Musketeers for example: it was first printed by the Shanghai Qiming publisher in 1936. There was an edition printed in 1956 by the Hong Kong Qiming publisher that was credited to the translator, but subsequently, in 1957, the Taiwan Qiming publisher reissued this version without the translator’s name. This nameless 1957 version went on to be pirated many times in Taiwan. 7

Between 1966 and 1976, only twenty-one translations of literature were published in China. Most of the original works were from Communist countries, such as the Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam and Albania. Another forty-five translations, including five titles from the United States, were published on a limited basis and listed as “internal use only”. Those titles were not accessible by the public. (Xie 2009)

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987 39



Aside from the Hong Kong branches of Shanghai publishers, some Hong Kong publishers also reissued Shanghai titles. Those titles may not have been printed legally during the Cold War period because China and Hong Kong were adversaries at the time, but the translators’ names were kept anyway. The translation by Xia Kangnong (1903–1970) of The Lady of the Camellias was a typical case. This version first appeared in Shanghai by Commercial Press in 1929, and a Hong Kong version was printed in 1951 by the publishing company Heming 禾明 with the translator’s name. The first Taiwan edition appeared in 1957. However, the Taiwan edition was credited to a pseudonym because the real translator was still alive in Mainland China. Neither the Hong Kong nor the Taiwan edition was authorized, but the former retained the translator’s name. 2. By pirating Shanghai titles before 1949: When a Hong Kong branch reissued its Shanghai titles, the translators’ names were usually kept, but pirated Hong Kong editions with pseudonyms also cropped up. Take for example the translation of The Outline of History by Liang Sicheng (1901–1972). This version was first printed in Shanghai by Commercial Press in 1928. There was a Hong Kong pirated edition in 1958, credited to a fictitious translator named ‘Jin Li’. Taiwan Commercial Press reissued this translation in 1966, but erased the name of the translator, since he was still alive and living in China. Other publishers in Taipei pirated this version, also anonymously, in 1972 and 1989. We cannot be sure whether the pirating publishers copied versions from Shanghai Commercial Press, the Hong Kong publisher, or Taiwan Commercial Press, but it is possible that an initial Hong Kong pirated version served as the source of later Taiwan versions. Although his father Liang Qichao (1873–1929) was recognized as an important thinker in Taiwan’s historical textbooks, Liang Sicheng’s name was nevertheless erased from all of Taiwan’s versions. Sometimes, even the United States played a role in the piratic practices in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The translation of Walden by Xu Chi (1914–1996) was such a case. This version was first printed in Shanghai by Chenguang 晨光 Publishing House in 1949. In fact, all of Chenguang’s translations of American literature were suggested by John K. Fairbank (1907–1991), who served in Shanghai as the Director of the United States Information Service in the late 1940s (Zhao 1949: 2). In

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1952, the World Today Press, owned by the United States Information Agency in Hong Kong, reissued this translation of Walden using a pseudonym. As the real translator Xu Chi was still alive in China at the time, the World Today Press was aware of the dangers he would face should his name appear in a title published by the government of the enemy. To protect the translator, they simply invented a pseudonym for him. This translation was listed as a banned book during the martial law period, yet it was very popular in Taiwan, with many different editions produced by different publishers. 3. By reissuing new translations from Mainland China after 1949: After 1949, books from China could still be printed and circulated in Hong Kong, and it was during this time that Beijing began to surpass Shanghai in terms of publishing by producing more first prints. Several Hong Kong left-wing publishers, such as Wanli 萬里 and Shanghai 上海 Bookstores, reissued many translations first printed in the 1950s, which then became the source of Taiwan’s pirated editions. See Table 2.2 for more examples. Table 2.2:  Hong Kong and Taiwan editions of translations from China after 1949 Title and author

Translator

China Hong Kong Taiwan pirated edition edition editions

First Love (1860) by Ivan Turgenev

Xiao Shan (1921–1972)

1954

1960

1969, 1976

Henry V (1599) by William Shakespeare

Fang Ping (1921–2008)

1955

1962

1981

Sonnets from the Portuguese Fang Ping (1850) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1955

1956

1960

Selected Poems of Lord Byron (1893) by George Gordon Byron

Zha Liangzheng (1918–1977)

1955

1959

1960, 1963, 1974, 1984

Pride and Prejudice (1813) Wang Keyi by Jane Austen (1925–1968)

1956

1958

1968, 1972, 1982, 1983

Selected Poems of Heine by Heinrich Heine

1956

1959

1961, 1968

Feng Zhi (1905–1993)

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987 41 Title and author Arabian Nights



Translator

China Hong Kong Taiwan pirated edition edition editions

Na Xun (1911–1989)

1957

1958

1959, 1981, 1993, 1994, 1999

Selected Poems of Tagore by Shi Zhen Rabindranath Tagore (1918–2009)

1961

1961

1968

All translators listed in Table 2.2 are in fact quite well known in China. Xiao Shan was the wife of the writer Ba Jin (1904–2005). Fang Ping was an important translator of Shakespeare and the chairman of the Shakespeare Research Society of China. Both Zha Liangcheng and Feng Zhi were famous poets. Na Xun was a Muslim and the first translator in China to translate Arabian Nights directly from the original Arabic. By way of Hong Kong, their works have circulated in Taiwan under pseudonyms for many years, but few Taiwanese readers know anything about them. Some Chinese translations in the 1950s were not directly reissued by Hong Kong publishers, but rather collected in other titles compiled in Hong Kong, which were subsequently pirated by Taiwan publishers. Since 1960, Shanghai Bookstore has published a series called ‘Authors and Their Works’, edited by exiled writer Ye Lingfeng (1905–1975) in Hong Kong. Many translations published in the 1950s were collected in this series. For example, in Table 2.2, First Love, translated by Xiao Shan, was first published in Shanghai in 1954 and later included in the compilation Turgenev: The Author and His Works, edited by Ye Lingfeng in Hong Kong. The whole book, and in fact the whole series, was subsequently pirated in 1968 by publishing house Wuzhou 五洲 in Taipei. Such compilations served as another major source of translations after 1949. 4. By producing new seed books in Hong Kong: During the Cold War years, Hong Kong was under the aegis of the United States. The World Today Press, owned by the US Information Agency, published many translations of American literature. Most of the translators in Hong Kong were exiled from China. To name a few, Eileen Chang (1920–1995), Tang Xinmei (1923–1999), Fang Xin (1919–2007), Frederick Tsai (1918–2004) and George Kao (1912–2008) all came to Hong Kong from Shanghai in the 1940s and worked for the World Today Press. Their translated works were

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often pirated in Taiwan, not because of the aforementioned reasons of political censure, but in their cases strictly due to the commercial motivation of profit. For instance, the writer Eileen Chang’s translations of The Yearling and The Old Man and the Sea were both pirated repeatedly in Taiwan. Other translations were pirated in Taiwan mostly because the books had been adapted to film. At that time, a film adaptation promised a bestselling title. The Affairs of Caroline Cherie, Of Human Bondage, Good Morning, Miss Dove and Doctor Zhivago were such cases. See Table 2.3 for more examples of such ‘made in Hong Kong’ translations. Table 2.3:  Examples of new translations produced in Hong Kong Title and author

Translator

Hong Kong Taiwan pirated edition editions

Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen

Dong Liu

1951

1957, 1958, 1973, 1974

The Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller

Yu Tong

1951

1964

The Yearling (1938) by Marjorie Rawlings

Eileen Chang

1953

1969, 1972, 1980, 1981

O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather

Tang Xinmei

1953

1968, 1981

Of Human Bondage (1915) by W. Somerset Maugham

Ye Tiansheng

1953

1980, 1981, 1986

Immensee (1949) by Theodore Storm

Zhang Pijie (1905–1970)

1955

1957, 1959,

Daisy Miller (1878) by Henry James Fang Xin

1956

1981

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell

1957

1974, 1984

Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955) by Cheng Frances Gray Patton Xuemen (Po-hi Yeung)

1957

1958, 1964, 1975

Doctor Zhivago (1957) by Boris Pasternak

Xu Guanxan (1924–2011)

1959

1965, 1979

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1894) by Mark Twain

Frederick Tsai

1964

1981

Huang Qili

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987 43 Title and author



Translator

Hong Kong Taiwan pirated edition editions

The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud

Joseph ShiuMing Lau (1934- )

1971

1982

The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

George Kao

1971

1990, 1991

Out of the twenty-eight seed books first printed in Hong Kong, twenty-two were translations of American authors. In comparison to British, French or Russian literature, American literature did not enjoy the lion’s share in China’s translation market. During the Cold War period, however, most translation efforts in Hong Kong were devoted to American authors. The influence of the United States as a cultural power had become obvious.

6. Three stages of piracy The dependency on translations from China and Hong Kong waned with the ever-increasing number of translators in Taiwan, a shift that can be described in three stages: 1. 1949–1959: Because of the severe language gap, almost all translated titles from this period were rendered by translators who either lived in China or were exiled to Taiwan and Hong Kong.8 Although some publishers from Shanghai, such as Commercial Press, Shihjie 世界 and Qiming, continued to publish their Shanghai titles, they usually used the term ‘editorial committee’ to replace almost all translators’ names. Although this can hardly be called piracy, the translators’ names were erased nonetheless. Another method, employed by some of the newly 8

This included several native Taiwanese translators, especially those who had spent some time in China prior to 1945, such as Hong Yen-chiu (1899–1980), who had studied at Beijing University.

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established publishers in Taiwan, such as Xinxing 新興, Beixing 北星 and Dazhongguo 大中國, was the replacement of the translators’ names with pseudonyms. This stage ended in 1959 when the owner of Qiming was arrested and charged with treason for reissuing titles from Mainland China. It was during this stage that 227 seed books were first pirated. Among them, 105 were ‘translated’ by Qiming’s ‘editorial department’. Qiming was without any doubt a main player in this stage. 2. 1960–1977: After the release of Qiming’s owner from jail in 1959 following pressure from the US government, translations were no longer confiscated for political reasons. On the one hand, books published before 1949 were no longer in circulation, and on the other hand, publishers understood the government’s bottom line, that is, almost anything could be reissued as long as the translators’ names were erased. Qiming’s owner permanently fled to the US, but more publishers ventured into large-scale piracy during this stage, printing existing translations anonymously or under pseudonyms. However, new seed books from Mainland China decreased because of the Cultural Revolution; Hong Kong played a crucial role in this stage. Many titles translated in the 1950s were imported to Taiwan via Hong Kong, along with titles originally translated in Hong Kong. In total, 290 seed books were first pirated in this period. Although seed books from this stage outnumber those of the first stage, they comprised a smaller proportion of the total number of translated works in Taiwan. This is because more and more titles were rendered by translators in Taiwan, who were either exiled mainlanders or young translators. 3. 1978–1987: In this stage, the US normalized its relations with China and the World Today Press ceased operations in 1980. Translations published before 1949 became dated and more native Taiwanese translators emerged on the market. In 1978, when Yuanjing Publishing House pirated the ‘old translations’ that were first printed in Shanghai before 1949, the editors had to revise and update almost every title. In the early 1980s, Zhiwen 志文 Publisher began pirating titles translated in China after 1978 and claimed them as ‘new translations’. In total, eighty-one new seed titles from this stage have been discovered so far. Although martial law remained in effect during this period, the motive for pirating was less political and more commercial.

Erasing the Translators: A History of Pirated Translation in Taiwan, 1949–1987 45

The seed titles in Table 2.3 include all genres, such as drama, novels and poetry. Figure 2.2 shows the three stages of original translations for novels written in English, French and German. In the first stage, more than 70 per cent of the translated novels were produced in China. In the second stage, 32 per cent were first printed in China. By the third stage, only 10 per cent of the translations were first printed in China. 140 120 100 Taiwan

80

HK

60

China 40 20 0 1945-1959

1960-1977

1978-1987

Figure 2.2:  Original publication locations of translated novels in each of the three stages.

After 1987, when the martial law period ended, translations by mainland translators were no longer banned. Piracy nonetheless continued due to the incentive for illicit profit, but the real names of translators began to appear on book covers, sometimes even accompanied by brief biographies. On the other hand, the risks associated with piracy increased since translators in China might now be made aware of its occurrence. For example, in 1988, Zhiwen Publisher in Taipei plagiarized the 1949 translation of Emma by Liu Chongde (1914–2007). The next year, Soong (1989) in Hong Kong compared the two versions and wrote an article in Newsletter of Chinese Language, exposing the alleged plagiarism. The translator Liu was still living and, upon being made aware of the incident, negotiated with the publisher. As a result, Zhiwen reissued a new Emma translation properly credited to Liu. The issue of pirated titles across the Taiwan Strait may never completely end, but the motive is no longer political; moreover, the percentage of pirated translations amongst total titles presently is negligible.

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7.  Consequences The large-scale, four-decades-long piracy of translated titles not only violated the rights of the translators, but also incited a host of unforeseen negative consequences. First, piracy has made it extremely difficult to conduct any legitimate study of translation history in Taiwan, since the first step of doing a translation history, as Pym (1998: 5) puts it, is ‘translation archaeology’, where the scholar asks, ‘who translated what, how, where, when, for whom and with what effect’. If we do not know who translated what, where and when, we cannot proceed to the next two steps: ‘Historical Criticism’ and ‘Explanations’. The research in this paper was undertaken with the expectation of facilitating the clarification of obfuscated translation authorships and laying the groundwork for a more substantial historical study of translations in the second half of the twentieth century. Secondly, piracy compels readers to peruse translations out of context, and indeed it expunges their historical context completely. When pirating translated titles, the publishers often excised clues about the original time and place of printing from the paratext. The context of a translation was thereby erased along with the translator’s name. For example, The Odyssey translated by Fu Donghua in 1929, Shanghai, was included in Yuanjing’s World Literature series in 1978, Taipei. Fu provided a detailed preface to explain his approach to the translation as well as to identify the English versions he used as his source texts. But this preface, along with the name of the translator, was deleted in the Yuanjing edition. The publisher obviously intended for readers to be under the false impression that they were reading a new translation. An uninformed reader of the late 1970s and early 1980s would certainly have been confused by a rhymed version of The Odyssey, which was actually produced half a century earlier in a vastly different context. The publishers, however, were clear on one point, namely, the who, when or where of a translated work was not of consequence in their view. This hidden message was harmful to translators’ status in general. Thirdly, the translation norms of the 1930s and 1940s lingered in Taiwan for decades thereafter. This was due to most seed books having been produced during that timeframe, and, as a result, the translation norms of that period stuck. For better or worse, translators in the 1930s and 1940s tended to follow Lu Xun (1881–1936) by adopting a rather literal approach, especially when compared with translators in the 1920s. Lu Xun’s catchphrase ‘ning xin er bushun’ 寧信 而不順 [rather unsmooth than unfaithful] revealed his position for adequacy

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over acceptability, in Toury’s (1995: 57) terms. His approach was so influential that even his political rival Liang Shih-chiu followed the norm of literal translation (Lai 2013). Another influential case of the literal approach was that of Li Lei-wen (1904–1972), the translator of The Red and the Black. When Xu Jun, a professor of French literature at Nanjing University, China, first read the novel’s so-called ‘Taiwan version’ he was surprised at the literalness of the translation and said, ‘Maybe Taiwan readers are more open to foreign languages and cultures, or their standard of good translation is different from ours. Mr Li Lei-wen’s translation is so Europeanized that I found it very difficult for readers in Mainland China to accept such a version’ (Xu 1996: 235, my translation). What Xu did not know was that Li Lei-wen was in fact an exiled translator, who in 1937 had started his translation of The Red and the Black while still in China. When young translators in Taiwan began their careers in the late 1960s, they had few choices in pedagogical models. That is why several of the most productive translators – both native Taiwanese and mainlander – translated quite literally. And since hundreds of translators were absent from the scene, there was hardly any debate over translation approaches. Perpetuating this trend was the fact that some exiled and influential scholars such as Liang Shih-chiu and Li Lie-wen, who were prestigious professors of foreign literature in Taiwan, had spawned a whole generation of followers in their literal translation style. Last but not least, translators have long been under-appreciated in Taiwan.9 For many years academics and editors have bemoaned the inferior position that translation holds in academia, and they have called for more attention to the profession. However, such an attitude might very well have its origins in the conspiracy of piracy that haunts Taiwan’s past. Without clarifying the reasons behind Taiwan’s pirating history, it is natural that translation and translators will continue to be marginalized.

9

Even though many translators in China were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, translators, especially those of literature, continue to garner more social respect in China, where there are strong associations, periodicals and awards for translators compared to their counterparts in Taiwan. Many well-known translators of great Western writers, such as Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Jane Austen, are frequently the subject of Master’s or PhD theses. Additionally, there are a number of biographies on famous translators. The situation of translators in China, especially in comparison to those in Taiwan, however, is beyond the scope of this paper.

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8. Conclusion: A history full of falsehood Taiwan’s history of translation is full of falsehoods, owing to linguistic differences and political circumstances. The pirating enterprise began as a conspiracy perpetrated in collusion between the KMT government and publishers. The KMT regime was haunted by the spectre of Communism and despised those writers and translators who did not join them in coming over to Taiwan. When the government found the suppression of their works to be futile, it invented a way to ultimately deny their existence: erase their names. For the publishers, erasure of a mainland translator’s name was risk-free, convenient and profitable, since there was at that time no method of, nor even a requirement for, paying royalties. For nearly half a century, readers were accustomed to raising no questions and remained ignorant about the real translators’ identities. Although the invisibility of the translator is arguably a universal phenomenon, the case in Taiwan is more disturbing due to the hundreds of fake names still haunting bibliographies and libraries. For instance, in total twenty-seven novels by Yuanjing Publishing House have been attributed to the same mysterious translator Zhong Si. The talent of this ‘Mr/Ms Zhong’ is so amazing that he or she was apparently able to translate all manner and language of Western classics, ranging from Arabian Nights and Homer, to Tolstoy, Flaubert, Cervantes, Dumas (both the father and the son) and Charles Dickens. Yet not a soul knew the translator! Of course, all twenty-seven titles were pirated, but it would seem not a single reader or researcher ever ventured to question the identity of this Zhong. Such historical ignorance remains widespread in Taiwan. In Chang Ching-er’s research bibliography of Western literature in Taiwan, there were twenty-seven translations of Jane Eyre credited to different translators or an ‘unknown translator’. In fact, they were all pirated from the same version by Li Jiye (1904–1997). Based on the misleading data of Chang Ching-er, Tsay and Dong (2009: 3) further claimed that from 1950 to 2008, there were sixty-four different translators who rendered Jane Eyre. Although Tsay and Dong (ibid.) included adaptations for children, the number was still dubious. Some scholars of foreign literature were also misled by publishers and wrote introductory material for pirated translations without questioning the identity of the translator. For example, Professor Francis So wrote an introduction to the translation of Arabian Nights (Taipei: Gui Guan, 1993) credited to Zhong Si. In fact, this

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translation was a pirated one and the real translator was Na Xun in China. Professor Fan Kuo-sheng also wrote an introduction to the translation of Nineteen Eighty-Four (Taipei: Gui Guan, 1994) credited to Qiu Suhui, another fake name. The real translator was Huang Qili in Hong Kong. Since the underlying data continue to be problematic, much of the research that has used these data in the disciplines of library studies, literature studies and translation studies in Taiwan lacks a certain amount of reliability: their contributions are at best slightly compromised and at worst entirely diminished. How many of the translations in Taiwan are of piratic origin? This is a question that cannot yet be easily answered. Dong’s study suggests at least 29 per cent of translated literature in Taiwan published between 1945 and 1987 was pirated, since those translators were either ‘unknown’ or described as a ‘translation committee’. I found that 39 per cent of the translations of British novels and 34 per cent of the translations of American novels were first published in China. For French novels, 69 per cent of the translations came from China. In fact, all translations of Balzac, Zola and Dumas were done by translators based there. But only 18 per cent of the body of translated German novels were first published in China. In total, 37 per cent of the translated novels from the three languages circulating in Taiwan during the martial law period were translated in China rather than in Taiwan. In post-colonial studies of translation, most theories approach the issue of colonialism from the perspective of translations between the colonial language and the native language. As has been noted by Niranjana (1992: 2), ‘Translation as a practice shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism’. In the case of Taiwan, however, the relationship of translation to colonialism has been different. The problem has not been between unequal languages but rather has concerned the pirating of translations in the dominant language for use as educational tools. Piratic translations still took place within the context of an asymmetrical power relationship between the Mandarin-speaking mainlanders and the Japanese-educated Taiwanese. The accepted proliferation of translation piracy also reflected the complicated Cold War relations amongst the US, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Although the Cold War ended some decades ago, the perpetration of this historical conspiracy continues to cloud the collective conscience of the Taiwanese people. If the ignorance of history is a shared experience of colonized societies, including those subordinated by a settler-state, then the first step to decolonization is uncovering true

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history and reclaiming memory. The restoration of the erased identities of mainland translators would not only pay them their due respect, but also shed some light on a murky past of Taiwan’s collective identity.

Bibliography Chajin tushu mulu 查禁圖書目錄 [The Catalogue of Banned Books] (1964). Taipei: Taiwan Garrison Command Headquarters. Chang, C. 張靜二 (ed.) (2004). Xiyang wenxue zai taiwan yanjiu shumu: 1946–2000 西 洋文學在臺灣研究書目: 1946 年–2000 年 [Research Bibliography of Western Literature in Taiwan: 1946–2000]. Taipei: National Science Council. Chen, F. 陳芳明 (2011). Taiwan xin wenxue shi 台灣新文學史 [A History of Modern Taiwanese Literature]. Taipei: Lianjing. Dong, H. 董蕙茹 (2007). Taiwan diqu de shijie wenxue fanyi zuopin: shumu jiliang fenxi 臺灣地區的世界文學翻譯作品: 書目計量分析 [A Study of World Translated Literature: A Bibliometric Approach]. Master’s thesis. Taipei: National Chengchi University. Hushi koshu zizhuan 胡適口述自傳 [Reminiscences of Shih Hu: Oral History] (1958/1981), trans. T. Tong. Taipei: Biography Literature Magazine. Lai, T. 賴慈芸 (2013). ‘Wuthering Heights in Taiwan: Translations, Adaptions and Other Derivative Works’, Compilation and Translation Review, 6/2, 1–39. Niranjana, T. (1992). Siting Translation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Osterhammel, J. (2005). Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, trans. S. Frisch. Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner. Peng, R. 彭瑞金 (1991). Taiwan xin wenxue yundong sishi nian 台灣新文學運動四 十年 [Taiwan’s New Literature Movement for Forty Years]. Taipei: Independent Evening News. Pym, A. (1998). Method in Translation History. Manchester: St Jerome. Robinson, D. (1997). Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Theories Explained. Manchester: St Jerome. Soong, S. 宋淇 (1989). ‘Wei zhenausiting jiaoqu: tan gaiyi yu chaoyi’ 為珍奧斯汀叫 屈—談改譯與抄譯 [Some Words for Jane Austen: Edited and Pirated Translations]. Newsletter of Chinese Language, 5, 29–37. Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Tsai, S. 蔡盛琦 (2010). ‘Yijiu wuling niandai tushu chajin zhi yanjiu’ 一九五Ｏ年代 圖書查禁之研究 [The Suppressed Publications in the 1950s]. Bulletin of Academia Historica, 26, 75–130. Tsao, F. 曹逢甫 (2011). ‘Yuyan zhengce, yuyan jiaoyu de huigu yu qianzhan’ 語言政 策、語言教育的回顧與前瞻 [Review and Perspective of Language Policy and Language Education]. In Zhonghua minguo fazhanshi 中華民國發展史 [A History of Development of the Republic of China], pp. 405–40. Taipei: Lianjing. Tsay, M. 蔡明月, and H. Dong 董蕙茹 (2009). ‘Taiwan diqu de shijie wenxue fanyi zuopin: shumu jiliang fenxi’, 臺灣地區的世界文學翻譯作品: 書目計量分 析 [A Study of World Translated Literature: A Bibliometric Approach]. Journal of Library and Information Science, 35/2, 34–53. Wang, Q. 王奇生 (2000). ‘Minguo shiqi xiangcun quanli jiegou de yanbian’ 民國 時期鄉村權力結構的演變 [The Change of Power Structure in Rural Areas during the Republican Period]. In Zhongguo shehui shilun 中國社會史論 [On the History of Chinese Society]. Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu. . Weitzer, R. (1990). Transforming Settler States. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wu, W. 吳文星 (2011). ‘Bainianlai zhongxiaoxue jiaoyu zhi fazhan’ 百年來中小 學教育之發展 [The Development of Middle and Elementary Education over the Past 100 years]. In Zhonghua minguo fazhanshi 中華民國發展史 [A History of Development of the Republic of China: Education and Culture] (vol. 1), pp. 281–312. Taipei: Lianjing. Xie, T. 謝天振 (2009). ‘Feichang shiqi de feichang fanyi: guanyu zhongguo dalu wengeshiqi de wenxue fanyi’ 非常時期的非常翻譯: 關於中國大陸文革時 期的文學翻譯 [Particular Translation during a Particular Period: On Literary Tanslation in Mainland China during the Cultural Revolution]. Zhongguo bijiao wenxue 中國比較文學 [Comparative Literature in China] 75: 23–35. Xu, J. 許鈞 (1996). Wenzi, wenxue, wenhua: hongyuhei hanyi yanjiu 文字、文學、 文化: 紅與黑漢譯研究 [Language, Literature, and Culture: A Study on Chinese Translations of The Red and the Black]. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press. Yeh, S. 葉石濤 (1987). Taiwan wenxue shigang 台灣文學史綱 [A Short History of Taiwan’ Literature]. Kaohsiung: Wenxuejie 文學界 [Literary World] Magazine. Zhao, J. 趙家璧 (1939/1949). ‘Chubanzhe yan’ 出版者言 [Preface by the Editor]. In Rensheng yishi 人生一世 (from W. Saroyan, The Time of Your Life, trans. S. Hong), pp. 1–2. Shanghai: Chenguang.

Nana Sato-Rossberg

3 The Emergence of Translation Studies in Japan in the 1970s

abstract It is a widely held view amongst both Japanese and Western scholars that translation studies (TS) emerged as an academic field of study in Japan just after the turn of the millennium. However, the recently re-discovered journal 『季刊翻訳』 Kikan hon’yaku [Quarterly Translation] (1973–1975) reveals that there was already a clear interest in establishing translation as a ‘science’ in the 1970s. Previously, I have argued that Kikan hon’yaku represents the beginning of TS in Japan (SatoRossberg 2014), but this raises two questions: why have TS scholars not recognized this fact, and why has the academic study of translation in Japan failed to develop as widely as in other countries? In this paper, I analyse two journals that were published in Japan during the 1970s–1980s in order to explore the early history of Japanese translation studies. This analysis reveals how the conflict that emerged between the development of translation theory on the one hand and the increasing emphasis on efforts to simply identify ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ translations on the other reflects the relationship between the two journals and professional translation schools. This research also sheds light on the tension that existed between academics and practitioners, and on the early struggle between different views regarding the introduction of Western translation theories.

1. Introduction Compared with China (especially Hong Kong) and South Korea, where several universities have departments dedicated to translation studies, Japan still appears reluctant to wholly accept and foster the study of translation as an academic field. Despite this, there are a number of translation studies

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(TS) scholars in Japan, and some Japanese studies academics have become interested in using concepts from TS in their works (Leung 2017; Tamada 2018). However, such adoption is often only partial. Authors might use certain terminology, such as foreignization and domestication, but often fail to deepen and develop these concepts within the Japanese context. Until recently, it was a common belief amongst TS scholars both in Japan and the West that Japanese translation studies only began to emerge in the twentyfirst century (Takeda 2012). However, Japan is well known as ‘a culture of translation’ and has a rich tradition of research on translation. This includes research on the reception of translations of foreign literature within kokugo [the study of the national language], and descriptive or document-based research related to translation that does not make use of any particular translation theory. Translation research has also been carried out in Japan using post-colonial and post-modern translation theories, especially in the field of comparative literature. Despite the lack of a substantive theoretical framework for much of this traditional research, it should not be ignored when examining the development of TS in Japan. As Wakabayashi (2012) points out, translation theories of Western origin are not always adequate in the Japanese context. Establishing TS in Japan is not simply a matter of adopting Western-oriented TS theories, due to the nature of the Japanese language, society and history and how the Japanese conceptualization of translation differs from the West. Even the status of translators is different in Japan, as documented in other contributions to this volume (see Thomas Kabara and Akiko Uchiyama); hence some concepts, such as Venuti’s (1995) invisibility of translators, do not always apply. In order to create an approach to TS that is genuinely applicable and relevant for Japan, I believe it is important to merge traditional translation research and the more recent field of TS, and to establish translation theories that is grounded in Japanese translation practice and philosophy. As mentioned previously, TS is generally thought to have emerged in Japan just after the turn of the millennium. However, the recently discovered journal Kikan hon’yaku [Quarterly Translation] (1973–1975) reveals a clear interest in establishing translation as a ‘science’ in the 1970s, and, in my earlier work, I have argued that its publication marks the beginning of TS in Japan (Sato-Rossberg 2014).

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Kayoko Takeda (2012: 16), one of the first scholars to analyse how TS gradually became institutionalized in Japan, states that: ‘The emergence of any new field of study may be signalled by the formation of an academic organization, conferences, publication outlets or university departments, and programmes dedicated to the discipline. This is exactly what has happened over the past several years’. In this paper, I contend that TS had already taken on the form of an academic field of study in the 1970s. To substantiate this claim, I will consider all four of Takeda’s (ibid.) criteria: (1) academic organizations; (2) academic conferences; (3) publication outlets; and (4) university departments and programmes dedicated to the discipline. In section 2, I will briefly discuss the influence of Eugene Nida’s (1972) translation theory and that of his colleague, Noah Brannen, who acted as a bridge between Nida and Japan. This discussion is important because of the extent of Nida’s influence on many translation scholars and translators at that time. It is also vital for understanding the role played by two translation journals published in Japan in the 1970s: 『季刊翻訳』Kikan hon’yaku [Quarterly Translation] and 『翻訳の世界』Hon’yaku no sekai [The World of Translation]. In section 3, I will examine these two journals and consider what aspects of translation they emphasized. In section 4, I will discuss the scope of the Japanese concept of hon’yaku ron [translation theory or discourse] based on these two journals, noting its potential for future development. Finally, I will discuss the reasons for the lack of progress of TS in Japan, despite its promising start in the 1970s. My motivation for undertaking this study is similar to that of Tsuji (1993) and her work on French translation history – to question the unproven myths surrounding the history of academic discourse on translation. Tsuji (1993: 219) explains:1 I am inspired by the attitude of ‘amateurs’ who confront problems with their bare hands during the early stages of a process. Once an organization has been established and begins to function, it is difficult to perceive the living breath and the thoughts of the individuals involved. But if you trace back to its origins, you can often find the passion and enthusiasm of certain individuals in crystallized form there.

1

Translations of Japanese references are my own unless otherwise stated.

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The two journals that are the focus of my attention make it clear that Japan was no exception and that there were people passionate about translation and open to discussing it from various perspectives in these early years.

2.  The institutionalization of translation studies in Japan In this section, I will build on Takeda’s (2012) description of the emergence of the new academic field of TS in Japan and ask if this could already be seen in the 1970s. This discussion is based on the journal Kikan hon’yaku and its successor Hon’yaku no sekai. 2.1 The aims of Kikan hon’yaku and Hon’yaku no sekai It is somewhat surprising that Kikan hon’yaku is rarely mentioned in recent literature on TS in Japan. The journal was published by the Nihon Hon’yaku Kenkyūkai [ Japan Translation Research Group], which appears to have been a loose association of researchers rather than an established academic society. The group no longer exists and its work has not been well researched, but it appears that the main contributors to Kikan hon’yaku were its members. It is interesting to note that the editors’ statement of the purpose of the journal and their concept of translation research are not dissimilar to those of Japanese TS scholars today: 1. This magazine will consider a broad notion of translation and cover various kinds of research and information. 2. Although translation plays an important role in the process of constructing Japanese modern culture, there has been little discussion that tackles the subject of translation head on. We invite the wider opinions of all those interested in translation. 3. We anticipate an audience not only from the field of literature studies but also from the social and natural sciences – from all those who relate to the field of translation. 4. Through translation, we aim to establish a shared platform to think about our literature and culture, and also about politics, economics and society (Kikan hon’yaku 1993).

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These statements point to several interesting issues: the need for an inclusive vision of translation; the status and legitimacy of translation; and the need to think beyond literary translation and establish a platform whereby people can discuss all genres of translation. In any discussion of Japanese TS, it is important to recognize that an awareness of such issues surrounding the understanding and status of translation already existed in Japan in the 1970s. Articles submitted to Kikan hon’yaku were not peer reviewed so, by today’s standards, it might not be considered an academic journal. However, peer review was not as common in the 1970s as it is today, and, by Western standards, there are not many refereed academic journals in Japan even now. Those in print are often attached to specific academic associations, and to submit an article one needs to be a member of that association. To my knowledge, there are currently no academic journals on TS in Japan that are open to general submission. Considering these factors, I believe it is fair to say that Kikan hon’yaku was as academic as one could expect a journal to be at that time. Interestingly, several authors mention in their articles in the journal that the editorial board had asked for the inclusion of more works dealing with translation theory. I will return to this point in section 4. 2.2 Translation courses at universities Concerning the question of whether courses on translation existed at the university level in 1970s Japan, the first issue of Kikan hon’yaku notes that the number of university courses on translation theory was increasing. Ikegami (1973a: 140) from Kikan hon’yaku asks: ‘Why do they offer this subject? Can translation theory be established as an academic discipline?’ In response to these questions, Ikegami visited the International Christian University (ICU). There, she first interviewed Prof. Noah S. Brannen, who co-authored with Eugene Nida and Charles R. Taber the Japanese edition of The Theory and Practice of Translation (1973) and, as a member of the translation committee of the Japan Bible Society, had learned translation theory from Nida. In this interview, Brannen explains that he had been giving translation theory classes at ICU since 1968 and stresses that ‘our

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translation theory derives from the linguistic perspective’ and that ‘our purpose is to research translation scientifically’ (in Ikegami 1973a: 142). It is noteworthy that Ikegami published this interview with Brannen in the first issue of Kikan hon’yaku, as if to point to the future direction of TS. Ikegami also interviewed students at ICU. Apparently, they had no specific intention of becoming translators; their interest lay rather in researching translation theory from the standpoint of linguistics (ibid.: 143). The attitude of these students demonstrates that in 1970s Japan it was already possible to study translation theory for purely academic purposes. In later editions, Kikan hon’yaku introduces translation theory courses at other universities, such as at Sophia University, where they were part of the English literature programme. When Ikegami visited Sophia University, she found that about ninety mainly third-year students were attending this course. The lecturer was Bekku Sadanori, who later became known for his critique of the debate about ‘right and wrong translation’ and whose publication Kekkan hon’yaku jihyō [Comments on Faulty Translation] was subsequently serialized in Hon’yaku no sekai. Bekku valued practical translation as a means of teaching English. In his interview with Ikegami (1973b: 138–9), he states: I am not a linguist and have no intention of researching translation linguistically. Explaining translation theoretically does not mean you can do better translations. We speak Japanese fluently, but it is different question as to whether we speak grammatically correctly or not – this is the same thing. Even if we know the grammar, it doesn’t mean that we can write good novels or poems.

Ikegami (ibid.: 139) adds a comment: ‘This is how Bekku values translation theory, so his lectures place emphasis on practical application as well’. These interviews with Brannen and Bekku reveal clear differences in attitudes towards translation theory and the understanding of its importance. Brannen was more theory-oriented and believed that theory could improve practice, whereas Bekku did not appear to hold translation theory in much regard. In summary, there was no formal translation programme in Japan in the 1970s, but translation theory courses had started to emerge.

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2.3 Conferences From 15 August to 2 September 1966, an international translation seminar organized by the Japan Bible Society was held in Hachioji, Japan. The aim was to bring together a broad interdenominational team to produce a new Bible translation (Seisho shin kyōdō-yaku ni tsuite 1966: 11). In this meeting of Bible scholars and university teachers, twenty-six out of the forty-five participants were university scholars. The report of this seminar states: In this way, the seed of a joint translation was planted. To grow that seed, just water the soil and God will take care of it. We took this opportunity in a three-week international translation seminar, which was ecumenical. This was the first seminar of this type. It was held in Hachioji, a suburb of Tokyo, from 15 August to 2 September 1966, and was facilitated and hosted by the Japan Bible Society, supported by the United Bible Societies. The seminar was led and chaired by Dr Nida, with fifty-five people from eleven countries participating, of which thirty were Japanese. Most Japanese participants later joined a collaborative translation of the Bible. (Takahashi, in Nihon Seisho Kyōkai 1987: 11–12)

Takahashi (ibid.: 5) recalls that they first tried to produce a popular translation based on Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence: ‘However, in order to make an acceptable translation for “people inside the church”, we ended up using plenty of honorific language. And for the transliteration of proper nouns, we decided to use the spellings that had often been used before’. As a result, the new translation, which was published in 1978, still used a formal style of Japanese. Similar seminars on Bible translation were also held in other parts of Asia, such as the Philippines and Taiwan, and it would be interesting to compare their impact in these various countries and regions. As described in the report above, the seminar in Japan was led by Nida, and one of the participating translators, Hotta, later contributed a paper on translation theory to Hon’yaku no sekai, which I will discuss in section 4. In conclusion of this section, we have seen how three of the criteria listed by Takeda (2012) as indicators of the birth of a new academic field (academic organizations, conferences and departments) have been satisfied in Japan in the 1970s, albeit on a much smaller scale than today. The fourth, publication outlets, will be discussed below.

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These developments were part of the global emergence of TS. In 1972, just one year before the launch of Kikan hon’yaku, James Holmes is said to have coined the term ‘Translation Studies’ at a conference in Copenhagen (Munday 2012). Thus, we can observe that rather than following Western developments, Japan was resonating with the same global trend and was an active participant in the emergence of this new field of study.

3. Nida’s influence in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s The American linguist Eugene Nida was one of the leading figures in the development of TS. In this section, I will explore how Nida’s theories influenced Japanese scholars and translators, and how they were received in Japan shortly after their publication. 3.1  Eigo seinen [The English Generation] According to Sato (2015), the subject of translation was already being discussed from the academic perspective of English literature in the journal Eigo seinen [The English Generation] starting around 1960. The journal was first launched in 1898 with the title Seinen [The Rising Generation] and, according to Sato (ibid.: 24), during the 1960s a discourse targeting the audience’s perspective emerged in Eigo seinen that can be linked to Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence. She writes that Eigo seinen valued translation theories that theorized about the practice of language transfer from the linguistic perspective. Nida’s (1964) Toward a Science of Translating and Nida and Taber’s (1969) The Theory and Practice of Translation were introduced by the journal as helpful for thinking about translation as an academic discipline. Sato (2015: 26) describes how Nida’s influence continued to grow among Japanese translation scholars in the early 1970s and notes that, because of the launch of the new translation journal Kikan hon’yaku, English literature academics concluded that translation would become increasingly popularized. Hence the discussion of translation began to disappear from the pages

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of Eigo seinen, as popular subjects were not deemed suitable for the attention of serious academics. 3.2 The theory and practice of translation: Brannen and Nida In order to understand Nida’s influence in Japan, it is important to appreciate the role of Noah Brannen, who first came to Japan in 1951 as a missionary and began teaching at the International Christian University in 1967. From the following year, he began teaching translation theory. He was one of the contributors to the new collaborative translation (kyōdō-yaku) of the Bible (see section 2.3) and is said to have learned translation theory from Nida (Kikan hon’yaku 1973). Although Nida and Taber published The Theory and Practice of Translation in 1969, it was not until 1973 that the Japanese version appeared, with Brannen’s name on the cover as one of the authors. Brannen (in Nida et al. 1973) added an interesting introduction for the Japanese audience, in which he explains that Nida’s approach to translation theory is to adopt the position of the recipient. He writes that the book tries to apply Nida’s ideas to issues of English-Japanese translation and explains that the book was rewritten for a Japanese audience with Nida’s consent, so that it could more easily be used by Brannen in his Japanese university courses (ibid.: viii). For example, Brannen (ibid.: 6) added various examples from the Japanese language: Not many words describing wind can be found in the English language. However, in Japanese, we differentiate depending on the time of day: ‘asa-kaze (morning wind)’, ‘yū-kaze (afternoon wind)’, ‘yo-kaze (night wind)’ […]. Among others, there are many specific names for fish and tea in Japanese. English has verbs that differentiate ways to cook, e.g., to bake, to fry […] we can see that language and culture are deeply connected.

Sawanobori and Masukawa (ibid.: vii), the translators of the book with Brannen’s reworkings, recall the situation of translation in Japan at that time in their preface: ‘How much effort translators made at that time to convey the meaning and the style of the original faithfully is beyond our imagination’. They also comment that translation depends on the skills and techniques of the translator (they use the Japanese word for ‘art’), and that these make the difference between good and bad translations. Sawanobori

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and Masukawa (ibid.) point out that Nida’s book, while accepting translation as an art, also proposes ‘scientific’ methods, such as thinking about the perspective of the readers and concentrating on the target audience and culture when translating. In this way, Nida’s theories extended beyond the bounds of Bible translators in Japan and influenced translators and scholars across a broad field. Arguably his most famous book, Toward a Science of Translating (1964), was translated into Japanese by the well-known translator Naruse Takeshi and published as Hon’yakugaku josetsu in Japan in 1972. Why did Naruse translate Nida’s book? In his postscript, he describes how he had attended Nida’s lectures while studying in the US: ‘If I recall well, in 1963, while giving his lectures with much humour, Nida must have been writing this book, which is the first to use the term “science (gaku)” in relation to translation theory’ (Naruse 1972). The translation was thus inspired by Naruse’s personal encounters with Nida and his lectures, and Naruse clearly attributes his interest in TS, to use the current term, to Nida’s influence in the US. From this section, I believe it is clear that Nida’s influence cannot be underestimated and should be studied more thoroughly in the Japanese context.

4. Translation journals In this section, I will look more closely at Hon’yaku no sekai to understand how translation scholars and translators in Japan understood translation theory. 4.1  Hon’yaku no sekai Hon’yaku no sekai was first published in 1976 as a successor to Kikan hon’yaku, which had been discontinued in 1975. It was published by Yoshida Yoshiaki and its editor was Yuasa Miyoko. Yoshida was the founder and president of the Daigaku hon’yaku sentā [Centre for University Translation], and Yuasa is

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the founder and chairman of the Japan Translation Training Centre and the current chancellor of the Babel University Professional School of Translation. She also founded the Japan Translation Association in 1985. Takahashi Kenji, the president of the Japan Association of Translators, Sato Ryoichi, the vice-president of the Japan Society of Translators ( JST, 1953–present) and various others contributed their ideas to the journal. Sato (1976: 53) appears to have been impressed by a meeting of the International Federation of Translators (FIT), in which he participated in 1973, commenting: ‘I understand how the field of translation in every country aims to respond to the developments and needs of current society. In addition, I was reminded of the value of translators who command multiple languages’. It is evident that Sato was inspired by taking part in the conference and witnessing activities to improve the status of translators in the West. He also notes the increasing number of translation classes at Japanese universities, and continues: ‘The interest in translation is growing along with demand in our country. At this time, when many researchers strive to become translators, the appearance of this journal Hon’yaku no sekai will support many people who aim to become translators’ (ibid.: 52). Sato’s comments document the keen interest in translation in Japan, not only from a practical viewpoint but also from an academic one. He calls for an increase in translation classes in higher education, noting the interest in translation amongst researchers (ibid.). Because of the link between FIT and JST, Hon’yaku no sekai appears to have been interested in improving the status of translators and featured a special report by Zuratoko Golian, the vice-president of FIT, titled ‘Recommendations for the legal protection of translators and translations and practical means to improve the status of translators’. Taketomi Norio also contributed an essay on ‘Advancing the status of translators’. It is important to note this link with developments in the West and the influence of FIT in Japan in the 1970s, as it most likely contributed to the establishment of the journal Hon’yaku no sekai. We can see from the contents of the journal and the postscript by the editor, which was published with each volume, that Hon’yaku no sekai differed from its predecessor Kikan hon’yaku in its attempt to promote business translation.

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Nana Sato-Rossberg It is likely that, when people hear translation, many imagine academic material, especially literary translation. This is the same for prospective translators. However, there is also a need for business translators who can work with government offices and private companies. There is a need for people who are knowledgeable about business and at the same time good at language. Understanding this and having established a business translation section, we are eager to work on business translation. We also intend to look at issues of mistranslation. In any case, we want to produce a journal that is enjoyed by our readers. (Yuasa 1976: 90)

The statement by the editors of Kikan hon’yaku that ‘we anticipate an audience not only from the field of literature studies but also from the social and natural sciences – from all those who relate to the field of translation’, clearly indicates that there was a tendency at the time to automatically link ‘translation’ with literary studies and fail to recognize other genres. In the postscript by Yuasa, we can see her additional aims for the direction of Hon’yaku no sekai compared with those of Kikan hon’yaku: to promote business translation and to point out mistranslations. In accordance with these aims, volume two onwards of Hon’yaku no sekai features a section called ‘Practical translation lessons’, which taught various topics such as ‘patents’, ‘electronics’, ‘medicine’ and ‘literature’. Apart from ‘literature’, all these subjects related to business translation. This increasing interest in business translation reflects Japan’s period of rapid economic growth, which started in the 1960s and peaked in 1990. In addition, the journal also aimed to emphasize that language ability alone was not sufficient for producing good translations and that it was important to understand the cultural context. Nakamura Yasuo (1997: 7), a translator and a regular contributor to Hon’yaku no sekai, writes: Kikan hon’yaku suddenly disappeared from print and then, just like a replacement, Hon’yaku no sekai began to be published. What I noticed from the first volume was that this journal does not view translation simply as a skill but tries to consider it from a wider perspective. Of course, the basis of translation is a language and reading ability. But if you do not understand the cultural, historical and ethical inevitability of why this text had to be written, you cannot translate it properly, even if you possess very good language skills.

Both journals wrote not only about language but also incorporated the cultural anthropologist’s perspective to try and broaden people’s view of translation.

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4.2 Cultural translations Several cultural anthropologists contributed articles about the translation of cultures to both Kikan hon’yaku and Hon’yaku no sekai. Konno Tetsuo (n.d.), editor of Hon’yaku no sekai in the 1980s, recalled in an interview that ‘cultural anthropology was very influential in the 1970s. That is possibly the reason for the strong perspective on comparative culture’ (Konno). In volume two of Hon’yaku no sekai, Sobue Takao (1997: 10) contributed an essay on ‘Proposals for Selecting Standard Translations’, in which he writes about conflicts that emerged in interpreting between ‘American Indians’ and ‘white settlers’:2 For example, when the border fences between white settlers and Indians were broken, there were several expressions in the Navajo language to describe this, such as ‘broken by animals’ and ‘intentionally broken by humans’. The expression differs depending on how it was broken. However, English has only one expression which is ‘broken’. When interpreters translated into Navajo, they had to use their judgement as to the correct translation. If they judged wrongly, it could result in disaster.

Aoki Tamotsu points out similar issues in his essay ‘The role of translation machines from the perspective of anthropology’. In Japanese, midori is generally accepted as the equivalent word for ‘green’ in English. However, the range of colour that is described as ‘green’ in English is different from that of midori in Japan: People in the field of cultural anthropology understand that green is not the exact equivalent of midori. Depending on the culture, it does not look like green, it cannot be recognized as green. They emphasize or point out, using many examples, that there is a difference between the thing which is expressed by a word and reality. (Aoki 1977: 31)

I believe that the appearance of articles about translating cultures in Hon’yaku no sekai reflects not only the popularity of cultural anthropology at that time, but also demonstrates a clear intention by the journal to broaden translation research beyond the literary translation that had occupied the mainstream until the 1960s.

2

These terms are direct translations of the Japanese words ‘Amerika Indian’ and ‘hakujin kaitakusha’. They reflect the attitudes of the time and are not in common use today.

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In volume three of Hon’yaku no sekai, one of the editors, Sugiura Yōichi (1978: 134), writes that ‘we want to cover not only literature but also natural sciences and social sciences; by covering issues across a broad spectrum of categories of translation, we want to prepare the ground for translation theory’. This is similar to the statement of purpose in Kikan hon’yaku and expresses his eagerness for the development of translation theory. Thus, we can see that, despite certain differences in emphasis, there was no drastic change in purpose between the two journals and both sought to broaden their focus beyond the traditional field of literary translation. 4.3 Hon’yaku ron [translation theory] The term riron as a translation of the English word ‘theory’ appears to have been first coined during the Meiji period (1868–1912). Notably, the word rironteki [theoretically] was used for the first time in Natsume Sōseki’s famous novel Kokoro, which was published in 1914 (Kabashima 1984). Several contributors to Kikan hon’yaku mention that the editorial board asked them to include more hon’yaku ron, which can be translated as ‘translation theory’ or ‘translation discourse’. Interestingly, the contributors interpreted this term in various ways. Some understood it in the sense of ‘theory’ and wrote accordingly, while others just expressed their personal opinions and preferences. Such flexibility in the use of terminology is typical of Japan, and the interpretation of hon’yaku ron in Kikan hon’yaku is no exception. This point is important to note when we think about the concept of theory. When we communicate in language, it may appear that we are using the same words for the same concepts. Yet, it is most likely that the concepts that different people draw on are actually different. This is why the development of area-based TS is important. It contributes to making TS richer and more open to perspectives from all over the world. A good example of this can be found in the first volume of Kikan hon’yaku, which contains the transcript of a discussion on ‘the limitations and possibilities of translation’. All five participants in this discussion were (male) translators. Topics they addressed included ‘loyalty in translation’, ‘translation and cultural difference’, ‘authors and translators who like translation’, ‘transparent translation and translation in colours’, and ‘the discourse on the limitations

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of translation’. In a section on ‘barriers between languages and cultures’, Yamashita Yuichi remarks: Now you mentioned the barrier of language, but I think it is more like the barrier of culture. I believe translators should not go beyond this cultural barrier. Going back to the example that we discussed, of course Americans do not know about hamachi [yellowtail] or wasabi. But I don’t think that we should skip over them in order to conform to American culture. This is my personal hon’yaku ron. (Kikan hon’yaku 1973: 43)

So here Yamashita is talking about his personal approach and ethics as a translator and refers to this as hon’yaku ron. But obviously he is not talking about translation theory. In my previous work I have described how the term hon’yaku ron was often used strategically in Kikan hon’yaku (Sato-Rossberg 2014). However, as explained in the previous section, the concept of hon’yaku ron was not well defined and contributors to the journal interpreted the word in different ways. Article titles related to hon’yaku ron include ‘Practical Hon’yaku Ron’ (vol. 1), ‘Hon’yaku Ron Notes’ (vol. 2), ‘Current Hon’yaku Ron and Its Problems’ (vol. 3), and ‘Introduction to Hon’yaku Ron’ (vols 5–7). Throughout the period of its publication, articles on hon’yaku ron appeared in almost every volume. The same is true for Hon’yaku no sekai during the 1970s, which included a series on ‘Hon’yaku Principles’ from February 1978 until March 1979. As a further example of how hon’yaku ron was understood in Japan, let me have a closer look at a series in volume one titled Bible Translation, written by Hotta Yasuo (1977). The first article in this feature is ‘New Directions in Japanese Bible Translation – Collaborative Translations’. In this article, Hotta suggests a so-called ‘translation cooking ron’, which includes aspects of Skopos theory. He writes that his ‘cooking ron consists of roughly three levels. After washing the ingredients, you cut them into bite-sized pieces or smaller, apply heat to convert them from their raw state to make them edible and then add some flavours to bring the original taste to life’ (ibid.: 16). In a similar way in translation, it is necessary to understand the background of the original text, analyse it to grasp the semantics correctly and then ‘transfer to Japanese, a different language. In addition, it is important to “re-structure” to adjust to the Japanese writing system’. Hotta (ibid.) writes

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that ‘even if you use the same materials, the cooking depends a lot on your preparation and how you add flavour; translation is the same, so there can be a number of different Bible translations’. In other words, depending on the aim and purpose of the translation and the target audience, translations can vary: ‘In the past, translators emphasized attention to the original, but today they tend to focus more on “Japaneseness” in writing and vocabulary in their translations’ (ibid.). Hotta (ibid.: 18) notes that there is greater interest in translations that sound more Japanese and that consider the perspective of the target audience rather than making strict faithfulness to the original text their central concern, arguing that: It must be noted that collaborative translation is based on a translation theory with academic credentials. This theory is about dynamic equivalence, which is promoted by the American structural linguist Eugene Nida and has received attention amongst both practical translators and translation scholars.

In the context of Bible translation, emphasis on readability in the target text serves to encourage more people to read the Bible. However, it is important to note that Hotta claims that even practical translators and scholars (i.e. those not involved in Bible translation nor associated with the church) have shown interest in Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence. This again illustrates the extent of Nida’s influence in Japan in the 1970s. The question that remains is why this widespread interest in hon’yaku ron did not result in the development of a flourishing and thriving field of TS in Japan.

5. Relationship between translation schools and translation journals Advertisements in library archives of newspapers published in the 1970s reveal that several specialized translation schools were established at that time, including schools for interpreters and for scientific and technical

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translation. In order to understand the history of TS in Japan, it is vital to consider the role of professional translation schools. In this section, I will briefly explain and discuss the links between schools and journals. The chapter by Thomas Kabara in this volume, discussing professional schools for subtitling, is also relevant in this regard. Kikan hon’yaku was published with the aim of creating a research journal that bridges practice and theory. One of these schools, the Japan Professional Translation School, was featured in Kikan hon’yaku volume 4 (1974). As I mentioned in section 2.2, as part of a series in Kikan hon’yaku the interviewer Ikegami (1973) visited universities and schools where translation was taught. In the first three volumes of the journal, her visits were restricted to universities, but in volume 4 she visited the Japan Professional Translation School. According to Ikegami, this was the first translation school in Japan. She explains: ‘This is the only translation school in our country. It was opened in April last year. Previously, the world of translation was closed to newcomers; this school was established with the aim of opening it up’ (1974: 138). She lists the names of the teachers, which include Ōkubo Yasutaka, mentioned above, and several others who also turn out to be regular contributors to Kikan hon’yaku. There were two courses taught at the school: one on literary translation (mainly the translation of novels) and one on general English literature (non-fiction and critical writing). Both courses lasted six months (ibid.). Interestingly, Ikegami (ibid.: 140) notes after observing a class: ‘Taketomi Norio also teaches practical translation’. Careful examination reveals even closer links between Kikan hon’yaku and the Japan Professional Translation School. Kikan hon’yaku often included advertisements, and one of these was for the Japan Professional Translation School and displayed the slogan: ‘The only professional translator-training organization in Japan’. The address given for the school is exactly the same as that of the publisher of Kikan hon’yaku, and Kobayashi Mitsutoshi is listed as both the president of the school and the publisher of the journal. It is also interesting to note that the school does not appear in the guidebook Vocational Schools in Japan, which was first published by the National Association of Vocational Schools in Japan in 1977. The most likely reason is that the school had closed down before the guide was published. As Kikan

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hon’yaku also ceased publication in 1975, it is reasonable to conclude that the demise of the journal was linked to the closure of the school. As mentioned previously in section 4.1, Yuasa Miyoko played an important role in developing the journal Hon’yaku no sekai. Babel started offering distance learning courses to train translators in 1974. An advertisement by Babel on their website (Sato-Rossberg: 2015) stated: ‘It goes without saying that translation skills require a well-trained linguistic ability […] The course aims to teach English thoroughly, not just cheap skills’ (ibid.). Because of a shortage of professional translators, there were many amateur translators in the marketplace at this time, and Yuasa writes that ‘the establishment of translation as a vocation is a very real and urgent matter’. Hon’yaku no sekai played an important role as a public-relations magazine for this course. An editor of the journal, Konno Tetsuo (n.d.: online) notes that, while ‘there was an aspect of a public-relations magazine for distance learning, it was not only that’ and continues, ‘if we look at the contributors [to the journal], there are not only practical translators but also authors, poets and scholars writing articles. These formed the core and, on top of this, there was discussion of translation skills and distance education’. The journal has sold 10,000 copies according to Konno. In this section I have examined the relationship between two translation journals and translation schools and distance learning courses in the 1970s. The journals played a part in establishing and supporting these schools, but had academic ambitions of their own. This synergy could be seen as a Japanese characteristic, unless it turns out to be a pattern also found in other parts of the world. The green shoots of the development of TS as a new academic field can clearly be seen in the two journals; in order to understand the subsequent stunted growth of TS in the academic world in Japan, it is vital to explore further the links between the translation industry and professional translation schools. It would also be useful to carry out a comparative study, covering other non-Western countries that have a strong emphasis on practical translation over theory.

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6. Conclusion In this paper, we have seen that there are clear indications of interest in establishing translation studies in Japan in the 1970s. This movement was not isolated but linked directly to developments in the West. Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence was well received, and a new collaborative translation of the Bible into Japanese was attracting the attention of non-Christian translators and scholars. We looked closely at the two translation journals Kikan hon’yaku and Hon’yaku no sekai and found that both were keen on disseminating and discussing translation theories. Despite the emphasis placed by Hon’yaku no sekai on practical translation, I found no signs of a chasm between theory and practice. It was interesting to discover that both journals were closely affiliated with professional translation schools. These schools focused on teaching practical translation skills, whereas the journals tended to be more academic. It is possible that this situation was unique to Japan, although a comparison with other East Asian countries might reveal similar stories. It is clear that the shoots of translation studies emerged in Japan in the 1970s in tandem with developments in the West. Why did they subsequently fail to flourish? Why did the initial enthusiasm not lead to sustained growth? Providing answers to these questions will be a subject for future work.

Bibliography Aoki, T. 青木保 (1977). ‘Jinruigaku kara mita hon’yaku ki no ichi’ 人類学から見た 翻訳機の位置 [The Position of Machine Translation from the Perspective of Anthropology], Hon’yaku no sekai, 2, 29–33. Asahi shimbun (1972–1973). Bekku, S. 別宮貞則 (1978). ‘Kekkan hon’yaku jihyō’ 欠陥翻訳時評 [Comments on Faulty Translation], Hon’yaku no sekai, 10, 128–34. Haga, T. 芳賀徹 (ed.) (2000). Hon’yaku to Nihon bunka 翻訳と日本文化 [Translation and Japanese culture]. Tokyo: Kokusai bunka kyōryoku suishin kyōkai. Hon’yaku no sekai 翻訳の世界 (1977–2005). Tokyo: Nihon Hon’yakuka Yōsei Sentā.

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Hon’yaku no sekai gekkan 翻訳の世界月刊 (1976–1977). Tokyo: Daigaku Hon’yaku Sentā. Hotta, Y. 堀田都茂樹 (1977). ‘Hon’yaku hōyaku no shinhōkō – kyōdōyaku ni tsuite’ 翻訳邦訳の新方向 [New Directions in Japanese Translation – about Team Translation], Hon’yaku no sekai, 1, 13–19. Ikegami, S. 池上昌子 (1973a). ‘Kenkyūshitsu meguri’ 研究室巡り[Visiting Research Offices], Kikan hon’yaku, 1, 140–3. —— (1973b). ‘Kenkyūshitsu meguri’ 研究室巡り [Visiting Research Offices], Kikan hon’yaku, 2, 138–40. —— (1974). ‘Kenkyūshitsu meguri’ 研究室巡り [Visiting Research Offices], Kikan hon’yaku, 4, 138–40. Kabashima, T., Toda, Y., and Yonekawa, A. 樺島 忠夫, 飛田 良文, 米川 明彦編 (1984). Meiji Taishō shingo zokugo jiten 明治大正新語俗語辞典 [Dictionary of New Colloquial Words in the Meiji and Taishō Periods]. Tokyo: Tokyodō Shuppan. Kikan hon’yaku 季刊翻訳 (1973–1975). Tokyo: Miki. Konno, T. 今野哲朗 (n.d.). Hon’yaku no Sekai moto henshū chō Konno Tetsuo san ni kiku 翻訳の世界元編集長今野哲郎さんに聞く [Interview with Tetsuo Konno, X- editor of Hon’yakuka] . Konosu, Y. 鴻巣友季子 (2011). Zenshin hon’yakuka 全身翻訳家 [The Whole-body Translator]. Tokyo: Chikuma bunko. Leung, W. 梁偉鴻　(2017). ‘Hon’yakuka ni okeru polaitonesu to ika hon’yakuka sutorateji’ 翻訳におけるポライトネスと異質化翻訳ストラテジー : 日英・日中の翻訳をめぐって [Politeness of Translation and Foreignizing Strategy of Translation], 235–56. . Munday, J. (2012). Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge. Nakamura, Y. 中村保男 (1977). ‘Bessekai no hon’yaku’ 別世界の翻訳 [Translation in a Different World], Hon’yaku no sekai, 2, 7–9. Naruse, T. 成瀬武史 (1972). Jobun 序文 [Introduction]. In E. Nida, Hon’yakugaku josetsu [Toward a Science of Translating]. Tokyo: Kaibunsha. Nida, E. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: Brill. Nida, E., and C. Taber (1969). The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden: Brill. Nida, E. (1972). Hon’yakugaku josetsu [Toward a Science of Translating], trans. T. Naruse. Tokyo: Kaibunsha. Nida, E., N. Brannen and C. Taber (1973). Hon’yaku – riron to jissai 翻訳理論と実際 [The Theory and Practice of Translation], trans. H. Sawanobori and M. Masukawa. Tokyo: Kenkyūsha. Nihon Seisho Kyōkai 日本聖書協会 (1987). Seisho kyōdōyaku ni tsuite 聖書共同 訳について [About Bible Team Translation]. Tokyo: Nihon Seisho Kyōkai.

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Ōkubo, Y. 大久保康雄 (1973). ‘Sōkan ni yosete: hon’yaku zatsudan’ 創刊によせて [Contribution to the First Issue: An Informal Discussion about Translation], Kikan hon’yaku, 1, 23–48. Sato, M. 佐藤美希 (2015). ‘1960～70 nendai no eibeibungaku hon’yakukan: Eigo seinen to Kikan hon’yaku no kyōshin to kairi’ [Discourses on the Translation of English and American Literature in the Scholarly Magazines Eigo seinen and Kikan hon’yaku in the 1960s–1970s], Hon’yaku kenkyū e no shōtai, 14, 21–38. Sato, R. 佐藤亮一 (1976). ‘Hon’yakuka no shinshutsu ni kitai’ 翻訳の進出に期待 [Expectations about the Advancement of Translators], Hon’yaku no sekai, 11, 82–7. Sato-Rossberg, N. (2014). ‘Kyōshin to koō: 1970 nendai Nihon ni okeru toransurēshon sutadeīzu’ 共振と呼応 [Resonance and Echo: The Birth of Japanese Translation Studies in the 1970s], Misuzu, 6–13. —— (2015). ‘1970 nendai Nihon ni okeru toransurēshon sutadeīzu no mebae to sono yukue’ 1970年代日本におけるトランスレーション・スタディーズとそ の行方 [Translation Studies in Japan in the 1970s: Kikan hon’yaku and Hon’yaku no sekai], Invitation to Translation Studies, 14, 5–20. Sobue, T. 祖父江孝男 (1977). ‘Gengo no sentaku to tōitsu e no teigen’ 言語の選 択と統一への提言 [Suggestions for Selection and Unification of Language], Hon’yaku no sekai, 1, 10–12. Sugiura, Y. 杉浦洋一 (1978a). ‘Kenkyūshitsu kara’ 研究室から [From the Editor’s Room], Hon’yaku no sekai, 1. 134. —— (1978b). ‘Kekkan hon’yaku jihyō ni kotaete’ 欠陥翻訳時評に答えて [Reply to ‘Comments on Faulty Translation’], Hon’yaku no sekai, 12, 91. Takeda, K. (2012). ‘The emergence of translation studies as a discipline in Japan’ In N. Sato-Rossberg and J. Wakabayashi (eds), Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese context, pp. 11–32. London: Bloomsbury. Tamada, S. 玉田沙織 (n.d.). ‘Waka no Dōka Hon’yaku ron’ [Domestication strategy of Waka]. . Tsuji, Y. 辻由美 (1993). Hon’yakushi no puromunado 翻訳史のプロムナード [Promenade of Translation History]. Tokyo: Misuzu. Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. Wakabayashi, J. (2012). ‘Situating Translation Studies in Japan within a Broader Context’. In N. Sato-Rossberg and J. Wakabayashi (eds), Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese context, pp. 33–52. London: Bloomsbury. Yuasa, M. 湯浅美代子 (1976). ‘Henshū kōki’ 編集後記 [Editorial Board’s Postscript], Hon’yaku no sekai, 11, 165. Zenkoku Senshū Gakkō Sōran 全国専修学校総連 (1977). Tokyo: Zenkoku Senshū Gakkō Kakushu Gakkō Rengō Kai.

part ii

Women Translators and Women in Translation

Akiko Uchiyama

4 Translating as Writing: Wakamatsu Shizuko’s Empathetic Translation as a Creative Literary Art

abstract Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864–1896) is one of the earliest female translators of Western literature in Japan, whose major work is the translation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886). Her English education at a mission school stimulated her interest in English literature, and she superimposed her aspirations to become a writer onto her literary translations. She actively chose works to translate that conveyed her way of thinking, and empathetically translated the texts as a ‘creative’ literary activity. This chapter explores her personal engagement with the translation process and careful word-crafting in the target language to argue that being a conscious agent of translation enabled her to produce memorable translations.

1. Introduction Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864–1896) was a translator and writer in Meiji Japan (1868–1912). Her translation works attracted critical acclaim from many of her contemporaries, including the so-called ‘king of translation’ Morita Shiken (1861–1897) and writer and literary critic Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935). She is now best remembered for having introduced Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) to Japanese readers as Shōkōshi 小公子 [The Little Lord], but her work does not seem to have attracted the attention it deserves. In Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (2000), Rebecca Copeland examines three Meiji women writers,

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including Shizuko.1 Each of these writers is less recognized than Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–1896), whose pen name Ichiyō means ‘single leaf ’. The book’s title suggests that Shizuko has been somehow ‘lost’ in the genealogy of women writers in Japan. Copeland (2000: 2) describes the neglect in literary histories: ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko is brushed aside as a mere translator, an imitator of another sort’. This description suggests that her lack of recognition is premised by the generally prevalent notion of ‘a mere translator’ who does not create but simply imitates others’ work. The overall purpose of my chapter is to highlight the importance of Shizuko precisely as a translator – as a pioneering literary translator of the period, whose work warrants greater academic attention. It is interesting to note here that Korean versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy, published much later than Shizuko’s translation, have the title So gong ja, which is identical in meaning to the Japanese Shōkōshi.2 It is reasonable to assume that the Korean title was influenced by the Japanese title, which has become a household name in Japan. While it is beyond the scope of this study to examine the possible link between Shizuko’s Shōkōshi and the Korean translations, we can at least situate Shizuko as an important early translator of Western literature in the East Asian context. Research publications on Shizuko often examine her writing style. For example, a special issue (1999) of the journal Kokubungaku 国文学 [Japanese Literature] on 100 years of the Japanese language features a number of articles on Shizuko’s use of language, including Nakamura Tetsuya’s ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko yaku Shōkōshi no “katari” to buntai’ 若松賤子訳『小公子』 の〈語り〉と文体 [‘Narrative’ and Style in Shōkōshi Translated by Wakamatsu Shizuko]. Another publication, Yamaguchi Reiko’s (1980) Tokuto ware o mitamae とくと我を見たまえ [Look on Me] is a biographical account of Shizuko, including some discussion of her writing; Wakamatsu Shizuko 若松賤子 by Ozaki Rumi (2007) is a major research volume that examines Shizuko’s work. The focus of my study is on Shizuko as a translator – specifically her active agency as a translator. I will start by introducing biographical 1 2

I refer to her as Shizuko, as this is the name she wanted to be remembered by. Her gravestone only carries the name Shizuko. Personal communication with Sung-Eun Cho, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

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elements of Shizuko’s life which are relevant to this research, including her educational background, before discussing the details of her translations. The discussion begins with an examination of her characteristic empathetic translation style, which is linked to her literary aspiration. I will then discuss Shizuko as storyteller, which involves reiterating the importance of her translation work within the context of the history of Japanese language and literature, including her use of the genbun itchi 言 文一致 [unification of spoken and written language] writing style that is the very foundation of the modern Japanese language. This section is relevant to the status of the translator in Japan – in this case, a female translator – that often defies the purported ‘invisibility’ of translators in the Euro-American context, though the status of translation and translators can change based on various factors, including time (Bassnett 2007). This ‘visible’ status of translators is also recognized in Japan today, as elaborated by Thomas Kabara in this volume. After a close examination of Shizuko’s major work Shōkōshi, I discuss her translation strategies throughout the work. An examination of her ‘creative’ translation is important in light of perspectives revealed by feminist translation theory, such as the doubly inferior status of female translators – that is, as both women and translators. For example, Sherry Simon (1996: 1) explains: ‘The hierarchical authority of the original over the reproduction is linked with imagery of masculine and feminine; the original is considered to be the strong generative male, the translation the weaker and derivative female’. Shizuko’s translation does not deserve to be labelled as secondary and derivative, and is presented here as her empathetic and personalized writing practices – her ‘creative’ literary art. This argument resonates with Susan Bassnett’s (2006: 174) remark that ‘it is absurd to see translation as anything other than a creative literary activity, for translators are all the time engaging with texts first as readers and then as rewriters, as recreators of that text in another language’. I will present Shizuko as a notable Meiji-era female translator who made her mark as an active agent of translation – an ardent reader of English literature and a recreator of foreign stories in Japanese.

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2. A biographical sketch of Wakamatsu Shizuko Shizuko was born Matsukawa Kashi in 1864, just before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. She entered a small mission school in Yokohama as a young girl under the care of her adopted parents. When the school developed into Ferris Seminary, currently Ferris University, she became a boarder. She was baptized while at Ferris, and remained a devout Christian throughout her life. The character for shizu 賤 in her pen name Wakamatsu Shizuko is thought to mean humble servant of God, while Wakamatsu refers to the place where she was born. She was educated in both English and Japanese, which laid the foundations for her future career. Her excellent command of the English language is noted by the headmaster E. S. Booth (1995: v–vi) in his memorial on her death: She had not only mastered the idiom of the English language, but she possessed the exceedingly rare faculty of being able to view things from an Anglo-Saxon viewpoint, which made her not only companionable to the few foreigners who had her confidence and acquaintance, but an excellent interpreter of Western thought and temperament.

This quality of being ‘an excellent interpreter of Western thought and temperament’ must have been instrumental to her deep and empathetic engagement with the original English works she translated. As an aspiring writer, Shizuko contributed works to Jogaku zasshi 女學雑誌 [Women’s Education Magazine], and eventually married its editor-in-chief Iwamoto Yoshiharu (1863–1942) in 1889. Iwamoto was also the vice-principal, and later the principal, of Meiji Jogakkō, a mission school established by Japanese Christians, and is known to have worked for the improvement of women’s status and rights. Jogaku zasshi remained an important medium for Shizuko’s literary career until her premature death in 1896.

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3.  Shizuko and translation 3.1 Shizuko’s empathetic translation Shizuko loved reading and consumed many works written in English. One of her essays lists the authors of books she enjoyed, including Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Walter Scott, George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charlotte Brontë (Wakamatsu 1890b: 15). In the essay, she singles out Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (1842) and Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) and David Copperfield (1850) as books she had reread; the other titles she read only once even though she found them engrossing. Although she mentions that she also enjoyed some works written in Japanese, her reading experience largely consisted of literature written in English. It seems, then, that her translation practices may well have been motivated by her love of English literature. Shizuko was also interested in writing and published her own original works, including ‘Nogiku’ 野菊 [Wild Chrysanthemum] (Wakamatsu 1889a), consisting of a dialogue between two young women, and ‘Omukō no hanare’ お向ふの離れ [Grandmother’s Room] (Wakamatsu 1889b), a short piece narrated by a 16-year-old girl about her aunt and grandmother. As Shizuko expresses her desire to create stories that can contribute to young women’s education and public morality (Wakamatsu 1890b: 14), her writing is often characterized by its moralistic elements. While she continued writing to produce later works such as the fantastical children’s story ‘Kimono no naru ki’ 着物の生る木 [Trees That Grow Kimono] (Wakamatsu 1895), her talent appears to have been demonstrated to a greater degree in her translations. Yet, as Shizuko herself explains, it is important to note that translation is closely linked to her literary aspirations. Her above-mentioned desire to create moralistic stories is followed by her remark that with limited skills she finds it difficult to express her thinking. She continues on to say that it is therefore easier for her to choose appropriate works by others and translate them (Wakamatsu 1890b: 14). She appears to have regarded translation as a substitute for her own writing. But despite being a ‘substitute’, her choice of translation as an alternative to ‘writing’ seems to have been a positive

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initiative. She decided to translate appropriate works by others, and perhaps saw the act of translation as an important vehicle for expressing her own thinking. She would therefore have chosen works she could relate to and empathize with. For example, Shizuko translated Chapter 44 of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850) as ‘Hinayome’ 雛嫁 (1892). As mentioned above, this book was one of her favourites. The title hinayome is the translation of ‘child wife’, and refers to David’s first wife Dora Spenlow, who simply cannot manage the home. Chapter 44 sketches David’s life with Dora, who asks her husband not to expect too much of her, as she is only a child wife. Sōma Kokkō, who studied at Meiji Jogakkō, notes that Shizuko told a friend that she had been just like Dora, the child wife, when she was newly married (Sōma 1985: 238). We can reasonably assume that Shizuko’s empathy with Dora led her to translate this particular chapter. It is interesting that she identified with Dora, rather than with David’s second wife Agnes Wickfield, who is a selfless, loving wife and mother – a feminine ideal that aligned with Shizuko’s Christian beliefs. Dora’s open-hearted and innocent nature probably attracted Shizuko, who treasured childhood innocence (discussed in more detail below). In the case of the adaptation ‘Wasuregatami’ 忘れ形見 [The Keepsake], Shizuko explains in her very brief preface that she was deeply moved by the poem The Sailor Boy by Miss Proctor (Adelaide Anne Proctor (1825–1864)), and translated it in prose form (Wakamatsu 1890a: 12). In ‘Wasuregatami’, the narrator, a 14-year-old boy, tells of a beautiful noble lady who was kind to him when he was small. This lady was in fact his estranged mother, but she died without telling him her true identity. The title of the translation, ‘Wasuregatami’, refers to the child of the lady’s late husband; Yamaguchi Reiko (1980: 137–8) explains that the title indicates the viewpoint of the mother and that Shizuko empathized with both mother and child. Kawato Michiaki (2000: 287) observes that Shizuko superimposed the lady’s sorrow onto her own mother, who died when Shizuko was young, and projected her own feelings onto the boy. This would have made her translation project very personal. Her empathetic translation was well received. The renowned poet Ueda Bin (1874–1916) praised it emotionally: those who are not moved to tears by ‘Wasuregatami’ are heartless; those who are aware of this work but have not read it have

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no use for discussing literature (quoted in Akiyama 1995: 38). Even if we discount Ueda’s possibly overblown rhetoric, it is not unreasonable to assume that his emotive response was prompted by Shizuko’s empathetic personal engagement with the mother and child in the poem. Shizuko seems to have recognized a certain power to appeal to readers in the emotive and melodramatic elements in the works she translated. Honda Masuko sees Shizuko as an entertainer in this regard. Referring to Shizuko’s translations of The Sailor Boy and Alfred Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, Honda (1989: 175) points out that Shizuko, a women’s rights supporter, was also an entertainer of young women who offered tear-jerking, tragic stories that brought sweet pleasure to those who indulged in excessively emotional reading experiences. While Shizuko’s idea of literature for moral reform and education may not necessarily correspond closely to her emotive translations, we might say that she actively employed melodramatic stories to contribute to her purpose by anticipating readers’ emotional responses. This at least suggests her active agency as a translator in selecting works to translate and drawing on their popular appeal. 3.2 Storyteller Shizuko Another important point to note about Shizuko’s translation is her ‘storytelling’ style. Akiyama Yūzō (1995: 60) explains that Shizuko’s translations, including Shōkōshi, were meant to be read by women who would in turn read them aloud to their children or younger siblings. Copeland (2000: 141) also observes that Shizuko ‘particularly wanted to create a text that a mother would feel confident reading aloud to her children’. The practice of reading aloud to family members was not uncommon in Shizuko’s day. Maeda Ai (1989) notes that the communal practice of reading, with one person reading aloud to listeners, was still widely enjoyed in the early Meiji period. He explains the formation of the modern reader as a transition from reading aloud to reading silently to oneself. It is important to note here that, in the case of Shizuko’s texts, reading aloud was associated with the formation of modern mothers who actively nurtured and educated their children. She often expressed the importance of nurturing and educating children at home, as seen in her preface to the book Shōkōshi.

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Shizuko’s storytelling is enhanced by her use of the genbun itchi style, which essentially brings the written language closer to the spoken language. The genbun itchi movement was initiated in the early Meiji period by writers/translators such as Futabatei Shimei (1864–1909) and Yamada Bimyō (1868–1910), who explored a new style of literary language. The movement began at a time when the spoken and written languages differed significantly, and the written language was marked by a multiplicity of forms, including Sino-Japanese, classical Japanese and the epistolary style. The translation of Western literature into Japanese made a crucial contribution to the process, and the genbun itchi style led to the formation of the modern Japanese language as it is spoken and written today. This new style, however, was yet to be established in Shizuko’s day. Her contemporary and acclaimed translator Morita Shiken (1861–1897), who was known for his elegant Chinese-influenced style, noted that among works written in the genbun itchi style, Shōkōshi was only the second work after Ukigumo to deeply impress him (1891). Futabatei’s original work Ukigumo 浮雲 [Drifting Clouds] (1887–1889) is regarded by many as Japan’s first modern novel and is written in a new style that he devised partly through his translation of Russian literature. It is telling that Morita ranks Shizuko’s work alongside this work of literary significance. These words from her contemporary, who was dubbed ‘the king of translation’, are a strong indication of Shizuko’s standing as a translator at the time. Kawato Michiaki stresses the novelty of Shizuko’s writing style in Shōkōshi by comparing it with that of Koganemaru こがね丸 [Koganemaru the Dog] (1891) by Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933), a pioneering work of modern Japanese children’s literature. Koganemaru is written in traditional literary language3 – for example, mukashi aru miyama no okuni, ippiki no tora sumikeri [a long time ago, there lived a tiger deep in the mountains] – with the antiquated theme of demonstrating filial piety by avenging one’s father (Kawato 1999: 245). Yamamoto Masahide (1981: 91) also underscores the importance of Shizuko’s contribution to the genbun itchi movement and regards Shōkōshi and other genbun itchi works by Shizuko as rare gems that

3

Iwaya (1994: 60) himself explains that he consciously employed the traditional language for its ease of reading for children.

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appeared at a time when the movement had stagnated. Despite this and other signs of recognition, her contribution does not appear to be duly acknowledged. Naomi Cross (2013: 7) sought to redress this oversight by arguing: ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko was in fact not merely someone who wrote in the modern vernacular but indeed was a pioneer and the greatest contributor in the development of the modern Japanese language’. Shizuko indeed deserves greater recognition. 3.3 Shōkōshi Shōkōshi is Shizuko’s best-known translation and has been read across the generations. It was included in the prestigious Iwanami Bunko [Iwanami Library] series in 1927 and republished in 2017. The original Little Lord Fauntleroy was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and published in book form in 1886. It is a story about an American boy, Cedric, who lives in New York with his widowed mother, Mrs Errol. His late father is the third son of the Earl of Dorincourt. When the Earl loses his older sons, he sends for Cedric to become his heir, and the ill-tempered old Earl gradually becomes attached to the innocent child. At the end of the story, Mrs Errol, whom the Earl loathes as an American woman who he thinks married his son for money, is welcomed to the Dorincourt castle to live with her beloved son. Shōkōshi was serialized in Jogaku zasshi between 1890 and 1892. It first appeared in the fiction section and soon after in the children’s columns. The children’s section of Jogaku zasshi was established to provide stories that could be read aloud to children, and Shizuko’s storytelling style was well suited to this purpose. Nakamura Tetsuya (2002: 35) notes that many readers of Shōkōshi were mothers from the emerging middle class, who nurtured their children at home and obtained their knowledge of child-rearing from the printed media; Shōkōshi was well received by these mothers and was recounted to their children. A mother’s care for her child is seen in the following example: lawyer and politician Katayama Tetsu’s (1887–1978) mother cut out the Shōkōshi pages from Jogaku zasshi and sewed them together to give to her son (Ichihara 1983: 56). The first part of Shōkōshi was published in book form in 1891, and Ozaki Rumi (2007: 209) points out that the book’s beautiful binding was obviously designed to appeal to women readers.

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Little Lord Fauntleroy has many elements that Shizuko would have found engaging. It is a melodramatic story with popular appeal. The fairytale aspect of the book, described by Purchase (2006: 157) as a ‘fairy tale of class relations’, might also have attracted Shizuko. Her deep engagement with the book is noted by Morita Shiken (1896), who commented on her empathetic translation in his memorial address for Shizuko. He believes that the translator must identify with the original author and mediate not only the language but also the spirit of the original work – which Shōkōshi has achieved in his opinion – and commends Shizuko’s deep engagement with the characters (ibid.: 21–2). Shizuko seems to place particular focus on childhood innocence. She explains in her preface to the above-mentioned book version of Shōkōshi that one reason for publishing the book was to commemorate her love for little children and to celebrate the child as the benefactor of the home (Wakamatsu 1999: 7).4 She refers to the child as a lotus flower in a squalid world and an angel in the home (here ‘angel’ refers to a child, not to the prevalent Victorian concept of the ‘domestic angel’ wife). She states that only a child can achieve the sacred mission of stopping his/her father from following the wrong path and reminding his/her debased mother of noble virtues (ibid.: 6). Takahashi Osamu (2009) identifies Shizuko’s evangelical interpretation of Little Lord Fauntleroy in her preface. Referring to such expressions as ‘angel at home’ and ‘mission’, he explains that the purpose of her translation is to glorify the Christian image of the child (ibid.: 52). The important point to note is that the Christian Shizuko foregrounds her interpretation of the story as the translator. In the Victorian era, childhood ‘was the arena within which a better society might be engineered, whether through adept molding of the malleable young or through the reform of men and women whose hearts were to be softened by contact with childhood innocence’ (Nelson 1999: 70). In Little Lord Fauntleroy, the Earl’s heart is softened by contact with the innocent Cedric. References to the boy’s innocent nature are abundant: ‘he [the Earl] 4

I quote Shizuko’s Shōkōshi text from the third volume of Meiji no jidō bungaku hon’yakuhen 明治の児童文学 翻訳編 [Children’s Literature in Translation in Meiji] published in 1999, which reprints her Shōkōshi published in Jogaku zasshi and related materials.

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had not known how tender and faithful and affectionate a kind-hearted little child can be, and how innocent and unconscious are its simple, generous impulses’ (Burnett 1994: 84); ‘Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart, and somehow this kind little heart, though it was only the heart of a child, seemed to clear all the atmosphere of the big gloomy room and make it brighter’ (ibid.: 115). The Earl embarks upon philanthropy in order to live up to Cedric’s trust in him as a benefactor. Shizuko’s focus on Cedric’s innocent nature is pertinent to her purpose of translating appropriate works that contribute to public morality, and the book’s melodramatic appeal and her idea of literature for moral and education are fittingly blended in Shōkōshi. Shizuko’s empathy with Cedric is also linked to her narrative style. Nakamura Tetsuya (1999) explains that the genbun itchi style relates to the very nature of the structure of narration; it involves transparent narration as if the narrator has become unified with the character by following the character’s viewpoint and psychology. Referring to Shizuko’s Shōkōshi, he points out that the third-person narration of the original is often presented from Cedric’s viewpoint in the translation (ibid.: 28). This creates a sense of subjectivity in narration, which stems from the translator’s intervention with the narrative voice through the use of the genbun itchi style. It seems to reinforce Shizuko’s empathy with the character of Cedric. Moreover, it gives a feel of orality to the narrative voice, which reinforces Shizuko’s storytelling style. Shizuko was pregnant with her first child when she started translating Little Lord Fauntleroy and had given birth to two children by the time the Shōkōshi series in Jogaku zasshi was completed. Her interest in childhood innocence would thus have been connected to her real-life experience at the time. For that matter, motherhood would also have been her major focus, and she would have empathized with Cedric’s mother Mrs Errol, a loving mother who nurtures and guides her son. Her possible empathy with Mrs Errol can be examined in a number of ways. For one thing, it may have been also connected with her focus on childhood innocence. While Mrs Errol exhibits the caring and self-sacrificing qualities of the Angel of the House,5

5

The concept is derived from Coventry Patmore’s love poem The Angel in the House (1854–1862).

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her child-like youthfulness and innocent appearance are also stressed in Little Lord Fauntleroy. She looks ‘more like a young girl than the mother of a boy of seven’, with ‘a very tender, innocent look in her large brown eyes’ (Burnett 1994: 23–4). Her ‘bright hair curled as softly as a child’s’ (ibid.: 132). Her eyes are ‘so like the big, affectionate, childish eyes’ the Earl has seen in Cedric, prompting the Earl to remark: ‘The boy is very like you’ (ibid.: 209). Her appearance and manner make the Earl ‘feel less gloomy’ (ibid.: 213); she appears to have the same influence as Cedric on the grumpy old man when he finally meets her in person. She is almost Cedric’s double in this regard. This is linked to Nelson’s (1991: 2) observation that ‘the Victorian stereotype of childhood had much in common with the feminine ideal’ and that ‘the forceful innocence of the good child, like that of the good woman, was an article of faith’. Mrs Errol’s caring and charitable manner, underpinned by Christian values, also would have appealed to the Christian Shizuko. In the story, Lady Lorridaile tells her brother, the Earl, that he may thank Mrs Errol ‘for making the boy what he is. She has given him more than her beauty’ (Burnett 1994: 174). When they are living together, Mrs Errol says, ‘God bless you all the day’ to Cedric every morning and ‘Good night, God keep you all the night’ every night. She encourages her son to be good and help others: only be good, dear, only be brave, only be kind and true always, and then you will never hurt anyone so long as you live, and you may help many, and the big world may be better because my little child was born. And that is best of all, Ceddie – it is better than everything else, that the world should be a little better because a man has lived – even ever so little better, dearest. (Ibid.: 136)

She sees Cedric’s influence on the Earl and more or less uses her son to engineer the Earl’s role as benefactor. Mrs Errol also helps others herself: ‘One thing that the Earl discovered was that his son’s wife did not lead an idle life. It was not long before he learned that the poor people knew her very well indeed. When there was sickness or sorrow or poverty in any house, the little brougham [of Mrs Errol] often stood before the door’ (Burnett 1994: 154). Shizuko translated ‘the poor people knew her [Mrs Errol] very well indeed’ as hinmin domo ga yoku fujin ni natsuitekita [the poor had become very attached to Mrs Errol] (Wakamatsu 1999: 135). The replacement of the more neutral

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‘knew’ with the emotionally charged natsuitekita [had become attached] emphasizes Mrs Errol’s popularity among the poor, while at the same time elevating her position and being somewhat condescending to the poor. The sense of condescension is also created by attaching the suffix domo (indicating plural), which is less respectful than the suffix of the same meaning tachi, to hinmin [poor people], although this may merely reflect the Earl’s position. While charity was important to the Christian Shizuko, its ‘social work’ aspect also seemed to be important to her. As Elliot (2002) explains, women’s charitable work takes place in the public sphere, although in Victorian England it was promoted as an extension of women’s domestic work. Mrs Errol’s good deeds, including having Cedric persuade the Earl to demolish the run-down cottages and build new houses, are in line with Shizuko’s purpose of enhancing public morality by providing access to appropriate literature. Here and elsewhere, Shizuko explored women’s role in society through Western literature, at a time when Japan was experiencing a radical social transition after opening up to the world following two centuries of isolation. Western influences on the feminine ideal are also discussed by Theresa Hyun in this volume. While her focus is on the creation of the ideal of the socialist woman in North Korea in the 1950s and 1960s, she also briefly examines the formation of a new feminine ideal in the early twentieth century under the influence of Western ideas. Both her chapter and my work show the importance of the translation of Western texts for the emergence of ‘modern’ women in East Asia. 3.4 Shizuko’s translation approach In her translations, Shizuko sometimes departs from the original to produce her own adaptations. For example, she translated the poem The Sailor Boy in prose, relocated the setting to Japan, and gave the characters Japanese names and titles. She also changed the boy narrator’s age to 14 instead of 12, as in the original. Importantly, though, the ‘spirit’ of the original is retained, as Morita Shiken might say. The original poem begins with the question ‘My life you ask of ?’, which is translated as Anata boku no rireki o hanasette ossharu no? [You ask me to tell my life history?] (Wakamatsu 1890a: 12).

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Shizuko carefully ‘reproduced’ the boy’s narrative tone. At other times, she chose to produce a close rendering of the original by adhering to the original expressions. She employed the latter ‘conscientious’ approach when translating Little Lord Fauntleroy. The names and American/British setting were kept, and foreign names were transliterated in katakana phonetic script. She tried to recreate the tone, atmosphere and feel of the original. Symbols such as ‘!’ and ‘—’ are also not neglected in the translation. For example, ‘!’ is replicated unchanged as ‘!’ or replaced by ‘?’ in certain contexts, such as her translation of ‘What!’ as nanda? in Japanese, or conveyed in words that express exclamation. Cedric’s confusion about the meaning of the expression ‘ancient lineage’ is conveyed in the sentence ‘I dare say she is of ancient lin-lenage’ in the original (Burnett 1994: 35). Shizuko (Wakamatsu 1999: 33) translated this as anohito wa kitto sono furui mon … monbatsu deshō. The misused word ‘lin-lenage’ is expressed as mon … monbatsu [lineage] written in hiragana script もん … もんばつ instead of the usual character compound 門閥, in order to replicate the awkwardness of Cedric’s speech. The translation of the lawyer Mr Havisham’s speech carefully conveys the formality of the original and presumably reflects how such a character would have spoken in Japanese. Shizuko’s attentive rendition of each character’s voice is recognized by Copeland (2000: 141): ‘Burnett gives each character a distinct voice. Shizuko meets the challenge admirably in her translation’. While Shizuko endeavours to provide a close rendering of the original, her translation is not word-for-word in a strict sense; nor does it follow the sentence segmentation in the original. She often writes long sentences; many of the original sentences are joined together in her translation. To give just one example, the following five English sentences correspond to one sentence in the translation. And Cedric’s mother was too gentle to suspect any harm. She thought that perhaps this meant that a lonely, unhappy old man, whose children were dead, wished to be kind to her little boy, and win his love and confidence. And it pleased her very much to think that Ceddie would be able to help Bridget. It made her happier to know that the very first result of the strange fortune which had befallen her little boy was that he could do kind things for those who needed kindness. Quite a warm colour bloomed on her pretty young face. (Burnett 1994: 42)

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While the meaning of each word seems to be accounted for in the translation, certain elements are added. For example, ‘whose children are dead’ is translated as kodomo o kotogotoku nakushita [lost all children] with the emphasis of kotogotoku [all], and ‘thought’ in the second sentence is modified with tada … koto to bakari, which adds a sense of only/simply (Wakamatsu 1999: 40). [I]mashimo [at this very moment] is added to the last sentence, presumably to improve the flow of the sentence. Long sentences like this example generate a certain flow and rhythm, which contributes to the orality of the translation. Shizuko’s aim to produce a translation that could be read aloud to children is also seen in the following examples in which brackets are used to provide ‘guidance’ to readers. ‘Don’t you think she is pretty too?’ (Burnett 1994: 177) is translated as anata (chikara o ire) anokata kireida to omoimasen ka? (Wakamatsu 1999: 154). Here the italicized ‘you’ is converted to anata [you], with chikara o ire [with emphasis] added in brackets. While this is one translation device for dealing with italicized words (since the Japanese language does not have an equivalent grammatical function), the bracketed words can work as a ‘stage direction’ for mothers reading to their children. Similar bracketed ‘directions’ are seen elsewhere. ‘“No!” said the Earl decidedly – in quite a loud voice in fact. “They can take nothing from her”’ (Burnett 1994: 205) is translated as nani, son’na koto, (to kōshaku-sama6 ga koedaka ni) nani mo totteyuku koto wa dekin noda (Wakamatsu 1999: 177). The description ‘in quite a loud voice in fact’ is bracketed in the translation as to kōshaku-sama ga koedaka ni [the Earl loudly]. This particular use of brackets suggests that Shizuko was conscious of women readers reading aloud to their children and younger siblings – after all, the children’s column had been created for that reason.

6

The mistranslation of Earl as 侯爵 kōshaku has been pointed out by many, including Minamitani Akimasa (2008), who carefully examines the original and Shizuko’s Shōkōshi and outlines a number of problematic translations, although the main purpose of his essay is to stress the strenghts of Shizuko’s translation.

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3.5 Shizuko’s ‘creative’ translation A close rendering also requires ‘creative’ writing skills in order to effectively convey the original – including the fine nuances, tone and feel – in the target language. We should note again that there has not traditionally been a clear demarcation between authors and translators in Japan. Many acclaimed Meiji authors engaged in literary translation, and their works contributed to the development of modern Japanese literature. Those authors/translators were highly regarded for their original works as well as their translations. The translation work of such Meiji women as Shizuko and the prominent literary figure Mori Ōgai’s (1862–1922) sister Koganei Kimiko (1870–1956) was also recognized, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent than that of male translators. There was still a condescending view of women and translation. Meiji writer Kunikida Doppo (1871–1908), for example, describes translation as suitable work for women because it is mechanical and can be done in one’s spare time, whereas original writing requires such qualities as inspiration and genius, which he does not consider many women to have (Kunikida 1978: 363–4). He explains that women’s marital status does not prevent them from engaging in translation; in fact, married women can conveniently ask for advice from their husbands. While his essay ‘Joshi to hon’yaku no koto’ 女子と飜譯の事 [On Women and Translation] (1898) supposedly encourages a ‘positive’ use of the foreign language skills many women have acquired through their education (and he names Shizuko and Koganei Kimiko as successful literary translators), the ‘double inferiority’ outlined by Simon (1996) is apparent here. Shizuko had a great deal of interest in women’s education and wished to produce novels that would contribute to the purpose. While she wrote original stories, she also chose to translate works which she thought would provide ‘good’ reading for Japanese audiences, especially for young women. She explored the feminine ideal through the translation of Western literature. Her focus on women and her active use of translation as a medium to convey her way of thinking seem to suggest that the combination of femininity and translation is not to be relegated to an inferior position – and even, perhaps, that it should be foregrounded. And it cannot be overemphasized that Shizuko’s translation is anything but mechanical. As discussed before, her empathetic translation is bolstered by her in-depth engagement with

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the original work and its characters. She in some sense expresses ‘herself ’ through translations, which brings her translation practice closer to her writing projects. The translation examples above clearly show signs of thoughtful creativity and sincerity in her work. Her translation is motivated by her literary aspirations, and her texts are carefully crafted through her love of writing. Influential writer and literary critic Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935), also known for his translations of Shakespeare’s works, describes the translation style of Shōkōshi as fluent and easy to read, and commends Shizuko’s sincere effort to choose appropriate wording (Tsubouchi 1978: 17). Shizuko’s husband Iwamoto Yoshiharu (1927: 256) recalls that she compared the process of choosing appropriate words for her translation to pondering over a neckpiece to match a kimono or appreciating a kimono taken from a chest of drawers. This indicates that she took great care to find the appropriate words and enjoyed the process in the same way one would appreciate the beauty of a kimono. She evidently understood the power and beauty of word-craft and its ability to produce a refined textual ensemble. It is her ‘creative’ writing skills that made her translation works so well received and memorable. As a translator who was particular about language, Shizuko kept polishing her Shōkōshi translation until her death, with the aim of publishing the latter half of the work in book form. The manuscript, however, was lost in a fire at Meiji Jogakkō and the nearby Iwamoto residence. The incident is thought to have exacerbated her protracted illness, and she died five days after the fire. The full Shōkōshi in book form, edited by Sakurai Ōson (1872–1929), was published posthumously in 1897, and this version was succeeded by the Iwanami Bunko series. It is fitting that Shizuko is remembered for this enduring work.

4. Conclusion During her short life, Wakamatsu Shizuko produced translations that attracted critical acclaim. Despite her literary aspirations, Shizuko consciously chose to translate works by others to express her way of thinking

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and contribute to women’s education and moral development. Her love of reading English literature enabled her to choose appropriate works for this purpose. As ‘an excellent interpreter of Western thought and temperament’, she engaged deeply with the original text and empathized with the characters, and her interpretation of the original is reflected in her translations. The resulting translation was akin to her ‘own’ work based on the original, and this close relationship is characteristic of Shizuko’s translation. Her effective use of the genbun itchi style made her one of the major contributors to the development of the modern Japanese language. It also enabled her to write flowing text which could be read aloud to children. This is linked to the idea of mothers nurturing and educating their children at home, an idea that Shizuko considered to be very important. She expressed her enjoyment of literary word-craft with reference to appreciating the beauty of a kimono, which fundamentally underpinned her translation as a creative literary activity. She actively applied the translator’s agency to her literary persona and generated memorable translation works, and it was her conscious use of translation as a vehicle to express her way of thinking that made her a ‘visible’ translator and a powerful recreator of English stories in the Japanese language.

Bibliography Akiyama, Y. 秋山勇造 (1995). ‘Meiji-ki no hon’yakusha 3 Wakamatsu Shizuko’ 明治 期の翻訳者 (3) 若松賤子 [Meiji Translators 3, Wakamatsu Shizuko], Jinbun kenkyū 人文研究 [Studies in Humanities], 123, 25–61. —— (2005). Atarashii Nihon no katachi: Meiji kaimei no shosō 新しい日本のかたち 明治開明の諸相 [Japan in New Form: Aspects of Meiji Enlightenment]. Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō. Bassnett, S. (2006). ‘Writing and Translating’. In S. Bassnett and P. Bush (eds), The Translator as Writer, pp. 173–83. London: Continuum. —— (2007). ‘Culture and Translation’. In P. Kuhiwczak and K. Littau (eds), A Companion to Translation Studies, pp. 13–23. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Booth, E. (1995). ‘Mrs Kashi Iwamoto’. In Y. Iwamoto (ed.), In Memory of Mrs Kashi Iwamoto, pp. i–xxvi. Tokyo: Ōzorasha.

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Burnett, F. (1994). Little Lord Fauntleroy. London: Puffin Books. Copeland, R. (2000). Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Cross, N. (2013). ‘The Duality of the Japanese Vernacular Movement and the Emergence of Modern Japanese: The Role of Wakamatsu Shizuko’, Kotoba no kenkyū 言葉 の研究 [Study of Languages], 1, 1–25. Elliot, D. (2002). The Angel Out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenthcentury England. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Honda, M. 本田和子 (1989). Ofīria no keifu オフィーリアの系譜 [A Genealogy of Ophelia]. Tokyo: Kōbunsha. Ichihara, M. 市原正恵 (1983). ‘Subete o rissuru chōmeisa: Yamaguchi Reiko Tokuto ware o mitamae: Wakamatsu Shizuko no shōgai’ すべてを律する澄明さ 山口 玲子『とくと我を見たまえ——若松賤子の生涯』 [Review of Yamaguchi Reiko’s Look on Me: A Biography of Wakamatsu Shizuko], Shisō no kagaku 思想 の科学 [Science of Thought], 31/4, 56–9. Iwamoto, Y. 巌本善治 (1927). ‘Kōjo’ 後序 [Afterword]. In Shōkōshi 小公子 [The Little Lord], pp. 255–8. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Iwaya, S. 巌谷小波 (1994). Koganemaru. こがね丸 [Koganemaru the Dog] In S. Kuwabara and S. Chiba (eds), Nihon jidōbungaku meisaku-shū, jō 日本児童文 学名作集（上） [The Collected Works of Children’s Stories in Japan], pp. 57–114. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Kawato, M. 川戸道昭 (1999). ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko to Shōkōshi’ 若松賤子と『 小公子』 [Wakamatsu Shizuko and Shōkōshi]. In M. Kawato (ed.), Meiji no jidōbungaku: Hon’yaku-hen dai 3-kan 明治の児童文学 翻訳編第三巻 [Children’s Literature in Meiji: Translations vol.3], pp. 229–48. Tokyo: Satsuki Shobō. —— (2000). ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko to shoki no hon’yaku jidōbungaku’ 若松賤子と 初期の翻訳児童文学 [Wakamatsu Shizuko and Early Children’s Literature in Translation]. In M. Kawato (ed.), Meiji no joryūbungaku hon’yaku-hen dai 1-kan Wakamatsu Shizuko-shū 明治の女流文学 翻訳編第一巻 若松賤子集 [Meiji Women’s Literature in Translation vol. 1 Wakamatsu Shizuko], pp. 271–90. Tokyo: Satsuki Shobō. Kunikida, D. 國木田獨歩 (1978). ‘Joshi to hon’yaku no koto’ 女子と飜譯の事 [On Women and Translation]. In Kunikida Doppo zenshū dai 1-kan 國木田獨歩全 集 第一巻 [The Collected Works of Kunikida Doppo vol. 1], pp. 362–5. Tokyo: Gakushū Kenkyūsha. Maeda, A. 前田愛 (1989). Kindai dokusha no seiritsu 近代読者の成立 [Emergence of Modern Readers]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Minamitani, A. 南谷覺正 (2008). ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko Shōkōshi no hon’yaku ni tsuite’ 若松賤子『小公子』の翻訳について [On Wakamatsu Shizuko’s Translation of Little Lord Fauntleroy], Gunma Daigaku shakai jōhō gakubu kenkyū ronshū

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群馬大学社会情報学部研究論集 [Gunma University Journal of Social and Information Studies], 15, 217–236. Morita, S. 森田思軒 (1891). ‘Shōkōshi o yomu’ 「小公子」を讀む [On Reading Shōkōshi], Yūbin hōchi shinbun 郵便報知新聞 [The Postal News], 15 November. —— (1896). ‘Shōkōshi no hon’yakusha Wakamatsu Shizuko-kun’ 小公子の飜譯者 若松賤子君 [Wakamatsu Shizuko, Translator of Little Lord Fauntleroy], Jogaku zasshi 女學雑誌 [Women’s Education Magazine], 422, 21–3. Nakamura, T. 中村哲也 (1999). ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko yaku Shōkōshi no “katari” to buntai’ 若松賤子訳『小公子』の〈語り〉と文体 [‘Narrative’ and Style in Shōkōshi Translated by Wakamatsu Shizuko], Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō 国文学 解釈と鑑賞 [Japanese Literature: Interpretation and Appreciation], 64/7, 23–31. ——(2002). ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko to Shōkōshi no meiyaku’ 若松賤子と『小公子』の 名訳 [Wakamatsu Shizuko and Her Celebrated Translation Shōkōshi]. In Kodomo no Hon Hon’yaku no Ayumi Kenkyūkai (ed.), Zusetsu kodomo no hon hon’yaku no ayumi jiten 図説 子どもの本 翻訳の歩み事典 [Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Children’s Books in Translation], pp. 35. Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō. Nelson, C. (1991). Boys will be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children’s Fiction, 1857–1917. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. —— (1999). ‘Growing Up: Childhood’. In H. Tucker (ed.), A Companion to Victorian Literature & Culture, pp. 69–81. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Ozaki, R. 尾崎るみ (2007). Wakamatsu Shizuko: Reimei-ki o kakenuketa josei若松 賤子 黎明期を駆け抜けた女性 [Wakamatsu Shizuko: A Woman who Ran through the Dawn of a New Age]. Kamakura: Minato no Hito. Purchase, S. (2006). Key Concepts in Victorian Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Simon, S. (1996). Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London: Routledge. Sōma, K. 相馬黒光 (1985). Meiji shoki no san-josei: Nakajima Shōen, Wakamatsu Shizuko, Shimizu Shikin 明治初期の三女性——中島湘煙・若松賤子・清水 紫琴 [Three Women in Early Meiji: Nakajima Shōen, Wakamatsu Shizuko, and Shimizu Shikin]. Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan. Takahashi, O. 高橋修 (2009). ‘“Katei no tenshi” to shite no kodomo’ 「家庭の天 使」としての子ども [A Child as the ‘Angel of the House’]. In Y. Iida, T. Shimamura, O. Takahashi, and A. Nakayama (eds), Shōjo shōnen no poritikusu 少女 少年のポリティクス [Politics of Girls and Boys], pp. 47–69. Tokyo: Seikyūsha. Tsubouchi, S. 坪内逍遥 (1978). ‘Shinkan’ 新刊 [New Releases]. In Waseda bungaku 1–12 早稻田文學1～12 [Waseda Literature 1–12], pp. 69–70. Tokyo: Daiichi Shobō.

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Wakamatsu, S. 若松賤子 (1889a). ‘Nogiku’ 野菊 [Wild Chrysanthemum], Jogaku zasshi 女學雑誌 [Women’s Education Magazine], 182, 14–15. —— (1889b). ‘Omukō no hanare’ お向ふの離れ [Grandmother’s Room], Jogaku zasshi, 182, 20–3. —— (trans.) (1890a). ‘Wasuregatami’ 忘れ形見 [The Keepsake] (from A. A. Proctor, ‘The Sailor Boy’), Jogaku zasshi 194, 12–18. —— (1890b). ‘Keishū shōsetsuka tō, daisan Wakamatsu Shizuko’ 閨秀小説家答第 三 若松しづ子 [Response from Women Writers No. 3: Wakamatsu Shizuko], Jogaku zasshi, 207, 13–16. —— (1995). ‘Kimono no naru ki’ 着物の生る木 [Trees That Grow Kimono]. In R. Ozaki (ed.), Wakamatsu Shizuko sōsaku dōwa-shū 若松賤子創作童話全集 [The Collected Works of Children’s Stories Written by Wakamatsu Shizuko], pp. 117–22. Tokyo: Kyūzansha. —— (trans.) (1999). Shōkōshi 小公子 [The Little Lord]. In M. Kawato (ed.), Meiji no jidōbungaku: hon’yaku-hen dai 3-kan 明治の児童文学 翻訳編第三巻 [Children’s Literature in Meiji: Translations vol.3], pp. 8–204. Tokyo: Satsuki Shobō. Yamaguchi, R. 山口玲子 (1980). Tokuto ware o mitamae: Wakamatsu Shizuko no shōgai とくと我を見たまえ 若松賤子の生涯 [Look on Me: A Biography of Wakamatsu Shizuko]. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Yamamoto, M. 山本正秀 (1981). Genbun itchi no rekishi ronkō, zokuhen 言文一致の 歴史論稿 続編 [A Study on the History of the Unification of Spoken and Written Language, A Sequel]. Tokyo: Ōfūsha.

Theresa Hyun

5 Translating/Transforming Women in North Korea: Traditions, Foreign Correspondences and the Creation of the Socialist Woman in the 1950s and 1960s

abstract This research is part of a larger project to consider the roles of literary translation during the formative phase of the socialist society in North Korea. In this chapter, I focus on the creation of the socialist woman ideal in the 1950s and 1960s. I examine translations and original writings by and about women appearing in the government-sponsored periodical Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women] in order to answer such questions as: to what extent did traditional feminine ideals continue to prevail? How did the contradictions and reversals of official North Korean government policy affect the lives of women? In what ways did the importation of foreign texts through translation bolster official aims or provide glimpses, however limited, of alternative lifestyles for women?

1. Introduction At the end of the Second World War, Korea was liberated from thirty-five years of Japanese colonial rule only to be divided into a communist government in the North and a capitalist one in the South, leading to the Korean War (1950–1953). The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the North was greatly influenced by the Soviet Union and China during the process of establishing a socialist society. Translation both in the sense of cultural transfer as well as of translations of texts was crucial as the DPRK realigned its social and political structures and redefined its place in the international arena.

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This research is part of a larger project to examine the roles of literary translation during the formative phase of the socialist society in North Korea. In this chapter, I focus on the creation of the socialist woman ideal in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the Choson Dynasty (1392–1910), translation has been an essential part of the education of women, from the Confucian classics of the traditional period to the European heroines of the early twentieth century and the importation of foreign texts in both North and South Korea. Among the ultimate aims of this research is to answer such questions as: to what extent did traditional feminine ideals continue to prevail? How did the contradictions and reversals of official North Korean government policy affect the lives of women? In what ways did the importation of foreign texts through translation bolster official aims, or on the other hand, provide glimpses, however limited, of alternative lifestyles for women? Many translations were published anonymously or under the name of a translator about whom little or nothing is known. Although very little precise information about official constraints on the work of North Korean translators during this period is available, articles in government-sponsored periodicals stipulated translational norms and aims (Hyun 2012: 117–20). Therefore, this chapter studies translations and original writing about women in the context of social and cultural change in North Korea. Section 2 provides a brief overview of translation and feminine ideals in the traditional period and the early twentieth century. Section 3 outlines the conflicts and constraints that North Korean policies imposed on women. In section 4, I examine samples of translated texts and original works in a preliminary attempt to determine the ways in which, for North Korean women, the foreign other interacts with and transforms the traditional self. In a broader sense, this project forms part of the effort to consider how ‘in different cultures and diverging time frames, people in Asian contexts have thought about and engaged with issues of transference of cultural material, representations and their ideological aspects, and the transculturation of textual sources’ (Ricci and van der Putten 2011: 7).

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2. Translation and the transformation of feminine ideals: Traditions and modernization In order to contextualize North Korean policies on women, it will be helpful to consider the traditions that these policies aimed to overcome as well as the transitional period in the early twentieth century. 2.1 Translation of Chinese texts and feminine ideals in the Choson period As Deuchler (1977: 1) points out, the reforms that took place during the early Choson period (1392–1910) had far-reaching implications for the situation of women. The preceding Koryo period (918–1392) allowed women some freedom to participate in activities outside the home, permitted the remarriage of widows and granted women a certain amount of control over their economic situation. Women gradually lost these rights as the approach to Neo-Confucianism exemplified by the Song dynasty (960–1279) philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200) gained ground. According to this way of thinking, the cosmos is governed by basic principles such as the complementarity of Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, male and female. The five relationships Oryun 오륜 that structure the human world include the separation of functions of husband and wife. Since violating these cosmological principles would bring disastrous results, women were compelled to accept their subservient position within the family and society. All women were bound by the three obediences, to their fathers when young, husbands when married and sons when widowed, and upper-class women were restricted to the inner quarters of the household. The Choson legal code that was passed in the late fifteenth century stipulated that the sons of remarried widows and concubines would not be allowed to take the civil service examination to qualify for government positions. The purpose of this ruling was to limit access to high-level positions in order to ensure that aristocratic males would maintain a monopoly on power. In class-conscious Choson society, this meant that the behaviour of upper-class women was strictly controlled.

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A great emphasis was placed on preparing women to fulfil their proper roles within the family and, therefore, from early childhood women were indoctrinated with the rules of virtuous conduct based on translations of Chinese textbooks for the education of women. Translation into Korean became possible after the invention in the late fifteenth century of the phonetic native Korean script hangul 한글, which was deemed appropriate for women and the lower classes, while the study of hanmun 한문, or writing in Chinese, was the privilege of upper-class men. One of the most important of these textbooks was Samgang haengsildo 삼강행실도 [Conduct of the Three Bonds] which was produced in the late fifteenth century at the request of Queen Sohye (1437–1504), the mother of King Songjong (1457–1494). Based on an illustrated collection of Chinese stories for children, this work focuses on the Three Social Bonds, namely Faithful Minister, Filial Son and Chaste Wife. Another influential text was Naehun 내훈 [Instructions for Women] which consisted of translations of excerpts from Chinese educational classics. Many similar translations from Chinese educational works appeared, and eventually such didactic works were written directly in Korean. Young women were exhorted to observe the feminine virtues of absolute loyalty to the husband’s family, thrifty use of family resources, discretion in speech and actions, diligent performance of household chores including sewing, cooking and entertaining guests (Deuchler 1977: 5–6). Throughout the Choson period, upper-class women were discouraged from acquiring the knowledge of Chinese classics required of male scholars as well as from publishing their writings. Lower-class women were largely illiterate and kisaeng 기생 [women entertainers] were the only ones allowed to write poetry dealing with romantic adventures. 2.2 Translation and the rise of new women in the early twentieth century While translations of Chinese texts in the Choson period reinforced NeoConfucian ideals of feminine virtue, at the turn of the twentieth century translations of the lives of European women aimed to encourage Korean women to go beyond traditional roles and participate in the modernization of the nation. During the 1920s and 1930s, translations by and about women contributed to the formation of the new woman ideal. Two translations

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in particular made an impact on evolving views of women during the first decade of the twentieth century: The Story of a Patriotic Lady and The Story of Madame Roland. The former, which appeared in 1907, was translated into Korean by Chang Ji-Yon (1864–1921), a journalist noted for his antiJapanese editorials at a moment when Japan was taking control of Korea. The Story of a Patriotic Lady deals with the life of Joan of Arc and employs a mixture of traditional and transitional stylistic elements to exhort women to imitate Joan’s patriotic defence of the nation while extolling the traditional virtue of filial piety. The translation conveys the message that women as well as men must be willing to struggle against Japanese encroachments on Korean sovereignty. The Story of Madame Roland is based on the life of Marie-Jeanne Phlippon, whose memoirs were written while she was waiting to be executed during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror in 1793. The translation was published in 1907, and, while the Korean translator is unknown, we do know that it was based on a Chinese translation by Liang Qichao (1873–1929) the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911) literary scholar. Like Patriotic Lady, Madame Roland employs direct narrative interventions to arouse patriotic sentiments in the readers. The Korean version opens with Madame Roland’s utterance in the Place de la Revolution as she is being marched to the guillotine: ‘O liberty! What crimes are committed in your name!’ Both of these translations introduce a new feminine ideal of direct political participation while also observing the rules of Confucian propriety (Hyun 2004: 33–7). The translations that appeared in the early 1900s broke with traditional patterns and set the stage for the formation of new feminine ideals. Debates over the New Woman concept arose in many countries during the transition from traditional societies to modern ones. In a 1934 article that appeared in the periodical Sin kajong 신가정 [New Family], Chong Rae Dong examined the works of Chinese women writers who were concerned with questions of acquiring financial independence, freedom from the restrictions of family life and the ability to chart an independent course in life. In the 1910s, the Japanese feminist Hiratsuka Raicho’s (1886–1971) partial translation into Japanese of the Swedish feminist Ellen Key’s (1849–1926) work Love and Marriage introduced Korean exchange students in Japan to new concepts concerning women’s rights (ibid.: 53). During the 1920s, Korean periodicals such as Sin yosong 신여성 and Sin yoja 신여자, both of which translate

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as ‘new women’, promoted reforms including the expansion of educational opportunities for women and the right to choose one’s own marriage partner. Debates on free love and marriage filled the pages of newspapers and periodicals in the 1920s and 1930s, and aroused great popular interest. The publication of an abridged translation of the socialist feminist Alexandra Kollontai’s (1872–1952) novel Red Love (1927) was greeted with great interest, particularly in leftist circles. Translations of the works of other foreign women writers such as Sara Teasdale, Christina Rossetti, Sarojini Naidu and Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared in newspapers and women’s periodicals and bolstered the attempts of Korean new women to increase their participation in political and social activities and go beyond the bounds of the traditional family (ibid.: 54–5). As we have seen in this section, translations of texts by and about women have played a crucial role in formulating feminine ideals and bolstering political and social projects, from the Confucian educational works of the Choson period, to the biographies of European heroines at the turn of the twentieth century, to the writings of the new women in the 1920s and 1930s.

3. Official policies concerning women in North Korea In this section I provide a brief overview of how social and political changes in North Korea affected the lives of women. A consideration of these official policies will contribute to an understanding of some of the factors influencing the original writing and translational activities of North Korean women at this time. 3.1 The stages of the development of the North Korean political and social systems (1945–late 1960s) The initial phase of the democratic socialist revolution in North Korea took place in 1945 and 1946 immediately following the end of the Second World War. As part of the campaign to eliminate vestiges of colonialism

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and feudalism, various measures were introduced including land reform, nationalization of important industries and the enactment of labour laws and gender equality laws (Yun 1991: 65). The preparatory phase of the socialist revolution (1947–1950) was interrupted by the outbreak of the Korean War (1950–1953). During and immediately following the war resources were diverted to the war effort rather than the socialist revolution (ibid.: 66). In April 1955, following Kim Il Sung’s report to the Party Central Committee, the project of educating party members about class consciousness was undertaken. From 1957 to 1961, the five-year people’s economic plan and the purge of anti-Kim Il Sung factions took place. In the mid- to late 1960s, Self-Reliance Thought Chu Ch’e Sasang 주체사상 was proclaimed as the guiding philosophy of North Korea (ibid.: 66–7). 3.2 The mobilization of women In the late 1940s, most women in North Korea were working on family farms, assuming traditional responsibilities for household chores and having arranged marriages, sometimes against their will. In order to achieve the socialist revolution, it was considered essential to overcome these outmoded social customs by bringing women into the workforce. An essential phase of North Korean policy on women involved changes in the legal and social systems to free women from the restrictions of the patriarchal family system. In the late 1940s, North Korea embarked on a programme of land reform that abolished the system of landlords and tenant farmers, and allotted land to peasants. Women were provided with a means of economic sustenance since they were granted portions of land on the same basis as men. It was proclaimed that women should be freed from the burdens of housework and tenancy farming (Yun 1991: 69–71). In November 1945, the Democratic Women’s Federation was founded. Pak Chong Ae (1907–), the first chair of the Federation, was recognized for her participation in the anti-Japanese struggle during the colonial period and her leadership in the workers’ party. The Women’s Federation adopted a platform that supported the proposal of the North Korean People’s Committee granting suffrage to women, pledged to eradicate illiteracy among women

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and stressed that women must devote themselves to defending the nation (ibid.: 77–8). In October 1947, during a meeting of the central committee of the Workers’ Party, Kim Il Sung gave a speech claiming that one of the important duties of the party was to support the activities of the Women’s Federation. He emphasized that the popular foundation of the party would be strengthened with the participation of women, who should be mobilized to contribute to the creation of a self-sufficient nation. There was a shift in emphasis from women intellectuals to women workers, and an effort to eliminate reactionary patterns of thought and to increase educational opportunities for women (ibid.: 82). Women were expected to transform themselves into communists, and early childhood education had to be revamped to produce citizens of the socialist society. In 1961, Kim Il Sung organized a mothers’ conference which emphasized the role of women within the family, especially as mothers. Schools for Mothers were organized in various regions across the country to inculcate methods of early childhood education. Women were mobilized, not just as workers, but as mothers who would contribute to the construction of the socialist society. This equation of women with the household and motherhood followed traditional feminine ideals, and subjected women to the two-fold pressures of conforming to these traditional values while becoming communists. It can be argued that the policy on women became dualistic. On the one hand, women were required to enter the labour force in order to reconstruct the economy, while on the other, the traditional submissiveness of women and their role within the family was again being emphasized (ibid.: 93–5). 3.3 The conflicting roles of the mother/worker During the formative years of the DPRK, Soviet models were followed in various aspects of the political and social spheres. Policies on women were no exception, and the mother-worker model was based on Stalinist socialism. Although the rearing of future workers and revolutionaries was a national priority, women took on the role of providing the early childhood education of revolutionary socialists (Park 2005: 361–2). The Women’s

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Federation participated in the establishment of nurseries and kindergartens, and women with specialized training supervised these projects. In order to integrate women into the socialist system, Schools for Mothers began to spread rapidly in 1956, and under the direction of the Women’s Federation these institutions followed the instructions of the party on the training of mother-workers (ibid.: 376). In the mid- to late 1960s, Kim Il Sung solidified his control of power, and his mother, Kang Ban Sok became the official model for women. She was revered for her twofold method of childhood education: first, raising children as model revolutionaries, and second, linking love for one’s offspring to the socialist cause. This meant changing personal emotions into collective parental love for the socialist revolution, following the example of Kim Il Sung’s family, which overcame financial difficulties, to instil a sense of patriotic self-sacrifice (ibid.: 380–1). 3.4 The limits of gender equality Beginning in the late 1940s, the Kim Il Sung government launched a propaganda campaign to raise awareness of the necessity of women’s participation in the labour force for the construction of the nation. On the ideological level, the policies on women promulgated by the North Korean government under Kim Il Sung were based on the socialist belief that women can achieve emancipation through participation in the proletarian revolution. Through the mobilization of all women in the labour force, the nationalization of the means of production, the socialization of the family and early childhood education, all people would be liberated (I 1987: 10). However, we have seen that on the practical level North Korean women were doubly burdened with child rearing and their role as workers outside the home as part of the socialist revolution. Some scholars argue that the contradictions in the situation of women pose an obstacle to policies on the reunification of the Korean peninsula (Son 1991: 7).

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4. Translation and foreign correspondences in Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women] In section 2, I briefly outlined some of the roles of translations in educating women during the Choson period and in creating new feminine ideals in the early twentieth century. In this section, I consider translations, texts by or about foreign women and cultures, and original literary works appearing in the government-sponsored monthly periodical Choson nyosong during the 1950s and 1960s with two aims: (1) to determine the extent to which these materials corresponded to or deviated from official policies on women and (2) to situate them in the larger context of the development of feminine ideals in Korea since the start of the modern era. I examine the following types of works: biographical sketches, letters and essays and translated and original fiction. 4.1 Biographical sketches The following is a sample of the types of biographical sketches that appeared in Choson nyosong. A two-page article ‘Kokuihan irum’ 고귀한 이름 [An Exalted Name], written by Lim Hui Kyong, claims that Lenin had a major impact on the women’s emancipation movement in the Soviet Union. Not only did he free Soviet women from inequality, he also established restaurants, childcare centres and nurseries in order to lessen the burden of household chores and facilitate the participation of women in the establishment of the socialist society. A picture of Lenin affectionately chatting with a group of little children is included (Lim 1956: 2–3). This article connects Lenin’s policies concerning women to those of North Korea. Biographies focusing on foreigners were complemented with those of notable Koreans, such as ‘Choson ui hullyunghan omoni Shin Saimdang’ 조선의 훌륭한 어머 니 신사임당 [An Outstanding Choson Mother Shin Saimdang], which praises the mother of the noted Choson-dynasty scholar Yi Yul Kok. Shin Saimdang possessed all the characteristics of a distinguished mother: moral principles, sincerity and inner beauty. She was also a talented painter whose

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artworks have gained acclaim for their ability to cleanse the mind. Under her guidance, one of her sons became a scholar and the other an artist. A photo of one of her paintings appears at the top of her biography (Choson nyosong 1956). Another piece about Lenin, ‘Leninui orini posdul’ 랜인의 어린이 벗 들 [Lenin’s Young Friends] was adapted by Lim Hui Kyong from an article in the April 1958 issue of Family and School, presumably a Russian periodical. The fact that it is identified as an adaptation indicates that North Koreans were attentive to different methods of translation. The sketch begins with a statement about how much Lenin loved children. He respected them because of their potential and felt that adults should serve as good role models. He believed it is the responsibility of adults to establish a communist society that will provide the proper education for their children. A drawing of Lenin embracing two children gives credence to the assertion that he was fond of distributing gifts to children when he visited a school (Lim 1958). These pieces about Lenin’s supposed love of children set the stage for the image of Kim Il Sung as the father of the nation. Kim Byong Uk translated the biographical sketch ‘Aegupui nyosong undongga sseja nyosa Mariya T’erressa Kallo’ 애급의 녀성 운동가 쎄 자 녀사 마리야 텔렛사 갈로 [Egyptian Woman Activist Madame Sseja Maria Teresa Kallo*]1 from World Women, the periodical of the International Women’s League. The article deals with the life of Maria Teresa Kallo, who was identified as the first Egyptian woman to remove her veil. After studying in France, Kallo returned to Egypt and fought for her country’s independence. She attended many international conferences including the International Women’s League Conference, where she and other Egyptian representatives lobbied successfully for the elimination of prostitution and the right of married women to choose their nationality. Throughout her life, she continued to struggle for the emancipation of Egyptian women. The photo at the end of the article shows women demonstrating in Cairo in 1951 (Kim 1959: 24–5). Under the title ‘Mong Marut’uruui pulkun ch’onyo Luija Missel’ 몽마르트르의 붉은 처녀 루이자 미쎌 [The Red Virgin

1

Cases where the original foreign name cannot be identified are indicated by an asterisk and have been transliterated from the Korean spelling.

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of Montmartre Louise Michel], Ch’oe Ch’on Shik related the accomplishments of Louise Michel, a French anarchist and medical worker who was born in 1830. Louise Michel fought in the Paris Commune and spent her life struggling to achieve revolutionary politics. When the Paris commune failed she was imprisoned, and during her trial the reactionary government tried to get her institutionalized, but she escaped to England and continued her work there (Ch’oe 1964). These two articles reinforce the North Korean government’s message that women should participate in political and social affairs. Marie Curie’s life is recounted by Kim Kum Cha in two articles entitled ‘Kuri puin’ 퀴리부인 [Madame Curie]. She was the first person to conduct research on radioactivity. Born in Poland, she went to France to study at the University of Paris. She earned high praise from her professors and became a physicist and mathematician while still in her twenties. She met and married Pierre Curie while they were both researchers. After the death of her husband, she overcame her grief and continued his work, eventually becoming a professor at the University of Paris. In 1910, she formulated a theory of radioactivity and discovered the elements polonium and radium (Kim 1964a). Kim Kum Cha also contributed two pieces about the life of the German Marxist writer and advocate for women’s rights Clara Zetkin, entitled ‘K’ulara Tchetukin’ 크라라 쩨 뜨낀 [Clara Zetkin]. The articles appear under the title ‘Famous Women of the World’. When she was young, her parents encouraged her interest in women’s rights. Through her studies of Marx and Engels, she realized that in order to follow communist ideology she had to fight for the emancipation of women. She went to Paris, where she met her husband and they both fought for the realization of socialist ideology. It was difficult for her to raise her two sons after her husband died in 1889, but she overcame her depression and passionately pursued her goals while lecturing about revolutionary causes. After the Russian revolution of 1905, she spread Marxist ideology among labourers. She organized an international women’s bureau and voiced her opposition to capitalism on International Women’s Day. Although she became ill in her sixties, she continued to research about family and youth problems. Her dedication to socialism is still recognized to this day (Kim 1964b).

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As with the early twentieth-century biographies of European heroines discussed in section 2, the North Korean sketches of the activities of foreign women display ‘a recognition that the source culture has (at least) one view of culture and the receptor culture another view’ (Tymoczko 2007: 259). Whatever the intentions of the writers of the original biographies may have been, the North Korean translators used their texts strategically to reinforce the government’s policies of mobilizing women for the establishment of a socialist society. 4.2 Letters and essays The following overview of some of the letters and essays by foreigners and Koreans appearing in Choson nyosong reveals strategies for incorporating elements of foreign cultures in North Korea at the time. ‘K’anada eso ponaeon p’yonji’ 카나다 에서 보내온 편지 [A Letter from Canada] by Nora Lode* indicates that it was written in Ontario, Canada, on 23 May 1956. It includes a poem by the author addressed to the women of the North Korean capital Pyongyang. The translator Kim Chong Uk is one of the few translators of this period about whom we have additional information. Kim Chong Uk is listed as the main translator of Ponju sichip 번 즈시집 [The Anthology of the Poetry of Robert Burns] (1959), and the author of a few articles on American and British literature that appeared in the Munhak shinmun 문 학신문 [Literary Newspaper] in the early 1960s. The author of the letter decries the horrors of the Korean War and ends the letter on the hopeful note that the birds of Pyongyang are still singing. The letter greets the women of Pyongyang and thanks them for their letter, which reminded her of the time she attended a performance at Pyongyang’s Moranbong 모란봉 theatre. She relates that she has travelled across Canada showing pictures of the devastation of the war that touched the Canadian women who had sent their husbands and sons to the battlefield. She writes on behalf of Canadian women and thanks the women of Pyongyang for their kindness during her visit in 1951 (Lode 1956). ‘Aljeriya nyosongduli chon segye nyosongdulege ponaenun p’yonji’ 알 제리야 녀성들이 전 세계 녀성드레게보내는 편지 [A Letter to All the Women of the World from Algerian Women] does not name the translator,

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but it indicates that it was written by Algerian women on 25 March 1957. The letter proclaims that the Algerians have been suffering for three years from war, and have been struggling for a long time for justice and freedom. Although every day women, children and old people were being arrested, the oppressors were hiding their acts of terror. The use of the word T’ero 테 로 indicates that the translator might have been working from an English text. The letter goes on to describe people who were mentally and physically afflicted by sexual assaults and thefts committed by the colonizers. The letter expresses sympathy for the French women of conscience who were anguished at having to send their sons to fight for the government, and for all women who experienced war and degradation. The authors express hope that the conference in March organized by the United Nations would result in the Algerian crisis being resolved in a democratic way (Choson nyosong 1957). The plight of the Algerian women would have resonated with some of the experiences that were familiar to Korean women, such as when their country was plundered during the oppression by the Japanese colonizers and when their territory was destroyed by bombing during the war with the Americans. The Secretariat of the International Democratic Women’s League sent a communiqué printed under the title: ‘Kukje minju nyosong ryonmaeng sogikukun haekmugi sihomul pandaehanun t’ujeangul kanghwahal kosul segye nysongdulege hosohanda’ 국제민주녀성련맹 서기국은 핵무기 시험을 반대하는 투쟁을 강화 할 것을 세계 녀성들에게 호 소 한다 [The International Democratic Women’s League Secretariat Appeals to the Women of the World to Strengthen the Struggle against Nuclear Testing]. The communiqué was signed by the Secretariat on 5 April 1953 in Berlin, but there is no indication of the translator’s name. On the left side of the page, the communiqué proclaims that women across the world were very satisfied when the Soviet Union decided to stop testing nuclear bombs. However, the Women’s League express dismay when the United States and the United Kingdom continued to advocate nuclear testing. The communiqué goes on to state that women were protesting, and in particular American and British women would be demonstrating. The Women’s League would be calling upon women all around the world to participate in anti-nuclear protests. A letter to American and British women appears on the right side of the page. The authors write that they understand how deeply women oppose testing for the sake of their children’s future. They express hope that

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all women would support the initiative for peace and reject the decisions of their governments. The transliteration for initiative inisyat’ibu suggests that the translator was referring to an English text (Choson nyosong 1958). It would seem that this article was published in Choson nyosong with the intention to enlist the support of Korean women on the side of the Soviet Union in the struggle against the Americans and British. In ‘Oet’u iyagi’ 외투 이야기 [The Story of the Overcoat], Shim Myong Cha tells the story of a parcel from Germany that was sent to the Women’s Central Committee. The parcel included a letter in German addressed to North Korean female comrades, explaining that the sender received a special coat that had belonged to a French woman fighter who had fought against fascism and sacrificed her life in one of Hitler’s prisons. The sender felt that the coat might be meaningful for North Korean women, who had fought against Americans in the Korean War. As the sender requested, the coat was displayed in a war museum. Later the sender was identified as a German woman who was imprisoned during the Second World War. When she was liberated by Soviet soldiers in 1945, she received a coat that had belonged to a French woman for whom she felt a sense of comradeship as a fellow fighter against fascism (Shim 1950). Through the transfer of the coat, this story links North Korean women with their comrades in Europe, and establishes North Korea as part of an international socialist network that includes the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and some Third World countries. ‘Arumdaun maum’ 아름다운 마음 [A Beautiful Mind] is a brief essay under the title of ‘Anti-Japanese Commando Units Campaign’. The sketch depicts a female fighter dressed in battle uniform charging forward while gripping a rifle. The author Pak Yong Sun mentions several female fighters who were influenced by Kim Il Sung’s great leadership. All of these women are described as heroic models for the people of North Korea, and their valour is equal to that of male fighters. While they were able to use weapons, some were also skilled at preparing meals and sewing. In particular, one female fighter Ri Son Hui, who was known for her dedication and bravery, fought at the front lines, handled bombs, used a sewing machine to repair soldiers’ uniforms and even made cigarettes (Pak 1960). Such an eclectic mixture of attributes calls to mind the heroines of the translated biographies of the early twentieth century, who were praised for defending the nation and observing Confucian propriety at the same time. Another article called ‘Chosonui insang, Choson pangmun

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Indonesia chonkuk nyosong taepyodanui sugi’ 조선의인상 조선방문 인 도네시 아 전국 녀성 대표 단의 수기 [An Impression of Choson, a Note on the Visit of the Indonesian Nationwide Women’s Delegation] expresses the Indonesians’ appreciation for the hospitality they received during their visit to North Korea. A photo shows several of the members of the delegation standing in front of the monuments of Pyongyang. Although the article speaks in the voice of the Indonesian visitors, there is no mention of the translator. According to the article, the delegation enjoyed visiting factories, farms, museums and war memorials. The tour of Kim Il Sung’s boyhood home was one of the highlights. They were most impressed with the struggle of the North Korean citizens against imperialism, the independent government and economy built by Kim Il Sung’s administration and the free medical care and education provided for the citizens. As mothers, they were pleased to witness the high level of early childhood education (Choson nyosong 1964). Articles such as this served to bolster the international standing of North Korea through activities relating to women. 4.3 Translated and original fiction works This section reviews several translated and original fiction works from the 1950s that provide examples of the reinforcement of government-inspired norms of behaviour for women, the exploration of social problems, the conflicts inherent in women’s roles and the emphasis on North Korea’s place in the international community (Hyun 2012). The Soviet short story ‘Chal kakora’ 잘 가거라 [Have a Safe Journey] by Anattoli Chullobin* was translated by Kim Chong Uk with an indication that it was abridged. The protagonist is a young girl who works in a factory by day and studies by night. One day, she reads a newspaper article about a project that is looking for participants to help cultivate some undeveloped land. She decides to go but hesitates to break the news to her parents. Finally, her parents encourage her plan to volunteer and leave her home to participate in communal development (Chullobin 1956). Beneath the title of the story ‘Ra P’o Ilgwa Ryu Rak Kunui kajong p’at’an munjee taehayo’ 라포일과 류락군의 가정 파탄 문제에 대하여 [Ra P’o Il, Ryu Rak Kun and the Break-Up of the Family] there is an indication in

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small print that it was taken from the periodical Chungguk punyo 중국분녀 [Chinese Women]. There is no mention of the author’s or translator’s names. Ra P’o Il is a man who has an affair and wants to divorce his wife, so he can marry another woman. After a long struggle, his wife, Ryu Rak Kun gives vent to her anger and bitterness. In the end, the government punishes the husband because his bourgeois ideas about love have led him to violate communist ideology (Choson nyosong 1956). This story validates the North Korean government’s crackdown on divorce as a catalyst for social destabilization. As is the case with translations, original fiction deals with government policies and models of femininity. I Chong Suk’s work ‘Yong Ch’anui iyagi’ 영찬의 이야기 [Yong Ch’an’s Story] tells of a young boy named Yong Ch’an who is being raised in an orphanage. His mother comes to search for him in the orphanage and recognizes him by the scar on his arm from nuclear fallout. It is a joyous reunion, although the boy’s father is still fighting the war with the US. When playmates taunt him for being an orphan, his mother reassures him that he has a loving family. Later, the boy learns that the woman is not his birth mother, but they continue to live together and form a close emotional bond (I 1956). Illustrations depict the boy as being surrounded by family members attempting to maintain stability amidst the horrors of war. The next several works deal with the difficulties of balancing the prescribed roles for women. In ‘Wae rihonharyo haessdonga’ 왜리혼하려 했 던가 [Why Did He Try to Get Divorced?], Kim Chong Suk recounts the predicament of Kim Il Hoon, who is considering a divorce because of his wife’s rude behaviour towards elderly people. However, he renounces the plan to get divorced out of consideration for their children. He handles the problem by providing his wife with educational materials and discussing his ideas about books and film with her. His increased efforts to correct her faults bring about an improvement in her attitudes and comportment, and their family life regains its dignity (Kim 1956). The drawings of a husband upbraiding his wife and a woman dutifully studying the pages of a book reinforce the message, reminiscent of traditional society, that the husband as head of the household is responsible for instructing the members of the family. The government’s policy on discouraging divorce is also emphasized. The fact that the illustrator’s names are mentioned both in the first story and this one indicates the focus on visual means of conveying the message and the didactic aims of these stories.

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Women are also castigated for their flaws in Kim Kyong Suk’s ‘Haengbok irago malhalkosinga’ 행복이라고 말할것인가 [Can It Be Called Happiness?], which explains that, although Ch’un Cha was a devoted wife and mother, her husband lost interest in family duties and complained that he could not talk to her. The problem stemmed from the fact that, although Ch’un Cha used to study and participate in her husband’s work, after the birth of her children she focused all her energies on child rearing. Due to her individualistic attitude, she refused to attend community meetings. The story points out that such laziness hampers progress, and all citizens must be willing to work for the improvement of their country (Kim 1957). Ch’oe Chong Suk’s ‘Chin omoniui aejonguro’ 친어머니의 애정으로 [A True Mother’s Love] tells of how, after her discharge from the People’s Army, Sun Nyo becomes a teacher and meets a man who is perfect for her, except for the fact that he has three children. After she realizes that they can still share a happy life, she accepts the children as if she were their natural mother. She is an excellent role model for the children, who learn to respect other people. While performing her duties as a devoted mother, Sun Nyo works wholeheartedly as chair of local organizations (Ch’oe 1957). It is interesting to note that the illustrations of many of these stories depict women wearing traditional clothing, as if to further emphasize the message that traditional values must be maintained in the process of building a socialist society. Although very little is known about most of the women writers and translators, one of the most well-recognized women writers was Im Sun Duk. Her career followed a trajectory linking the colonial period with the early years of the DPRK. She made her literary debut with the publication of a story in 1937, during the Japanese colonial period, and soon established herself as one of Korea’s first female socialist literary critics. In the late 1940s, she went to the northern part of Korea where she taught at a women’s school and, in 1947, she moved to Pyongyang where she began writing for Choson nyosong and Choson munhak 조선문학 [Choson Literature]. During the following decade, she regularly contributed essays aimed to instruct women on their roles within socialist society and short fiction works that in some cases canvassed support for the Korean War effort and in others dealt with what Lee Sang Kyung has termed the hope of constructing self-reliance for women based on freedom from gender, class and national oppression (2009: 222). Im Sun Duk continued to write stories about the plight of

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women struggling against patriarchal prejudices. Nothing is known of her whereabouts after 1957, and it is possible that she became implicated in the political purges that were taking place in North Korea at the time. While Im Sun Duk continued to explore in her work the conflicts faced by women, the other stories mentioned above indicate the didactic trends of fiction works that aimed to encourage women to emulate the ideals of the socialist woman and mother-worker.

5. Conclusion After reviewing the correlations between translations of foreign texts and the education of women in the traditional period and at the beginning of the twentieth century, this chapter has considered the official North Korean government policies on women as the background for understanding of the roles of translations of foreign materials in the formation of the socialist woman ideal in the 1950s and 1960s. We have seen that, in the Choson period, translations of Chinese texts for the education of women promoted the ideal of a chaste wife and wise mother that was deemed necessary for the continuation of the male elite’s dominance in political and social spheres. At the turn of the twentieth century, translated biographies of European women aimed to encourage Korean women to engage in patriotic activities and contribute to modernization. The ‘New Women’ of the 1920s and 1930s, in their quest for social and political recognition, were inspired by translations of the works of Ellen Key and Alexandra Kollontai. The translations appearing in Choson nyosong display similar tendencies to those mentioned above. Reflecting the paradoxical North Korean government policies of the time, women were presented with contradictory models of the traditional wife-mother and the socialist mother-worker. Original works by women writers also followed these patterns. Although the atmosphere of strict government control makes it difficult to discern the activities of individual translators or the extent of compliance and resistance, translation is ‘as intentional, as activist, as deliberate as any feminist or otherwise socially activist activity’ (von Flotow 2011:

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4). We can identify several areas to be explored as the research progresses: first, the extent to which the focus on international women’s organizations forms part of an attempt to redefine the position of North Korea within the global socialist community; second, the fact that many of the translations do not include any introductory comments or mention of the translator’s name on the one hand resembles the importation of foreign trends at the beginning of the twentieth century, and on the other might be an indication of state-controlled team translating; and third, the ways in which the traditional emphasis on translating foreign materials for the education of women continued to form the mainstay of government stability during the formative years of the North Korean socialist society. De Beauvoir (1961: 233) has written that, traditionally for men, woman has appeared as the ‘privileged Other, through whom the subject fulfils himself ’. Translation in North Korea offers rich possibilities for exploring how cultures appropriate the foreigner Others in order to expand the national self.

Acknowledgement I would like to express my appreciation to Prof. Yoo Im Ha, Prof. Yi Sang Suk and Prof. Jeon Young Sun for their guidance and advice, and Dr Yee Sun Kyung and Esther Eojin Hwang for their assistance with research.

Bibliography ‘Aljeriya nyosongduli chon segye nyosongdulege ponaenun p’yongji’ 알제리야 녀성들 이 전 세계 녀성들에게 보내는 편지 [A Letter to All the Women of the World from Algerian Women] (1957). Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 9, 34. Ch’oe, C. S. 최천식 (1957). ‘Chin omoniui aejonguro’ 친어머니의 애정으로 [A True Mother’s Love], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 12, 26–7.

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——(1964). ‘Mong Marut’uruui pulkun cho’nyo Luija Missel’ 몽마르트르의 붉은 처녀 루이자 미쎌 [The Red Virgin of Montmartre Louise Michel], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 3, 49–51. ‘Chosonui hullyunghan omoni Shin Saimdang’ 조선의 훌륭한 어머니 신사임당 [An Outstanding Choson Mother Shin Saimdang] (1956). Choson nyosong 조선 녀성 [Choson Women], 5, 37. ‘Chosonui insang, Choson pangmun Indonesia chonkuk nyosong taepyodanui sugi’ 조 선의 인상 조선 방문 인도네시아 전국 녀성 대표단의 수기 [An Impression of Choson, a Note on the Visit of the Indonesian National Women’s Delegation] (1964). Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 11, 58–9. Chullobin*, A. (1956). ‘Chal kakora’ 잘가거라 [Have a Safe Journey], trans. C. U. Kim, 김종욱, Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 1, 30–2. de Beauvoir, S. (1961). The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parhsley. New York: Bantam/ Alfred A. Knopf. Deuchler, M. (1977). ‘The Tradition: Women during the Yi Dynasty’. In S. Mattielli (ed.), Virtues in Conflict: Tradition and the Korean Woman Today, pp. 1–47. Seoul: Samhwa. Hyun, T. (2004). Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Colonial Period. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. —— (2012). ‘Translation Policy in North Korea: Foreign Imports and Self-Reliance’. In M. Reisenleitner and S. Ingram (eds), Historical Textures of Translation: Traditions, Traumas, Transgressions, pp. 109–25. Wein: Mille Tre Verlag. I, C. S. 리 정숙 (1956). ‘Yong Ch’anui iyagi’ 영찬의 이야기 [Yong Ch’an’s Story], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 6, 26. I, T. Y. 이 태 영 (1987). Pukhan yosong 북한 여성 [North Korean Women]. Seoul: Shilch’un Munhaksa. Kim, B. U. 김병욱 (1959). ‘Aegupui nyosong undongga Sseja Nyosa Mariya T’erressa Kallo’* 애급의 녀성 운동가 쎄자 녀사 마리야 텔렛사 갈로 [Egyptian Woman Activist Madame Sseja Maria Teresa Kallo*], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 5, 24–5. Kim, C. S. 김정숙 (1956). ‘Wae rihonharyo haessdonga’ 왜리혼하려 했던가 [Why Did He Try to Get Divorced], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 10, 24–5. Kim, C. U. 김종욱 (1959). Ponju sichip 번즈 시집 [The Anthology of the Poetry of Robert Burns]. P’yongyang: Kukrip Munhak Yesul Sojok Ch’ulp’ansa. Kim, K. C. 김금자 (1964a). ‘Kuri puin’ 퀴리 부인 [Madame Curie], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 7–8, 40–1, 45–6. —— (1964b) ‘K’ulara Tchetukin’ 클라라 쩨뜨낀 [Clara Zetkin], Choson nyosong 조 선녀성 [Choson Women], 9–10, 40–1, 76–7.

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Kim, K. S. 김경숙 (1957). ‘Haengbok irago malhalkosinga’ 행복이라고 말할것인가 [Can It Be Called Happiness?], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 7, 9–10. ‘Kukje minju nyosong ryonmaeng sogikukun haekmugi sihomul pandaehanun t’ujaengul kanghwahal kosul segye nyosongdulege hosohanda’ 국제민주녀성련맹 서기 국은 핵무기 시험을 반대하는 투쟁을 강화할 것을 세계 녀성들에게 호 소한다 [The International Democratic Women’s League Secretariat Appeals to the Women of the World to Strengthen the Struggle against Nuclear Testing] (1958). Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 5, 26. Lee, S. K. 이상경 (2009). Im Sun Duk, taeanjok yosong chuch’e rul hyanghayo 임순득, 대안적 여성 주체를 향하여 [Im Sun Duk, Towards an Alternative Women’s Self-Reliance]. Seoul: Somyong Chu’ulp’an. Lim, H. K. 림희경 (1956). ‘Kokuihan irum’ 귀한 이름 [An Exalted Name], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 4, 2–3. —— (1958). ‘Leninui orini posdul’ [Lenin’s Young Friends], 랜인의어린이 벗들 Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 4, 8–9. Lode*, N. (1956). ‘K’anada eso ponaeon p’yonji’ 카나다에세 보내온 편지 [A Letter from Canada], trans. C. U. Kim, 김종욱. Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 7, 16–17. Pak, Y. 박용순 (1960). ‘Arumdaun maum’ 아름다운 마음 [A Beautiful Mind], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 9, 24–5. Park, Y. 박영자 (2004a). ‘Pukhanui yosong nodong chongch’aek (1953–1980): Nodong kyekuphwa sup’yongjok, sujikjok wikyerul chungshimuro’ 북한의 여성 노동 정 책 (1953–1980): 노동 계급화 수평적, 수직적 위계를 중심으로 [The Policy on Women’s Labour in North Korea (1953–1980): Focusing on Sexual Rank], Pukhan Yonguhakhoe, 북한연구학회 [North Korean Studies Association], 8/2, 137–60. —— (2004b). ‘Pukhanui namnyopyongdung chongch’aekui hyongsonggwa kuljol (1945–1970): Pukhan yosongui chongch’i sahoejok chiwi pyonhwarul chungshimuro’ 북한의 남녀평등 정책의 형성과 굴절 (1945–1970): 북한 여성의 정치사회적지위 변화를 중심으로 [The Formation and Refraction on a Policy of Sexual Equality in North Korea (1945–1970): Focusing on the Changing Process of Women’s Political and Social Status], Asia yosong yongu, 아 시아 여성연구 [Asian Women’s Research] 43/2, 297–330. —— (2005). ‘Pukhanui yosong chongch’i: Hyokshinjok nodongja – hyokmyongjok omoniroui chaekusong’ 북한의 여성 정치: 혁신적 노동자-혁명적 어머니 로의 재구성 [The Politics about Women in North Korea: The Formation of the Innovative Labourer and Revolutionary Mother], Sahoekwahak yonguso, 사회과 학연구소 [Social Science Research Center] 13, 356–89.

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‘Ra P’o Ilgwa Ryu Rak Kunui kajong p’at’an munjee taehayo’ 라포일과 류락군의 가정파탄 문제에 대하여 [Ra P’o Il, Ryu Rak Kun and the Break-Up of the Family] (1956). Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 2, 16–18. Ricci, R., and J. van der Putten (eds) (2011). Translation in Asia, Theories, Practices, Histories. Manchester: St Jerome. Shim, M. 심명자 (1950). ‘Oet’u iyagi’ 외투 이야기 [The Story of the Overcoat], Choson nyosong 조선녀성 [Choson Women], 3, 22–3. Son, P., et al. 손봉숙 (1991). Pukhanui yosong saenghwal: Irongwa shilje 북한의 여성 생활: 이론과 실제 [North Korean Women’s Lives: Theory and Practice]. Seoul: Naham. Tymoczko, M. (2007). Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing. von Flotow, L. (2011). Translating Women. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Yun, M. R. 윤미량 (1991). Pukhanui yosong chongch’aek 북한의 여성 정책 [North Korean Policies on Women]. Seoul: Hanul.

part iii

New Media Translation

Thomas Kabara

6  Th  e Cultures of Professional Subtitling and Fansubbing: Tradition and Innovation in Audiovisual Translation in Japan

abstract This chapter compares anime fansubbing culture to the professional subtitling culture of Japan in terms of their respective effects on subtitling practices. Ostensibly, the professional culture is a highly conventionalized system that excludes innovation, while fansubbing culture, with its flouting of conventions, is an innovative alternative to rigid professional translation norms. This chapter, however, will argue that the situation is more complex. The visibility (in Lawrence Venuti’s sense of the word) professional subtitlers wield in Japan paradoxically elevates the status of their translations. At the same time, the innovations found in fansubbing can conceal a paradoxically conservative view of translation – one that maps traditional norms about word-for-word translation onto new translation devices and exoticizes the source culture.

1. Introduction In March 2002, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (LOTR) was released in Japanese theatres, earning 9 billion yen (approximately 72 million US dollars) at the box office and making it the fourth-highest grossing film in Japan for 2002 (Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, Inc.). But the film was not a complete success – at least not with fans of Tolkien’s original work. These fans found the Japanese subtitles unacceptable and used the Internet to enumerate what they considered inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the source material. They even went as far as to request that

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Toda Natsuko, the film translator who had been commissioned to produce the subtitles for the first film in the planned trilogy, be fired and prevented from translating the two sequels slated for release in Japan in 2003 and 2004. Director Peter Jackson even joined in the ‘fire Toda’ chorus, after hearing this outcry. But the Japanese distributors did not capitulate entirely. They argued that Toda’s name and reputation were too profitable in Japan, thus quieting Jackson (Nornes 2007: 241). In the end, they struck a compromise with fans by hiring Seta Teiji, the translator of the Tolkien’s original novels, to assist Toda in producing the subtitles for the final two films in the trilogy. While the LOTR incident was taking place in Japan, a new trend in subtitling practice was emerging outside of Japan. Thanks to the explosion of file-sharing networks in the early twenty-first century, groups of anime fans around the world started taking advantage of the ability to exchange their favourite shows more easily than ever. But one problem was that not all fans spoke Japanese, and since a lot of the contents were being shared through unofficial channels, they had not yet been translated. Moreover, even if content did feature official subtitles, fans were often dissatisfied with the translations – mainly for not being ‘faithful’ enough to the original. They wanted near word-for-word translations that kept culturally specific references intact even at the expense of target-text fluency. Thus, the fans distributing these contents took it upon themselves to provide the subtitles they wanted to see, created under the principles of translation they believed in. Over the last decade or so, this practice of amateurs creating subtitles for Japanese anime, usually called ‘fansubbing’, has blossomed in North America, Europe, China, South Korea and many other countries. But the rise of fan influence raises questions about the role of professionalization of audiovisual translation and translation norms. Specifically, what are the effects of professionalizing the field on controlling the norms of interlingual subtitling; and what are the effects of fansubbing on transforming those norms? This chapter will explore this twofold question by comparing fansubbing culture to the professional subtitling culture of Japan, which sits squarely at the centre of these questions. Japan provides an unusual example of professionalization of the field; its media is at the core of the fansub movement, and yet it has not cultivated its own version of this new subtitling culture. Thus, an exploration on the situation of Japan can illuminate the core principles at stake.

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The first half of this chapter will discuss the professional industry in Japan, including its unusual centralization, notability and open discourse. It will then illustrate how professional subtitlers use discourse to establish subtitling practices that emphasize invisibility that seeks to hide the existence of translation through fluency (Venuti 1995). The second half will outline the practice of fansubbing Japanese anime and its relationship to new ways of consuming media, especially the custom of world-building through the acquisition of intertextual information. It will also discuss the lack of amateur and innovative subtitling practices within Japan and how that reflects on the influence professionals retain. Through a comparison of the two approaches of professional and amateur subtitling, this chapter will demonstrate how, on the one hand, professionalizing the field yields a paradoxical relationship to visibility, where practitioners strive to make their translations unnoticeable to their audience, while arguing for this very norm openly and publicly. This has allowed them to maintain control over the norms of the field in Japan, as the lack of experimentation through amateur subtitling illustrates. Meanwhile, the practice of fansubbing has a contradictory relationship to innovative translational practices. With its flouting of conventions, fansubbing has been considered an innovative and liberating alternative to the top-down concept of translation found in the professional subtitling industry (Nornes 2007: 182). But the innovations found in fansubbing can conceal an ironically conservative view of translation. What fans are seeking is translations that are more ‘faithful’ to the original so that fans can have as direct access as possible to the ‘truth’ found in the canonical texts that make up their favourite fictional worlds. In the end, what fansubbing provides is not a new set of norms for translating audiovisual texts; rather it maps traditional norms about word-for-word translation onto new translation devices (such as surtitle annotations). In some contexts, namely China, these norms act as a safeguard against censorship, but in other contexts, like North America and Europe, they tend to exoticize content. Thus, fansubs can but do not necessarily provide grounding for innovative translational norms.

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2. Generating authority in professional subtitling in Japan Professional film subtitling in Japan poses a fairly distinct situation for the field of translation. It is highly professionalized and marked by a strong centralized authority, the notability of its practitioners and an open discourse about translation strategies. These characteristics work in concert to perpetuate tradition and confirm professional authority in the field. With only a few members directing translation practices, the Japanese film subtitling industry is highly centralized. The majority of the translations for foreign feature films distributed in Japan are managed by a handful of professionals, most of whom are members of the Japanese Screen Translators Association ( JSTA) [Eiga hon’yakuka kyōkai 映画翻訳家協会 ()]. Founded in 1983 by subtitler Shimizu Shunji, the JSTA functions as a professional support group and quasi-labour union designed to protect its members’ legal interests. Its mission is to create a forum for interaction and exchange of information among translators while also providing a means of negotiating contracts and other professional matters with distribution companies. Membership is highly selective, with only twenty translators admitted as of 2016. Joining requires the recommendation of two members and is limited to translators who subtitle films for theatrical release on a regular basis. With so few practitioners, JSTA members are able to generate and enjoy a degree of notability not frequently found among translators. In many other contexts, such as North America and Europe, it is often taken for granted that translators will mostly remain anonymous, indeed invisible, to their audiences. Surveys of translators’ cultural status bear this out. Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires (CEATL) conducted an international survey in 2010 on literary translator visibility and found that, in the countries surveyed, translators’ names are routinely omitted from the cover of books and ‘translators are rarely invited to participate in radio and television shows devoted to the books they have translated’. Kalinowski (2002: 50 quoted in Bilodeau 2015: 64) summarizes the situation neatly when she notes, ‘the difficulty of “making a name for oneself ” in this domain retains a very literal significance’.

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In contrast to the CEATL survey participants, Japanese literary translators enjoy greater status. Some translators even garner a degree of fame in the field. For example, Wakabayashi (2012: 43) refers to the translators of Paul Auster and James Joyce, Shibata Motoyuki and Yanase Naoki respectively,1 as ‘star’ translators due to the frequent appearance of their commentary in mass media. JSTA members have achieved a similar ‘star’ status, as they enjoy an unusual amount of credit and media exposure as subtitlers. They are routinely credited on DVD or Blu-Ray disc box covers and at the opening or end credits of foreign language films released in Japan, unlike the respondents of the CEATL survey. And, as is the case with Shibata and Yanase, JSTA subtitlers enjoy many opportunities to air their views on audiovisual translation in mass media. In fact, Japanese subtitlers began producing discourse about subtitling from its inception and continue to do so today. Japan’s first subtitler, Tamura Yukihiko, wrote articles detailing his first assignment, Morocco (1930), in the magazine Kinema junpō キネマ旬報 [The Movie Times] in 1931. Shimizu Shunji, one of Japan’s most prolific subtitlers, has published over fifty articles on subtitling in magazines like Hon’yaku no sekai 翻訳の世界 [The World of Translation]. Toda Natsuko has written several books on the topic as has Ōta Naoko and Okaeda Shinji. Their writings are intended as manuals on subtitling practices: Okaeda’s (1988) book is entitled Sūpā jimaku nyūmon スーパー字幕入門 [An Introduction to Subtitles] and Shimizu (1988) has published a collection of his articles in a book titled Eiga jimaku no tsukurikata oshiemasu 映画字幕の作り方教えます [Lessons on How Subtitles Are Made]. JSTA members have even achieved a certain degree of fame through their publications, appearances on television, lectures on film translation and interpreting for foreign movie stars like Tom Cruise. The aforementioned Toda is the quintessential example of this phenomenon. Having translated 1

Shibata, a former professor of American literature and literary translation at the University of Tokyo, has translated over 100 literary works from a wide variety of authors from English into Japanese. He also founded the literary journal Monkey Business, which introduces modern American literature into Japan. Yanase’s translation of Finnegans Wake has won praise for its inventiveness.

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hundreds of high-profile Hollywood films for over thirty-five years, she has been dubbed the ‘queen of subtitling’ in Japan. In addition to publishing several books on film translation, Toda frequently makes appearances on television shows, such as the NHK talk show Eigo de shabera naito 英語で しゃべらナイト [Chat in English Tonight], and gives public lectures on subtitling that fill university lecture halls past capacity. And as the LOTR incident indicates, her name is even used in film marketing in Japan. Over the years, she has accumulated a degree of visibility in her capacity as a film translator that is rarely, if ever, enjoyed by film translators outside of Japan. With the centralized authority of the JSTA and sufficient notability to propagate discourse through mass media, including television, this small group of subtitlers maintains a strong influence over the subtitling industry and its practices in Japan. Most high-profile translation work goes to JSTA members. Foreign film distributors in Japan rely heavily on members of the JSTA for subtitling feature films. As one spokesperson for Nippon Herald, a major distributor, explains, ‘We know who’s best for which film because we’ve known the (JSTA) subtitlers so long’ (T. Lee 2002: 11). While the JSTA is not a monolith that monopolizes all audiovisual translation, its members do the bulk of feature film translating and that tends to place them in leadership positions. In fact, this high degree of centralization of professional subtitling has frustrated subtitlers on the outskirts of the industry. Some find that the control JSTA translators hold over subtitling major films stifles innovation (ibid.). JSTA members demonstrate and perpetuate their authority through discourse on the principles of subtitling, creating a set of subtitling rules that are widely disseminated and put into practice. Some of these rules are based on the inherent limitations of the subtitling apparatus and are shared in one form or another by all languages; other rules are constructed from assumptions about audience approaches to film viewing. 2.2 Generating visibility through invisibility As a result of the aforementioned authority, professional subtitling culture in Japan has been conservative and slow to innovate. The basic principles professional subtitlers promote through their discourse is that translators must aim for invisibility. In other words, subtitles should be rendered so that the

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viewer remains unaware of the presence of translation and its practitioners. But at the same time, practitioners have advanced the professionalization of the field by making the principles behind its practice open and available for all to see. Thus, what arises is a multilayered paradox: the subtitlers actively promote the idea that translations should be invisible, but they do this through advancing the visibility of themselves and their discourse, which they are able to disseminate because of their ability to maintain authority in the field. On the one hand, it is widely understood that subtitling is a limited form of translation. The physical apparatus imposes constraints on the way subtitles are created and displayed, regardless of language or culture. Most of these constraints revolve around timing and character-counts. But the principles behind subtitling policies are based on assumptions about the need for translators to take on subordinate roles and produce ‘invisible’ translations – that is, translations that read fluently and conceal the presence of translation. In an attempt to normalize an international industry that at times can produce slapdash work, Ivarsson and Carroll (1998) codified standards of practice in their ‘Code of Good Subtitling Practices’. Among these were the policies that (1) subtitles should appear and disappear in synchronization with the corresponding spoken source text (ST) dialogue and (2) viewers should be able to read the text without undue haste. To effect the above codes of practice, foreign film industries around the world place limits on the number of characters that can be displayed per second. In Europe, fifteen to seventeen characters per second (CPS) appears to be standard. In Japan, where subtitles make use of kanji 漢字 [Chinese characters], the standard is four CPS – a rule established in the 1930s which remains intact today. These CPS limits compel translators to create subtitles that condense the content of the ST dialogue. In fact, Antonini (2005: 213) finds that subtitling among European languages results in word count reductions of 40 to 75 per cent. Japanese subtitlers have recognized and abided the apparent necessity for condensation from the earliest days of screen translation. The first film to feature Japanese subtitles, Morocco (released in 1930 in the US and 1931 in Japan), included an average of thirty titles per reel in the ninety-two-minute film (Anderson and Richie 1982: 76). This amounts to 1.5 subtitles per minute.

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In his various articles and books, Shimizu (1998: 68) has explicated why subtitles reduce the ST content so much, arguing that since subtitles appear so briefly on the screen before they are removed, they must be short and readily understood to ensure the viewer is able to grasp the storyline. He adds that this limits the language subtitlers can deploy, especially in a language like Japanese, which relies heavily on ideograms. He also warns against using uncommon kanji that could challenge viewers (ibid.: 17). Thus, not only does he insist that translators must inevitably omit ST content, but that subtitlers must also limit the vocabulary used to express this truncated content as well. Overall, the above concerns and the strategies they engender help to ensure the subtitler is seen in a subordinate position and that their translations remain unnoticeable. In his essay ‘Subtitling Japanese Films’, Richie (2011) explicitly states that his goal in making English subtitles for Japanese classics is to make sure the subtitles remain ‘invisible’. He reasons that subtitling should be a convention that remains muted, otherwise they ‘distract the viewer from the film itself ’ (ibid.: 232). Thus, he insists subtitlers and their work play a subordinate role in the presentation of film content, as do his Japanese counterparts, who have managed to pass on this principle to the present practitioners through discourse on subtitling. Throughout this discourse, these subtitlers insist that their work is not actually translation and that subtitling must be invisible to film viewers. In her biography on working as a subtitler, Ōta Naoko (2007: 15) recites the often-repeated mantra that ‘subtitling is not translation but summary’. Toda (1997: 121–2) has written that subtitling is not meant to be a direct translation of dialogue; rather it should capture the ‘essence’ of the original lines. Moreover, Shimizu, mentor to Toda, had a book dedicated to this idea entitled Eiga jimaku wa hon’yaku dewanai 映画字幕は翻訳ではな い [Film Subtitling is Not Translation] posthumously published in 1992. Shimizu (1992: 59) even refrained from identifying himself as a translator in his screen credits, preferring the title ‘Subtitle Supervisor’ or something to that effect. Thus, Japanese subtitlers make an effort to differentiate their status from translators as well as their output. Much of this JSTA discourse has come about as responses to criticism of their translations. These criticisms tend to attack the translations for not being literal enough. For example, Toda’s subtitles for the 1979 Francis Ford

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Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now were met with reproach from author and critic Tachibana Takeshi in the May 1979 issue of the Japanese magazine Shokun! 諸君! [Gentlemen!]. Focusing on her translation of the lines ‘Take care of him with extreme prejudice’ and ‘His methods have become unsound’, which Toda renders as Kare o ansatsu seyo 彼を暗殺せよ [Assassinate him] and Kare no kōdō ga ijō ni natta 彼の行動が異常になった [His actions have become irregular] respectively, Tachibana criticizes the subtitles for stripping away the subtlety of the ST dialogue.2 Bothered by this explicitation of euphemistic language, he concludes that ‘Nobody understands Coppola’s message’ (Toda 1997: 115). Soon after Tachibana publicly excoriated Toda’s translation, Shimizu posted a response in the magazine Hon’yaku no sekai 翻訳の世界 [The World of Translation] defending Toda’s decisions. In his rejoinder, Shimizu (1992: 24) intimates that Tachibana’s criticisms demonstrate a simplistic view of subtitling, pointing out that a literal translation of ‘His methods have become unsound’ [‘Hōhō ga fukenzen da’ 方法が不健全だ] would be inappropriate as the Japanese is an unusual expression and audiences cannot be expected to grasp its meaning in the split-second the subtitle appears on the screen. According to Toda’s autobiography, Shimizu continues his case in an article in Nihon eiga penkurabu kaijo 日本映画ペンクラブ会場 [Japan Film Pen Club] where he argues that word-for-word translations in film is an unrealistic standard due to the nature of subtitling – where text appears and disappears within a short period of time and ‘There’s no time to read and think’, thus the best subtitles should be easy to grasp (Toda 1997: 115–16). The idea that subtitles should be easy to grasp is echoed throughout the field, but it is not necessarily universally accepted. Filmmaker Harada Masato, who was commissioned to rewrite the Japanese subtitles for Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) after the director read a back-translated version of Toda’s subtitles and demanded that they be redone, disagrees with the ‘easy to understand’ standard of Japanese subtitling. Echoing Tachibana, he states that as a filmmaker himself, he wants the nuances of dialogue translated more ‘faithfully’ (Kamiya 2004).

2

Tachibana’s recollection of the line is inaccurate. The actual line from the film is ‘Terminate the Colonel’s command’.

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Nevertheless, Toda and the other JSTA subtitlers continue to push the standard of ‘easy-to-understand’ subtitles throughout their discourse. Moreover, they insist that subtitles are part of an entertainment product designed to emotionally affect audiences (Toda 1997; Ōta 2007). These principles have the combined purpose of rendering the translator and the translation invisible. But this emphasis on invisible translation is only half the story. Professional subtitlers in Japan, especially members of the JSTA, have enjoyed an unusual degree of exposure. It is challenging to think of translators, especially those who specialize in a field that takes great pains to hide the existence of its own product, as subtitling does, gaining the degree of recognition among the general public that Toda does. Moreover, the JSTA subtitlers have used this visibility to make the translation process and the rationale for their decisions transparent and available for anyone to see or even scrutinize. This openness by the JSTA subtitlers helps drive the profession. Nevertheless, their work has been criticized for being stagnant, especially in comparison to amateur subtitles, which are seen as fresh and innovative (Nornes 2007: 182–4). Indeed, it is this same professionalization of the subtitling industry that prevents experimentation because over the years the JSTA members have turned traditional practices passed on from generation to generation into professional standards. Conversely, it is the amateur status of fansubbing that allows room for experimentation and innovation.

3. New media, innovation and exoticization in anime fansubbing culture Anime fan culture initially emerged in North America and Europe in the 1980s. According to Pérez-González (2007), fans grew dissatisfied with the domesticated translations of their favourite anime and began demanding more faithful translations. Due to the limitations of the subtitling apparatus, distributors could not meet these demands, and so the fans took it upon

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themselves to create their own subtitles (ibid.: 69–70). This fansubbing culture flourished with the advent of file-sharing and high-speed internet in the early 2000s and coincided with the rise of new modes of appreciating audiovisual media. In Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Jenkins (2006) details a trend in how media is being consumed in the twenty-first century. He argues that media content is often spread across several platforms in order to create a fictional world that sustains multiple characters and stories. For example, the story of The Matrix trilogy is conveyed only partly through the actual films. To make better sense of the films, viewers needed to refer to extra-textual sources of information about The Matrix world, including comic books, video games, an animated series, etc.: some scenes in the films cannot be understood without reference to one of these other sources. This multi-platform world-building has two effects on how media is consumed: it encourages the participation of viewers in the creation process and it also promotes media consumption centred on information-seeking activities. Jenkins (2007) summarizes this succinctly in his blog: This process of world-building encourages an encyclopedic impulse in both readers and writers. We are drawn to master what can be known about a world which always expands beyond our grasp. This is a very different pleasure than we associate with the closure found in most classically constructed narratives, where we expect to leave the theatre knowing everything that is required to make sense of a particular story.

These new modes of viewing and appreciation provide an environment that can propagate fansubbing culture, which is characterized by fans participating in the creation process and seeking out information about specific anime programmes. When creating subtitles, fansubbing groups incorporate insights and opinions from viewers generating a dynamic authorship between translator and user. According to Lee Hye-Kyung (2011: 1138), ‘there is a tendency to pay attention to viewers’ responses – either longstanding followers or more casual fans – taking their comments or download numbers seriously’. The fact that these amateur translators are translating for other members of their subculture – a subculture which exists primarily on filesharing sites on the Internet – and are therefore taking advantage of new approaches to

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audiovisual media consumption, prompts them to explore better ways to fulfil their ideal standards of translation, which are based on the principle that translations should be more ‘faithful’ to the ST than professional subtitles made for general audiences. In other words, fansubbers are motivated to experiment with form and find new ways to create faithful translations to appeal to their target audience. Since the rise of fansubbing culture, fansubbers have deployed a variety of techniques that are rarely found in professional subtitles available on official media. Elaborating on the work of Ferrer Simó (2005), PérezGonzález (2006) provides an overview of common fansubbing practices that breach professional conventions. One practice is to exploit variations on font style, size and colour for an assortment of functions, including distinguishing between two different speakers. Another practice is to use a variety of layouts, positioning titles all around the image rather than the traditional position at the bottom. This is done to indicate who is speaking or to avoid interfering with important image information. Finally, there is a tendency to leave culturally specific items untranslated and instead provide annotated explanations (Pérez-González 2006: 270–1). The last practice is perhaps the most telling way that fan subtitles push boundaries: the inclusion of the translator’s notes as surtitle annotations. The use of surtitle annotation allows for the retention of culture-specific references (CSRs) in the ST – in other words, a reference ‘connoting different aspects of everyday life such as education, politics, history […] place names, foods and drinks […] as experienced in different countries and nations of the world’ (Antonini 2007: 154). For example, in episode 100 of the anime Detective Conan, Hatsukoi no hito omoide jiken (名探偵 コナン、初恋の人思い出事件 [The Memories of First Love Case] (dir. Kodama Kenji, aired 1998)), a subtitle for a line of dialogue reads: ‘I went all the way to Ginza to buy it’, while a surtitle simultaneously displayed at the top of the screen explains, ‘Note: Ginza is an expensive shopping district in Tokyo, equivalent to Fifth Avenue in New York’ (found in fansubbed version translated by ‘Rika’ and distributed by Anime-Conan). In episode forty-eight, Gaikōkan satsujin jiken 外交官殺人事件 [Diplomat Murder Case] (dir. Kenji Kodama, aired 1997) a subtitle reads: ‘Please wait in the tatami room’, with the surtitle annotation: ‘Note: Tatami room = a room

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with Japanese straw floor covering’ (found in fansubbed version translated by ‘Lobato’ and distributed by Anime-Conan).3 These annotations function the same way as footnotes found in isosemiotic translations where timing and CPS counts are immaterial. But fansubbing is not an isosemiotic translation; it is a diasemiotic translation, where traditionally speech and text are aligned (Gottlieb 2005: 36). Thus, the use of surtitles disrupts the flow and unconscious reading of conventional subtitles by steering viewer attention to multiple sites of information all at once. This defies conventional norms of subtitling that aim to redirect viewer attention back to image information as quickly as possible. New approaches to consuming media allow for attention-diverting practices like simultaneous surtitle annotations, since any given text is no longer seen as an isolated source of narrative information. Traditionally, the ST is at the heart of any translation, even one as loose as interlingual subtitling. But fansub audiences do not consume these videos in a traditional way. As Pérez-González (2012: 18) states, ‘the focus has been placed on subtitling practices that […] do not attempt to naturalize the world of the story by making it self-contained and closing it off from the space of the audience’. In anime fansubbing, the ST plays a paradoxical role: it is indeed the source of the information the subtitles must reproduce faithfully, but it is no longer the centre of attention; rather, it is merely one piece of the puzzle in the world-building process. In new media storytelling, outside sources of information that corroborate the ST dialogue and expand the fictional world are welcome and often necessary. Likewise, surtitle annotations provide nondiegetic content that supplements the diegetic content (ST dialogue) in the same way a video game might fill in narrative gaps in The Matrix stories. To viewers adopting this approach to audiovisual media appreciation, secondary texts that reroute attention from the story do not intrude on entertainment value, because viewers engaged in this mode of media appreciation are not looking for the linear, unobstructed satisfaction of traditional modes so much as direct access to information about a fictional world they are trying to reconstruct in their minds.

3

Given the nature of fansubbing and its flouting of copyright laws, fansub creators and distributors often use pseudonyms.

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Unlike their professional subtitles, which try to reinforce a self-contained world of fiction, fansubs are designed to convey discrete information about fictional anime worlds (or the far-off, ‘exotic’ world of Japan) to be enjoyed well after the closing credits roll. As Díaz Cintas (2005: 30) explains, in fansub anime culture, ‘We encounter a new viewer avid for information and […] more importance seems to be given to the actual cultural referent than to a “correct” translation. The consumer is genuinely interested in the foreign culture and language and the acculturation of terms is avoided’. What fans want is as direct access as possible to the ST, or rather, the culture that has produced the ST. This has an exoticizing effect on subtitling. One reason fansubbing emerged was that fans criticized official subtitles for not being Japanese enough. According to Pérez-González (2007: 69), fans demanded ‘the right to experience first hand [sic] the cultural “otherness” that anime is imbued in’. This principle works its way into the fundamental practices of fansubbing. According to Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez (2006: 45), often the people doing the translations for fansubbed anime shared overseas are native speakers of Japanese, because ‘one of the overriding factors in fansubbing is the need to fully understand the Japanese ST, both linguistically and culturally’. Presumably, fansubbing groups assume that the most accurate interpretation of the language and cultural elements in anime must come from a native of the culture, as outsiders do not have the same level of understanding. By contrast, East Asian fansubbers share the same norm of rendering ‘faithful’ translations in their subtitles, but the rationale behind this norm is quite different. For one thing, it is less likely that fansubbers in China or South Korea would look to Japan to find exotic culture. Rather, in China, the fansubbing culture seeks to produce and consume subtitles that are ‘more loyal and authentic translations of the original products’, but they do so to skirt censorship laws in China (Dang 2013). This contrast highlights the difference in how fansubbing is used and how it could be used. On the one hand, fansubbing, at least in the West, is used to feed world-building activities that tend to exoticize its various sources. On the other hand, in other contexts, these same innovations could be used as a means to combat oppression.

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3.2  The influence of amateur subtitling Numerous websites, such as Baka Updates, Fansub TV and Anime Suki, catalogue links to fan-subbed content. As of 2015, Baka Updates lists over 1,200 fansubbing groups, while My Anime List registers well over 2,000. The legality of these groups’ activities is a point of contention, as they violate copyright laws. Although some legal action has been taken against illegal sharing (Japan Times 2014), fansubbers have so far faced little resistance, as distributors tend to see file-sharing as a net benefit (Díaz Cintas and Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 44). They find it an effective way to promote anime fan culture and test the market demand for a particular anime programme (Lee 2011: 1139–40). Thus, by enlarging the market and influencing what programmes are distributed, the mere existence of fansubbing culture impacts the industry and its official distribution channels. Fansubbing culture’s influence extends to the translation of licensed anime, as well. Some of the innovative practices deployed by fansubbers have been adopted by professionals working on licensed DVDs or Blu-Rays. For example, the official DVD for the anime Pani Poni Dash! allows viewers to select subtitles with annotation. The adoption of such techniques by some commercial distributors indicates that DVD producers are willing to take a chance on unconventional subtitling techniques originally formulated by amateurs (Caffrey 2009: 3). Thus, fansubbers have wielded some influence over the industry. And while audiences/consumers always wield power over the products they consume, fansubbing represents a transfer of consumer power from the general masses, whose impact is based on sheer volume, to a subculture of expert consumers, whose impact is based on esoteric knowledge. Moreover, the subtitles they produce are marked by innovations that appeal to new ways of consuming media. The situation within Japan is quite different, however. There, innovation in subtitling is hard to find, and the professionalization of the field coupled with the lack of amateur subtitlers ensures traditional practices are maintained. While amateur and unconventional subtitling does exist in Japan, these subtitles exhibit the same formal traditions of the JSTA members, suggesting a strong adherence to the standards JSTA members expound, giving further credence to their authority.

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Fansubbing culture remains inchoate in Japan because the conditions that brought about anime fansubbing in other countries do not necessarily exist within Japan. For one thing, a lot of foreign media is readily available and most of it comes through commercial industry channels. One of the main reasons fansubbing emerged outside of Japan was that translated anime programmes were so difficult to find. That is not the case, at least for English, Chinese, Korean or other popular foreign content, in Japan. This licensed content always features professionally made subtitles. Although this does not guarantee consumer satisfaction with the translation, the factors that make translations objectionable to anime fans abroad are not prevalent with foreign media in Japan: it is probably fair to say that in Japan, South Korean media or even English-language media lack the same ‘exoticness’ that anime boasts in North America. Without the key ingredient of curiosity towards ‘otherness’, viewers may be less inclined to engage in world-building activities than their counterparts are in North America and Europe. The amateur subtitling culture that does exist in Japan is limited in scope and scale. For example, one blogger has created ‘homemade’ subtitles for the American TV show Bones . But he and others like him may not enjoy the quasi-cooperation of media companies that non-Japanese fansubbers do. While the anime industry tends to ignore blatant copyright infringement because it gives their products greater exposure, foreign content, at least English-language TV shows, get plenty of exposure in Japan. So, media companies may not feel that ‘homemade’ subtitling offers them any benefit. Thus, policing of such activities may be stricter and amateurs will likely feel discouraged about producing their own translations. On the other hand, international video-sharing websites offer legitimate opportunities for amateurs to create Japanese subtitles for audiovisual content. The Singapore-based Viki (a play on the word Wiki), for example, is a streaming site with a Creative Commons license that allows volunteers to collaborate and add subtitles in any number of languages to copyrighted videos, including anime, Korean dramas and English-language television programmes. Many of the videos available feature Japanese subtitles generated by anonymous volunteers in a fashion similar to fansubbing. Discussion boards on the site allow subtitlers to confer on specific translations or general translational practices, making the endeavour a more open and cooperative

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process – one of the central characteristics of fansubbing. However, the subtitles on Viki or similar sites do not typically display the innovation found in anime fan subtitles. Also, some unconventional uses of subtitles can be found in Japan, and not just on obscure content, but on licensed DVDs of the same feature films that JSTA members typically translate. Specialized DVDs of Hollywood films, such as Forrest Gump (1994), offer viewers what is called chō-jimaku 超字幕 [subtitles-plus], which display both Japanese and English subtitles simultaneously. Like surtitle annotations, these subtitles-plus DVDs subvert strict limits of character counts and flout principles of readability. They also engage the viewer in the new mode of viewing fansubbing audiences enjoy. But the purpose of these subtitles-plus DVDs is for English language learners to engage in listening practice. Viewers use the simultaneous English and Japanese subtitles to test what they hear and to confirm their understanding. So, while surtitle annotations and subtitles-plus text both supplement traditional subtitles, their end purposes are distinct: surtitle annotations are used to provide information about the fictional world to which the ST belongs, while subtitles-plus are used as an exercise tool for skills that have a real-world application. Another trend is uso-jimaku 嘘字幕 [parody subtitles], where amateurmade subtitles superimposed over clips from famous films lampoon the original dialogue. Videos with parody subtitles can be found on video-sharing sites, such as the popular Japanese site Niconico. One parody subtitle video on Niconico features a clip of the famous scene from Full Metal Jacket (1987) where Gunnery Sergeant Hartman verbally abuses new recruits at basic training. The accompanying subtitles turn his vicious and obscene rant into a relatively innocuous discussion of anime. When Hartman asks a cadet where he is from, and the cadet answers that he is from Texas, Hartman screams, ‘Only steers and queers come from Texas’. Meanwhile, the parody subtitles read, Tekisasu ni aru nowa meido kissaten to inchiki garō テキサスにある のはメイド喫茶店とインチキがロー [The only things in Texas are maid cafés and phony art galleries]. But, again, such unconventional subtitles are not meant to enhance the viewers’ ability to appreciate the ST or its fictional world in the same way as fansubbing. They are simply intended as jokes disconnected from the ST.

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While it is true that amateur subtitling exists in Japan and that some experimenting is done, the degree of organization and the goals of these subtitles are quite different from fansubbing culture. It is possible that amateur subtitling culture in Japan will grow in the future, especially through websites like Viki, but the incentives that allow fansubbing culture to flourish in other countries do not exist in Japan. The ready availability of properly licensed popular foreign media, lack of government censorship and fears of copyright issues may stifle the development of the same kind of extensive and prolific community we find with anime fansubbing. Without that community, the amateur subtitling culture that does exist in Japan may not be able to flourish or take on the same characteristics as anime fansubbing overseas. Specifically, it is not part of the information-gathering activities that are integral to world-building culture. And it is world-building culture that makes room for innovative subtitling practices since it is an innovative way of appreciating media content. Certainly, the same world-building and information-gathering customs have taken root in Japan as much as anywhere. This is crystallized neatly in the LOTR incident mentioned in the introduction, where Tolkien fans viewed Toda’s translation and complained vociferously about how much it deviated from not only the ST film itself, but also from the world J.R.R Tolkien had so thoroughly built. One of the most often-heard criticisms in this incident is that Toda admitted she had not even read the original books and therefore was not qualified to translate because she was not a proper ‘fan’. The Tolkien fans in Japan, on the other hand, had become experts on Middle-earth; they sought translations faithful to the original in all its exotic ‘otherness’; they formed a community on the Internet; and they used their expertise to influence how their text of interest was going to be translated. This is all similar to the culture of anime fansubbers, except for the fact that the Japanese Tolkien fans did not endeavour to make the subtitles themselves. Instead, they called for more ‘faithful’ subtitles by the professionals.

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3.3 Tradition through innovation The disparity in fansubbing cultures in East Asia and in North America and Europe highlights the importance of taking a measured view of how liberating anime fansubbing truly is. The innovations we see in anime fansubbing are technical innovations that liberate translators from the conventions of condensed texts and character counts and allow them to provide viewers with more direct access to the ST, which is what fans want. But fansubbing culture is a contradictory one. While it has freed practitioners from technical constraints and made their translations more visible, it tends to reinforce traditional conceptions of translation that treat the ST as a canonical text. The underlying principles behind fansub translations lack rigorous self-examination. Indeed, their emphasis on faithfulness to the ST is the default position for lay-person critics such as Tachibana. Although the ST is only one piece in a world-building puzzle, the information it provides is considered canon and therefore it must be delivered completely unmolested. Thus, despite the translation and translator visibility fansubbing culture engenders, ultimately the foundation for all translation activity harks back to a belief in the sacredness of individual words found in the ST. Whereas in conventional subtitling a reference to a tatami room in the dialogue ‘Please wait in the tatami room’ may be simplified to ‘the next room’, in fansubs, the word tatami, which has not entered the lexicon of the average English speaker, must be kept in the translation in order to capture the same level of precision as the ST. While fansubbers and their audience strive to acquire an understanding of the ST and the source culture, this effort is paradoxical: the seeking of knowledge relies on a fascination with the unfamiliar, a situation which makes pre-existing knowledge almost undesirable. This self-contradicting combination of fascination and expertise in the ST limits translation to a rather conservative conception of the practice. In fansubbing culture, translation is less about the deliberate transformation of translational norms as it is about ST access.

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4. Conclusion While audiovisual subtitling has established itself as a respected profession within Japan, the innovative audiovisual translation practices flourishing outside of Japan are scarce within its borders. Professional subtitling culture in Japan has been a bastion of traditionalism, with policies from the 1930s still prevalent today. But this professional culture has its critics. The attack is two-pronged: some decry deviations from the ST (LOTR fans, Tachibana), others denounce its conservatism in an age of new media viewership (Nornes 2007). But rather than responding to these criticisms by exploring the possibilities of translation, Japan’s professional subtitlers have co-opted them, utilizing them as a starting point to ‘educate’ the public about the difficulties of subtitling. And while the digital revolution allows for some flexibility in subtitling, there is little indication that Japanese audiovisual translators will take advantage of it. Nevertheless, the establishment of a professional culture should be encouraging to those seeking greater translator visibility. Even though JSTA subtitlers have received a healthy amount of criticism, they still have established a receptive audience. Moreover, working within the formal traditions ignored by fansubbers need not be a barrier to quality translation. Traditional subtitling can still produce fresh perspectives on the ST that allow it to ‘grow’ in new ways (Kabara 2015). Lastly, no profession can maintain standards of quality without an entrenched tradition. While there is always room for new ways of expressing translation, especially in an environment in which the ways we appreciate media are expanding, the professionalizing of any field is inevitably met with resistance to changes in accepted practices. Japanese anime has provided the origins for the new translation culture of fansubbers around the world. While it is true that today amateur subtitling is done in a variety of linguistic and cultural contexts, it was the attempts of Western audiences to capture the ‘exoticness’, the ‘otherness’ of anime that led amateurs to seek alternatives to professional subtitling and to invent the fansubbing practices and culture that has now exploded into an international phenomenon. In other words, although amateur subtitling may very well have developed regardless, without Japanese anime the innovative techniques anime fansubbers employ may never have come about.

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But as new ways of appreciating media develop, amateur subtitling continues to grow into an international phenomenon. Indeed, the fansubbing of Japanese anime has become entrenched as a practice in China and South Korea. But the rationale behind fansubbing in East Asia appears to differ from their North American and European counterparts. This opens up the possibility of using the technical innovations fansubbing has developed for translations that do not view the language of the ST as immutably sacred nor the ST itself as part of an exotic ‘other’.

Bibliography ‘2002-Nen (Heisei 14-Nen) Kōshū 10-Oku-En Ijō Bangumi’ 2002年（平成14年）興 収10億円以上番組 (2002). Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, Inc. . Anderson, J., and D. Richie (1982). The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Antonini, R. (2005). ‘The Perception of Subtitled Humour in Italy: An Empirical Study’, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 18(2), 209–25. —— (2007). ‘SAT, BLT, Spirit Biscuits, and the Third Amendment: What Italians Make of Cultural References in Dubbed Texts’. In Y. Gambier, M. Shlesinger and R. Stolze (eds), Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies: Selected Contributions from the EST Congress, Lisbon 2004, pp. 153–67. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bilodeau, I. (2015). Literary Translators as Peritextual Authors: Conventions, Agency, and Image Building in the Writing of Japanese Translator Commentary. PhD thesis. Nagoya: Nagoya University. Caffrey, C. (2009). Relevant Abuse? Investigating the Effects of an Abusive Subtitling Procedure on the Perception of TV Anime Using Eye Tracker and Questionnaire. PhD thesis. Dublin: Dublin City University. Dang, L. (2013). ‘China’s Fansubbing Community: A Jianghu of Underground Heroes – (1) Ten Years’ Ups and Downs’, Citizens Media at Manchester. Díaz Cintas, J. (2005). ‘Back to the Future in Subtitling’. In H. Gerzymisch-Arbogast and S. Nauert (eds), MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation:

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Conference Proceedings. . Díaz Cintas, J., and P. Muñoz Sánchez (2006). ‘Fansubs: Audiovisual Translation in an Amateur Environment’, The Journal of Specialised Translation, 6, 37–52. Ferrer Simó, M. R. (2005). ‘Fansubs y Scanlations: la influencia del aficionado en los criterios profesinales’, Puentes, 6, 27–43. Gottlieb, H. (2005). ‘Multidimensional Translation: Semantics Turned Semiotics’. In H. Gerzymisch-Arbogast and S. Nauert (eds), MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings. . Ivarsson, J., and M. Caroll (1998). ‘Code of Good Subtitling Practice’. . ‘Japan Plans Campaign to Curb Manga, Anime Copyright Violations Abroad’. (2014). Japan Times, 28 July. . Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. —— (2007). ‘Transmedia Storytelling 101’, Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, 22 March. . Kabara, T. (2015). ‘What is Gained in Subtitling: How Film Subtitles Can Expand the Source Text’, TranscUlturAl, 7(1), 166–79. Kalinowski, I. (2002). ‘La Vocation au travail de traduction’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 144, 47–54. Kamiya, S. (2004). ‘Lost in Translation on Japanese Screens’, Japan Times, 9 May. . Lee, H. (2011). ‘Participatory Media Fandom: A Case Study of Anime Fansubbing’, Media, Culture & Society, 33(8), 1131–47. Lee, T. (2002). ‘Getting the Words Right’, Daily Yomiuri, 3 August, 11. Nornes, M. (2007). Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ōta, N. 太田直子 (2007). Jimakuya wa ginmaku no katasumi de nihongo ga hen da to sakebu 字幕は銀幕の片隅で日本語が変だと叫ぶ. Tokyo: Kōbunsha. Pérez-González, L. (2006). ‘Fansubbing Anime: Insights into the “Butterfly Effect” of Globalisation on Audiovisual Translation’, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 14(4), 260–77.

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—— (2007). ‘Intervention in New Amateur Subtitling Cultures: A Multimodal Account’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies, 6, 67–80. —— (2012). ‘Co-creational Subtitling in the Digital Media: Transformative and Authorial Practices’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(1), 3–21. Richie, D. (2011). Viewed Sideways: Writings on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge. Shimizu, S. 清水俊二 (1988). Eiga jimaku no tsukurikata oshiemasu 映画字幕の作 り方を教えます. Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko. —— (1992). Eiga jimaku wa hon’yaku de wa nai 映画字幕は翻訳ではない. Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō. Toda, N. 戸田奈津子(1997). Jimaku no naka no jinsei 字幕の中の人生. Tokyo: Hakusuisha. Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge. ‘Visibility’. (n.d.). Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires. . Wakabayashi, J. (2012). ‘Situating Translation Studies in Japan within a Broader Context’. In N. Sato-Rossberg and J. Wakabayashi (eds), Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese Context, pp. 33–53. London: Bloomsbury.

Yeong-ae Yamashita

7 A Gender-Based Analysis of the Translation of South Korean TV Dramas in Japan1

abstract This article employs a gender-based analysis to investigate a number of characteristics that have become intrinsic to the process of subtitling Korean television dramas into Japanese. The analysis draws from the hit drama Winter Sonata to focus particularly on the ways in which patriarchal elements are relayed through the subtitles. The first section of the article provides a general overview of the characteristics of Korean families as portrayed in dramas, and contextualizes the Korean patriarchal culture that forms the backdrop to Winter Sonata. The second section examines the ways in which patriarchal culture is transformed by the subtitle translations through a number of dialogue examples. What emerges from this analysis is that through the processes of translation, Korean patriarchal culture is transformed into a Japanese-style equivalent. Finally, the third section looks at these factors from a feminist perspective in order to emphasize both the importance of continued engagement in this field of research and future strategies to promote awareness of bias and inconsistencies in the industry.

1. Introduction: The significance of the Korean Wave in Japan It has been fifteen years since Japan’s first broadcast of Fuyu no sonata 冬 のソナタ [Winter Sonata] (twenty episodes, Korean Broadcasting System [KBS], 2002), the South Korean TV drama that precipitated the Korean Wave in Japan. ‘Korean Wave’ is the generic term used to describe the global increase in popularity of South Korean culture that was initially driven by 1

This article is a revised and updated version of Yamashita (2010).

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TV dramas, but subsequently evolved to include South Korean celebrities, K-POP, cuisine, cosmetics and other commodities. The neologism Hallyu ( Jp. Kanryū or Hanryū), literally meaning ‘flow of Korea’, first appeared in the late 1990s following a surge in demand for South Korean dramas and music in Taiwan and China. In Japan, the 2003 broadcast of the series by the public broadcaster NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai [ Japan Broadcasting Corporation]) helped to propel the fervour for South Korean popular culture to a level unprecedented in the course of Japan’s modern history. Japan has not always enjoyed close relationships with its Korean peninsular neighbours. Even aside from the lack of formal ties with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) did not re-establish diplomatic relations until the signing of the Treaty of Basic Relations in 1965. But for the majority of Japanese, the return to cordial relations did little to stimulate interest in South Korea beyond the realm of political, economic and military affairs. This general attitude stemmed both from the Meiji era (1868–1912) ideology advocating that Japan should ‘de-Asianize’ and align itself with Europe, and the early twentieth-century Japanese colonization of Korea which remained in place until the close of the Second World War (1910–1945). Throughout the colonial period, Koreans were schooled in ‘modern’ ways by Japan’s governing regime, whose perception of the peninsular nation as ‘backward’ and ‘stagnant’ gave rise to widespread discrimination and prejudice towards the Koreans that continued even after the return of their sovereignty. At the close of the war, approximately one-third (600,000) of the Koreans displaced to Japan during the colonial period settled in Japan. The deep-seated forms of discrimination they experienced as ‘Zainichi’ 在日 [Koreans living in Japan] are well-documented. Even the postwar Japanese education system taught very little about Korean culture or history. The resulting Japanese ‘ignorance’ about the nation(s) next door only served to reproduce forms of discrimination and prejudice. While a percentage of Japanese men visited Korea either for business or on ‘prostitution tours’, women were rarely presented with opportunities to experience the country first-hand. For this reason, it is probably fair to say that many women held negative – or, at best, neutral – feelings toward Korea.

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The TV drama Winter Sonata played a catalytic role in stimulating interest in South Korea among Japanese women, who became fixated on watching the intimate love story unfold against a backdrop of breathtaking scenery and stunning young actors. At the peak of the drama’s popularity in the late 2000s, however, Japan experienced a resurgence in hate-speech demonstrations and unfavourable discourse on Korea, which impacted enthusiasm for the drama.2 Then in 2011, prompted by a right-wing protest demonstration directed at Fuji TV,3 Korean dramas – the very cultural product that initiated the Korean Wave in Japan – were successively withdrawn from terrestrial broadcasting channels. However, South Korean TV dramas neither disappeared from Japanese screens, nor lost their extensive fan base. As of March 2018, there are more than twenty BS (Broadcasting Satellite) and CS (Communication Satellite) channels televising weekly instalments of more than 150 South Korean TV dramas. A small number of terrestrial broadcasts continue as well. In the summer of 2015, NHK announced that it would no longer be televising South Korean dramas, but by April 2016 broadcasting had resumed. The boom may be over, but the genre continues to draw interest as a product of Japanese popular culture with widespread appeal. Incidentally, I am a second-generation Korean who grew up in Japan. From the late 1980s, I lived in Seoul for a decade as a Korean university graduate student of women’s studies. While I was there, I campaigned for women’s rights through movements including those that sought justice for the Japanese Army’s ianfu 慰安婦 [comfort women] (Yamashita 2008). It was around this time that I also became engrossed in South Korean TV dramas and watched them every day. However, in the late 2000s, at the peak of the Korean Wave, I initially felt detached from the cultural

2

3

Hate speech in Japan usually targeted Zainichi Koreans. Of particular note is the group Zaitokukai (a truncated version of Zainichi Tokken o Yurusanai Shimin no Kai, literally ‘Citizen’s Group that Will Not Forgive Special Privileges for Koreans in Japan’), which formed in January 2007. The group actively recruited members on the internet to participate in street demonstrations. This protest demonstration was held outside Fuji TV’s headquarters in July. It was precipitated by a tweet by the Japanese actor Takaoka Sōsuke that read: ‘Is Fuji TV a Korean broadcaster?’

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frenzy surrounding the leading actor, Bae Yong-joon (b. 1972), and the explosion of interest in Yon-sama.4 It seemed to me that the aforementioned discrimination and prejudice which Zainichi Koreans had lived with since the end of the war had simply been put aside in the rush to view Korean culture and actors as objects of consumption. I first watched Winter Sonata in 2008, and, as a researcher of South Korean culture and gender studies, felt compelled to record my impressions of the drama. The following year, I started to give lectures and write essays on South Korean TV dramas (Yamashita 2013). The main concept underlying the lectures was to relay information, through the drama genre, on the history and culture of the Korean peninsula, and the progress of Korean women. Initially, I hoped that these events would promote exchanges and deepen mutual understanding between Japan and Korea. However, as I continued to host the events, I became aware of a new topic that I needed to address: how was South Korea’s patriarchal culture, as played out in Korean dramas via representations of the Korean family and the division of gender roles, conveyed and received in Japan? In Japan, South Korean dramas are usually translated into Japanese via subtitles or dubbing. The constraints of the subtitling process (such as limitations on character numbers) make it extremely difficult to accurately translate the finer cultural nuances that accompany the dialogue. But I also began to notice the strong influence of gender in the translated dialogue – for example, in the demarcations in Japanese between onna kotoba 女言葉 [women’s language] and otoko kotoba 男言葉 [men’s language], which will be discussed more in detail below. It became clear to me that in the process of subtitling the dramas in Japanese, the patriarchal context inherent in Korean dramas became inflected with Japanese patriarchal culture as well. In the analysis that follows, I provide some specific examples drawn from Winter Sonata. The first section of the article describes the typical Korean family as portrayed in South Korean TV dramas. Although Japanese and 4

Yon-sama is the nickname given to the main character of the TV drama Fuyu no sonata [Winter Sonata], Joon, played by Bae Yong-joon. As the popularity of the drama grew, there was an enormous increase in Yon-sama fans among middle- and older-aged women.

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Korean families may seem similar, they also differ in many respects. In this case, viewers cannot properly understand the drama’s narrative without knowledge of the patriarchal culture inherent to Korean families. Japanese viewers who are not aware of these differences tend to focus on the ‘pure love’ narrative between the leading roles, and as a result, they miss the true intentions of Mi-hee (the male lead’s birth mother). Viewers only see Mi-hee as attempting to disrupt the development of this relationship. In the second section, I look at the ways in which Korean patriarchal culture is transformed in the drama’s subtitling to take on a Japanese-style patriarchy. Based on these findings, in the third section, I consider the relationship between the practise of viewing Korean dramas and patriarchal culture, in order to make recommendations for future research and strategize about rethinking industry standards. The earliest research engaging with the topic of the Korean Wave was located in the fields of Japanese-Korean sociology, media and cultural studies (Mōri 2004; Hirata 2005; Cho 2002; Kim 2005). In Japan, it was during the initial stages of the frenzy surrounding Winter Sonata’s Yon-sama that research began to consider the drama from the perspective of gender. These investigations repeatedly affirmed the popularity of Winter Sonata and its protagonist Yon-sama in Japan, and focused on analysing the narrative and characters ( Jōsai International University Gender and Women’s Studies Research Institute 2006). Towards the middle of the boom period, researchers examined other aspects of the Korean Wave, such as its reception among women in regions of Asia (Lee Soo-yeon 2008) and its Japanese fanbase (Lee Hyang-jin 2008). Following these studies, there was a shift in focus from the phenomenon of the Korean Wave to highlighting the importance of Korean society, culture and history as a backdrop to the dramas (Lee 2010; Kweon 2010; Hasegawa 2011; Kim 2011; Choi 2012). However, very little research has been conducted on Korean dramas in the field of cultural translation. This article attempts to redress this lack of scholarship and stimulate further studies in the area.

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2. Interpreting TV dramas and patriarchal culture 2.1 Korean families as portrayed in TV dramas Japanese viewers of South Korean TV dramas easily become absorbed in the genre as they find them easy to follow. This is due to cultural similarities and affinities that have arisen as a result of geographical proximity and historical connections. For example, the Japanese audience is well acquainted with the staples of Korean dramas, such as the motif of the family, and the moral standards by which its members conduct themselves. But above all, the middle- and older-aged female viewers feel a sense of nostalgia as they observe the Korean patriarchal family structure that was also typical of Japan in their younger days. Although Korea and Japan both belong to the same sphere of Confucian cultural influence, and thus share a history of patriarchal culture centred around paternal lineage, the degree and content of that influence varies considerably. In Korea’s Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), Neo-Confucianism was installed as the guiding ideology and took root over the ensuing centuries in the daily lives of the people. Many of these Confucian customs also continued during Japan’s rule of Korea in the colonial period (1910–1945). Over time, a Japanese-style patriarchal family system based on the Meiji Civil Code (1898) was established. However, following Korea’s liberation, the ‘family-head system’ [hojuje 호주제] was introduced, in the name of reinstating Korea’s family system, which had been displaced by Japanese rule. The system continued under the military regime and exerted a great influence on the daily lives of the people until it was finally abolished in 2008. There are a number of differences with the Japanese system. Firstly, consanguineous links through the paternal line are extremely important. For example, Korea’s family name system around which these consanguineous ties are based is considerably different from Japan, because Japanese surnames were commonly derived from place names or occupations. By comparison, Korean family names indicate a blood relationship with a particular group. For this reason, there are tens of thousands of Japanese surnames, but in Korea, there are only around 250. Each family name is further divided into clans [bongwan 본관] indicating the region of its originator. In cases where

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the family and clan names coincide [dongseong-dongbon 동성동본], members are considered as belonging to the same ‘ancestral home’. For instance, the most common surname in Korea, Kim, has approximately 280 clans, which include Kimhae Kim, Kangnung Kim and Kyeongju Kim (‘Surname info’, n.d.). Traditionally members of the same family name and clan have not been permitted by law to marry. Neither is it possible for Koreans to change their family and clan names inherited through patrilineage. For this reason, when Koreans marry, they retain the family name they were born with, unlike Japanese couples, who are required to have the same surname. Furthermore, due to the family-head system, traditionally the role of Korean women was defined by their ability to conceive and raise sons in order that the paternal line not become extinct. For this reason, attitudes giving rise to preferences for baby boys,5 gendered divisions of labour and the importance of female virtue were firmly rooted in Korean society until around the 1990s. In South Korean TV dramas, families are usually portrayed as being organized around the family-head system. There is a direct link between this system and the frequent use of ‘secret birth’ plot lines in TV drama narratives. These follow a number of patterns, but the most common one involves concealing the identity of a child’s birth mother as in the following dramas: Hyakuman bon no bara 百万本のバラ [One Million Roses] (2003–2004), Kanashimi yo, sayonara 悲しみよさようなら [Goodbye Sadness!] (2005–2006), Sora kurai, chi kurai 空くらい地くらい [Like Land and Sky] (KBS, 2007), Watashi no musume Konnimu 私の娘コン ニム [My Daughter Konnimu] (SBS, 2011–2012). Such cases occur when the biological mother entrusts the care of the child to the paternal family and leaves after a divorce, or a husband conceives a child out of wedlock and wishes to record the birth in the family register nominating himself and his current wife as the parents. The plot line usually revolves around the grief of the birth mother as a consequence of having her child ripped away from her, and the attempts of the child’s guardians to conceal the identity of the 5

In the 1980s, when it became possible to choose the sex of a foetus, there was a rapid rise in the proportion of male births, which reached a peak in 1990. For every 100 female births that year, there were 116.5 male births.

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birth mother from both the child and others. The deception arises due to the breakdown of the idealized family, according to the family-head system, and the subsequent embarrassment that this causes the extended family. Korean drama narratives occasionally contain the reverse scenario of hiding the identity of a child’s biological father, as in Wakamono no hinata 若者のひなた [Youthful Days in the Sun] (1995), Hatō 波濤 [Rough Seas] (1999), Nikukutemo mō ichido 憎くてももう一度 [Once More Anyway] (2009) and Purejidento プレジデント [President] (2010–2011). In these cases, the child’s father is often unaware of the child’s existence. Usually the mother is unmarried, thus experiencing financial and social hardship. Unless her family is affluent and supportive, it would be impossible to raise the child on her own. The ‘secret birth’ in Winter Sonata follows this pattern. For this reason, it is a good example of the features of (and harmful effects experienced by) contemporary Korean families operating under the family-head system. 2.2 The patriarchal code in Winter Sonata Winter Sonata differs from the typical Korean family TV drama where three generations all live together under one roof. At first glance, it seems similar to many Japanese dramas, in that it is centred around a nuclear family, and the family-head system underlying Korean familial relations is somewhat obscured. For this reason, it is understandable that viewers, many of whom were experiencing Korean culture for the first time, may not immediately have been able to identify its ‘Confucian’ and ‘patriarchal family’ themes. However, Winter Sonata, which is set in South Korean society in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, includes very pronounced examples of the patriarchal themes described above. These themes are symbolically portrayed in Kang Joon-sang’s search for his biological father, and the attempts by his mother Kang Mi-hee to conceal his father’s identity. In other words, the drama’s plot line is not just a pure love narrative between its protagonists Kang Joon-sang and Jeong Yoo-jin; it also highlights the lives of an ‘unwed mother’ and an ‘illegitimate child’, who live beyond the bounds of acceptability in Korea’s patriarchal family system. As Yamagata (2006: 124) points

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out, it is ‘the story of a mother unable to find her place in a community that was defined by the cultural discourse of “good wife and wise mother”’. Joon-sang’s mother, Mi-hee, was jilted by the man she loved, Hyeonsoo, who decided to marry another woman. In response, Mi-hee attempted to kill herself, but was saved by the sympathetic Jin-woo. While Mi-hee was still in an abyss of despair, she and Jin-woo engaged in sexual relations, conceiving Joon-sang. Without telling Jin-woo, Mi-hee then departed for the United States, where she gave birth to Joon-sang. She consoled herself by pretending that Joon-sang’s biological father was Hyeon-soo. Mi-hee was able to carry on with Joon-sang at her side. When he asked her who his father was, Mi-hee lied and told him that his father was dead. Meanwhile, Jin-woo married another woman after her departure, and they went on to have children together. To this point, Mi-hee has acted quite selfishly in terms of infringing on Joon-sang’s right to know the identity of his biological father. However, there were circumstances that necessitated the lie. For Mi-hee to give birth and raise a child on her own would be a violation of the code that governs a patriarchal society. If Mi-hee had told Joon-sang who his real biological father was, Jin-woo would eventually have found out. If this had happened, it is quite probable that Mi-hee would have had to relinquish Joon-sang to his father. This is because under the family-head system, children belong to their fathers. Even if Jin-woo chose not to take his son, he would most likely have included him in his family register. Under the family-head system at that time, biological fathers could register children born outside of marriage without the consent of their wives or the biological mothers. This was of course not tenable to Mi-hee; she was not in love with Jin-woo, and she wanted to raise Joon-sang under the pretence that he was Hyeon-soo’s child. But this arrangement was also beneficial to Jin-woo, who would have not only lost the trust of his wife and son, but also damaged his social prestige as a university professor had his paternity been revealed. However, as long as Mi-hee, who continued to insist that Joon-sang’s biological father had died, lived in Korean society, she would be made to pay the price of breaking the patriarchal code. In Korea, where generally parents’ surnames are different, it is standard for children to take their father’s family name. Joon-sang’s maternal surname would have highlighted his status as an ‘illegitimate child’. In spite of his capabilities, as a fatherless child, his

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childhood would have been marked by unhappiness due to societal disdain. In order to save Joon-sang from these circumstances, Mi-hee decided to move to the US. Because Joon-sang suffered from amnesia after an accident, Mi-hee was able to construct ‘new’ memories about his biological father, and create for him a new identity as Lee Min-hyeong. So how did Mi-hee react when the adult Min-hyeong encountered Yoo-jin ten years later? Min-hyeong was already aware that he was raised as Joon-sang, and that his mother had attempted to erase his memory. At this point, Min-hyeong attempted to establish the identity of his biological father, after recalling a former concern as to whether he may share Yoo-jin’s father, Hyeon-soo. Naturally, if this were the case, the pair would be siblings and thus unable to marry. Yoo-jin also became aware of the situation and together they decided to visit Mi-hee to ask her for the truth. Mi-hee did not lie to Min-hyeong and Yoo-jin, but hesitated by responding that she could not answer the question immediately. As she struggled to find the right words, the pair found themselves unable to wait for an answer, and they ran off. They both jumped to the hasty conclusion that Hyeon-soo must be Joon-sang’s father. However, the reason Mi-hee maintained her silence was not because she was attempting to conceal the truth. Rather, her silence can be attributed to a lack of opportunity to set the record straight, and a lack of probing by the people in her life. As the narrative of the lives of Mi-hee and Joon-sang (particularly during his childhood) demonstrate, people who deviate from the norms of Korea’s patriarchal society are particularly vulnerable. The contrast between Joonsang’s dark facial expressions and Min-hyeong’s cheerful disposition before he regains his memory is symbolic of how difficult it is for ‘illegitimate’ children who do not know their fathers to live in Korean society. It was for this reason that neither mother nor son was happy, and Joon-sang resented Mi-hee. This context – particularly Mi-hee’s emotional suffering – is not fully understood by the Japanese audience, who are unfamiliar with the realities of Korea’s family-head system. Generally speaking, Japanese viewers tend to regard Mi-hee as an evil character who causes suffering, and who attempts to keep Joon-sang and Yoo-jin apart. Her insistence that Joon-sang’s father had died, and her failure to disclose the truth is interpreted as stemming purely from her own selfishness. As we will see in the following section, this attitude is implicitly supported by the Japanese subtitles.

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3. Translating culture through subtitles 3.1 The dilution of sociocultural context Here I would like to consider whether one of the reasons that the Japanese audience interpreted Mi-hee’s character in this way can be attributed to the way in which the drama’s subtitles were translated. For instance, looking at the Japanese subtitles, it is very difficult to discern the position of hardship in Korean society occupied by the unwed mother Mi-hee and her illegitimate child Joon-sang. It is not my intention to debate the quality of the subtitling; rather, I would like to draw attention to the features of the subtitles themselves. Subtitling differs considerably from document translation in that it contains a number of limitations specific to audiovisual texts. In the case of Japanese TV dramas, one second is considered the amount of time required to read a maximum of four subtitled characters or letters; if the subtitles are any longer, viewers become unable to follow the subtitles while watching the drama. Another limitation is that, unlike document translation, it is usually not possible to add translators’ notes to subtitles for any points that may require further clarification. Due to these constraints, it is virtually impossible to translate the cultural context of the drama through the subtitling. Furthermore, in most cases, a great deal of effort is spent in articulating the dialogue in a ‘natural’ manner that is easily digested by the viewing audience. Now, let us turn to an example of subtitles from Winter Sonata, in the scene where Min-hyeong has just remembered his former life as Joon-sang, and Mi-hee attempts to explain her reasons for ‘altering’ his memories. The scene recounts the sense of pity that Mi-hee felt towards her ‘illegitimate child’. The omission here of these important keywords – which are crucial to understanding the drama’s background and context – makes it extremely difficult for Japanese viewers to comprehend (see Table 7.1).

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너한테 아버지를 주고 싶었어.

Subtitles A: 2008 　B: 2011 A 父親をあげたかった

사생아였던 중상일 그대로 두고 싶지가않았다

父親がいないのが

[I wanted to give you a father. I didn’t want Joon-sang [you] to be an illegitimate child.]

[I wanted to give you a father.

かわいそうで Because it was sad that you didn’t have one.] B 父親を与えたかったの 父親のいない子に しておけなかった [I wanted to give you a father. I didn’t want you to be a fatherless child.]

너하곤 달라.준상이는 불행했어. 그 애가 사생아로 자라면서 겪은 일을 너는 몰라.

A チュンサンは 不幸な子供だったの

그 애는 정말 불행했다

どんな思いをして育ったか

[He was nothing like you. Joon-sang was unhappy. You don’t know anything about the things he experienced being raised as an illegitimate child. He was so unhappy.]

つらかったはず [ Joon-sang was an unhappy child. It was so hard for him growing up.] B あなたと違ってー チュンサンは不幸だった 父親なしに育った過去は 本当に不幸だったの [Unlike you, Joon-sang was unhappy. His past was so unhappy, being raised without a father.]

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In the original Korean dialogue, the difficulties of growing up as an ‘illegitimate child’ are emphasized. However, this is not conveyed in the subtitles on the right, where the lack of contextual information could potentially lead Japanese viewers to surmise that the boy’s father had died. Although a greater level of contextual information is provided by the longer subtitles in the 2011 version, the term shiseiji 私生児 [illegitimate child] does not appear in either version. While this may be attributed to an active avoidance of using discriminatory expressions,6 the lack of direct expression makes it difficult for Japanese viewers to understand the intensity of discrimination against ‘illegitimate’ children in Korea. For this reason, in the sequence of events between Mi-hee and Joonsang, Japanese viewers tend to interpret Mi-hee as a very self-centred character. Now I would like to introduce another example, in which Joon-sang, who is now aware that his biological father is Jin-woo, interrogates Mi-hee about why she lied to him about his father being dead. This is an important scene in the drama, as Mi-hee explains her reasons for why she failed to tell the truth (see Table 7.2). Table 7.2:  Keywords: ‘without giving you up’ (Episode 19) Original dialogue in Korean [English translation]

Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011

A 그래서 난 너를 현수아들이라고 ヒョンスの子だとー 생각하고 키웠어. 그래야만 내가 살 そう信じるしかなかった 수 있었으니까. 널 포기하지 않고 살 수 있었으니까 [As I raised you, I thought of you as Hyeon-soo’s child. This gave me the will to live. Because I was able to live without giving you up.]

6

ヒョンスの子だと信じて 今まで育ててこないとー 生きられなかった [The only way was to believe that you were Hyeon-soo’s child. If I hadn’t raised you believing that you were his, I would not have been able to survive.]

While the parameters governing word usage may not be explicitly stated, it is thought that there are certain words which are not to be used in broadcasts. See Nettimes Blog, 2013.

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Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011 B それでー ヒョンスの子だと思って あなたを育てたの　 だから生きてこられた あなたと一緒にー 生きていくためだった [That’s why I raised you thinking of you as Hyeon-soo’s child. That’s how I survived. It was because I wanted to live with you.]

In the original dialogue where Mi-hee explains ‘I was able to live without giving you up’, the phrase ‘without giving you up’ is key. As an unwed mother under the family-head system, Mi-hee had no parental rights over her child; here she expresses the extreme difficulties that she would have faced in raising Joon-sang on her own in Korea. ‘Without giving you up’ could plausibly also be expressed as ‘without letting you go’. There are a number of interpretations for the former phraseology. For example, it could hold the meaning of ‘giving up’ the process of childbearing and childrearing by having the pregnancy terminated, or putting the child up for adoption. But it could also signify the loss of parental authority and rights if the biological father (in this case, the married Jin-woo) chose to record the birth in his family register. Rather than the meaning proposed in the 2008 subtitles (version A), where Mi-hee ‘believed’ that Joon-sang was Hyeon-soo’s child, it is probably fair to say that she fell into thinking that way due to the pressure of her circumstances. Based on the 2008 subtitles, the Japanese audience could again interpret Mi-hee’s reasons for not revealing the identity of Joon-sang’s father as extremely selfish. On this point, the 2011 subtitles (version B) are much closer to the original dialogue.

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The third example demonstrates a change in dialogue to align with Japanese-style reasoning. In this scene, Jin-woo suspects that he may be Joon-sang’s father, and secretly arranges a DNA test. After discovering the results are positive, Jin-woo visits Joon-sang’s apartment, where the following dialogue takes place (see Table 7.3). Table 7.3:  Episode 19 Original dialogue in Korean [English translation] 고맙다, 고맙구나 [Thank you. I’m so grateful.]

Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011 A すまない 悪かった [I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.] B ありがとう すまないね [Thank you. I’m so sorry.]

그동안 몰랐다는게 이상하구나. 이렇게 너의 할아버지를 닮았는데

A なぜ気づかなかった 私の父の若いころに

[It’s strange I didn’t realize earlier. You そっくりじゃないか look so similar to your grandfather.] [I wonder why I didn’t realize. You look just like my father when he was young.] B 気がつかなかったなんて こんなにー 君の おじいさんに似てるのに [I can’t believe I didn’t realize. You look so much like your grandfather.]

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In this scene, Jin-woo expresses his feelings of joy and gratitude at the discovery that he has a son who will continue his (in other words, his father’s) lineage. The first line in the dialogue, ‘Thank you, I’m so grateful’, is directed at Joon-sang, who has prepared some tea. However, it can also be interpreted in the Korean context as also containing the nuance of Jin-woo’s thanks at the appearance of a son. By contrast, the translation of the subtitles de-emphasizes Jin-woo’s joy by suggesting that an apology is being offered for something that was not realized until recently. The liberal translation of ‘thank you’ to ‘sorry’ may seem natural in the context of Japanese expression. However, this deviates considerably from the original Korean context. In the dialogue where Jin-woo rhetorically asks why he did not realize sooner that Joon-sang looked like his paternal grandfather, the emphasis lies in the blood relationship rather than just facial resemblance. To this end, the 2011 subtitles, which contain the words ‘your grandfather’, are much closer to the Korean original than the 2008 subtitles that only include ‘my father’. 3.2 The use of gender in Japanese In addition to these problems of interpretation, subtitling also requires our attention in terms of the gender characteristics embedded in the Japanese language. Feminist research on this topic has been taken up by well-known scholars in the field such as Jugaku Akiko (1979), Ide Sachiko (1998), Endō Orie (2001) and Nakamura Momoko (2001, 2013), as well as activist groups such as Media no Naka no Seisabetsu o Kangaeru Kai メディアの中の 性差別を考える会 [Association for Rethinking Sexual Discrimination in the Media]. Their research encompasses diverse topics such as sociolinguistics, language and sexual discrimination and sexual discrimination in the media (Nakamura 2001). On the topic of subtitles, of particular interest here is the work of Nakamura Momoko (2013), who has pointed out how Japanese onna kotoba not normally used in daily conversation is reproduced in the process of

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translation. In addition, the work of Korean scholar Lee He-yeong (2009), who has presented a detailed comparison of gendered expressions in Japanese and Korean, is also pertinent. Her research reveals how the effects of gendered language use at the end of sentences and in personal pronouns are far more striking in Japanese than Korean. While Japanese clearly distinguishes between onna kotoba and otoko kotoba, in Korean, expressions that differ noticeably according to the gender of the speaker are comparatively rare. However, Korean does contain expressions that are frequently used by one gender but not the other. Applying this knowledge to the field of subtitling sheds a great deal of light on the translation process. When the original Korean dialogue is translated into Japanese, language which was gender-neutral in Korean is often translated into onna kotoba in Japanese. For this reason, even if men and women are speaking at an ‘equal’ level or tone in Korean, when their dialogue is translated into Japanese it is subjected to the divisions of gendered language. In concrete terms, this means that women’s dialogue becomes flavoured with a submissive and polite tone, while men’s language adopts a comparatively gruff, authoritative and careless tone. In Korean, the use of casual language and polite language is determined less by gender than by prescribed rules of interaction that are defined by the relative ages, social status (for example, seniority) and intimacy of the speakers. Moreover, due to the established hierarchy of familial relations, it is typical for children to talk to their parents in polite language, and for their parents to adopt a casual or authoritative tone in response. This usage differs from similar contexts in Japanese. These sorts of conventions in Korean conversations are often completely dismantled when dialogue is translated into Japanese. As indicated in the aforementioned scene about the illegitimate child, the casual language and authoritative tone of the mother’s dialogue is expressed in ‘women’s language’ in Japanese. Now let us turn to an example (see Table 7.4).

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Table 7.4:  Examples of the translation of Korean casual language from a mother–son dialogue into onna kotoba in Japanese (Episode 13) Original dialogue in Korean [English translation] 잘 못했다, 잘 못했어 [I was wrong. I was wrong.]

Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011 A ごめんなさい 悪かったわ [I’m sorry, I was wrong.] B 悪かったわ ごめんなさい [I was wrong, I’m sorry.]

정말 어렵게 결정한거야 [It was truly a painful decision.]

A 本当に つらい決断だったのよ [It was truly a painful decision.] B 苦渋の決断だったのよ [It was a distressing decision.]

A 그 앤 세상에서 나를 가장 미워했다 この世でいちばん [That child detested me more than 私を憎んでいたわ anyone in the world.] [He detested me more than anyone in the world.] B あの子は私を 世界で一番 憎んでた [That child detested me more than anyone in the world.]

A Gender-Based Analysis of the Translation of South Korean TV Dramas in Japan 167 Original dialogue in Korean [English translation]

Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011

A 그래서 그 애가 사고로 기억을 だからー 잃었을때 엄마는 차라리 잘 됐다고 생각을 했어 事故で記憶をなくして [Therefore, when the child lost his よかったと思ったくらいよ memory in the accident, mommy Therefore, I even thought it was fortuitous thought it was fortuitous.] that he lost his memory in the accident.] B 記憶を失った時 むしろ よかったと思ったわ [Rather, when he lost his memory, I thought it was fortuitous.]

Moreover, Joon-sang’s words towards his mother, which use polite and honorific language in Korean, appear in the Japanese subtitles in casual otoko kotoba, as shown in Table 7.5. Table 7.5:  Examples of Korean polite language translated into casual language in Japanese (Episodes 19 & 13) Original dialogue in Korean [English translation]

Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011

A 말씀해보세요. 어머니도 뭔가 説明して 하실 말씀이 있으실거 아니에요 言うことがあるだろ [Please say something. Mother, there is something you wish to say [Explain yourself ! There’s something you want to isn’t there?] say isn’t there?] B 話してくれよ　 言い分があるんだろ [Talk to me! You have a complaint don’t you?]

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제 기억을 돌려주세요. 지금 당장 제 머리 속에 든 것을 다 가져가 주세요 [Please return my memories. Please take away all of the memories in my head.]

Subtitles A: 2008　B: 2011 A 記憶を返して この頭から 偽の記憶を消してよ [Give me back my memories! Get rid of these fake memories in my head!] B 僕の記憶を返して 今 僕の頭にある記憶を 持っていって [Give me back my memories! Take away the memories in my head!]

As these examples demonstrate, Joon-sang continuously uses polite and honorific language towards Mi-hee in the original, but in the Japanese subtitles his language is presented in rougher otoko kotoba. Meanwhile, Mi-hee’s speech takes on the polite characteristics of onna kotoba, meaning that the respective tones of their dialogue in the original Korean are completely reversed. Although this may be an unavoidable aspect of the subtitling process, which necessitates expressing ideas in familiar language for the Japanese audience (Ōta 2013a, 2013b), ultimately it means that Korean relationships and the sociocultural nuances of the language are not properly reflected. These issues with translated subtitles affect a large proportion of Korean TV dramas broadcast in Japan, as they seem to be recurring features of translating Japanese for the screen. But difficulties are not limited to language features. Because the subtitles must be translated to convey programme content within limited timeframes through the faculty of sight (or, in the case of dubbing, sound), they are written in a manner that makes it as easy as possible for the Japanese audience to understand. As Nakamura (2013) points out, the phenomenon of ‘reproducing women’s language in translation’ is

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evident in the subtitles of Korean TV dramas. In other words, language that is influenced by Japanese patriarchal culture is reproduced in the genre. The following example demonstrates a case where the use of tone and terminology causes transposition to a Japanese patriarchal context. The dialogue takes place in a drama called Nikukutemo mō ichido 憎くてもも う一度 [Once More Anyway], broadcast in 2009 in twenty-four episodes on KBS. The drama’s protagonists are Han Myeong-in, chiarperson to the Myeong-Jin Group that operates a famous department store, and her husband, Lee Jyeong-hun, who supports her in the role of vice-chairman. The dialogue takes place in a scene where the couple is being interviewed by a magazine about their roles as joint-CEOs of the group. Throughout the interview, the male reporter concentrates his attention on Jyeong-hun, in an effort to unmask his true opinions. The dialogue takes place between the two men after the reporter asks Jyeong-hun if it inconveniences him to have a working wife (see Table 7.6). Table 7.6:  Patriarchal context (Episode 4) Original dialogue in Korean [English translation] Vice-chairman (male): 꽤나 가부장적인 질문을 하시네요 [That’s a very patriarchal question, isn’t it?] Reporter (male): 역시 성공한 아내뒤엔 열린 생각을 가진 남편의 외조가 필수군요

Subtitles 突っ込んだ質問だな [That’s an invasive question isn’t it!] 成功の裏には 寛大なご主人がいらっしゃる [Behind every success there is a generous husband.]

[Of course, behind every successful woman the support of an open-minded husband is indispensable.]

This example demonstrates how the vice-chairman’s polite tone has been translated to casual language, and the reporter’s use of the word for ‘husband’ has been elevated to honorific status in the subtitles. The first sentence ‘That’s an invasive question isn’t it!’ is an excellent choice as a subtitle. Because ‘patriarchal’ is not a commonly used term, it makes sense to change the expression. Although

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in terms of length the number of characters in the sentence ‘Kafuchōteki na shitsumon da na’ 家父長的な質問だな [That’s a patriarchal question isn’t it!] is not at all problematic, it constitutes a deviation from the regular style of subtitle translation. This is probably why tsukkonda 突っ込んだ [invasive] was chosen instead. In addition, the term goshujin ご主人 [polite form of ‘husband’], which comprises a pair with okusan 奥さん [wife], is a discriminatory word containing nuances of the class lines and gender divisions of former times. Although feminists have fought hard to eradicate these sorts of terms (Ueno 1996), they continue to be widely used. Also on the subject of terminology, Korean and Japanese differ considerably in their use of first person pronouns. The use of the Korean first-person pronouns na 나 [humble form of ‘I’] and jeo 저 [polite form of ‘I’] is subject to a hierarchy that is determined by age difference and social status. Gender is rarely a factor in determining which first person pronoun to use. There is a clear distinction, however, between the usage of the Japanese feminine first-person pronouns watashi 私 or atashi あたし and the masculine boku 僕 or ore 俺 [less polite form of ‘I’]. In the Japanese subtitles of Korean dramas, boku and ore frequently appear as the translations of ‘I’ for male speakers. In Japan, these first-person pronouns are used when addressing others of equal or inferior social status. It is the social norm that the male first person pronoun becomes watashi when speaking to one’s superiors or in a formal setting, to correspond to the greater formality required in such circumstances. Failure to use watashi makes the male speaker appear careless or impertinent. However, in subtitling, it is common to see ore used even in circumstances that require formality, such as when a man is speaking to his superiors (for example, his wife’s parents). This prevents Japanese viewers from understanding that, in the drama itself, the man is conducting himself in a polite and courteous manner. So far, we have identified four issues that require attention with regards to subtitling, namely: 1. When the original dialogue is converted into Japanese subtitles, many of the characteristics of Korean are largely ignored and rendered into general Japanese language. 2. One of the major factors in the conversion is the set of ‘rules’ that is intrinsic to the translation of subtitles in Japan. These include limitations

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on numbers of characters per frame, the selection of terminology that is acceptable to the majority of viewers and the constraints placed on the broadcasting of particular words in Japanese. If this is true, then: 3. What are the ‘rules’ and principles that guide the translation of subtitles, and how should they be applied? 4. And finally, how does feminism play a role in determining these rules and principles? Each of these points warrants further research that is inclusive of the views of all parties involved in the process of translating subtitles. As mentioned earlier, South Korean TV dramas are not always rendered in Japanese through subtitling. Dubbed versions also exist, but drama fans overwhelmingly prefer subtitles. There may be a number of reasons for this preference. Firstly, some viewers like to hear the voices of the actors. Secondly, in Japan, since Japanese audiences ‘have for a long time watched movies in which Westerners speak Japanese’ (Nakamura 2013: 90), they may have an aversion to watching Koreans speaking Japanese. Moreover, because in dubbed versions viewers listen to dialogue converted to ‘women’s language’ and ‘men’s language’ (often in an unnaturally emphasized way), they may find it even more disconcerting. This may explain why Korean drama fans are not as enamoured of Japanese TV dramas. Although not to the extent of dubbed works, the dialogue in Japanese dramas tends towards gendered language. This point also requires further investigation.

4. The necessity of critiquing TV dramas 4.1 The South Korean Women’s Movement and TV dramas Viewed from a feminist perspective, the characteristics that emerge in translating subtitles for the Korean TV dramas described above are just one aspect of patriarchal culture reproduction through the media. Among the Korean dramas that continue to be mass produced, many contain depictions of stereotypical gender roles and patriarchal family ideologies. As a

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matter of course, it will be necessary to research and critically engage with the topic of patriarchal culture in order to investigate what impacts the Korean dramas have had not only on the Japanese viewing audience, but also on Japanese culture. The widespread acceptance of Korean dramas in Japanese society as a form of popular culture has had positive implications for cordial relations between the two countries. If this trend and the broadcasting of Korean dramas continue, it will be important to consider ways to deal with the replacement of the patriarchal culture that is characteristic of these shows. One way to respond to this issue is to actively engage in critical assessments of the media, which of course includes TV dramas. As I explained above, the ‘rules’ in subtitle translations dictate the preference for some words or phrases over others. It is necessary to initiate discussions on such matters as the merits of choosing terminology based on general acceptability and comprehensibility, and negotiations to reduce discriminatory or gendered language. For this reason, critical assessments of the media are indispensable. Without the active participation of the viewing audience, the current state of affairs cannot be changed. Now, as a useful reference point let us turn to the types of critical attention that dramas receive in Korea. As the birthplace of many popular series, TV dramas have naturally come under close scrutiny. Efforts to monitor media content in attempts to rectify sexual discrimination in Korea’s mass media began in the early 1990s, around the same time that the Women’s Movement started gathering momentum. The Women’s Movement formed within the Democratic Movement of the 1980s. Various initiatives and organizations established in that decade – including the Korea Women’s HotLine (1983),7 the Korean Women’s Association United (1987) and Womenlink (1988) – played a role in the formation of the Women’s Movement as it exists today. As society moved towards democratization, the members of these groups initiated the movement by giving voice to myriad issues including sexual violence and other forms of discrimination against women in the home and in society. 7

The Korea Women’s HotLine is not an emergency call centre as its English title may suggest. It is an organization established to promote gender equality in Korea. See the Korea Women’s HotLine website.

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Soon after, the golden age of the Korean TV drama occurred as South Korea transitioned from a military dictatorship to a democratic government in the 1990s. Under the military regime, drama content had been subject to stifling regulations, but as democratization took hold, themes formerly considered taboo were boldly introduced. As the contest for broadcast ratings intensified, dramas became a defining genre among audiences, giving rise to many hit shows. At the same time, the Feminist Movement became attuned to sexually discriminative and violent expressions used in the media. The impetus behind the formation of the movement was the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in September 1995. In October, the South Korean government announced ‘Ten Broad Themes for the Expansion of Women’s Participation in Society’ in response to the Beijing Platform for Action’s Strategic Objectives on ‘Women and the Media’ adopted at the conference. Then, in December, the phrase ‘Improvements on sexual discrimination in the mass media’ was added to Article 28 of the Fundamental Law on Women’s Development. Using the law as a foundation, a governmental auxiliary group called the Korean Women’s Development Institute immediately initiated research on sexual discrimination against women in the mass media (Korean Women’s Development Institute 1996; Kim and Min 1997). In 1998, the non-government organization Womenlink mentioned above started a media campaign to monitor all types of media for discriminatory practice. They also made recommendations to the Broadcasting Committee and individual networks and worked towards raising public awareness about sexual discrimination. At the same time that Womenlink established its media campaign headquarters, it inaugurated the Blue Media Award, presented at an annual awards ceremony. In 2001, the Korea Women’s HotLine Alliance also began a media-monitoring education programme, and two years later established the Media and Culture Campaign Centre. A statement released to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Korea Women’s HotLine stated that the group’s mission was to ‘proactively develop a media campaign that eradicates sexually discriminatory prejudice and stereotypes, and promote a variety of cultural activities that promote awareness of equality and harmony’ (Korea Women’s HotLine Alliance, 2003).

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Around the same time, Kim Dae-jung’s administration became wellknown for its efforts to promote popular culture. From the time of his election campaign, Kim made public commitments to unprecedented levels of promotion for Korea’s cultural sector and film industry. Following his election to the presidency and his inauguration in 1998, he opened the way for the implementation of policies overturning bans on the importation of Japanese culture, which also served as an impetus for the exportation of Korean films, dramas and music to overseas markets. In addition, Kim’s administration actively pursued women’s policies. Following his inauguration, the handling of women’s affairs was elevated from the second office of the Ministry of Political Affairs to the remit of Kim’s office, and renamed The Presidential Commission on Women’s Affairs. The following year, the Commission established the Gender Equality in Broadcasting Award (Equality of the Sexes in Broadcasting Award since 2012), in order to grapple with sexual discrimination in the media. The handling of the award was taken over by the Ministry of Gender Equality (now the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family), which replaced the Presidential Commission on Women’s Affairs in 2001. Most of the prize-winning works fall in the documentary, current affairs and educational categories, but dramas also comprise approximately 20 per cent. Interestingly, three years after the award was established by the Ministry for Women, dramas took the major prize for five consecutive years, from 2001 to 2005. It is fair to say that many women’s movements flourished under the proactive support of Kim Dae-jung’s administration, and Roh Moohyun’s administration that followed. In 2006, Womenlink, the Ministry for Women and the Korean Women’s Development Institute collaborated on a comprehensive report after implementing a process of ‘monitoring for the advancement of equality of the sexes in media language’. Awards ceremonies have been held every year since the late 1990s, including the Equality of the Sexes in Broadcasting Award, the Blue Media Award and the Award for Quality TV Shows selected by the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Additionally, the aforementioned organizations continue to analyse monitoring and programming, conduct surveillance activities on the media and present their findings in reports and statements made publicly available on their homepages.

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4.2 Critique of TV dramas in Japan The Women’s Liberation Movement and the rise of women’s studies in Japan since the 1970s has been accompanied by a growing body of feminist research and initiatives investigating representations of women in the media. Many publications were released on this topic from the late 1980s to the 2000s. In addition, from 1975, the Women’s Activist Group Formed in International Women’s Year worked tirelessly towards critiquing the media and mounting protests against any form of sexual discrimination in society. Following the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Gender Equality Commission presented the report ‘Vision for Gender Equality’ (1996) to the Prime Minister’s Office, which included a discussion on the advancement and protection of human rights in the media. Furthermore, the ‘Basic Plan for Gender Equality’ (2000) based on the Fundamental Law for Gender Equality established in 1999 also advocated respect for women’s rights in the media (Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, 2016). However, as far as I am aware, since the 2000s there has not been much critique of dramas, especially compared to the level of activity monitoring the media up until the 1990s. As I outlined in section 2, the initial approach of researchers in the fields of women’s studies and gender studies centred around cultural discourse focused on Winter Sonata and the phenomenon of the Korean Wave, rather than a unified media assessment. Since 2009, I have conducted lectures on Korean dramas throughout Japan and, in my experience, many middle- and older-aged women who comprise the first-generation fans of Korean dramas became devotees after watching Winter Sonata. They have watched countless dramas over the last decade, and for this reason there is no doubt they have developed a critical eye regarding the finer nuances of the genre. Most women watch dramas at home on their own, but at lectures and other drama-related events they have the chance to meet other fans. In recent times, these women have begun to form groups that discuss and evaluate the dramas, such as the Drama Literacy Society at the Women’s Centre in Nagaokakyo City (Kyoto), and the Korean Wave Society at the Koryo Museum in Shin-Ōkubo (Tokyo).

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In 2015, the Korean Wave Society began making its views known by hosting a project exhibition called The Korean Wave: New Forms of Exchange Pioneered by Women: Gender as Portrayed in Korean TV Dramas. Established in 2011 as one of the museum’s research projects, the society unveiled the exhibition as one outcome of the periodic study group meetings held since its inception. Nineteen dramas were chosen by five members of the group, who organized the entire event, including the creation of panel displays for the exhibition, and lectures and special gatherings for drama fans. One of the organizers described the aims of the exhibition as follows: We have three aims for this exhibition. The first is to demonstrate, both inside and outside the Koryo Museum, the significance of the Korean Wave as one instance of popular culture exchange in the history of Japan-Korea relations. Based on the frequent inclusion of social context in the dramas, the second aim is to highlight those components that promote understanding about Korean history and Korean society. The third aim is to encourage the acquisition of knowledge regarding the conditions of women living in Korean society as introduced in dramas from a gender perspective, in order to elucidate differences, commonalities, and other issues between Japanese and Korean women. (Endō 2015: 6)

Through examples such as this, it is reasonable to surmise that fans of Korean dramas have begun to encourage public discourse on social matters that reach well beyond the confines of the individual hobbyist. Incidentally, from 2016, the society has continued its work under its new name, the Korean Wave Cultural Research Society. The Winter Sonata and Yon-sama phenomena that occurred in 2000 gave rise to a large female fanbase. The majority of activities pursued by these women – including fan meetings, trips to Korea and learning the Korean language – fell within the parameters of individual pursuit. It is important to consider whether they can escalate these interests to a socially influential level in the same way as the Korean Wave Society. This is because the act of strengthening social ‘literacy’ through Korean dramas constitutes one way of challenging the reinforcement of patriarchal systems.

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5. Conclusion How is the patriarchal culture portrayed in Korean dramas conveyed and received in Japan through subtitling? Furthermore, what sort of meanings can we uncover if we look at these subtitled dramas from a feminist perspective? This article has attempted to answer these questions through an investigation of the differences in patriarchal culture between South Korea and Japan, the effects generated by subtitle translation and the importance of critiquing dramas. Disputes within each of these three themes may differ in their intensity, but each is essential to discussing the issue of patriarchal systems. The patriarchal systems of Japan and Korea have numerous points of similarity as well as difference, which cannot be conveyed simply through the subtitles of Korean dramas. To compensate for this shortcoming, it will be important to conduct investigative activities around Korean gender history research in Japan (and vice versa), and to deepen our understanding of neighbouring cultures. Additionally, this article has suggested that one of the reasons why the Japanese audience watching Winter Sonata did not find it overly patriarchal in nature was the incorporation of gendered features into the subtitles. In the process of transposing Korean cultural expressions into Japanese, Japanesestyle perceptions of gender and patriarchy were embedded into the original Korean culture. The article has predominantly analysed examples from Winter Sonata; clearly there is a need for future studies examining many more dramas, and the expressions used in dubbing as well as subtitling. Finally, the media focus and ‘literacy’ activities about patriarchal culture and gender stereotypes as portrayed in TV dramas should be intensified, not just in terms of research, but also to actively enable the empowerment of Korean drama fans. This will no doubt increase the demand for investigations into the relationship between Japan’s Korean Wave culture and patriarchal systems, both in academic and practical terms. – Translated by Penny Bailey

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Nakamura, M. 中村桃子 (2001). Kotoba to jendā ことばとジェンダー [Words and Gender]. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. —— (2013). Honyaku ga tsukuru Nihongo 翻訳がつくる日本語 [Japanese Language Created in the Translation Process]. Tokyo: Hakutakusha. Nettimes Blog ネッタイムス・ブログ (7 April 2013). Hōsō kinshi yōgo jiten (hōsō jishuku yōgo no kiso chishiki) 放送禁止用語辞典（放送自粛用語の基礎知 識） [Dictionary of Prohibited Broadcast Terms (Basic Knowledge of Self-Regulated Terms in Broadcasting)]. accessed 6 March 2016. Ōta, N. 太田直子 (2013a). Jimakuya ni ten wa nai: jimaku wa ura ga omoshiroi 字幕 屋に「、」はない (字幕はウラがおもしろい) [We Don’t Use Commas: The Interesting Backstory to Subtitling]. Tokyo: Ikarosu Shuppan. —— (2013b). Jimakuya no Nihongo tosei funtō ki 字幕屋のニホンゴ渡世奮闘記 [An Account of a Subtitler’s Difficulties with Japanese]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Sun, S. 徐勝 (ed.) (2007). ‘Kanryū’ no uchi soto 「韓流」のうち外 [Inside and Outside the ‘Korean Wave’], Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō. ‘Surname info’ (n.d.). accessed 4 March 2016. Ueno, C, with the Association for Rethinking Sexual Discrimination in the Media 上野千鶴子、メディアの中の性差別を考える会 (1996). Kitto kaerareru seisabetsugo きっと変えられる性差別語 [Eradicating the Use of Sexually Discriminatory Language]. Tokyo: Sanseidō. Yamagata, J. 山形淳子 (2006). ‘Fuyu no sonata ni miru hahaoyazō: Kan Mihi o chūshin ni’ 「冬のソナタ」にみる母親像—カン・ミヒを中心に [The Mother Figure in Winter Sonata: With Particular Reference to Kang Mi-hee]. In Jōsai International University Gender and Women’s Studies Research Institute (ed.), Jendā de yomu ‘Kanryu’ bunka no genzai ジェンダーで読む“韓流”文化 の現在 [Reading the Current State of ‘Korean Wave’ Culture through Gender], pp. 124–35. Tokyo: Gendai Shokan. Yamashita, Y. A. 山下英愛 (2008). Nashonarizumu no hazama kara: ‘ianfu’ mondai e no mō hitotsu no shiza ナショナリズムの狭間からー「慰安婦」問題への もう一つの視座 [From a Crack in Nationalism: Another Perspective on ‘Comfort Women’]. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. —— (2010). ‘Nihon ni okeru Kanryū dorama honyaku to jendā: Fuyu no sonata o chūshin ni’ 日本における韓流ドラマ翻訳とジェンダー：“冬のソナ タ”を中心に [Translation of Korean Dramas in Japan from a Gender Perspective: With Particular Reference to Winter Sonata], Seizongaku Kenkyū Sentā Hōkoku [Report of the Research Center for Ars Vivendi], 15, 62–9. —— (2013). Onnatachi no Kanryū 女たちの韓流 [The Women’s Korean Wave]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Xiaochun Zhang and Minako O’Hagan

8 Transcreation in Game Localization in China: A Contemporary Functionalist Approach to Digital Interactive Entertainment

abstract The game industry has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar international business. In response to the need to reach players across the world, video games must support multiple languages through game localization. Despite the increasing commercial interest in the Chinese market, however, there is still a paucity of research on game localization into and from Chinese. This article investigates Chinese game localization practices by means of case studies with the main focus on ‘transcreation’. The case studies indicate evidence of transcreation of elements that are closely aligned with the gameplay experience and international marketing. Furthermore, transcreation in Chinese game localization appears to be characterized by a complex interplay between those elements and constraints such as censorship, including self-censorship by the translator. In turn, transcreation helps provide the basis for a fresh look at skopos theory and a functionalist approach in the contemporary context of digital interactive entertainment.

1. Introduction In recent decades, video games have become a mainstream product in the global entertainment market. Consequently, the game industry has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar business that continues to grow at a rapid pace. To meet the expanding market need to reach players across the world, video games must support multiple languages. This involves varying degrees of transformation to satisfy the requirements of the target market, which may include technical and cultural aspects as well as linguistic issues. In the game

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industry, the process of preparing video games for international markets is commonly known as ‘game localization’; this process has thus become a significant factor for the global success of video games, in turn calling for scholarly attention. While a growing body of literature is available on game localization for American and European markets (Bernal-Merino 2006; Mangiron 2007; O’Hagan 2007), little attention has been paid to the situation in China so far (Zhang 2008, 2010, 2012). This article therefore seeks to address the under-explored topic of Chinese game localization. The sparsity of research on this topic partly reflects a specific aspect of China, namely that it is not always possible to access certain types of information. In fact, video games were long viewed as ‘electronic heroin’ in China, with games and gaming devices being strictly regulated. It was not until 2014 that the government lifted a game console ban enacted in 2000. However, the importance of the Chinese market for the game industry is now apparent on several levels. In the past decade, the public perception of gaming has gradually changed, and the online PC game sector in particular has developed rapidly. According to the recent China Gaming Industry Report,1 there were 566 million game players in China in 2016, and the revenue of the Chinese gaming industry reached RMB 165.5 billion (approximately US $24.9 billion or €21.5 billion), a 17.7 per cent increase compared with the year 2015. In fact, China now leads the gaming market, generating the highest game revenues worldwide.2 The increasing importance of video games in China, which has now become a producer as well as a consumer of such products, justifies the focus on this region and all the more problematizes this significant gap in the literature on game localization in translation studies. As interactive digital entertainment, video games have unique features, the translation of which tends to involve an approach geared toward the target text and target culture, albeit within a number of constraints. Using the case of mainstream Japanese console games localized into US and European versions, Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006) argue that ‘the original gameplay 1 2

The report is available in Chinese at . For more information, .

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experience’ should be recreated in the localized version, suggesting that translating a game is equivalent to translating a gameplay experience. They then propose that game localization involves ‘transcreation’, in which translators are granted ‘quasi absolute freedom’ while negotiating various constraints. The main driving force behind such an approach is the end purpose of the product, which is to entertain the user. In the context of translation studies, the concept of transcreation affords different interpretations depending on whether it is attributed to the post-colonial context of India (Gopinathan 2006) or Brazil (Vieira 1999). In addition, the modern uptake of the concept in the translation industry is typically found in connection with the translation of advertising and marketing texts (Pedersen 2014), which often call for extensive adaptation and rewriting. In this article, we operationalize the concept of transcreation in the context of game localization within the framework of a functionalist approach which prioritizes the ultimate purpose of the translation, an imperative asserted by Reiss and Vermeer (1984 in Williams, 2003: 101) as: ‘Der Zweck heiligt die Mittel’ [The end justifies the means]. To support our arguments, we collected data from World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004–present), one of the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), as a prime example of localization from English into Chinese. We also draw on the Chinese-made game Perfect World (Perfect World 2005–present) as an example of localization from Chinese into English. Perfect World is a fantasy-based MMORPG comparable to World of Warcraft. Our study is thus situated in the functionalist paradigm and aims to: (1) establish what transcreation is by drawing on the literature in translation studies; (2) gather empirical evidence of transcreation in games localized into and from Chinese; and (3) begin to conceptualize the functionalist orientation of translation strategies used in the new context of globalizing digital interactive media. Furthermore, we hope to contribute a number of Asian perspectives to the growing literature on game localization by addressing the under-reported Chinese context. Guided by these research goals, we next proceed to elaborate on transcreation in relation to its post-colonial traditions as well as its modern interpretation with a particular focus on its application to game localization. We then present our case studies in order to identify and analyse transcreation in a number of examples from the

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above-mentioned games localized into and from Chinese. The final section aims to generate insight into Chinese game localization from the point of view of transcreation, and to explore the broader implications of our findings in reference to a functionalist approach in contemporary translation practices such as game localization.

2.  Transcreation from traditional to contemporary contexts Translation scholars have recognized that transcreation is a long-established tradition in many cultures, and the phenomenon has recently gained renewed interest in contemporary translation practices in fields such as the translation of marketing materials (Humphrey 2011), website localization (Maroto and de Bortoli 2001; Rike 2013) and audiovisual translation (Caimotto 2014; Di Giovanni 2008; Zanotti 2014), in addition to game localization. This section provides a brief review of literature on the concept in reference to post-colonial contexts and Asian traditions on the one hand, and more recent instantiations focused on game localization on the other. 2.1  Transcreation in traditional contexts In Europe, the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is considered the first to have outlined the concept of transcreation, as he described the phenomenon as early as the year 1676 (Katan 2014). Leibniz (1676 in McCaffery 2001: 42) notes that ‘the body E is somehow extinguished and annihilated in [place] B and actually created anew and resuscitated in [place] D, which can be called “transcreation”’. The concept is often traced back to pre-colonial India, especially the creative translations of the ancient Sanskrit spiritual texts into modern Indian languages. It is perceived as a ‘rebirth or incarnation (avatar) of the original work’, which is ‘an aesthetic reinterpretation of the original work suited to a new target-language audience’ (Gopinathan 2006: 236). Transcreation is assumed to have been the dominant norm in the era of pre-colonial India and has had a weighty influence

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on the development of translation theories. Gopinathan (ibid.: 237) believes that transcreation is ‘a device to break the myth of untranslatability’ and can provide a solution to culturally oriented problems in literary texts. The term ‘transcreation’ also saw a revival at the beginning of the twentieth century, when several Indian writers, such as the poet and translator P. Lal (1972), revisited the concept. Lal connected this term to his own translations, which were not strictly faithful to the originals. On the other hand, during the colonial period in India, the British adopted different strategies to translate Indian literature into English, sanitizing the texts for greater acceptability in the West. This practice is regarded by Trivedi (2005: 11) as a ‘common translatorial temptation to erase much that is culturally specific’. Several scholars thus associated Indian translation history and transcreation with cultural hegemony and foreign domination (Chaudhuri 2006; Trivedi 2005, 2006). In parallel, transcreation was also conceptualized by Haroldo de Campos, a Brazilian writer and translator in the 1960s. He compared the act of translation to a ‘blood transfusion’ which ‘moves translation beyond the dichotomy source/target and sites original and translation in a third dimension, where each is both a donor and a receiver’ (in Vieira 1999: 97). De Campos (ibid.: 110) believes that transcreation is a ‘radical translation praxis’ where translation ‘visualizes the notion of mimesis not as a theory of copy but as the production of difference in sameness’. It is worth noting that de Campos also reflects ideas from the Indian legacy, which does not privilege the author or the original text but accredits the creativity of translators in the process of forming new texts and realities. In East Asia, we can also identify similar age-old practices. Classic Chinese novels, The Great Five in particular,3 were freely adapted into Japanese and Korean (Chan 2009). In the context of Chinese translation history, Lin Shu (1852–1924), who made a name for his creative translation style, is one of the best-known transcreators. His work, as Chan (2009: 393–4) comments, ‘evinces certain of the characteristics of the adapted text as observable in Chinese adaptations of the era, most notably the weird admixture of Western personalities, metaphors, manners, and customs with

3

‘The Great Five’ refers to The Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, The Water Margin, Plum in the Golden Vase and Dream of the Red Chamber.

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the Chinese one in the same text’. Lin Shu was known to rely on the oral, vernacular translations of his collaborators, who sometimes worked with English translations of originals in other languages (ibid.: 395). However, his translations have had a profound impact on Chinese literature and society. In China, translation is acknowledged as a highly creative type of work which can be even more demanding than the creation of original texts. For example, Guo Moruo (1984: 22, our translation), a renowned Chinese poet, translator, and scholar, comments that ‘translation is a creative task. A good translation equals creation, and it may even surpass the original. This is not an ordinary task. Sometimes, translation can be more difficult than creation’. Nevertheless, the general reaction of the business world to the term ‘translation’ seems negative, as it still strongly resonates with ‘the traditional image of the translator as a subservient worker’ (Gambier and Munday 2014: 20). By contrast, many translation scholars argue that a translation is not and should not be viewed as inferior to the original version; it can even be superior to the original. For instance, Xu Yuanchong (2012: 84) reasons: The text in the original depicts reality, which, however, is not equal to the object or reality. There are distance and conflicts between the text and the reality. At the same time, there are also distance and conflicts between the translated text and the original text. The translation, therefore, cannot be equal to the original or be a hundred percent faithful to the original. However, the distance between the translation and the reality that the original text depicts may not be larger than the distance between the original and the reality. Thus, the translation can win over the original for being closer to the reality.

The Korean scholar Choi Byong-hyon (2000: 174) also shares the view that ‘translation implies not a passive activity dictated by the authority of the source text. Translation is essentially an act of revision or improvement of the source text’. With emphasis on the creativity involved in the translating process, transcreation is perceived as a positive shift from translation that ‘will broaden perspectives with respect to both translations and translation research’ (Rike 2013: 68). Transcreation is also viewed as a solution to enhancing the overall social status of translation in the hierarchy of cultural practices (Choi 2000: 174).

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2.2 Transcreation in contemporary contexts The resurgence of transcreation in contemporary practices in the translation sector has given rise to a discussion on the connection between transcreation and translation, and on how the former can be re-positioned within the framework of translation studies in light of modern practices such as game localization. In the industry, practitioners working in fields closely associated with creative licence (such as marketing and advertising) seem to prefer to use the term ‘transcreation’, maintaining that it involves more than translation (Pedersen 2014). However, at the same time, some scholars consider it redundant, arguing that all translations could be transcreations since ‘they require a certain degree of creativity on the translators’ part, although they are not creating anything from scratch but from a very clear source’ (Bernal-Merino 2006: 33). It is not surprising that the views from the industry and those of translation scholars do not necessarily converge on this issue; after all, no consensus has been reached on the definitions and boundaries of the concept of translation itself. In the modern translation industry, translation is often regarded as a text-centric transcoding process (Melby et al. 2014). This view is particularly prevalent in the localization industry, where translation is typically defined in its narrowest sense as converting words written in one language into another, with cultural considerations being treated elsewhere (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013: 100–2). Against such a prevailing notion of translation in the very fields of business which use and benefit from this activity, O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013) argue that transcreation is a necessary and productive concept, particularly in the field of video game localization. Introducing the term ‘transcreation’ in the context of game localization, Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006) stress the creativity and freedom that game translators exercise to achieve the priority of preserving the gameplay experience for target players while keeping the ‘look and feel’ of the original games. They also note that the freedom granted to game translators ‘would be the exception rather than the rule in any other types of translation’ (ibid.: 20). The use of the ‘compensation’ technique, which involves ‘introducing a new feature in the target text to compensate for a different one that could not be reproduced somewhere else in the text’ (ibid.: 15), is often evident, as acknowledged by scholars in translation studies. Nevertheless, the degree of

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liberty taken in some localized games with completely new features which were absent in the original game challenges the scope of compensation and completely departs from ‘fidelity to the original’ as a key fundamental concept of certain translation theories. In the case of games, Mangiron and O’Hagan (ibid.: 15) assert that ‘fidelity takes a different meaning whereby the translator does not have to be loyal to the original text, but rather to the overall game experience’. They also point out that, given the heterogeneity of game players (ranging from early teens to adults with different tastes in games and styles of play), the localized game must be inventive and stimulating as well as easy to comprehend and play. In light of these reasons, translators are often granted ‘carte blanche to modify, adapt, and remove any cultural references, puns, as well as jokes that would not work in the target language’ (ibid.: 15). Bernal-Merino (2007: 181) also agrees that adapting a game to another market requires creativity and serves to position translators as cultural mediators, who play an essential role by ‘highlighting features, characters, music, or storylines that might not work at all in the receiving cultures’. 2.3 Operationalizing transcreation Based on their case study of the international best-selling Japanese game series Final Fantasy (Square Enix 2001), Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006: 17–19) also highlight the role of creativity in addressing technical constraints, such as limitations of the space in which the translated text needs to fit (especially in the case of user interfaces) and the handling of non-linear and de-contextualized strings. Subsequently, O’Hagan and Mangiron (2013) further develop the concept of transcreation by relating the notion in game localization to de Campos’s conceptualization of transcreation, where the original is used to ‘nourish’ new work in the target language. They regard transcreation as ‘operating at multiple levels and in multimodality to recreate the whole gameplay experience in a new target-user setting’ (ibid.: 199). In addition, they argue that the concept of transcreation gives rise to the agency of the translator in the process of translation; this stands in sharp contrast to the localization of productivity software, which prioritizes standardization and uniformity over variability, thus often curtailing creativity in

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translation for the sake of the efficiency and repeatability of the localization operation (ibid.: 107). In fact, creativity is clearly recognized by game localization service providers as an important translator attribute in relation to translation quality. For example, increasing numbers of game localization companies are incorporating creative writing in their recruitment tests when hiring new translators, as explained by Finegan (2006: 56): ‘Quality in the localized version of a game is paramount, just as quality is paramount in all other aspects of the development of a game. The translations must be more akin to creative writing than to literal translation while still conveying all the same information contained in the original’. Similarly, some universities have also started to include creative writing modules in their translation curricula, thus reinforcing the connection between translating and creative writing (Rogers 2011). By extension, one can argue that such pedagogical implementations provide evidence that translators are expected, under certain circumstances, to take ‘author-like creative control’ (Bernal-Merino 2008: 58). Several scholars have examined the application of transcreation in the localization of games. For example, Fernández-Costales (2012) points out that transcreation can be detected more often in game genres that depend on narrative techniques and well-developed plots, such as role-playing games (RPGs) and action/adventure games, while some other game genres may show a weaker tendency towards transcreation. He also notes that the language transfer between European language pairs may not require translators to apply the same degree of creativity as translating from, for instance, Japanese into a European language. Interestingly, on the basis of an empirical analysis of texts in the game Magical Encyclopedia (TSR 1992) localized from English into Lithuanian, Šiaučiūnė and Liubinienė (2011) highlight clear evidence of transcreation applied by the localization professionals who undertook this project. This supports the idea that its application is not confined to language pairs that include a nonEuropean language. Similarly, Crosignani and Ravetto (2011) discuss their experience of localizing from English into various European languages the game series Buzz! (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe 2005–present) and stress the particular need for transcreation in the localization of quiz games, which need to be based on questions that are relevant to

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the target market. On the basis of empirical evidence gathered from the localization of Japanese games, Mangiron and O’Hagan (2006: 17–19) suggest that the creativeness and freedom of game translators are reflected mainly in four aspects, namely (1) re-naming of key terminology and character names; (2) contextualization by addition; (3) re-creation of plays on words and (4) deliberate use of regional expressions. Focusing on game localization in China, Zhang (2013: 165–6) similarly observes that transcreation is applied in the translation of: (1) game names; (2) in-game terms and (3) dialogues, also acknowledging the necessity of transcreation in game localization. As discussed above, the concept of transcreation is rooted in multiple traditions. This background and the present resurgence of the concept suggest transcreation could provide insights into unique aspects of the practice of translation of games as complex technological and cultural artefacts. As Bernal-Merino (2008: 61) points out, the extent of translators’ creative input in games cannot be fully perceived without considering the ludic nature of games and the globalized markets. Transcreation could indeed be conceived as a mode of translation which embraces the multi-dimensional characteristics of video games as an interactive, ludic medium as well as a representative narrative form.

3.  C  ase studies on transcreation in video games localized into and from Chinese In order to investigate transcreation in the practice of game localization involving Chinese, this section reports examples drawn from the localization of World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004–present) from English into Chinese and the game Perfect World (Perfect World 2005–present) as an example of Chinese-English localization.

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3.1 Localization into Chinese: World of Warcraft World of Warcraft is currently the world’s most popular MMORPG title. The game’s success is indicated by its 5.5 million registered users as of the second quarter of 2015.4 It is available in nine languages: English (US & EU), German, Spanish (EU & Latin America), French, Italian, Portuguese (EU & Latin America), Russian, Korean and Chinese (Simplified & Traditional). It is interesting to note that while a Korean and two Chinese locales have been released, there is no Japanese locale, reflecting the fact that online games are not particularly popular in Japan (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013: 66). World of Warcraft was first released in 2004 and had been complemented with seven expansion sets5 as of November 2017, namely The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016) and Battle for Azeroth (2017). The setting of the game is the land of Azeroth, a world of swords and sorcery, home to different races and cultures. In World of Warcraft, there are two large, opposing factions: one is known as the ‘noble Alliance’, comprising the valiant humans, the stalwart dwarves, the ingenious gnomes, the spiritual night elves, the mystical draenei and the bestial worgen. The other is the ‘mighty Horde’, consisting of the battle-hardened orcs, the cunning trolls, the hulking tauren, the cursed Forsaken, the extravagant blood elves and the devious goblins. Meanwhile, the harmonious Pandaren, in the name of balance or personal philosophy, stand between these opposing races and may join either faction. Each player can choose the role of a character who has a specific set of skills and abilities in the game’s fantasy world. The players can embark on quests, learn new skills and acquire weapons and other in-game items, such as enchanted rings, artefacts and armours. The core gameplay of World of Warcraft revolves around fighting monsters and completing quests. The game drew its inspiration from fantasy, steampunk and science fiction, and it features characters such as gryphons, dragons, elves, zombies, werewolves and other monsters. It also includes concepts such as 4 5

For more information, see . An expansion set is an addition to an existing game that usually adds new elements, such as areas, weapons, objects and sometimes an extended storyline.

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time travel, spaceships and alien worlds. In contrast, the main stories used in online games of Chinese origin have been dominated by ancient legends and folklore that are well known within China. This instantly made World of Warcraft’s game elements and graphic design seem foreign and exotic to Chinese players. Such noveltiess may have been among the reasons behind the game’s massive popularity in China. The fantasy elements of the game also afford the translators a great deal of freedom to exercise creativity should they choose to do so. Drawing on the literature on transcreation in game localization, we focused on the translation of key terminology, such as the names of characters, races, professions, in-game items and locations, as they are closely linked to the gameplay experience. We also examined the game’s cinematic trailers from 2007 to 2012. The data on the key terminology was obtained from the English (EU) and simplified Chinese versions of the official World of Warcraft website and from the trailers. By comparing the translations and categorizing the different translation strategies applied, we discuss the evidence of transcreation in these examples. After scrutinizing the key terminology, we were able to identify the application of transcreation in two forms. Firstly, several terms were rendered by adding information as a means of contextualization. For example, ‘Monk’ was translated as wu seng 武僧 [warrior-monk]. The extra word wu was added to indicate that the monk is also a warrior. ‘Moonbrook’ was translated as yue xi zhen 月溪镇 [Moonbrook town], in which the word zhen 镇 [town] was added to indicate that Moonbrook is a place. Similar examples were found on several other occasions with evidence of further contextualization. In fact, it may appear unnecessary to provide additional information, as the players themselves are likely to figure it out after some time. However, the key purpose of a game is for players to play rather than decipher the text, and user-friendliness will obviously help them do so more quickly and easily. In the two examples given above, the information helps players to understand the function of the ‘Monk’ immediately and to remember the location easily. Secondly, some terms were transformed, most likely due to censorship considerations. As reported in Zhang (2012), China has not established any formal age-rating systems for games. The existing regulations on the content of games are vague, and the administration of game censorship lacks transparency. Due to these factors, game translators tend to exhibit stringent self-censorship in their translations

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in order to ensure that the games satisfy the censors. For instance, several alterations were made to the Chinese version of World of Warcraft during an update in 2007: ‘rogue’ was changed from dao zei 盗贼 [thief ] to ying xing zhe 隐形者 [invisible man], ‘steal’ was modified into sou suo 搜索 [search/investigate], and ‘poison’ was altered to yao gao 药膏 [ointment]. Additionally, the images of skeletons were transformed into (arguably less frightening) zombie-like creatures, and the bones of dead players were replaced by tombstones. These modifications were likely made in consideration of censorship, as elements such as ‘thief ’, ‘steal’ and ‘poison’ may be seen as glorifying and encouraging criminal behaviour. The changes highlight that transcreation can be triggered by external factors, which in turn manifest as self-censorship on the translators’ part (Zhang 2012). This is reminiscent of the era of ‘self-regulation’ applied by major game companies such as Nintendo of America during the 1980s and early 1990s, before formal age-rating bodies were set up to rate games.6 In the absence of official guidelines, Nintendo of America used to voluntarily apply strict internal rules on games developed by Nintendo in Japan for their release in North America so as to avert public outcry and to preserve Nintendo’s family-friendly company image (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013: 225). In the cinematic trailers, we found additional solid evidence of transcreation that appears to be of a different nature compared to the treatment of key terminology discussed above. Table 8.1 shows the Chinese versions of the narrative from the 2007 cinematic trailers with a back translation provided by one of the authors. It can be seen that the source text ‘You are not prepared’ was transformed into ‘You are seeking a death path!’ in back translation of the target text. The Chinese versions turned the ominous tone of the source text into a more literal warning by resorting to the rather direct reference to ‘death’, which is avoided in the original. This example shows that the translator clearly commits to a highly dramatic option that may be risky, yet is more in keeping with the gameplay feel typical of this genre of games. As a result, this can be considered a case of transcreation.

6

The US Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was established in 1994 as the first such body to rate games.

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Source Text in English

Target Text in Chinese

Back Translation

Imprisoned for ten thousand years.

我被囚禁了一万年。

I have been imprisoned for ten thousand years.

Banished from my own homeland.

又被逐出了自己的故乡。 Exiled from my own homeland.

And now, you dare enter my realm.

现在你们竟敢闯入我的 领地。

And now, you dare enter my realm.

You are not prepared.

真是自寻死路。

Seeking a death path indeed.

YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!

你们这是自寻死路！

You are seeking a death path!

Table 8.2:  Cinematic trailers – Mists of Pandaria (2012) [emphasis added by authors] Source Text in English To ask why we fight, is to ask why the leaves fall.

Target Text in Chinese 战火为何而燃， 秋叶为何而落，

Back Translation Why do flames of war burn; why do autumn leaves fall;

It is in the nature. Perhaps, 天性不可夺， there is a better question. 吾辈心中亦有惑。

The nature cannot be taken; We also have doubts in mind.

Why do we fight? To 怒拳为谁握？ protect home and family. 护国安邦惩奸恶， To 道法自然除心魔。 preserve balance and bring harmony.

For whom [do we] clench the fist of anger? To protect the country and punish evil. To follow the nature and to remove evil in one’s own mind.

For my kind, the true question is … what is worth fighting for.

War is restless and doubt is endless. For what shall we fight!

战无休而惑不息， 吾辈何以为战！

As shown in Table 8.2, creative licence is also apparent in the translation of the trailer for Mists of Pandaria, the 2012 expansion of the game. The degree of the adaptive approach taken is extensive and centres on the key terminology in each line; the Chinese translation departs markedly from the original and is consistently transcreated using an ancient poetic style. As highlighted in the examples in Table 8.2, the characters 落 (luo), 夺 (duo),

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惑 (huo), 握 (wo) and 魔 (mo) are intentionally used because they rhyme in Chinese. Both styles are commonly applied in Chinese-made games, particularly those based on ancient legends. However, it is likely that the Chinese players of the game do not expect to encounter such a familiar style in a foreign-made fantasy game, which probably makes it a pleasant surprise. The adaptation fits well with the gameplay as well as the background plot of this expansion, which introduces a new race, the Pandaren. The Pandaren are designed on the basis of anthropomorphic giant pandas, which are, of course, considered a cultural symbol of China. The background setting and design also contain a large number of Chinese elements, including clothing, architecture and scenery. Although this expansion version marked a sharp change in style compared to the translation of previous expansions, the translation is reportedly received extremely well by the players.7 The function of a cinematic trailer is to make an immediate visual appeal to game players and to attract more players to join the game, and this may have been one significant factor in the decision to employ overt transcreation. 3.2 Localization from Chinese: Perfect World We next examined the game Perfect World (Perfect World 2005–present), one of the first Chinese-made games to be launched on the global market, as an example of game localization from Chinese. The game is set in the mythical world of Pangu, which is based on traditional Chinese mythology. Players can take on various roles, including swordsmen, magicians, archers, priests and magical creatures. Characters can develop skills over time, use magical weapons and team up with other players to fight against monsters and various creatures, and to conquer and govern territories. So far, the game has been localized into English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese. Evidence of transcreation in Perfect World can be found mainly in the translation of Chinese cultural references; in particular, the terms used for 7

According to an online survey on the cinematic trailer of Mists of Pandaria conducted by 178.com, one of the most popular online game information portals in China, 86 per cent of the 33,599 participants were 100 per cent satisfied. For further information, see .

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the game characters’ skills and the names of in-game items manifest themselves in two forms. Firstly, concepts from Chinese cultural references are recreated mainly by describing their concrete effects. For example, the skill feng juan can yun 风卷残云 [the wind blows away the remaining cloud] was translated into ‘Cyclone Heel’. This aptly conveys the particular skill, which enables the player to leap from the ground and perform a sweeping kick. The expression feng juan can yun is, in fact, an idiom to describe the power of a strong wind, the usage of which dates back to literature in the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). The game thus uses a classical poetic style common in martial arts literature. Although it is familiar to Chinese players, this idiom (if translated literally) is unlikely to be easily understandable or memorable to game players from other cultures. Therefore, while the translation ‘Cyclone Heel’ is not entirely faithful to the original, it describes well the potential effects of the skill in the game. Another example is that ling feng 凌风 [mastering the wind] is translated into ‘Aeolian Blade’. This is a skill that allows the player to leap into the air and slam the enemy. The term chosen for the translation ‘Aeolian’ refers to the Greek god of the winds, hence conveying the meaning of controlling the wind. This adaptation is likely to make the term seem more familiar and thus more memorable to Western players. In addition, references to Chinese medicine are transcreated by referring to its effects, particularly in in-game items. For example, huo xie san 活血散 refers to the Chinese medicine that invigorates blood circulation. In the game, it is an item that can give extra life to a player and is hence rendered as ‘life powder’, which specifies the effect in a more explicit manner. Similar examples can be found in Table 8.3. Table 8.3:  In-game text: names of potions in Perfect World Source Text in Chinese 金创药 [jin chuang yao]

Gloss Golden vulnerary

Nine suns [jiu yang dan] pills 九阳丹

Target Text in Cultural References Function in the English in Chinese Game Healing Potion A vulnerary used in the healing of wounds

Restore health points

Rejuvenation Potion

Restore mana points & health points

A medicine that warms up body

Transcreation in Game Localization in China Source Text in Chinese

Gloss

Life restoring [xu ming san] potion 续命散

沉香丸 [chen xiang wan]

Agila-wood pills

Heart[yang xin cao] nourishing grass 养心草

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Target Text in Cultural References Function in the English in Chinese Game Condensed An ancient Healing Potion prescription used to treat various conditions

Restore health points

Magic Dust

A medicine to regulate blood circulation

Restore mana points

Tranquillia Herb

A heart-healing herb

Regenerate life

Secondly, Chinese cultural references are transcreated according to their visual graphic design. For example, the race yan zu 炎族 [the ethnic group of Yan] is rendered as ‘winged elves’. In Chinese mythology, this Chinese nation is the offspring of King Yan and King Huang, who are commonly considered the legendary ancestors of the Chinese nation. In the game, yan zu are the descendants of King Yan, which constitutes a strong Chinese cultural reference. However, the translation ‘winged elves’ is based on the appearance of the avatars in the game and on a Western cultural reference to elves. It can be argued that yan zu will sound alien to Western players and can be difficult for them to relate to or remember, and this cultural reference is not essential for gameplay in this case. The translator therefore transcreated the Chinese element into a reference which might be more familiar to non-Chinese players from all cultures. Another example can be found in the translation of the item gu shen fu 固神符. This term in Chinese means a charm that calms characters down and helps them pull themselves together. However, there are several other items that have similar meanings and functions in the game, such as ding shen fu 定神符 and ning shen fu 凝神符. This potential ambiguity may well be the reason why gu shen fu is transcreated as ‘Azure Charm’, based on the colour of this item. Meanwhile, ding shen fu is rendered as ‘Focused Resistance Charm’ and ning shen fu is translated into ‘Charm of Concentration’.

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3.3 Discussion The examples above suggest that transcreation is applied as a deliberate translation strategy rather than a set of ad hoc decisions. World of Warcraft is a major game, and it can be reasonably assumed that considerable resources were devoted to the Chinese localization. Similarly, Perfect World – as one of China’s first games to be developed and exported – must have been a high priority for the publisher, whose aim was to break into international markets. A transcreative approach is clearly visible in the localization of World of Warcraft into Chinese, especially in the inclusion of a recognizable classic poetic style in the cinematic trailer for Mists of Pandaria. This can also be correlated to the purpose of the trailer, which was designed to showcase the forthcoming game and to immediately attract the attention of players anticipating its release. Although the very novelty of the game and its foreignness could have been expected to whet the appetite of Chinese players, increased familiarity through transcreation was prioritized. This is arguably in keeping with the undertone of the Chinese theme apparent in the reference to ‘panda’. The translation strategies applied to key terms within the game suggest more concrete and locally contextualized translations. Similarly, the use of the word ‘death’ in the Chinese translations, a concept that is merely implied in the original, shows explicitation. This can be seen as somewhat contradictory to the more toned-down selection of words in Chinese translations of concepts related to morality in reference tocriminal behaviours such as stealing and poisoning. However, the explicitation decisions can be justified as an effort to better guide the players through the game by avoiding potential ambiguities. From the perspective of translation studies, functionalist approaches have shifted the focus of translation from maintaining source-text fidelity to aligning the function of the translated game in the target culture with that of the original in the source culture. This principle also dovetails neatly with the purpose of game localization, which is to deliver an entertainment product that can be enjoyed in the target market. Games are first and foremost designed to entertain the end users; this imperative must be respected in game localization, and final products must fulfil their intended function in the target culture in a similar way as in the source culture. As discussed above, the literature on game localization places

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heavy emphasis on the target market, and this can be logically linked to the application of transcreation. Our study has highlighted that this is the case, especially with the translation of the cinematic trailer sequences in a classical Chinese style elaborated by the use of precise rhyming. As revealed by some game translators (Alexander O. Smith, in O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013: 182), marketing and promotional materials often take priority in the game localization workflow, and the translator of the trailer may well have had a translation brief to that effect. Indeed, one can argue that the modern application of transcreation to advertising texts clearly fits the bill here, as the function of the trailer is to appeal instantly to gamers eagerly awaiting the new game. The particular case of the World of Warcraft localization into Chinese reveals that the presence of censorship criteria is likely to have guided the translator to apply self-censorship, which clearly challenges and overrides the translator’s loyalty to the source text. In further elaborating a functionalist approach based on skopos theory, Nord (1997) added the role of the translation brief as well as the translator’s loyalty to the source text. The above examples of localization into Chinese suggest that it is indeed a matter of balance and negotiation as to when and where loyalty to the source is shown in the presence of imposing target cultural norms which are manifest in the form of censorship. China has a stringent (albeit not always transparent) set of criteria applied to video games, and game localizers know that they ignore them at their peril. At the same time, it is clear that they decide for other types of content more liberally, guided by market-driven principles, as seen in the strategies used for the translation of the trailer. In turn, the examples found in the localization from Chinese into English appear to reveal efforts to make the game accessible to Western players on the assumption that they are unlikely to be familiar with Chinese traditions or culture-specific references. Evidence of the use of visual information such as graphics and colours in transcreation is found in the literature (Mangiron and O’Hagan 2006). This points to the way in which translators exploit the multimodal nature of games.

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4. Conclusion This article set out to seek evidence of transcreation in games localized from and into Chinese, which can be defined in the context of gameplay experience as well as market forces. The two representative games examined demonstrate that such approaches are indeed present. In materials such as highly visible promotional trailers, the translation priority seems to be aligned directly with target players and their traditions. We were able to discern a clear attempt to make the Chinese-origin game accessible and appealing to foreign players, who are assumed to lack an understanding of the Chinese cultural background. The case of explicitation in Chinese of the implied meaning (relating to death) stands in sharp contrast to generalizations elsewhere, which seem to be clearly motivated to avoid concepts being taken as promoting certain socially unacceptable behaviours in view of politically sensitive content, violence, sexual content and criminal acts in the context of self-censorship. The former strategies may have been a deliberate decision by the translator to give a clear warning to the Chinese players and to inject a more thrilling, dramatic turn. However, this is merely speculation on our part, as we were unable to contact the translators directly. Further studies on the effect of censorship might help reveal how it affects transcreative approaches in comparison with other types of constraints. Our study seems to support a hypothesis that despite China’s economic clout, its cultural hegemony in the field of video games is clearly not assumed by the Chinese game publisher, who obviously attempts to bring the text to the audience, rather than the other way around. In addition, there are clear signs of market forces at play: in the translation of the trailer, its promotional nature seems to dictate the translation strategy, which manifests itself as transcreation applied to certain marketable content. In the context of digital interactive entertainment, a new functional approach seems to be evolving in the balancing act between the market-driven need to consider the instant appeal of the game’s enjoyability and the deep-seated cultural and social factors that underlie the age ratings and censorship criteria. In an attempt to gain insight into Chinese game localization, we focused on transcreation in our analysis of the two games as prime examples of translation into and from Chinese. This proved to be a useful lens that allowed

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us to demonstrate the way in which the target player’s gameplay experience is respected and shapes such translation choices. Our case studies highlighted several specific instances of transcreation with a view to maintaining a similar gameplay feel in the target version and also to responding to a commercial drive for effective international marketing. In particular, the interplay between these factors and implicit and explicit constraints such as censorship and self-censorship is where transcreation meets a functionalist approach. Such findings can be extended beyond Chinese contexts, given the ever-present conflict caused by the often inherently provocative nature of games in any language. The main thrust behind skopos theory was the idea of translation as action, which seems to be particularly significant in game localization in the sense that the translator needs to identify with the player, whose action or interaction with the game is what ultimately counts. Despite the limited scope of our study, we hope our findings can act as a catalyst for revising the important concept of skopos and a functionalist approach to translation in new, contemporary contexts of video game localization, just as transcreation has gained a new lease of life in contemporary translation practices.

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Notes on Contributors

penny bailey (The University of Queensland) is a researcher in Japanese studies and art history. Her research focuses on Japanese and Korean art history and design, particularly in the modern period. Her doctoral thesis examines the ways in which the founder of Japan’s Mingei [Folk Craft] Movement, Yanagi Sōetsu, theorized Korean visual cultures during Korea’s colonial period (1910–1945). She has published articles in Monumenta Nipponica, Asian Currents, International Review of Korean Studies and TAASA Review (The Asian Arts Society of Australia), and translations in Review of Japanese Culture and Society and Japonisumu kenkyū. theresa hyun was a faculty member at Kyung Hee University in Seoul before coming to York University, Toronto, where she is Professor of Korean Studies. Her scholarly publications focus on Korean literature and culture, translation studies and feminist studies. Her recent publications include ‘Translating Korea, Revising Poetics, Rewriting Gender during the Japanese colonial period and in North Korea,’ in Kang Ji-Hae and Judy Wakabayashi (eds), Translating and Interpreting in Korean Contexts: Engaging with Asian and Western Others, Routledge (2019), and ‘Rejuvenating the Nation: Translation, Nationalism, and the Establishment of Children’s Literature in Korea in the Early Twentieth Century,’ in Wong Lawrence Wang-chi (ed.), Translation and Modernization in East Asia in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, The Chinese University Press (2017). She has published two volumes of original bilingual Korean/English poetry. She is a member of the five-year York University project, ‘Korea in the World, the World in Korean Studies.’ thomas kabara currently teaches Translation Studies at Aichi Shukutoku University in Nagoya, Japan, and is a PhD candidate in the Department of Japanese Culture Studies at Nagoya University. His research focuses on Japanese film subtitling practices and their reception with an emphasis on cognition and inferential reasoning. His recent publications include ‘What

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is Gained in Subtitling: How Film Subtitles Can Expand the Source Text’ in TranscUlturAl; and he has translated for a variety of scholarly publications on Japanese cinema history, including the forthcoming Japanese Cinema Book. peter kornicki is a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Professor of Japanese at the University of Cambridge. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2000. His most recent publications are Languages, Scripts, and Chinese Texts in East Asia (Oxford, 2018), Umi o watatta Nihon shoseki – Yōroppa e, soshite Bakumatsu Meiji no Rondon de 海を渡った日本書籍─ヨーロッパへ、そして幕末・明治のロン ドンで (Tokyo, 2018), and British Royal and Japanese Imperial relations, 1868–2018: 150 years of association, engagement and celebration, with Hugh Cortazzi and Antony Best (Folkestone, 2019). sharon tzu-yun lai (National Taiwan Normal University) is Professor of Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation and Director of Taiwan Association of Translation and Interpretation. Her expertise is in translation history, translation examination and translation of children’s literature. Her recent publications include: 翻譯偵探事務所 [A Detective Agency for Translations and Translators], Azure (2017), ‘三城記：冷戰時期滬港 台的譯者與譯本大遷徙’ [A Tale of Three Cities: On the Migration of Chinese Translators and Translated Works in the Cold War Era] in Reflexion 37 (2019). minako o’hagan (School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, University of Auckland) is Associate Professor in Translation Studies. She has research specialisms in translation technology, video game localization and fan community translation. Her recent publications include an edited volume The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology (2019), ‘Game Localization: a critical overview and implications for audiovisual translation’ in Luis Pérez-González (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation (2019), ‘Gamer emotions in laughter’, Translation, Cognition & Behavior (1)2 (2018) (co-authored with Marian Flanagan), ‘Technology in Audiovisual Translation’ in Mona Baker and Gabriella Saldanha (eds), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2019, forthcoming).

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nana sato-rossberg (SOAS, University of London) is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies. She is head of the School of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics, chair of the SOAS Centre for Translation Studies, convener of MA Translation, and Executive Council Member of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies. Her expertise is in cultural translation, translation of orality, intergeneric translation, and translation history. Her recent publications include: ‘Translations in Oral Societies and Cultures’ (in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture, 2018), ‘Constructing Japanese translation studies’ (The Japan Forum, 2019). In early 2020, she expects Misuzu to publish her second monograph and also the edited volume 『翻訳と文学』 [Translation and Literature]. akiko uchiyama (The University of Queensland) is the Coordinator of the Master of Arts in Japanese Interpreting and Translation (MAJIT) program in the School of Languages and Cultures. She has research interests in literary translation, gender in translation, intersemiotic translation, and the cultural history of translation in Japan. Her recent publications include ‘The Politics of Translation in Meiji Japan’ in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (2018) and ‘Akage no An in Japanese Girl Culture: Muraoka Hanako’s Translation of Anne of Green Gables’ (2014), Japan Forum, 26 (2). She is currently working on a monograph entitled Translation and Postcoloniality: Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Translation of the West to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. yeong-ae yamashita (Bunkyo University of Japan) is Professor of Language and Literature. She earned MAs from Tsuda University (International Relations) and from Ewha Womans University (Women’s Studies), Korea, and a PhD (International Relations) from Ritsumeikan University, Japan. She has published books on the topics of Korea’s comfort women and Korean dramas. She is currently researching North Korean dramas. xiaochun zhang (School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol) is Lecturer in Translation Studies, Programme Director of MA ChineseEnglish Translation. Her expertise is audiovisual translation with a special focus on video game localization and fansubbing. She recently co-edited the special issue on game localization in the Journal of Internationalization and Localization (2017).

Index

agency, translator’s 78, 79, 83, 94 area-based translation/translation studies 2 Audiovisual Translation 6, 125, 146, 202, 206 avatar 184, 197 Bae Yong-joon (Yon-sama) 152–3 banned books/translations/titles 33–7 Choson nyosong 99, 108–9, 111–9 period 101, 102, 104, 108, 117 Choson Dynasty 100 Cold War period 37–9, 43 colonization 30, 33, 150 de-colonization 30, 49 re-colonization 30, 32 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 99 East Asia 3–6, 9–13, 15, 17, 23, 24, 26, 71, 78, 89, 138, 143, 145, 185, 205, 206 EATS 3 empathetic translation 5, 77 family-head system 155–9, 162 feminine ideal 82, 88–9, 92, 99–101, 103–4, 106, 108 genbun itchi 31, 79, 84, 87, 94 gender equality 105, 107, 172

gendered language/gender in translated dialogue 152, 165, 171–2 Genshin 18 Great Five, The 185 Hayashi Razan 19, 26 history of translation 9, 29, 48, 207 Hon’yaku no sekai 55–9, 62–7, 70–3, 129, 133 hon’yaku ron 55, 66–8 Im Sun Duk 116–7, 120 Institute for the Translation of Sūtras 11 Khitan 12, 15, 17, 26 Kikan hon’yaku 5, 53–67, 69, 71, 72–3 Kim Dae-jung 174 Kim Il Sung 105–7, 109, 113, 114 KMT 29, 30, 33–4, 36, 48 Korean drama 6, 140, 150–2, 154, 155, 157, 170–2, 175, 176–7, 207 Korean Wave (Hallyu) 149–51, 154, 175,178–9 Korean Women’s Association United 172 Korea Women’s HotLine 172–3 Lê Quý Đôn 24 Little Lord Fauntleroy 77, 78, 85–8, 90, 95, 96 localisation 202–3 Manchu 15, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26 martial law period 29, 30, 34, 40, 44–5, 49 Ministry of Gender Equality 174

210 Index MMORPG 183, 191 mother-worker 106, 107, 117 Nakamura Momoko 164 new media storytelling 137 New Women 117 patriarchal culture 149, 152, 154–5, 169, 171–2, 177 piracy of books 38 Roh Moo-hyun 174 RPG 183, 189 seed books/titles 37–8, 41, 43–4, 46 Self-Reliance Thought (Chu Ch’e Sasang) 105 Sengyou 10 Shōkōshi 77, 78, 79, 83–7, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97 Skopos 67, 181, 199, 201 socialist woman 6, 89, 99–100, 117 Sŏl Ch’ŏng 13 South Korean TV dramas 6, 140, 149–52, 154–7, 170–2, 175–7, 207 star translators 6, 12 style, storytelling 2, 3, 9, 47, 59, 61, 78–9, 83–5, 87, 93–4, 99–100, 136, 149, 154–5, 163, 170, 177, 185, 188, 194–6, 198–9 subtitle translations/translation of subtitles 149, 170–2 surtitle annotation 127, 136, 137, 141

Tangut 10, 12, 17, 25, 26 Toda Natsuko 126, 129 transcreation 2, 6, 181, 183–93, 195, 198–201 translating/translation area-based 2 journals 55, 68, 70–1 norms 46, 125–6 schools 68 theory 2, 53, 62, 66–8, 79 as writing 5, 77 United States Information Service 39 video game 6, 135, 137, 181, 182, 187, 190, 199–201, 206, 207 Wakamatsu Shizuko 5, 77, 78, 80, 85, 93–7 Wei Yuan 21 Winter Sonata 149, 151–4, 157, 160, 175–7, 179–80 Womenlink 172–4 women’s education 5, 81, 92, 94 women’s language/men’s language 152, 165, 168, 171 Xianbei 10, 15 Xuanzang 11

New Trends

in

T r a n s l at i o n S t u d i e s

In today’s globalised society, translation and interpreting are gaining visibility and relevance as a means to foster communication and dialogue in increasingly multicultural and multilingual environments. Practised since time immemorial, both activities have become more complex and multifaceted in recent decades, intersecting with many other disciplines. New Trends in Translation Studies is an international series with the main objectives of promoting the scholarly study of translation and interpreting and of functioning as a forum for the translation and interpreting research community. This series publishes research on subjects related to multimedia translation and interpreting, in their various social roles. It is primarily intended to engage with contemporary issues surrounding the new multidimensional environments in which translation is flourishing, such as audiovisual media, the internet and emerging new media and technologies. It sets out to reflect new trends in research and in the profession, to encourage flexible methodologies and to promote interdisciplinary research ranging from the theoretical to the practical and from the applied to the pedagogical.

New Trends in Translation Studies publishes translation- and interpretingoriented books that present high-quality scholarship in an accessible, reader-friendly manner. The series embraces a wide range of publi­cations – monographs, edited volumes, conference proceedings and translations of works in translation studies which do not exist in English. The editor, Professor Jorge Díaz Cintas, welcomes proposals from all those interested in being involved with the series. The working language of the series is English, although in exceptional circumstances works in other languages can be considered for publication. Proposals dealing with specialised translation, translation tools and technology, audiovisual translation and the field of accessibility to the media are particularly welcomed.

Vol. 1 Meng Ji: Phraseology in Corpus-Based Translation Studies 251 pages. 2010. ISBN 978-3-03911-550-1 Vol. 2 Josu Barambones Zubiria: Mapping the Dubbing Scene: Audiovisual Translation in Basque Television 191 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0281-4 Vol. 3 Elisa Ghia: Subtitling Matters: New Perspectives on Subtitling and Foreign Language Learning 234 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0843-4 Vol. 4 Anabel Borja Albi and Fernando Prieto Ramos (eds): Legal Translation in Context: Professional Issues and Prospects 325 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0284-5 Vol. 5 Kieran O’Driscoll: Retranslation through the Centuries: Jules Verne in English 302 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0236-4 Vol. 6 Federico M. Federici (ed.): Translating Dialects and Languages of Minorities: Challenges and Solutions 245 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0178-7 Vol. 7 Silvia Bruti and Elena Di Giovanni (eds): Audiovisual Translation across Europe: An Ever-changing Landscape 289 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0953-0 Vol. 8 Tong-King Lee: Translating the Multilingual City: Cross-lingual Practices and Language Ideology 176 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0850-2 Vol. 9

Laura Incalcaterra McLoughlin, Marie Biscio and Máire Áine Ní Mhainnín (eds): Audiovisual Translation. Subtitles and Subtitling: Theory and Practice 301 pages. 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-0299-9

Vol. 10 Xiaohui Yuan: Politeness and Audience Response in Chinese–English Subtitling 250 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0732-1 Vol. 11 Isabel García-Izquierdo and Esther Monzó (eds): Iberian Studies on Translation and Interpreting 401 pages. 2012. ISBN 978-3-0343-0815-1

Vol. 12 Claire Ellender: Preserving Polyphonies: Translating the Writings of Claude Sarraute 250 pages. 2013. ISBN 978-3-0343-0940-0 Vol. 13 Pilar Sánchez-Gijón, Olga Torres-Hostench and Bartolomé Mesa-Lao (eds): Conducting Research in Translation Technologies 329 pages. 2015. ISBN 978-3-0343-0994-3 Vol. 14 Claire Ellender: Dealing with Difference in Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling Linguistic Variation in Films 221 pages. 2015. ISBN 978-3-0343-1816-7 Vol. 15 Anna Jankowska and Agnieszka Szarkowska (eds): New Points of View on Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility 316 pages. 2015. ISBN 978-3-0343-1842-6 Vol. 16 Charlotte Bosseaux: Dubbing, Film and Performance: Uncanny Encounters 251 pages. 2015. ISBN 978-3-0343-0235-7 Vol. 17 Guadalupe Soriano-Barabino: Comparative Law for Legal Translators 220 pages. 2016. ISBN 978-3-0343-1725-2 Vol. 18 Șebnem Susam-Saraeva: Translation and Popular Music: Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish–Greek Relations 184 pages. 2015. ISBN 978-3-03911-887-8 Vol. 19

Celia Martín de León and Víctor González-Ruiz (eds): From the Lab to the Classroom and Back Again: Perspectives on Translation and Interpreting Training 371 pages. 2016. ISBN 978-3-0343-1985-0

Vol. 20

Carla Mereu Keating: The Politics of Dubbing: Film Censorship and State Intervention in the Translation of Foreign Cinema in Fascist Italy 191 pages. 2016. ISBN 978-3-0343-1838-9

Vol. 21 Susanne M. Cadera and Andrew Samuel Walsh (eds): Literary Retranslation in Context 252 pages. 2017. ISBN 978-3-0343-1996-6

Vol. 22 Kayoko Nohara: Translating Popular Fiction: Embracing Otherness in Japanese Translations 248 pages. 2018. ISBN 978-3-0343-1963-8 Vol. 23 Pierre-Alexis Mével: Subtitling African American English into French: Can We Do the Right Thing? 256 pages. 2017. ISBN 978-3-0343-1897-6 Vol. 24 Micòl Beseghi: Multilingual Films in Translation: A Sociolinguistic and Intercultural Study of Diasporic Films 256 pages. 2017. ISBN 978-1-78707-159-9 Vol. 25 Michał Borodo: Translation, Globalization and Younger Audiences: The Situation in Poland 248 pages. 2017. ISBN 978-1-78707-473-6 Vol. 26 Eugenia Dal Fovo and Paola Gentile (eds): Translation and Interpreting: Convergence, Contact and Interaction 308 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78707-750-8 Vol. 27 Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko Uchiyama (eds): Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia 224 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78874-022-7 Vol. 28 Sarah M. A. Reed: Translating Cultural Identity: French Translations of Australian Crime Fiction 256 pages. 2019. ISBN 978-1-78874-007-4