Two Approaches to Translating Japanese Fantasy Fiction: A Case Study of Fuyumi Ono's Tsuki no Kage, Kage no Umi
Savtchenko, Annu (2019-01-31)
Two Approaches to Translating Japanese Fantasy Fiction: A Case Study of Fuyumi Ono's Tsuki no Kage, Kage no Umi
(31.01.2019)
Julkaisu on tekijänoikeussäännösten alainen. Teosta voi lukea ja tulostaa henkilökohtaista käyttöä varten. Käyttö kaupallisiin tarkoituksiin on kielletty.
suljettu
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on:
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe201902195420
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe201902195420
Tiivistelmä
This Master’s Thesis is a comparative study of two North American English translations of Fuyumi Ono’s Japanese fantasy novel Tsuki no Kage, Kage no Umi (‘Shadow of the Moon, Sea of Shadows’). The earlier translation of the two is a fan translation by Eu-gene Woodbury; the latter is an officially published translation by Alexander O. Smith. The study is conducted through a descriptive analysis of similarities and dissimilarities observed in the comparison between the two translations. My analysis focuses on trans-lation strategies utilized with the Japanese-English language pair, with Venuti’s concepts of foreignization and domestication as the main theoretical framework.
Academic research on fantasy fiction and its translation focuses mainly on the Anglo-American context, and in addition to the comparative study, this thesis discusses the credibility of fantasy fiction research when studying a source text of East Asian origin. In addition, this thesis touches on the fan translation phenomenon, particularly that of works of Japanese popular culture. Because the translation of fantasy fiction is a rather marginal field of academic research, the main focus of the fantasy part of this thesis is the translation of names, and how the basic construction of fictional names and neolo-gisms in Japanese differs from a Western language like English. The second part of my analysis focuses on miscellaneous aspects of translating a work of Japanese origin, and how the Japanese culture and the logographic writing system affect the translation.
The main factors behind the translation strategies utilized in my research material are the translator’s status in relation to the assumed readership of the target language and culture, the publication platform of the translation, and the expectations placed on a translator of the Japanese-English language pair.
Academic research on fantasy fiction and its translation focuses mainly on the Anglo-American context, and in addition to the comparative study, this thesis discusses the credibility of fantasy fiction research when studying a source text of East Asian origin. In addition, this thesis touches on the fan translation phenomenon, particularly that of works of Japanese popular culture. Because the translation of fantasy fiction is a rather marginal field of academic research, the main focus of the fantasy part of this thesis is the translation of names, and how the basic construction of fictional names and neolo-gisms in Japanese differs from a Western language like English. The second part of my analysis focuses on miscellaneous aspects of translating a work of Japanese origin, and how the Japanese culture and the logographic writing system affect the translation.
The main factors behind the translation strategies utilized in my research material are the translator’s status in relation to the assumed readership of the target language and culture, the publication platform of the translation, and the expectations placed on a translator of the Japanese-English language pair.