JALT2018 Plenary Series: Momoko Nakamura: Gender Construction in Japanese Translation

We have uploaded a video of Momoko Nakamura’s plenary session from the JALT2018 International Conference, titled “Gender Construction in Japanese Translation” (click here to watch). In this plenary, she explores the inter-lingual process of gender construction by analyzing the employment of gendered styles in Japanese translation. Drawing on a set of linguistic features associated with femininity and masculinity in Japanese, she investigates how Japanese translators use the gendered features in translating the speech of non-Japanese women and men (Inoue 2003; Shibamoto Smith 2004). The data consists of the translated speech in English and Russian literary works, TV dramas, films and newspaper interview articles. Based on the methodology of discourse analysis, she examines the occurrences of feminine and masculine features in the wide range of media discourse (Nakamura 2013). The analysis shows: Japanese translators overwhelmingly use feminine features in translating non-Japanese women’s speech, and while they also employ masculine features in translating non-Japanese men’s speech, with respect to the casual, laid-back speech of non-Japanese men, they have created a specific Japanese style used only in the translation of the speech. The findings suggest: the predominant use of feminine features for the speech of non-Japanese women works to naturalize Japanese femininity beyond linguistic and ethnic boundaries, and the invention of the style for non-Japanese men serves to enregister the Japanese stereotype of non-Japanese casual masculinity, depending on which Japanese masculinity maintains its idealized status. In sum, this paper contributes to elucidating the inter-lingual intersections of gender construction. This video is the first of four plenary session videos that will become available over the upcoming weeks. The theme of JALT’s 44th Annual International Conference on Language Teaching and Learning & Educational Materials Exhibition was “Diversity and Inclusion.” JALT2018 was held at the Shizuoka Convention & Arts Center (Granship) in Shizuoka City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, from Friday, November 23, to Monday, November 26, 2018. For details on our upcoming conference as well as other past conferences, please see the conference page on our website.