Abstract
This paper examines some 40 Japanese fictional works containing portray-als of translators or translation (here understood as including interpreting). It explores Japanese writers’use of translation as a metafictional device, the extent to which these works (mis)represent reality, whether they are positive or negative depictions, and the insights they provide into how translators and translation are regarded by Japanese authors and, by extension, the Japanese public. Recurring themes are analyzed, such as marginality and identity issues, power and fidelity, author/translator relations, attitudes toward translators, and translation as a profession and business. Of par-ticular interest is the question of how Japanese depictions might differ from those by Anglo-American writers.
Highlights
Strümper-Krobb (2003: 121) attributes the gap between fiction and reality to “differences in agenda and discourse”, but ignorance of the translators and interpreters (T/Is) profession on the part of writers is clearly another factor
The overall picture emerging from the Japanese corpus is somewhat negative, rather than a view of the T/I as “transformer, recreator, performer, even liberator of the original text” (Appel 2002: 1); nor does it tally with Appel’s claim in relation to certain Western works that the theme they share is the idea of translation as “the product of a dialogue [...] between the author and the translator”
References to translation in Japanese works are often minor and incidental, except perhaps in how they contribute to characterization as something of a dilettante
Summary
Fictional treatments of translation burgeoned in the West in the second half of the 20th century. In a book examining how the trope of translation is used by some writers as a metaphor for remaking the world in which ethnic Americans find themselves, Martha Cutter (2005: 16) suggests that translation allows us to “hear a double voice” – that of the source text/culture and that of the target text/culture “as it is modified by interaction with the source text/culture” Another possible cause for the increase in such fictional representations “is the spread of the feeling that as postmoderns we are epigones”: “The translator’s secondary position with respect to the primary text makes him or her a personification of belatedness, and translation itself a model for all forms of belated cultural endeavour” (Thiem 1995: 209). The observations below draw on implicit contrasts with my unpublished study of about 80 Western representations of translators and translation, space does not permit a full or explicit comparison
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
