Abstract
In 1813 Friedrich Schleiermacher proposed a ‘special domain just for translations’, where things not permitted elsewhere are allowed. Quite independently, Japanese society has reserved for translations a separate but not marginalized area that has even affected original writing. With its recognizably translational origin or influence, this language (hon’yakuch?) blurs the lines and hierarchy between translating and original writing, and also the source-target dichotomy. It traces back to encounters with Japan’s cultural ‘superiors’, China and the West, but today it stems from Japanese expectations toward translations as a genre, rather than the prestige of the source cultures. There is a belief that hon’yakuch? reflects the source text more transparently, allowing experience of the foreign, whereas rendering foreign texts into natural Japanese might give a sense of dislocation.
 
 Tymoczko (2003: 201) argues that translators are not positioned in a ‘space between’—which would imply a lack of ideological engagement—but are inevitably committed to a particular cultural framework. Likewise, hon’yakuch? is not a neutral space between, but a site of engagement within the language proper. It would be inappropriate to describe translational Japanese as ‘foreignizing’ in the sense used by Venuti (1995), since it is not primarily motivated by a desire to disrupt readers’ complacency. Rather than constituting a locus of difference and respect for Otherness, hon’yakuch? represents a certain homogeneity in and of itself that does, nevertheless, help mediate between the foreign and the domestic. 
 
 Recently Japan’s growing cultural confidence has coincided with a shift toward domestication in translation, resulting in fewer opportunities to reorient the language through hon’yakuch?. Although it has become the target of some criticism and no longer strikes readers as fresh, it still has supporters and practitioners and continues to challenge the common Western conception of translationese as undesirable.
Highlights
In Japan there has long been an acceptance, and even a welcoming, of language with a distinctly ‘foreign’ origin and texture
The emphasis has been on how translators and writers have used hon’yakuchō within the Japanese language to redefine the contours of the language
The existence of translational language means that translation in Japan cannot be regarded in clear-cut terms of source and target languages and that the notion of target language in Japan is not monolithic, but differentiated
Summary
In Japan there has long been an acceptance, and even a welcoming, of language with a distinctly ‘foreign’ origin and texture. Hon’yakuchō was prominent in the Meiji period, when the content of translated texts (Western ideas and knowledge) was regarded as more important than the form (adherence to traditional style), and when translation was perceived as a way of enhancing the expressive capacities of the language in line with the needs of the modernizing nation. The foreignness inherent in hon’yakuchō paradoxically represents not heterogeneity, but a certain homogeneity in and of itself, since the linguistic features that mark hon’yakuchō are so widely practised and accepted in translations and even original writing It constitutes a (sub)norm whose transgressive thrust is not so much to violate Japanese norms as to transform them. The emphasis has been on how translators and writers have used hon’yakuchō within the Japanese language to redefine the contours of the language
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