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Literature Translation as Re-importation: When the Text Travels Twice Between Cultures

Name: Hiroko Inose

Contact address: hin@du.se

Affiliation: Dalarna University (Sweden)

In the field of literature translation, the treatment of cultural references becomes one of the major issues. In order to transfer the source culture (i.e. the culture of the source text, ST) into the target culture (i.e. the culture of the target text, TT), there are numbers of translation strategies. However, the problem becomes even more complicated if the text has to travel not only once, but twice between the source and target cultures.

This can happen in various ways, but one case is when a ST, written about the target culture, is translated into the target language (TL), to be read by the readers of the target culture.  For example, translating a novel on Japanese traditional culture published in U.S. and written in English into Japanese language would give a series of special translation problems that would not occur when the same novel is translated into any other language. This is not only because of the distance between English and Japanese languages and differences in their structures, but because of the significant difference of cultural knowledge between ST (in this case, English original version) and TT (in this case Japanese translation) readers – unlike in the usual case of translation, the TT readers are expected to have much more knowledge than ST readers about the cultural themes treated in the novel. This may be called re-importation of culture. The target culture is first imported into the ST for the ST readers, and then re-imported into the TT through translation.

The present study will focus on language combinations English/Japanese and French/Japanese, and study novels written on traditional or current Japanese culture and society that have been translated into Japanese.  Original and translation of novels such as Memoir of a Geisha (Arthur Golden,1999), An Artist of the Floating World (Kazuo Ishiguro, 1986) or Stupeur et Tremblements (Amélie Nothomb,1999) will be analysed to see the translation problems encountered, as well as translation strategies used to solve them.