Abstract
In the field of Translation Studies, humor is considered to be one of the most challenging aspects
of interlingual translation, its ephemeral essence often being difficult to preserve in another
language—in particular if the languages in question are as dissimilar as English and Japanese. This
study focuses on Junko Nishimura’s Japanese translation of Diana Wynne Jones’s British fantasy
novel Howl’s Moving Castle (1986), demonstrating how the language-bound and culture-specific
humor of the original text underwent a circumspect re-rendering to conform to Japanese language
conventions and target-readership expectations. The paper pursues the double objective of widening
the scope of research into the Japanese translations of Diana Wynne Jones’s compositions and
initiating a more constructive discussion of why “verbal humour travels badly” (Chiaro, 2010, p. 1)
across Anglophone and Japanese cultures. A discussion of linguistic and cultural differences followed
by an analysis of Jones’s humor characteristics constitute the theoretical part of the study, while an
empirical analysis of the translation methods used by Nishimura to render different comical devices
of the novel comprises the practical part.
https://ror.org/03xg1f311 
