Views on LGBTQ+ revealed through translation

University students’ representation of fictional gay and bisexual characters

Abstract

This paper examines how gay and bisexual characters from a short English story are represented by Japanese university students through translation into Japanese. We recruited five students and asked them to translate an excerpt of the short story. The findings are based on the translations, and on subsequent semi-structured interviews. The results suggest that the participants’ representations of gays and bisexuals are strongly influenced by the media. While some participants produced target texts solely based on such stereotypical images, others strived to learn more about actual gay people by utilizing the Internet before undertaking translation. The study also revealed that all participants were influenced by heterosexual and gender binary norms when translating and describing the relationship between the gay and bisexual characters.