Reproductive Health and Rights Proposed in the Japanese Translation of Our Bodies, Ourselves (1988)

Abstract

This study analyses the Japanese translation of Our Bodies, Ourselves (The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1984). Our Bodies, Ourselves was an epoch-making text, as it advocated reproductive health and rights, 20 years before the Cairo Declaration defined them. The book has played an important role in women’s health worldwide—it has sold around 4.5 million copies and has been translated into thirty languages all over the world (Bessaïh & Bogic, 2020, p. 520). The Japanese translation Karada, Watashitachijishin (Our Bodies, Ourselves Japanese Translation Group, 1988) is worth exploring because it not only introduced the notion of reproductive health and rights to Japan, but it also provided a voice for Japanese women. Therefore, this study will conduct a comparative analysis of the source and target texts, to investigate the attempts, from a feminist translation perspective, to capture the original in the Japanese version.