In the early part of the twentieth century, Modern written Chinese, due to encounters with Western languages, was undergoing significant changes in relation to how to represent gender in third person pronouns. This paper, through an analysis of the reasons for Yuen Ren Chao’s translation of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and his solution to the technical problems relating to the translation of the third person pronoun, demonstrates how “她” and “牠(它)” had a high occurrence frequency and usage and that “她” was strikingly close to modern Chinese. The paper also examines the times of the translation, Yuen Ren Chao’s enthusiasm for participating in the creation of Modern written Chinese and the possible influence in the latter part by contact with R.F. Johnston.

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This paper aims to investigate how users with a certain level of knowledge of English language, in addition to learning motivation, receive and utilize the presence of an interpreter and the corresponding translations provided by said interpreter, and hence to reveal the roles granted to the interpreter by the users. Six people in their 50s, 60s and 70s participated in this study, in which semi-structured interviews were conducted. The results revealed the users’ different stances toward the interpreter: dependent and independent positions, each of which represented participants’ dual identities as English learners and as group members. The interpreter became not only a linguistic assistant for learning materials, but also provided support for creating harmony among the users. This suggests that the users’ individual or group characteristics can make their understanding of interpreters’ roles varied and even unpredictable, thus raising interpreters’ awareness of their unexpectedly wide-ranging possibilities as a communication facilitator.

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It is widely said that Japanese women prefer not to use Japanese women’s language. However, the speech of foreign female characters in Japanese translations is usually translated to use stereotypical Japanese women’s language. Hence, this study seeks to explore the factors which may play a role in the amplification of Japanese women’s language in translations of American novels. Four hypothetical factors are proposed: the personality of the female characters in the original novels (with consideration to social class as well), the time period that Japanese versions were first published, the gender of translators, and the age of translators. With data collected from the Japanese translations, these factors will be examined to determine if any (of the four factors) influence the use of stereotypical Japanese women’s language.

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This paper reports the discursive analysis of novice-professional differences in problem-solving approaches to translation challenges. A semi-structured interview was individually conducted with 16 professionals and 16 student translators. Key interview questions were prepared and seven simulated scenarios were created. During the interview, each participant was asked to describe how they would address the ill-defined scenarios and further questions were asked, where necessary, as to what kind of solution(s) they would employ and their justifications of the chosen solution(s). Overall, professional participants were prone to approach to the challenges in a holistic and flexible manner (e.g. the use of a wide range of solutions with consideration to other stakeholders), while novice participants generally indicated their lack of understanding of translator’s roles and confidence about their competencies. The findings in this study can be a useful reference to accommodate this aspect of problem solving in translator education classrooms.

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This article examines a Japanese version of “The Strange Mum” originally published in Korea in 2016. Although the original text is written in standard Korean, the Japanese translation, published in 2017 with the title “Fairy Mum” employs a Kansai dialect to one character and Standard Japanese to the second character. Why has been it translated in this way. I clarify this issue and the effect of dialect use.

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South Korea and North Korea held an unusual historical inter-Korean summit in April 2018, and the results of the summit was announced through an agreement text named “Panmunjom Declaration”. Responding to the global attention, the Korean government released multilingual translations of the same declaration. However, some media pointed out inaccuracies in the English translation of Panmunjom declaration. The declaration is a public document which has important meanings and implications for the future of inter-Korean relations. However, as pointed out in previous studies, there seems to be a problem concerning the translation of official public documents in Korea. In order to confirm and corroborate the findings from such studies, this paper attempts to analyze the Japanese translation of the Panmunjom declaration by using the quality assessment list for public document translation formulated by Chung & Lee (2013).

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This paper discusses norms of interpreters’ awareness working for Japanese companies in China, focusing specifically on their responses to communication conflicts. Based on a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, the study analyzes the interpreters’ behaviors when communication conflicts occur, by applying Chesterman’s (1997) theory. The survey and interviews results reveal that interpreters make efforts to avoid conflicts and make the communication smooth under the influence of “the communication norm” (strongly) and “the accountability norm”. Meanwhile, “the relation norm” has less effect. The study suggests that interpreters’ action is partly governed by norms, though their identity as an interpreter as well as an employee of a company, also influence their interpreting behaviors.

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