Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of English
Document Type
Paper
Publication Date
Spring 2024
Subjects
Publishers and publishing, Translating Books -- United States
Abstract
This research analyzed the ways in which book titles are changed in translation from English to Japanese and Japanese to English. The titles of one hundred books, fifty in Japanese and fifty in English, were sorted into three main categories of translation based on Tsukawaki’s research on translated sci-fi movie titles (2009): those using the Japanese katakana script, literal, and semantic. For Japanese to English titles, literal translations accounted for 68% of the data and semantic translations for 20%, while Japanese to English titles were literally translated only 48% of the time but semantically 34%. The changes made to translated titles are grounded in a language’s associated context (culture). This corroborates existing research that Japanese is an implicit language relying largely on shared context among speakers while English is an explicit language requiring more words to compensate for a lack of shared context. Based on the relationship between language and culture, this paper advocates for an increased emphasis on localization in translation and marketing within the book publishing industry.
Rights
© 2024 Angela Griffin
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42257
Recommended Citation
Griffin, Angela, "Prose by Any Other Name: Analyzing Changes to Translated Book Titles in Japanese and English" (2024). Book Publishing Final Research Paper. 79.
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42257
Description
Paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Writing: Book Publishing.