BEAL Forum 6. Plenary Session 1. 
Date: Friday, 18 October 2024
Time: tba
Venue: Virtual event via Zoom, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Professor Momoko Nakamura
Kanto-Gakuin University
“Inter-indexical Gender in Japanese Translation”
Abstract: Japanese translators construct gender by assigning different speech styles to the speech of non-Japanese characters. In this talk, Nakamura first shows that the speech of non-Japanese white women is often translated into stereotypical Japanese women’s language. Such translations serve to naturalize the reserved, polite femininity associated with Japanese women’s language as if it is shared by women all over the world. Second, the speech of non-Japanese casual men is translated into a peculiar informal style used only by non-Japanese men. Such translations, by dividing Japanese and non-Japanese masculinities, work to sustain the hegemonic status of the polite Japanese masculinity.
Bio: NAKAMURA Momoko, Ph.D. is Professor of English at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan. Her recent publications include Kotoba ga kawareba shakai ga kawaru [Language Changing Society] (2024),Jibunrashisa to Nihongo [Identity and Japanese] (2021), Gender, Language and Ideology: A Genealogy of Japanese Women’s Language (2014), Shinkeigo “maji yabaissu” [New Honorifics “Maji yabaissu”] (2020), andOnna kotoba wa tsukurareru [Constructing Women’s Language] (2007, Received the 27th Yamakawa Kikue Award). She has edited several volumes and special issues on language, gender, and sexuality including special issues of Gender & Language (2020) and East Asian Pragmatics (2021) and translated Language and Sexualityby Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick (2003) into Japanese.
Free and Open to the Public
Organizers:
BEAL Forum 6 Organizing Committee
Faculty Co-Chairs: Mineharu Nakayama, Marjorie K.M. Chan, and Zhiguo Xie
Graduate Student Co-Chairs: Paul Ueda, Ka Fai Law, Yuki Hattori & Saori Wakita
Committee Members: tba
Sponsors:
East Asian Studies Center, Graduate Association of Chinese Linguistics (GACL), Graduate Students of East Asian Languages and Literatures (GREALL), Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (DEALL), and other OSU units.
This event is sponsored in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center, programming fund for GACL from the Council on Student Affairs, and by the James H-Y. Tai Buckeye East Asian Linguistics Fund.