A de-feminized woman in Conan Doyle's the yellow face

Hiroko Furukawa

pp. 107-123

in: Jean Boase-Beier, Lina Fisher, Hiroko Furukawa (eds), The Palgrave handbook of literary translation, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

It has been argued that female speech in Japanese translation is overly feminized and the convention has had an important role in spreading gender ideology in society. A possible strategy to counteract this tendency might be to "de-feminize" women's speech as a feminist translation strategy, as opposed to the ideologically encouraged convention. In practice, however, it seems difficult to realize de-feminizing translation. In this chapter Furukawa investigates an actual case which failed in de-feminizing a female character's speech. The character Effie's speech is analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively in unpublished translations and the accepted version of The Yellow Face (Conan Doyle 1893, tr. Yu Okubo 2008). Then a report on an interview with the translator helps provide insight into norms in the Japanese literary system.

Cited authors

Conan Doyle Arthur