A Feminist Woman with a Given Female Language: A contradictory figure in the Japanese translation of Margaret Atwoods The Edible Woman
Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction/International Journal of Translation, (2012)Abstract
When a female character’s speech is translated from English into Japanese, the femininity level of the character, as it is likely to be perceived by the reader, can be very different. This results from the explicit marking of femininity and masculinity in the Japanese language. The most striking feature is the use of sentence-final particles, and the speaker’s femininity or masculinity level is indicated by such particles, such as ‘wa’ or ‘no’ (Inoue 2006: 2).