JAPANESE-ENGLISH AND ENGLISH- JAPANESE TRANSLATIONS OF ONOMATOPOEIA - A Comparative Pragmatic Analysis of Translation Consistency in Juvenile Fiction

Abstract

Aims: This study on Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese translations of onomatopoeia aims to investigate common onomatopoeia, how they are translated, how consistently they are translated and finally, what concepts impact that consistency. Method/material: Several thorough read-throughs of the books Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Delivery Service act as the basis of this thesis. Following this, an analysis of the most observed onomatopoeia in these novels was conducted. In addition, to further investigate onomatopoeia frequency, the BCCWJ corpus was utilized. Once data was collected and categorized, an analysis of the consistency of translation of the most common onomatopoeia was conducted. Furthermore, analysis of the rate of translation through omission/addition. Finally, discerning whether frequency, lexicality, or where the onomatopoeia fall on the “showing-saying continuum”, impacts the translation consistency, if such is the case, discern how much. Main results: Translation was deemed consistent across the two books. The omission rate for Kiki’s Delivery Service was higher than previous research suggests, though additions for Howl’s moving castle were at a lower level. Frequency had little impact on translation consistency but lexicality and “showing-saying” had much more impact.