“In the name(s) of the moon!”: ‘Japaneseness’ & Reader Identity in Two Translations of Sailor Moon

Manga has become increasingly popular in the United States since the 1990s, and over time, the strategies employed in translating these texts for English-speaking audiences have shifted. As translation practices have changed, so too has the status of the sociocultural construct of 'Japaneseness' – a commodified branding of Japanese elements – in translated manga. A striking example of this shift can be seen in two English translations of Naoko Takeuchi's 1991 manga Bishôjo Senshi Sêrâ Mûn (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon) for the U.S. market, released 13 years apart: the 1998 Mixx/TokyoPop translation and the 2011 Kodansha translation. In this paper, we examine the use of four linguistic features – loanwords, honorifics, onomatopoeia, and iconicity – in both translations, and find that each version broadly employs a different strategy to either erase (in the case of the earlier translation) or amplify and actively create (in the case of the later translation) 'Japaneseness' within the text. These strategies in turn afford two different ways for readers to engage with Sailor Moon, so following our analysis of the texts themselves, we then examine fan discourse to show how readers construct distinct identities by drawing on salient linguistic features of each translation. The shift from a preference for domesticated reading experiences to a desire for translations to retain as much Japanese character as possible reveals the construct of 'Japaneseness' as central to the commodification of Japanese language and culture in both manga publishing and Anglophone fandom more broadly.

Accuracy analysis of Japanese machine translation based on machine learning and image feature retrieval

At present, there are still many deficiencies in Chinese-Japanese machine translation methods, the processing of corpus information is not deep enough, and the translation process lacks rich language knowledge support. In particular, the recognition accuracy of Japanese characters is not high. Based on machine learning technology, this study combines image feature retrieval technology to construct a Japanese character recognition model and uses Japanese character features as the algorithm recognition object. Moreover, this study expands image features by generating a brightness enhancement function using a bilateral grid. In order to exclude the influence of the edge and contour of the image scene on the analysis of the image source, the brightness value of the HDR image is used instead of the pixel value of the image as the image data. In addition, this research designs experiments to study the translation effects of this research model. The research results show that the model proposed in this paper has certain effects and can provide theoretical references for subsequent related research.

Kyara revisited: The pre-narrative character-state of Japanese character theory

This article proposes to take a closer look at a variety of contemporary Japanese “character” franchises which cannot be accounted for if the entities in question are primarily understood with reference to diegetic worlds or stories. Rather, virtual idols like Hatsune Miku, fictional mascots like Kumamon, or notorious product placement figures such as Hello Kitty all seem to circulate mostly on non-narrative artifacts such as clothes, office supplies, or decontextualized artworks, and within mediated performances such as stage musicals, cosplay, or public appearances in full-body suits. They are nevertheless quite typical for the Japanese “media mix” franchising model, designed to allow for user-level reshuffling and reenactment. Such “characters without stories,” or kyara, are thus best understood as “mediated performers,” as fictional actors that can take on any fictional role attributed to them within the participatory cultures and collective creations of fan manga (dōjinshi), fan artworks, or even cosplay. Theorists such as Itō (2005) or Azuma (2009) therefore differentiate sharply between kyarakutā und kyara, the latter being a pre- or meta-narrative “nodal point” for diverging games of make-believe. Kyara can just as easily be enacted and performed as they can be brought back into narrative (kyarakutā) contexts. The following article relates and contrast these notions to international (“Western”) character theories and argues for their relevance beyond “exotic” Japanese contexts.