『通訳翻訳研究への招待』No.17

JAITS

＜論文＞

Kiki’s and Hermione’s Femininity:
Non-Translations and Translations of Children’s Literature in Japan

Hiroko Furukawa(Tohoku Gakuin University)
Abstract
Foreign women’s speech in Japanese translations has been suggested to be far more feminised
than the language used by real Japanese women. There have been some empirical studies on
the gap between the language seen in Japanese translations and in real women’s discourse.
However,comparative

researchonlanguageuseinJapanesetranslations

andnon-translations (i.e. novels originally written in Japanese) from a gender perspective has
been a largely unexplored area. Therefore, this article intends to fill this gap and investigates
the female characters’ language use in Volumes 1–6 of the Japanese novel series Majo notakkyubin (English title: Kiki’s Delivery Service; Eiko Kadono 1985–2009) and in theJapanese translations of Volumes 1–7 of the Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling, 1997–2007;translated by Yuko Matsuoka, 1999–2008). This research was conducted using quantitativeand qualitative analysis, focusing on the use of sentence-final particles in Kiki’s andHermione’s speech.

1. Introduction
Japanese translation is often claimed to emphasise femininity in female characters’ speechwithout regard to the characters’ personality or the time of the story (Nakamura, 2012, pp. 9–11). Nowadays, Japanese women’s language use has become less feminised – or sometimes
masculinised – and there is a clear discrepancy between the language used by real Japanesewomen and that seen in the Japanese translations of foreign women’s speech. Despite the gap
between literary language and real-life language, research on translational style from a gender
perspective has been a largely unexplored area in Japanese translation. Although there havebeen some empirical analyses of translational style and real women’s discourse (e.g. Furukawa,2016), there is only one comparative stylistic analysis of the differences between translations
and non-translations, i.e. novels originally written in Japanese (Fukuchi Meldrum, 2009, pp.
Furukawa Hiroko, “Kiki’s and Hermione’s Femininity: Non-Translations and Translations of Children’s Literature
in Japan,” Invitation to Interpreting and Translation Studies, No.17, 2017. pages 20-34. © by the Japan
Association for Interpreting and Translation Studies

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Kiki's and Hermione's Femininity

120–123). Against this background, more comparative studies of the language use in translated
texts and Japanese original texts are needed. This article thus intends to contribute to filling
this gap in the literature.
Investigating the language use of children’s literature is crucial when considering therelationship between language and gender ideology. This is because children learn how tobehave or what they are supposed to do as women in society as they grow up (Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet, 2010, pp. 15–32) and children’s literature is regarded as an important
mediator for them in learning feminine language and the feminine ideal.
A survey published in 2009 illustrated that even though language use in children’s daily
conversations is not clearly masculinised or feminised, children understand the kind of
language assigned to each gender. The survey, “The 6th questionnaire on the Japanese
language”, conducted by Shogai Gakushuu Sentā (literally, the lifelong learning centre) of theJapanese educational publisher Oubunsha, was conducted with 13,704 children of whom
10,930 of them responded – 7,598 elementary school students, 2,924 junior high school
students, 314 high school students, 85 others and nine unknown. The gender classification is asfollows: males 5,787 (52.9 per cent), females 5,107 (46.7 per cent); 36 did not respond (0.3 percent). The result shows that even though females use men’s language sometimes and viceversa, 71.7 per cent of the respondents answered no to the question “Do you think that thelanguage men use and that of women are the same?” Moreover, 78.2 per cent of themrecognised the following phrase as men’s: “Omae, iikagen ni shiroyo!” (You, enough of yourjokes!) and yet 27.6 per cent of the female respondents answered that they used it in their daily
lives; so did 63.6 per cent of the male respondents. “Omae” is a very masculine second-person
pronoun and “iikagen ni shiroyo!” is a blunt way of expressing “you’ve done enough”, withthe strongly masculine sentence-final form “yo” (Shogai Gakushuu Sentā, 2009, pp. 1–5).
Furthermore, in the same questionnaire there was a question “What should you do to learn
refined language?” and the option most chosen was “Read books” (55.0 per cent) (Shogai
Gakushuu Sentā, 2009, p. 6). This result indicates that the influence of language use inchildren’s literature can be considered important in maintaining gender ideology in society.
Therefore, this paper will investigate whether there is any difference between translational andnon-translational style in Japanese children’s literature to see how Japanese translations ofchildren’s literature work to spread the feminine ideal. This research is based on qualitativeand quantitative analysis of language use in the Japanese novel series Majo no takkyubin Vols.
1–6 (English title: Kiki’s Delivery Service; Kadono, 1985, 1993, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2009) andin the Japanese translations of Vols. 1–7 of the Harry Potter series (Rowling, 1997, 1998,
1999, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007; translated by Yuko Matsuoka, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004,
2006, 2008), focusing on the speech of the female characters Kiki in the former and Hermione
Jean Granger in the latter.

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『通訳翻訳研究への招待』No.17

2. Children’s literature
Before the actual analysis, we need to define exactly what children’s literature is.
Children’s literature can be defined as follows:
Literature for children and young people […] is defined not as those books
which they read (children and young people read and always have read a wide
range of literature), but as literature which has been published for — or mainlyfor — children and young people (O’Connell, 2006, pp. 16–17).
Both Kiki’s Delivery Service and Harry Potter are targeted at children as their main audienceand therefore they are regarded as children’s literature under this definition.
Regarding the writing or translation process of children’s literature, one of the mostimportant characteristics is “the unequal relationship” (Lathey, 2006, pp. 4–5) between thewriter or translator and the audience. Children’s literature is mostly written or translated byadults, whereas those who read it are mostly children, even though there are a few exceptions;for example, people may revisit their favourite children’s literature when they have grown tomaturity.
That is, there is a power imbalance between the producer and the receiver. Adults often
hope to socialise children by guiding their behaviour and adult writers also hope that theirwork will have some beneficial effects on their socialisation (Knowles and Malmkjaer, 1996, p.
43, pp. 61–62). In Japanese translations of children’s literature, for instance, it is claimed thatfemale characters’ speech is sometimes rendered more polite or their emotional expressions
are exaggerated for educational reasons (Fujinami, 2013, p. 114). This is an example of theintervention of adult ideology in children’s literature.
As a result, language use in children’s literature can be a mediator of ideology in society,as Knowles and Malmkjaer point out:
The language of social texts — including those texts which we read to ourchildren or give them to read for themselves — is therefore a particularly
effective agent in promoting the acceptance by the child of these customs,
institutions and hierarchies (1996, p. 44).
Hence, as indicated in the Introduction, language use in children’s literature is influential insocialising children. Feminised language, as a representation of the preferable female speechstyle, is widespread in society and has been instilled even in children’s minds. Therefore, it isimportant to study language use in children’s literature to explore how gender ideology isrepresented.
3. Kiki’s Delivery Service and the Harry Potter seriesThis article analyses the following two series, as presented in the Introduction: Vols. 1–6
22

Kiki's and Hermione's Femininityof the Japanese children’s literature series, Majo no takkyubin and the Japanese translations ofVols. 1–7 of the Harry Potter series. Majo no takkyubin was translated into English with thetitle Kiki’s Delivery Service. Hereinafter, Kiki’s Delivery Service is referred to as KDS and theHarry Potter series as HP.
KDS is a story about a 13-year-old girl, the daughter of a witch mother and a non-witch
father. She starts to live apart from her parents to become a witch. The story is probably morefamous for the film adaptation by Studio Ghibli than for the original novels. The founder ofStudio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, dramatised the novel and directed and produced the animatedfilm. The Japanese translations of HP were highly successful and created the same great
sensation in Japan as they did elsewhere in the world.
The reason for the choice of texts is that the two sets of series have five similarities. First,
both series are very popular in Japan. The texts are widely received in the target culture.
Second, the publication years are close to each other. KDS was written by Eiko Kadono andpublished between 1985 and 2009. KDS first appeared serially in a magazine, Haha no Tomo(literally, Mothers’ Friend), between 1982 and 1983 and was then brought out in book form.
Similarly, HP, written by J.K. Rowling, was published between 1997 and 2007. The series wastranslated into Japanese by Yuko Matsuoka and published between 1999 and 2008. In addition,
both of the series are targeted at a similar child audience. On the back cover of KDS, there is aclear indication that the books are for children over 9–10 years old, as follows: “For those who
are over the middle years of elementary school”. As for HP, on the website of the publisher
Seizansha, the series is recommended for children over the higher classes of elementary school,
which is over 11 years old. Furthermore, the female characters’ ages are almost the same. Overthe series, Kiki in KDS is described from 13 to 35 years old and Hermione in HP is aged 11 to
37 years old. Finally, the character settings are alike and both female characters are witches.
There is an interesting comment on Hermione’s speaking style in the Japanese translations,
made in a Japanese linguist’s lecture on Japanese and gender at an American university:[…] If a young girl like Hermione Granger speaks like this, she will lose her
friends […]. She sounds so snobbish or seems to say “I’m different from youguys” or “I’m such a feminine nice girl.” This is not women’s language you
would hear in Japan from a young girl like Hermione Granger (Nakamura, 2015,p. 4).
Indeed, the way Hermione speaks in Japanese seems unnatural at her age, or at any age
of Japanese speakers. So why has the series been published with the use of suchlanguage and why has it been widely accepted by the target audience? Is it because
adults think that they should instruct children in how to speak in a feminine manner?
But adults in real life do not speak like Hermione. Is this because adults think that suchfeminine language should be preserved?
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『通訳翻訳研究への招待』No.17

The perception of gendered language use has gradually changed among Japanese speakers,
as indicated in the results of a public opinion poll on Japanese (Agency for Cultural Affairs,
Government of Japan, 2011). The survey was conducted among 3,485 Japanese people over 16
years old, of both genders, in February 2011. Of those solicited, 60.4 per cent (2104) of people
responded. For the question “What is your opinion of the notion that there is less difference
between men’s and women’s language use?” the following five options were given(percentages of those choosing each option shown in brackets): (1) “It is better if there is nodifference between the genders” (12.2 per cent); (2) “It is a current trend and unavoidable”(47.1 per cent); (3) “It is better if there is a difference between the genders” (36.8 per cent); (4)“My opinion is neither 1, 2, nor 3” (2.9 per cent); (5) “I do not know” (1.1 per cent).
In the same public poll in 2001, 52 per cent chose option 3: “It is better if there is adifference between the genders”; 34.8 per cent chose option 2: “It is a current trend andunavoidable”. Compared to the previous results, the percentage of those supporting genderdifference in language use dropped by 15.2 percentage points, from 52 per cent to 36.8 per
cent, while the percentage of those who considered it “unavoidable” that men’s and women’s
language use is becoming similar rose by 12.3 percentage points, from 34.8 percent to 47.1 percent. Even though the word “unavoidable” does not imply positive acceptance, the perceptual
shift of Japanese speakers is worth noting.
Despite the gradual change in perception, if Japanese children see such feminised language
used repeatedly in children’s literature, they will subconsciously learn what kind of language
women are supposed to use or know. The survey presented in the previous section
demonstrates that the adults’ effort bears fruit. The Agency for Cultural Affairs (Governmentof Japan) declared in its report on the Japanese language teaching policy: “Different language
use should not be imposed on individuals depending on their gender” (1997, own translation).
Even though the officials claim gender equality in language, children’s literature and othercultural materials still work as “a vehicle for educational, religious and moral instruction andthe teaching of literacy” (Lathey, 2006, p. 6) and teaching children gender ideology prevails insociety. It should also be pointed out here that the questioning in public opinion polls seems to
be set based on the presupposition that there is a difference between women’s and men’s
language use.
4. Text analysis
This section now turns to the actual text analysis to investigate the research question
concerning whether there is any difference between translational and non-translational style inJapanese children’s literature.
The analysis is conducted focusing on the use of sentence-final particles in Kiki’s andHermione’s speech. Sentence-final particles are attached to the end of Japanese sentences.
Japanese sentences are divided into polite forms, which show the speaker’s respect for thehearer or the modesty of the speaker and plain forms with no such features of politeness;
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Kiki's and Hermione's Femininity

sentence-final particles are mostly used in the plain form. They are the most notable anddiscussed features of modern spoken Japanese and have an important function of indexing how
feminine or masculine the speaker is or would like to present her/himself (Masuoka andKubota, 2014, p.52, p. 216, p. 225). Because of this characteristic, the simple English utterance“it will rain” can be expressed as follows: “ame ga furu wa” (it will rain + sentence-final
particle “wa”: strongly feminine), “ame ga furu no” (it will rain + particle “no”: moderately
feminine), “ame ga furu” (it will rain: neutral), “ame ga furu yo” (it will rain + particle “yo”:
moderately masculine), or “ame ga furu zo” (it will rain + particle “zo”: strongly masculine).
Each rendition above has a different level of femininity or masculinity and Japanese speakers
use them to index their femininity or masculinity when they utter a simple statement, as above.
The feminine or masculine grouping of the example statement is made based on Okamoto andSato’s classification (1992, pp. 480–482). There are many more particles to indicate femininity
or masculinity and to make it more complicated, a particle can be either masculine or feminine
depending on what the particle is attached to. For example, “yo” attached after the plain formof a verb is classified into the moderately masculine category, “yo” attached after theimperative form of a verb is in the strongly masculine category and “yo” attached after a nounor na adjective is in the strongly feminine category (Okamoto and Sato, 1992, pp. 480–481).
Based on this rule, “iku yo” ([I] will go + particle “yo”) is moderately masculine, as in theexample statement above, “ike yo” (go + particle “yo”) is strongly masculine and “ashita yo”([it is] tomorrow + particle “yo”) is strongly feminine. Feminine sentences are likely to avoid
assertive, imperative or obtrusive expressions, whereas masculine phrases are regarded asincluding these features. The different language variation by gender is not absolute and men
use feminine expressions depending on the context and vice versa (Masuoka and Kubota, 2014,p. 222).
What is important about sentence-final particles is that they do not directly alter themeaning of the original utterance. Therefore, if multiple translators render a sentence written
or uttered in a foreign language in Japanese, it is possible that each translation will have a
different sentence particle. This means that when translating a novel, one of the most difficult
tasks for translators dealing with Japanese is to decide the characters’ femininity or
masculinity level and select the appropriate particles for each character.
For the analysis, the following methodology was used. First, the sentence-final particles ofthe female characters’ speech – Kiki in KDS and Hermione Granger in HP – were collectedmanually. Because sentence-final particles tend to be used in informal settings, as explained
above, only conversations occurring in a close friendship were chosen for the investigation.
Magic words and quotations were excluded from the instances as these did not represent theirown speech. Then, the particles were identified by their level of femininity or masculinity
according to Okamoto and Sato’s classification (1992, pp. 480–482) and classified under fivecategorisations: strongly feminine, moderately feminine, strongly masculine, moderately
masculine and neutral with no gender marking.
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4.1. Kiki’s language use
First, each volume of KDS was analysed using the methodology. For this study, Kiki’s
conversations with Jiji, her black cat and best friend, were collected and analysed. The cat Jiji
understands human language and Kiki speaks to Jiji in Japanese, as she does with othercharacters in the story. The total instances collected numbered 1,328.
The results in Table 1 show that the percentages of feminine forms vary. However, on thewhole, all of the volumes use feminine forms for about 50 per cent of Kiki’s speech. The
lowest percentage of the feminine form is 47.42 per cent in Vol. 3, which is more than 10 per
cent lower than the highest percentage (58.14 per cent) in Vol. 6. In Vol.3, there is a new
character, Keke, a 12-year-old girl, whose behaviour is the exact opposite of Kiki. Kiki starts
to think that Keke is intervening in her life and taking her friends away. Thus, there are somescenes in which Kiki becomes irritated by Keke. In such scenes, we see fewer feminine
features in her speech. This may be the reason why there are fewer feminised sentences thanthose in other volumes. Vol. 6 mainly describes the development of Kiki’s twin children (a girland a boy), at which point she is already 35 years old. An analysis of Japanese women’s
discourse shows that the older women are, the more they tend to use feminine forms in theirconversations (Okamoto, 2010, pp. 133–134). Hence, the percentage of feminine forms in thisvolume synchronises with this tendency. As for masculine forms, none of the volumes use any
strongly masculine forms. Thus, it is clear that the author of KDS avoids them for Kiki’s
speech. We see only a small percentage of moderately masculine forms used in Vols. 1–5.
When it comes to real women’s discourse, Okamoto’s (2010) analysis of the speech ofJapanese women aged 18–20 finds that they use 12.30 per cent feminine forms, 18.90 per centmasculine forms and 68.80 per cent neutral forms in their conversations. Compared to real
language used by Japanese contemporary women, it is clear that Kiki’s language use isexcessively feminised. It is rather unnatural that Kiki rarely speaks using masculine forms.
Table 1. Percentage of gendered sentence-final forms (Kiki’s Delivery Service, Vols. 1–6)
Vol. 1Vol. 2Vol. 3Vol. 4Vol. 5Vol. 6(1985)(1993)(2000)(2004)(2007)(2009)

Kiki’s age

13

14

16

17

19–20

35

Feminine forms

57.46

48.69

47.42

53.55

53.39

58.14

Strongly feminine

38.12

28.43

28.64

33.33

32.58

41.86

Moderately feminine

19.34

20.26

18.78

20.22

20.81

16.28

Masculine forms

1.10

0.33

2.35

0.55

0.45

0.00

Strongly masculine

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Moderately masculine

1.10

0.33

2.35

0.55

0.45

0.00

Neutral forms

41.44

50.98

50.23

45.90

46.15

41.86

Note 1: Total number of instances = 1,328 (362 for Vol. 1, 306 for Vol. 2, 213 for Vol. 3, 183 for Vol. 4,
221 for Vol. 5 and 43 for Vol. 6).

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Kiki's and Hermione's Femininity

Note 2: The year of publication used is the date when the text was first published.
Note 3: As all figures have been rounded to two decimal places, there is a systematic error when they
are totalled.

4.2. Hermione’s language use
Next, each volume of HP is analysed using the same methodology. The instances for thisstudy are Hermione Granger’s conversations with her close friends, Harry Potter and Ron
Weasley. They were also collected by hand and analysed. The total instances in this case are
3,630. The data displayed in Table 2 show that the percentages of feminine forms are higher
than 60 per cent in all volumes and that there is less fluctuation than shown in the data for
KDS. The lowest percentage is 64.47 per cent in Vol. 5 and the highest is 69.36 per cent in Vol.
7. The highest percentage in the last volumes can be explained by Hermione’s age; she isdepicted as 18 years old in most of the story and in the very last chapter she, Ron and Harry –who are all by then 37 years old – send their children to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft andWizardry. Although HP uses some masculine forms, the percentages are fairly small; even thehighest shows only 0.46 per cent in Vol. 1. Like Kiki, Hermione is artificially feminised
compared to the real Japanese women’s discourse illustrated above.
Table 2. Percentage of gendered sentence-final forms (The Harry Potter series Vols. 1–7)
Vol. 1Vol. 2Vol. 3Vol. 4Vol. 5Vol. 6Vol. 7(1997/(1998/(1999/(2000/(2003/(2005/(2007/

1999)

2000)

2001)

2002)

2004)

2006)

2008)

Hermione’s age

11–12

13

14

15

16

17

18 & 37

Feminine forms

68.94

67.01

67.13

64.51

64.47

65.20

69.36

Strongly feminine

50.68

41.88

46.76

45.31

46.51

47.36

48.47

Moderately

18.26

25.13

20.37

19.20

17.96

17.84

20.89

Masculine forms

0.46

0.00

0.23

0.31

0.00

0.00

0.00

Strongly masculine

0.46

0.00

0.23

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Moderately

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.31

0.00

0.00

0.00

30.59

32.98

32.64

35.18

35.54

34.80

30.65

femininemasculine
Neutral forms

Note 1: Total number of instances = 3,630 (219 for Vol. 1, 191 for Vol. 2, 432 for Vol. 3, 651 for Vol. 4,
802 for Vol. 5, 454 for Vol. 6 and 881 for Vol. 7).
Note 2: The years of publication used are the dates when the original and the translation were firstpublished (ST/TT).
Note 3: As all figures have been rounded to two decimal places, there is a systematic error when they
are totalled.

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4.3. Kiki vs. Hermione’s language use
To compare the use of sentence-final particles in the two series, the average of each series
is displayed in Table 3 below. Regarding the feminine forms, HP shows a higher percentage by
13.83 percentage points: 52.64 per cent for KDS, 66.47 per cent for HP. Because thepercentages of moderately feminine forms are almost the same – there is only a 0.17
percentage point difference between them – it is clear that HP uses more strongly feminine
forms than KDS. Thus, in the case of KDS and HP, HP is more feminised than KDS in termsof the female protagonist’s speech style.
Regarding the two female characters’ personalities, Kiki in KDS seems more conscious ofbeing feminine than Hermione in HP. When Kiki turns 13 years old, the time arrives tobecome a witch and Kiki has to depart to find a new town in which to live with Jiji alone.
When preparing for the departure, she asks her mother for a new dress with cosmos flower
patterns, but her request is rejected. Then she complains about her black dress and says “It’sold-fashioned, really. A black witch with a black cat. It’s all black” (Kadono, 1985, p. 30, own
translation). Moreover, when Tonbo-san, a boy Kiki is in love with, says to her “[…] you arelaid-back and I feel relaxed with you. You don’t look like a girl. […]” (Kadono, 1985, p. 136,
own translation), she becomes upset about being described as unwomanly. In contrast,
Hermione is described as a complete bookworm and is not depicted as being interested inclothing or other feminine matters. Thus, if we consider the degree of femininity in which eachcharacter is described, it would seem more reasonable to expect Kiki to use more feminised
forms. Interestingly, however, the data suggest the opposite result.
Table 3. Average percentage of gendered sentence-final forms(Kiki’s Delivery Service, Vols. 1–6 & the Harry Potter series, Vols. 1–7)
KDS

HP

Vols. 1–6

Vols. 1–7

(1985–2009)(1997–2007/
1999–2008)

Feminine forms

52.64

66.47

Strongly feminine

32.91

46.91

Moderately feminine

19.73

19.56

Masculine forms

0.09

0.12

Strongly masculine

0.00

0.06

Moderately masculine

0.09

0.06

Neutral forms

46.46

33.42

Note 1: Total number of instances = 1,328 (Kiki’s Delivery Service Vols. 1–6); total number of instances= 3,630 (the Harry Potter series Vols. 1–7).
Note 2: The year of publication used is the date when the text was first published.
Note 3: As all figures have been rounded to two decimal places, there is a systematic error when they
are totalled.

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Kiki's and Hermione's Femininity

4.4. How Hermione is feminised
This section analyses Hermione’s language qualitatively to examine the approach tofeminisation. Here is an excerpt from Hermione’s utterance to Ron. The excerpt above is theoriginal utterance and below is the Japanese translation:“You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ron, you can find the ingredients and try
and charm them into something worth eating, […]” (Rowling 2007, p. 295,
italics in the original).
「ロン、明日は あなた が料理するといいわ！ あなた が食料を見つけて、呪文で何か食べられるものに変えるといいわ。[…]」[Ron, ashita ha anata ga ryouri surutoii-wa! Anata ga shokuryou wo mitsukete,jumon de nanika taberarerumono ni kaerutoii-wa. […]]
(Trans. Matsuoka, 2008, p. 427, bold in the original).
There are three key features in the Japanese translation and these are indicated in the square
brackets below:“You [anata] can do the cooking tomorrow [wa] [!], Ron, you [anata] can findthe ingredients and try and charm them into something worth eating [wa], […]”
The first feature is that Hermione in Japanese uses the strongly feminine sentence-final particle“wa”. This particle indicates a high level of femininity in Hermione’s speech. The second isthat the exclamation mark has been added to the translation. The final feature is that you in
italics is translated in bold “あなた [anata]” in Japanese.
The second feature is worth mentioning because the Japanese translation exaggerates heremotional expression. As indicated above, children’s literature exhibits an unequal relationshipbetween the writers and translators and the readers; the former are usually adults and the latterchildren (Lathey, 2006, p. 5). Because of this inequality, adults tend to impose their values onchildren. In Japanese translations, for example, adult translators sometimes add features thatare not in the original text, such as polite forms or exaggerations of emotional expressions in
the belief that they are for the children’s sake (Fujinami, 2013, p. 114). According to Knowles
and Malmkjaer (1996, p. 44), the language used in children’s literature is an effective agent inconveying ideology in society. This means that changes made by adult translators will
influence children’s views of feminine ideology during their socialisation. This can be applied
to Hermione’s case. The quantitative analysis in this section has only focused on sentence-final
particles and has not considered other aspects, such as exclamation marks. However, thisexcerpt shows that Hermione has been feminised in Japanese not only by the frequent use offeminine sentence-final particles, but also by other factors.
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Some could still argue that the discrepancy in the use of feminine forms depends on theindividual translator’s preference. To explore this point, the next section presents a set of datafrom the author’s previous research (Furukawa, 2015), analysing some Japanese translations ofchildren’s literature for reference.
4.5. A comparison with other translations of children’s literature
The data presented here are from the two Japanese translations of Anne of Green Gables(Montgomery, 1977, first published in 1908; AGG hereinafter): Yuko Matsumoto’s translationin 1993 (AGG1) and Yasuko Kakegawa’s 1999 translation (AGG2). Another Japanesetranslation by Hanako Muraoka in 1952 was analysed in previous research. However, because
the publication year is too distant in time for a comparison to KDS and HP, Muraoka’s version
is excluded from this paper. In this analysis, the 2000 edition of AGG1 and the 2006 edition of
AGG2 were used.
AGG has been one of the most popular girls’ novels in post-war Japan (Uchiyama, 2011,
pp. 92–93). Anne is described from 11 to 16 years old in this story. Although there is no
indication of the target audience of the translations on the back cover, in the translator’s
afterword, or on the publisher’s webpage, it is assumed that the novel will be read by girls at
similar ages to Anne in Japan. AGG1 is a unique case compared to most Japanese translationsof AGG because it comes with copious notes. Thus, AGG1 seems to appeal more to adultreaders. For this analysis, Anne’s speech with Diana, her best friend, is collected and analysed
for the same reason explained above.
The results shown in Table 4 indicate that both AGG1 and AGG2 are more feminised than
KDS and HP. The gap between the least feminised KDS and the most feminised AGG1 ismore than 30 per cent – 33.25 per cent. The data appear to support the idea that translations ofchildren’s literature are more feminised than original Japanese children’s literature.
It is worth mentioning that the finding in Fukuchi Meldrum (2009, pp. 120–123) shows acontrary result to this analysis; that is, non-translations use more feminine sentence-final
particles than translations. For her analysis, 16 Japanese translations and 18 Japanese books,
all of which were bestsellers between 1980 and 2006, were chosen. The corpora comprised
various genres of adult books, such as historical novels, thrillers, mysteries and self-help books,
but only one work of children’s literature, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling,2000) was included. It is possible that the contradictions were caused by the choice of genre
and the target audience of the texts; this issue needs to be investigated in further studies.

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Kiki's and Hermione's Femininity

Table 4. Average percentage of gendered sentence-final forms(KDS, HP, AGG1 and AGG2)
KDS

HP

AGG1

AGG2

Vols.1–6

Vols. 1–7

(1993)(1999)(1985–2009)(1997–2007/
1999–2008)

Feminine forms

52.64

66.47

85.89

79.01

Strongly feminine

32.91

46.91

58.28

50.57

Moderately feminine

19.73

19.56

27.61

28.44

Masculine forms

0.09

0.12

0.00

0.00

Strongly masculine

0.00

0.06

0.00

0.00

Moderately masculine

0.09

0.06

0.00

0.00

Neutral forms

46.46

33.42

14.11

20.99

Note 1: Total number of instances = 1,328 (Kiki’s Delivery Service Vols. 1–6), 3,630 (Harry Potter
series Vols. 1–7), 489 (AGG1) and 524 (AGG2).
Note 2: The year of publication used is the date when the text was first published.
Note 3: As all figures have been rounded to two decimal places, there is a systematic error when they
are totalled.

5. Conclusion
This article has conducted a comparative study of the style in translations of children’s
literature and original Japanese children’s literature. To investigate the research question
concerning whether there is any difference between these, two sets of series have been
analysed: the Japanese translations of the Harry Potter series Vols. 1–7 (J.K. Rowling, 1997–
2007; translated by Yuko Matsuoka, 1999–2008) and the Japanese novel series Majo notakkyubin Vols. 1–6 (Kiki’s Delivery Service, Eiko Kadono, 1985–2009). The analysis was
carried out with regard to the female characters Hermione Jean Granger’s and Kiki’s speech,
focusing on the use of sentence-final particles, which are considered a notable indicator of
their femininity.
From the results, it can be concluded that Hermione is more feminised than Kiki. Therefore,
in this particular case, the data suggest that translations of children’s literature are more likely
to use feminised sentences than children’s literature in the original Japanese. Another set ofdata from the author’s previous analysis of the Japanese translations of Anne of Green Gables(Montgomery, 1977) appears to support this conclusion. To obtain a more conclusive
judgement, this issue will require further research into other children’s literature, translated ororiginal. Nevertheless, the data presented in this article suggest that translators intervene in theoriginal texts in the translation process and instruct children about the feminine ideal.
Consequently, translations of children’s literature can be a vehicle for gender ideology inJapanese society.

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Acknowledgement
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16K02043.
About the author
Hiroko Furukawa is Associate Professor at Tohoku Gakuin University, Japan. Her PhD in Literary
Translation is from the University of East Anglia (UK), 2011. Her main research interests are literarytranslation, translation theories and language and gender ideology.
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