Leiden University Student Repository

Oord, Imogen van den (2024)

Characterisation in Translation: A Reception Study of Yakuwarigo in Manga Translation

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

This reception study researched how yakuwarigo or “role language” is translated from Japanese into English in multimodal translation. A survey with two versions (one containing only excerpts with text, the other with visuals and text) was conducted amongst English-speaking Dutch students in the Netherlands. One group of the participants had prior knowledge of manga, anime, or the Japanese language or culture. The other group did not have this knowledge of Japan, or only some. It was found that visuals play an important role in interpreting characters and the translation of their yakuwarigo in manga translation. Knowledge of Japan also helped students in some cases to interpret characters accurately, although it was uncertain to which extent.

Yakuwarigo

role language

manga

translation

multimodal

comics

Author

Oord, Imogen van den

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Translation

Supervisors

Dorst, A.G.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en