Recently, researchers have begun to use syntactic priming to investigate the mental representation of the two languages of bilinguals and their accessibility during comprehension and production (e.g. Bernolet, et al, 2007). In the syntactic priming technique, a priming sentence is presented to elicit a structurally similar target response, when an alternative structure is also available. Previous studies, which focused mainly on the L2 syntactic priming effects of dative structures, found priming effects when the target L2 structure is similar to the L1 but not when they are dissimilar (e.g. Branigan, 2007). The present study investigated priming effects on the English L2 production of relative clauses by 18 Advanced adult Japanese-English bilingual speakers, using a modified version of Bock's (1986) sentence-repetition and picture-description task. It was predicted that the cross-linguistic differences between Japanese and English could potentially influence their L2 production. Experiment 1 comprised three prime-types (Full-relatives, Reduced-relatives, and simple actives) in English. Experiment 2 contained two Prime-types (Full-relatives and simple actives) in Japanese. In both experiments, the target responses were in English. Repeated-measures two-factor ANOVAs was used to test for Main and Interaction effects of Prime Type and Response Type on the mean proportion of responses in each Response Type category. The results of both Experiment 1 (L2-to-L2) and Experiment 2 (L1-to-L2) indicated a significant main effect of Response Type; in both experiments, the participants preferred Simple Actives for picture-description regardless of Prime type. As for the interaction between Prime Type and Response Type, significant results were obtained only in the case of Experiment 1, where the directionality was from L2 prime to L2 response, but not in the case of Experiment 2 (Japanese-to-English). Specifically, in Experiment 1, the participants used Reduced-Relatives more often in the Reduced-Relative clause priming conditions than in the Full-Relatives and the Simple Active condition. The findings bolster the position that the L1 mental representation and the L2 mental representation of complex structures are separate, particularly when a bilingual speaker's two languages are typologically different, as in the case of Japanese and English. The findings also indicate that the L1 mental representation is not accessed during L2 production.

In this study ten Grade 2-3 Japanese-English bilingual students wrote compositions on the same topic in Japanese and English. The students received an intervention designed to help them improve their Japanese writing, and were asked again to write in English after that. The compositions in Japanese and English before and after the intervention were compared and examined in terms of fluency, lexical complexity, grammatical complexity and accuracy, and using holistic measures. The results showed that the fluency, lexical complexity and theme statement of the compositions were highly related across languages before the intervention. Also the intervention was observed to exert a positive effect on lexical complexity and the use of metaphor, but negatively on accuracy. All the patterns found in the quantitavie data were investigated qualitatively. The thesis concludes with practical suggestions for parents and educators of bilingual students about how to support them trnasfer their knowledge across langauges.

In this study ten Grade 2-3 Japanese-English bilingual students wrote compositions on the same topic in Japanese and English. The students received an intervention designed to help them improve their Japanese writing, and were asked again to write in English after that. The compositions in Japanese and English before and after the intervention were compared and examined in terms of fluency, lexical complexity, grammatical complexity and accuracy, and using holistic measures. The results showed that the fluency, lexical complexity and theme statement of the compositions were highly related across languages before the intervention. Also the intervention was observed to exert a positive effect on lexical complexity and the use of metaphor, but negatively on accuracy. All the patterns found in the quantitavie data were investigated qualitatively. The thesis concludes with practical suggestions for parents and educators of bilingual students about how to support them trnasfer their knowledge across langauges.

Japanese high school teachers are extremely busy. They are covering a myriad of duties in exceedingly long shifts when compared to their colleagues from across the world. The tasks that teachers have to undergo on a daily basis could vary greatly every semester and so does their need for interaction with peers, superiors, society, parents and students. This puts them at the forefront of a wide array of ever changing learning contexts while perhaps also compromising their needs for personal and professional development. Nevertheless, the degree of sophistication and variety of learning settings available to teachers, quite often, mirrors their work commitment and obligations.     Teachers are also aware of additional threats hampering their performance and aims for empowering their students with holistic education. The aim of this research is to identify the strategies that teachers use for satisfying their own adult learning interests and professional development while highlighting the biggest impediments to their learning goals. This study pretends to be a snapshot of the current state of affairs of high school English teachers in Japan as well as a reflection of the resilience of other English teachers across Japan.    I have used a qualitative approach using theme analysis in the interpretation of semi-structured interviews.

This mixed methods study investigates how Japanese non-native English speaking teachers’ (NNESTs) efficacy and identity are developed and differentiated from those of native English speaking teachers (NESTs). To explore NNESTs’ efficacy, this study focuses on the contributing factors, such as student engagement, classroom management, instructional strategies, self-perceived English proficiency, their teaching and teacher education backgrounds, culture related to teaching, and so on. For the portion of teacher identity, this study analyzes four perspectives: their role identity, professional identity, teacher education and professional development, English proficiency. After the data were collected from Japanese NNESTs, they were compared and contrasted with their NESTs’ counterparts. The primary goal of this study is to identify the characteristics of Japanese NNESTs’ efficacy and identity and investigate how their individual, educational, cultural, and other social factors influence their efficacy and identity development. Forty six (46) Japanese NNESTs and one hundred and two (102) NESTs who were teaching in the junior high, high school, and college levels in Japan participated in a survey. Five Japanese NNESTs and six NESTs from the three types of grade levels were interviewed. Data analysis procedures comprised a statistical analysis of the survey data and a theme analysis of the interview data, and both data sets were integrated to discover the mixed method findings. There were several major findings from this research. First, there was a positive correlation between Japanese NNESTs’ efficacy, particularly efficacy for instructional strategies, and self-perceived English proficiency. Therefore, higher English proficiency can be a predictor of a higher level of overall teacher efficacy and efficacy for instructional strategies. Second, although Japanese NNESTs’ efficacy for student engagement was lower than efficacy for classroom management and instructional strategies, they demonstrated various strategies for increasing their students’ motivation. Third, their Japanese use in instruction influenced their teacher identity, and being a language model and a behavioral role model was reflected on their Japanese NNESTs’ identity. Finally, college NESTs showed significantly higher teacher efficacy compared to different groups. Both Japanese NNESTs and NESTs’ efficacy and identity were formed by their previous teaching experiences, various roles as teachers, perceptions of Japanese educational system, culture, and students. The conclusion includes suggestions and implications for administrators, teacher educators, and Japanese NNESTs.

In the field of manga translation there are official translations and translations by fans, so called scanlations. Traditionally, official translations tended to use domesticating strategies, while scanlations tended to be foreignized. This study examined potential recent trends in the usage of foreignization and domestication strategies in the official translation and scanlation of KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World! to see if there are any changes in these known tendencies. It also attempted to see the connections between the usage of those strategies to the quality of the translations. It did so by collecting cases of onomatopoeia and mimetic words, culture-specific items, honorifics, order of names of people, ateji and dialogue that does not fit these categories from both official and fan translations and compared them to the original Japanese version.It was found that some foreignizing strategies used in official translations can be linked to scanlator’s practices, and that the quality of a translation can sometimes be linked to the usage of foreignizing or domesticating strategies. Finally, a unique strategy of combining transference, translation, and leaving the original onomatopoeia or mimetic word intact was found in the official translation. However, it is not possible to determine the origin of this strategy in a case study alone, suggesting the need for further research.

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When comparing official translations and scanlations (fan-translation) the discussion often leads to the method of translation, namely foreignization and domestication. This study seek out to compare the official translation, by Vizmedia, to the scanlation done by Twisted Hel Scans, of the manga Tokyo Ghoul. The translations were compared to see if some different tendencies in their translation choices could be found. As well as looking for differences, the accuracy was also analyzed to see which translation had the higher accuracy. The results showed that the official translation leaned more towards a domesticated approach but did use some foreignizing aspects as well. The scanlation was leaning much heavier towards a foreignizing approach in which the translators tried to keep the original sentence structure and also tried to transfer Japanese cultural terms into the translations. The scanlation overall had a worse flow of the text when compared to the official translation, and it also presented more translation errors.

According to Paul Bensimon, the retranslation hypothesis advocates for a pattern between the first and second translation of a literary work. The hypothesis runs that the second translation (also called “retranslation”) tends to be closer to the original text and more foreignized, while the first translation is farther away from the original and more domesticated to better fit with the norms of the target audience. This paper intends to test this view of the retranslation hypothesis on the two English translations of the Japanese novel バトル・ロワイアル (“Battle Royale”). The study compared proper names and cultural terms from both translations in semantic similarity and from the perspective of the domestication/foreignization theory. The results show that the retranslation has more foreignizing tendencies concerning the translations and the translation strategies of cultural terms, and a closer semantic similarity to the original work regarding proper names. On the other hand, the first translation has a more frequent tendency of using foreignizing translation strategies for proper names. Thus, the results show a partial agreement with the retranslation hypothesis.

Cultural adaptation and free translation strategies are more common to use within the field of video game localization although they are still not recommended too veruse in translation studies. Free translation strategies are commonly used invideo game localization to make video games ready for a targeted audience. As free translation is mostly target-oriented in video game localization, the original source text often loses its meaning because of culturally adapting and modifying the text to fit to the target culture. This study aims to analyze 10 chosen cutscenes of the video game Lost Judgement, to find how frequently cultural adaptation and free translation strategies were used for pragmatic (proper names, cultural termsand expressions, allusion) and interlingual (regional dialect and slang) translation problems and how these problems were solved. The result and analysis of the study demonstrate examples of these translation problems within chosen cutscenes. The examples prove that depending on translation problems, both free translation and cultural adaptation can be used in combination with a literal word-for-word translation strategy. It also indicates that the video localization of Lost Judgement implied to use both domestication and foreignization approaches to achieve a higher satisfaction for the players of the game who can choose their favorite version. Another important factor was that the localization of the videogame focused on a functional approach whose purpose was to keep loyalty to the original text, the source text.