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.

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.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a book written by H.P Lovecraft and is one of the first books in the genre of cosmic horror. The book has been translated several times by different translators from English to Japanese. Finding equivalence between two languages is always a challenge when translating, especially in Lovecraft’s case, whose texts are full of archaic expressions and words which are unique to the time and culture in which the book was written. Acknowledging these facts, this study aims to compare translation of religious metaphors used in the book. Lovecraft has a very distinctive view on religion that can be seen by the usage of religious metaphors in his texts. By comparing translations made by three different translators, this study shows different strategies and approaches when translating something as culturally sensitive as religion. By analyzing the metaphors, it becomes clear that there are contextual and intertextual levels that also must be considered when translating Lovecraft’s works. Results of this study show how different strategies and approaches affected the text and what kind of difficulties the translators had.

This study examined the translation of neologisms in the fan and official translations of the first book of the The Irregular at Magic High School light novel series. It aimed to examine whether the choices of translation strategies differed between the two as well as how the word type and choice of translation strategy affected the end result. Additionally, it compared the results to trends in manga fan translation. The study was performed by reading the first four chapters of the original novel and writing down each unique neologism as well as its corresponding translations. Then, each case was categorized by word type and translation strategy. The study found that both translations had similar distributions of translation strategies, though the fan translation contained more omissions and mistranslations. Furthermore, depending on the type of word, different strategies were employed. For example, neologisms of non-Japanese origin were often transferred to English whereas Japanese compound words were often literally translated. In contrast, Japanese abbreviations caused difficulty and required a wide array of strategies to translate. Lastly, the study found some similarities and some dissimilarities to manga translation.

This study examines the censorship guidelines and translation techniques used in the localization of Mother 2 (1994) (English title: EarthBound), a video game developed originally by Nintendo of Japan and released in North America in 1995 by Nintendo of America. Having extracted 50 dialogue lines which are considered to include topics subject to censorship, the study analyses the prevalence of censorship and translation techniques, as well as the consistency of the localization with Nintendo of America's guidelines. The results show that adaptation and modulation were the most favoured translation techniques, used in 36% and 40% of the cases, respectively. Furthermore, censorship appeared to be more prevalent in categories related to graphic violence and religious themes. However, inconsistencies in the localization suggest that the guidelines were not always followed strictly. These findings align with some previous studies on censorship and localization in media and entertainment, although every product has a different distribution of themes, which in turn affects the type of censorship found. The study concludes that further research on censorship and translation techniques in video games, as well as other forms of media, could provide useful insights into the process of localization.

Hakuōki, produced by Idea Factory, is an otome game series set in late Edo periodJapan. It is among the most popular video game series in its genre. The games inthis series have been localized for the English video game market, one that is verydifferent from the source culture. The game play experience is expected to beequivalent in all language versions of the game – however, given that any twolanguages cannot be completely equivalent and have different cultural contexts,translation problems are expected to arise. Acknowledging these problems, thisstudy aimed to determine whether or not, due to choices made in the translationprocess, dialogue was altered. Consequently, the study aimed to find out if aselected character’s personality could be perceived differently between the playersof two language versions of the video game Hakuōki. The study was conducted intwo parts: first, a translation analysis was conducted by the researcher. Secondly,to see if character personality was altered in translation, selected lines were used ina questionnaire survey that was conducted both in English and Japanese. Therespondents were asked to describe their perception of the character based on theexcerpts provided in the questionnaire survey. The results of the surveys werecompared and contrasted with the findings of the translation analysis. The resultsof the study show that dialogue was altered in translation, and that the selectedcharacter’s personality can be perceived differently between the players of twolanguage versions of the video game.

This study assesses the translation accuracy of ChatGPT-4 against two human translators, Donald Keene and Mark Gibeau, focusing on the first 50 sentences of Osamu Dazai's Japanese novel "Ningen Shikkaku" translated into English. In the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence, where AI increasingly integrates into fields such as translation traditionally occupied by humans, it examines the effectiveness and reliability of AI incapturing both the literal and figurative meaning of a literary text. A significant gap in the field is the scarcity of comparative studies between AI and human translators, and all the more so in Japanese-English translation. Most existing research on AI translation focuses on European languages or evaluates AI against other machine translation tools. The study employs a translation quality assessment framework based on how erroneous the translations are, where either one or two points are deducted for each error depending on severity to evaluate the accuracy of each translation. The identified error types are grounded on the standardized error marking system utilized by the American Translators Association, and endeavors to provide an objective measure of translation quality. The results of the study show that ChatGPT-4's translation incurred the least number of point deductions, roughly half as many as those of Gibeau and Keene. Gibeau's translation rankedsecond in accuracy, with Keene's trailing closely behind. The results also reveal that Keene's translation errors typically stemmed from altered words and phrases, while Gibeau's translation rather added, intensified, or omitted elements. ChatGPT-4's translation had fewer errors overall, except in relation to literalness. It is discussed that the utility of AI in literary translation varies depending on whether accuracy or aesthetic is most valued. Nevertheless, translators can already at present utilize AI to manage routine tasks and accelerate translation processes, enabling them to concentrate on aspects such as flow, rhythm, and readability.

Japanese video games have existed for decades now; however, the early games often lacked cultural elements and were thus easy to localize in other countries. As video games gained popularity and became more advanced, more of Japanese cultural elements started appearing in the games, which brought rise to translation problems. The localizers had to face the issue of whether to preserve or delete foreign culture elements within the game when these games were released in the West. As game localization of (Japanese) cultural elements is under-researched, this paper focuses solely on cultural terms. It attempts to see whether there is a change of translation techniques and if there is a shift regarding foreignization and domestication from the first game to the latest release within the game series Fatal Frame. The games were played in both their original form (Japanese) and the English localization in order to gather data which consists of cultural terms that appear in-game. Their translation was then analyzed to see if they were deemed to be foreignized or domesticated, followed by a comparison to see if there was a shift in the 22-year gap between the first and latest release. The result indicates that both games used the adaptation and equivalence (paraphrasing) techniques to a similar extent. The latest release preferred using the omission technique compared to the first, while the first game favored equivalence in conjunction with the borrowing technique. However, against expectation, the first game is considered more foreignized compared to the latest release, which goes against the trend seen in other mediums where translations are becoming more foreignized in modern times. This was also the result of a previous study within this area.