The Inferno from La Commedia, by Dante Alighieri has been translated into Japanese about a dozen times in the past 110 years. In this comparative analysis, seven of those are analysed and compared with regards to how cultural terms were translated and to what degree the different translators tried to make a word-by word translation for certain selected passages. Nine such passages, with a total of 93 lines were chosen. About 60 words were analysed per translator and the main goal was to determine whether if they have a tendency towards foreignisation or domestication. A Natural Language Processing analysis was also conducted to assess the similarity of translations in terms of word usage. Besides the oldest translation, which is quite different when it comes to both word usage and grammar and is therefore considered an outlier, two main groups emerge. One that tends to translate more word-by-word than the other, which is freer. All in the first group imitate the Italian pronunciation of cultural terms using katakana, while most in the latter prefer the current Japanese term. In between these groups appears one translator, which is more consequently following the change of words in a similar way like Dante did when referring to Virgilio, while others tend to use the same word several times.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:du-48840 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Hast, Anders |
| Publisher | Högskolan Dalarna, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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