Reframing the victims of WWII through translation

Abstract

This study examines the ways and extent to which narrative voices encoded in a source text are reframed and mediated through translation. So Far from the Bamboo Grove (Watkins 1986), the personal narrative of an eleven-year-old Japanese girl during the final days of WWII, was used as an educational text for primary and middle school pupils in the US until it became the target of heavy criticism from Korean-American parents who boycotted the book, arguing that it misguided young American students by constructing a ‘good Japanese–bad Korean’ binary. The Korean translation was distributed by a reputable publishing house in South Korea until 2007, when its distribution became controversial. Although the book – and its translation – has been the target of much criticism, it has been neglected by scholars of translation studies. Adopting the model of analysis elaborated by Baker (2006) and drawing on the concept of framing by Goffman (1974) and the work of Genette (1997), this study analyses So Far from the Bamboo Grove and its Korean translation, Yoko Iyagi (Watkins 2005, trans. Yoon), and investigates the framing strategies used by mediators to reframe the narrative in a new setting.