A feminist woman with a given female language : a contradictory figure in the Japanese translation of Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman

incl. ref.

"The acclaimed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood published The Edible Woman in 1969 when feminism was becoming an influential trend in North America. Although this story has a radical feminist voice, The Edible Woman was translated by a male translator, Oura Akio, in 1996, and his language choice for the protagonist is excessively feminine. (...) In the Japanese translation, readers are likely to find a contradictory figure in Marian and she seems to be happy to use impeccable women's language given and promoted by male-dominant authorities. (...) This fact interferes with the novel's feminist purpose. I therefore examine the effect of Maian's language use in the Japanese translation from a reader-response theory and a relevance theory point of view."