Raising the intercultural competence of learners has been one of the most important issues in language education in this global world, but how can we integrate intercultural education into our teaching? This chapter introduces two online exchange projects, one for the beginner level and one for the intermediate level, which were designed for Swedish learners of Japanese as a means to develop their intercultural competence through collaborative language learning. The projects were designed through collaboration between five universities in Europe and Asia. In this chapter, the authors explore how the intercultural competence of learners developed based on learners' reflections after each session and their answers in the questionnaire after the project. The study finds that the different language levels require teachers to take different approaches in designing the intercultural contents of the projects. The chapter ends with further discussions on how to design intercultural education in an online environment.
A text can travel between languages and cultures through translation, but this “travel” can be rather complicated when the text not only goes, but goes back to the culture of origin. This can happen when the text is about the culture of the target language. Translating Memoir of Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997) into Japanese can be one example. Due to the expected level of readers’ cultural knowledge, the translator will have to use some different translation strategies compared to when the text is translated into other languages. This “travel” of the text can be even more complicated if the author’s first language or original cultural background is different from the language in which s/he writes the text – for example, an author whose first language is Japanese, but writing his/her text in English, about stories that take place in Japan – and then the text is translated into Japanese by a translator, to be published in Japan. This is the case of Kyoko Mori, a Japanese-American writer who had grown up in Japan until she moved to U.S. as an adult. Her first novel, Shizuko’s Daughter was published in U.S. in 1993. It is autobiographical, and therefore the story takes place in Japan, with all its personages being Japanese. The novel was translated by Makiko Ikeda and published in Japan in 1995. Four of Mori’s novels are published in Japan, but the author never translated her own novels into Japanese. This happened before the cross-border literature boom in Japan and may be considered as its precursor. In the present study, the “travel” of this text will be studied from two aspects – exoticisation and translation. The novel belongs to the minority literature in U.S., and its Japanese aspects seem to be emphasized in its reading (in its cover or in book reviews), whereas in Japan, its publication was called “Reimported Japanese literature”, and the fact it was written in English attracted great attention. It was an exoticisation from both ends. As for the translation, source and target texts will be studied in detail, to identify the cases of change, addition (of extra information), omission, correction of culturally wrong information (if any) and their motives will be considered. Unnatural expressions and translationese will also be studied, considering if they can be avoided when the first language of the author is Japanese.
The present paper discusses how various elements in shōjo manga (Japanese comics for girls) have been incorporated in works of Japanese contemporary literature. The connection between shōjo manga and literature was pointed out for the first time when the novel Kitchen by Yoshimoto Banana was published in 1987. This paper argues that this connection has developed further since then, focusing on one of the most active writers in contemporary Japanese literature, Miura Shion[1]. The paper briefly introduces the genre shōjo manga and describes its connection with the novel Kitchen before analysing a short story and an essay by Miura Shion, focusing both on their motifs and styles, to identify elements influenced by shōjo manga.
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