Hiroko Furukawa

-The title:
Bridget Joness Femininity Constructed by Language: a comparison
between the Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary, and the Japanese subtitles of
the film
-Authors name: Hiroko Furukawa
-Affiliation:
PhD student, School of Literature and Creative Writing
University of East Anglia, UK
-E-mail address: h.furukawa@uea.ac.uk
-Postal address: PhD student, School of Literature and Creative Writing
University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bridget Joness Femininity Constructed by Language:

A comparison between the Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary, and the
Japanese subtitles of the film
Hiroko Furukawa
(University of East Anglia)

Abstract
The language found in Japanese translation and original fiction is very different
from that used by Japanese women in their real lives. Present-day Japanese women do not
use literary language or so-called authentic womens language; however, they read it as
female characters speech, particularly those in non-Japanese novels and stories. This
tendency has become a kind of convention in Japanese translation. In addition, Japanese
has a wide variety of language choices depending on the speakers perceived level of
femininity or masculinity. So a translators language use greatly affects the image of the
characters, and their femininity level is constructed differently in each translation.
In this paper, I will analyse the Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary and
the Japanese subtitles of the film version to explore the differences in Bridgets
femininity from a linguistic perspective.
Even in a contemporary novel such as Bridget Joness Diary, an exaggerated
female figure can be seen. A linguistic analysis of the Japanese translation of Bridget
Joness Diary and real womens discourse shows that the eponymous protagonist
overuses feminine and sophisticated forms in the translation. Bridget is a 30-something
working woman in London, and her speech style is modern and colloquial. Hence, there
is a striking gap between Bridget in the original and that in the Japanese translation. The
motivation of this paper is to investigate how differently Bridget was perceived by the
audience of the film and the readers of the translation.
The markedly feminine figures in Japanese translation are created by social
expectations of an ideal feminine speaking style, and translation functions to reinforce
an ideal model of how women should speak. I will further argue that translation is a
shaper of gender ideology.

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Key Words
Literary Translation
Film subtitles
Femininity
Japanese Womens Language
Bridget Joness Diary

1. Introduction
The language found in Japanese translation and original fiction is very different
from that used by Japanese women in their real lives. Present-day Japanese women do not
use so-called authentic womens language in conversation. They do, however, read it as
used by female characters, particularly those in non-Japanese novels and stories; its use is
a convention of Japanese translation (Inoue, 2003; Nakamura, 2007b). Womens language
in this sense is neither simply a linguistic construct, nor is it real Japanese womens
language. But this is a culturally salient category and knowledge (Inoue 2006: 13) that
women are supposed to know. The female representation in literature is constructed by
the fabricated language use, and this is a reflection of social expectations of what women
should be like.
Japanese is characterised by the explicit marking of femininity and masculinity.
The speakers femininity or masculinity level is indicated by different sentence-final
particles, such as wa or no (Inoue, 2006: 2). For example, a simple utterance I will
go can be expressed in at least five different ways; Iku-wa (Ill go + particle wa, very
feminine), Iku-no (Ill go + particle no, moderately feminine), Iku (Ill go, neutral),
Iku-yo (Ill go + particle yo, moderately masculine), or Iku-ze (Ill go + particle ze,

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strongly masculine). That is, one sentence can convey a characters strong femininity,
moderate femininity, strong masculinity, or moderate masculinity. Therefore, when a
translator renders a foreign characters speech, she or he has to decide how feminine or
masculine the character is in the original text, and choose the appropriate level of
femininity or masculinity. Hence, a female characters femininity level may be different
in each Japanese translation if the same novel is translated by several different translators.
This paper uses stylistic analysis of translation and actual speech, focusing on
gender marking in the Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary (BDJ1i, translated by
Yoshiko Kamei in 1998) and the subtitles of the film version (BDJ2, 2001). It considers
two questions: 1. How and to what extent do female characters speech patterns in the
Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary and the Japanese subtitles of the film
version not reflect Japanese womens contemporary language practice? 2. How
differently was Bridget perceived by the readers of the translation and the audience of the
film?
There are some analyses on the artificial use of womens language in literature;
however, there has been no empirical study. This paper, therefore, explores the gap
between female characters speech patterns in Japanese translation and Japanese
womens contemporary language practice using numerical data.
Bridget Joness Diary is a contemporary novel and the characters conversations
are held mostly in an informal situation. So this is an appropriate text to compare with
real Japanese womens dialogues. BJDs eponymous protagonist is a single working
woman in London, in her thirties, and her speech style is modern and colloquial in the
original. This novel was a worldwide bestseller with sales of over two million copies,

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garnered the 1998 British Book of the Year, and was adapted into a film in 2001
(Memmott, 2006). As a benchmark to see the gap between literary language, supposedly
authentic womens language, and real womens language, I shall be using a linguistic
analysis of Japanese womens conversation (Okamoto and Sato, 1992).

2. A Big Gap between Real Language, BJD1 and BJD2

To answer the first questionhow and to what extent do female characters
speech patterns in the Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary and the Japanese
subtitles of the film version not reflect Japanese womens contemporary language
practice?I first compare BJD with the analysis of Japanese womens conversation.
Then, the protagonist Bridgets femininity in the translation is compared with that in the
film subtitles. The comparison clearly shows that femininity in Japanese translation and
subtitles is constructed by the use of fabricated language, and the characters in the
translation are over-feminised.

Firstly, I compare BJD1 with the result of an analysis of Japanese womens

conversations that occur in the context of close friendships (Okamoto and Sato, 1992).
For the data of BJD1, I consider the protagonist Bridget Joness conversations with three
close friends: Tom, Jude, and Sharon. The studies focus on the analysis of sentence-final
forms, which can be regarded as the clearest distinguishing characteristics of womens
language. I compare the sentence-final forms with Okamoto and Satos five
classifications: strongly feminine, moderately feminine, strongly masculine, moderately

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masculine, and neutral (Okamoto and Sato, 1992: 480-482). This methodology is also
applied to the next comparison. Okamoto and Satos analysis is based on the informal
two-person conversations of three female homemakers, who are close friends aged 27-34,
from middle- or upper-middle-class background. They were born in Tokyo and living
there when the survey was conducted. Although their professions are different from
Bridget Jones, and there is a six-year time difference of these data, Okamoto and Satos
study is a useful benchmark to see the gap between emphasised feminine speech style in
BJD1 and Japanese contemporary womens actual conversations.
Considering the date in Figure 1, there is a striking gap between Bridgets
language use and that in real discourse. When examining feminine forms in the two sets
of data, it is obvious that Bridgets language use is much more likely to be seen as
feminine than real Japanese womens speech. Regarding masculine forms, BJD1 seems to
avoid masculine forms intentionally. Contemporary Japanese women used masculine
forms at 14% in Okamoto and Sato, whereas there is only one masculine form in BJD1.

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Figure 1 Use of Gendered Sentence-final Forms (BJD1 and Real Language

Practices)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sentence-final Forms

Total Tokens Used (%)

Okamoto and Sato
(1992)
(1998)

BJD1

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feminine forms
-Strongly feminine forms
-Moderately feminine forms
Masculine forms
-Strongly masculine forms
-Moderately masculine forms
Neutral forms

24%
12%
12%
14%
0%
14%
62%

45.22%
28.70%
16.52%
0.87%
0.87%
0.00%
53.91%

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note (1): Total number of tokens = 390 (130 instances for each subject, Okamoto and Sato 1992) and 115 (BJD 1998)
Note (2): Each subject in Okamoto and Satos survey aged between 27-34
Source of the data Okamoto and Sato:
Okamoto, Shigeko and Shie Sato. (1992) Less Feminine Speech among Young Japanese Females, in
(eds.) Hall, Kira, Mary Bucholtz and Birch Moonwomon. Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second
Berkeley Women and Language Conference, April 4 and 5, 1992, Vol.1, Berkeley and Calif; Berkeley
Women and Language Group: 483
Note (4): As all figures in BJD1 are rounded off to two decimal places.

Secondly, let us compare the two sets of data with the data from BJD2 under the
same conditions. In this analysis, Bridgets conversations with three close friends: Tom,
Jude and Shazzer, a new character in the film in place of Sharon, are compared.
Figure 2 shows a similar tendency in Bridgets language use. The proportion of
feminine forms in BJD1 is 45.22% and that in BJD2 is 45.00%. The frequency of neutral
forms in BJD1 is 53.91% and that in BDJ2 is 55.50%. Considering the data in more
detail, we notice that BDJ2 shows more use of artificial language. Bridget in the film
subtitles only uses strongly feminine forms or neutral forms. There are no moderately
feminine forms or masculine forms of either type.
The language use of Japanese women has become less feminised, and nowadays
there are few female sentence-final forms which are actually used by women (Mizumoto,
2005; Endo, 1997). Notwithstanding this tendency, Bridget shows a strong inclination

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towards feminine forms. The enormous gap between Bridgets language and real life
language is noteworthy.
Figure 2 Use of Gendered Sentence-final Forms (BJD1, BDJ2 and Real Language
Practices)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sentence-final Forms

BJD2

Total Tokens Used (%)

Okamoto and Sato
(1992)

(1998)

BJD1
(1998)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feminine forms
-Strongly feminine forms
-Moderately feminine forms
Masculine forms
-Strongly masculine forms
-Moderately masculine forms
Neutral forms

24%
12%
12%
14%
0%
14%
62%

45.22%
28.70%
16.52%
0.87%
0.87%
0.00%
53.91%

45.00%
45.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
55.50%

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note (1): Total number of tokens = 390 (130 instances for each subject, Okamoto and Sato 1992), 115 (BJD1 1998)
and 20 (BJD2 2001)
Note (2): Each subject in Okamoto and Satos survey aged between 27-34
Source of the data Okamoto and Sato:
Okamoto, Shigeko and Shie Sato. (1992) Less Feminine Speech among Young Japanese Females, in
(eds.) Hall, Kira, Mary Bucholtz and Birch Moonwomon. Locating Power: Proceedings of the Second
Berkeley Women and Language Conference, April 4 and 5, 1992, Vol.1, Berkeley and Calif; Berkeley
Women and Language Group: 483
Note (3): As all figures in BJD1 and BJD2 are rounded off to two decimal places, and there is a systematic error when
they are totalled.

When we compare Bridgets language with that of her two close female friends, it
becomes clear that the novels central character is not supposed to be particularly
womanly. In Figure 3, I analyse Sharons and Judes conversations with Bridget in
BJD1. Both of them are independent working women in London of around the same age
as Bridget. Their characters are described as more decisive than Bridgets in the novel.
Sharon is strongly influenced by feminist theory. Jude has a successful career and hires a
personal shopper.

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Figure 3 Use of Gendered Sentence-final Forms (Bridget, Sharon and Jude in BJD)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sentence-final Forms

Jude

Total Tokens Used (%)

Bridget

Sharon

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feminine forms
-Strongly feminine forms
-Moderately feminine forms
Masculine forms
-Strongly masculine forms
-Moderately masculine forms
Neutral forms

45.218%
28.696%
16.522%
0.870%
0.870%
0.000%
53.913%

45.883%
31.765%
14.118%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
54.118%

47.692%
36.923%
10.769%
0.00%
0.00%
0.00%
52.308%

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Note (1): Total number of tokens = 115 (Bridget), 85 (Sharon), and 65 (Jude).
Note (2): As all figures are rounded off to three decimal places, and there is a systematic error when they are totalled.

Although some differences can be seen in the use of strongly feminine forms and
moderately feminine forms, there is no more than 2.5 % difference in any category:
feminine forms, masculine forms, and neutral forms. Surprisingly, Bridgets use is less
feminine than her friends and the frequency of strongly feminine forms is more than 8 %
less than Judes. The three sets of data clearly illustrate that the language use of each is
surprisingly close the others no matter how feminine they are.
Fictional characters are not necessarily supposed to represent real people. Women
in a novel might represent exceptionally feminine figures. However, what I would like to
argue here is that female characters tend to be over-feminised by womens language in
Japanese translation no matter how the characters femininity is represented in the
original text. This tendency is not only seen in BJD1 and BJD2. I have also analysed a
Japanese novel Kitchen (by Banana Yoshimoto, 1988), three different translations of
Pride and Prejudice (by Jane Austen, first published in 1813), which are currently on the
market in JapanAkira Tomitas version (1950), Yoshio Nakanos version (1963) and

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Kji Nakanos version (2003)and three translations of Emma (by Jane Austen, first
published in 1816): Shoko Hardings version (1997), Masashi Kudos version (2000), and
Kji Nakanos version (2005). Surprisingly, all of the texts show over-feminised
tendencies. Thus, Japanese readers reading Japanese translations perceive a doublelayered femininity constructed by the descriptions in the novel and the translators
language choice.

3. Translation of swear words

To answer the second questionhow differently was Bridget perceived by the
readers of the translation and the audience of the film?I will examine how swear words
are translated in the Japanese translation and the subtitles.
In the original novel, for instance, Bridget uses swear words such as
Bastard!(126, 168), Bastards (127), [] the bloody bastard (ibid), and Bloody
bastard (ibid). However, most of them were modified in the Japanese translation:
Rokudenashi! [A good-for-nothing] (Kamei: 166), Rokudenashidomo![Good-fornothings] (Kamei: 167), or Usuratonkachi no rokudenashi [A foolish good-for-nothing]
(Kamei: 167). Only once does the translator use a masculine particle ga to emphasise
Bridgets anger to fuckwittage (188) men: Rokudenashidomo ga! [Losers!] (Kamei:
245). The particle ga indicates Bridgets abusive language use (Shinmeikai Japanese
Dictionary, 2005: 214).
In the film version, Bridget also shows a liberal use of swear words such as Oh,
shit!, Bollocks!, Oh, bugger bugger! However, most of them were deleted in the

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Japanese subtitles. For example, Oh, bugger bugger! is not translated at all and there is
no subtitle for the line.
Some other examples can be seen in the Japanese subtitles. When Bridget is
preparing for her birthday party and cooking for her close friends, the sauce overflows
from the mixer and causes a mess. Then she cannot find tuna in the refrigerator. In her
anger she says: Where the fuck is the fucking tuna? This sentence is simply translated
as Tsuna ha dokodakke? [Where is the tuna?]. Although this Japanese phrase is fairly
colloquial, Bridgets foul-mouthed character is lost.
In the last scene, Darcy visits Bridgets flat and finds her diary. It says Darcy is a
boring person. The wife who left him was right, and so on. Darcy leaves the flat, and
Bridget says Oh, shit! This is rendered as Taihen [Oh my God!]. The nuance is
modified in the subtitle. Bridget then runs after him in a hurry without putting on her
shoes, though it is snowing outside, and she exclaims: Bollocks! This word is translated
as Tsumetai! [Its cold!]. This subtitle explains the context; however, it does not express
her despair at all. There is only one literal translation of Oh shit! Kuso! [shit]
throughout the film. However, Bridget does not use other swear words at all in the
Japanese subtitles.

4. Womens Language as Ideologyii

Modern use of womens language was promoted politically during the Meiji
period (1868-1912), and its typical use, such as a series of sentence-final particles,
became established (Kindaichi, 1988: 39; Tanaka, 2004: 26). The Meiji period is linked

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to Japanese modernisation, given that it was during this time that Japan became an
industrialised society. Capitalist development and state centralisation were mutually
related and occurred at the same time (Inoue, 1994: 324), and they also involved the
construction of a gender ideology through the new education system. The notion of
womens language can thus be seen largely as a consequence of political motivation
(Nakamura, 2001: 216), and the construction of womens language and its strong
connection to gender ideology played a fundamental role in the society of the time
(McConnell-Ginet, 2003: 281).
Womens role is clarified in the modernisation of society in accordance with the
compulsory education system at that time (Endo, 1997: 113-124). In 1878, coeducation
was prohibited by law and feminine training started (Nakamura, 2007a: 139). Girls
education was to teach the culturally standardized code of propriety (Lebra, 1984: 42) to
create domesticated wives who supported their husbands, the industrialised nations main
bread winners. Inoue indicates that compulsory education emphasised efficient
homemaking and consumption, a demeanor of modesty and obedience to ones father and
husband, high morality and chastity, and frugality and thrift (1994: 324).
The phrase ryosai kenbo [good wife and wise mother], which is derived from
Chinese Confucian ideas, illustrates womens role in Japanese society at that time. The
idea that women should be good wives and wise mothers was state propaganda
popularised by the Education Ministry through compulsory education, and ryosai kenbo
became the aphorism for the government policy (Nolte and Hastings, 1991: 152, 158). It
is clearly significant that this phrase was used for the first time during the Meiji period
and the educational policy was based on the idea of ryosai kenbo (Inoue, 1994: 324). In

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contrast, there is no Japanese word for good husband and wise father. This fact also
indicates that this kind of suppression was only aimed at the education of girls. In the late
Meiji period, the elementary school moral book (published in 1903, by the Ministry of
Education) denied womens inferiority to men for the first time in an educational
publication. However, it still clearly instructed that there were different roles determined
by gender; the book says that you should not forget that mens duty and womens duty are
different and each should fulfil his or her own duty (Endo, 1997: 124).
Such feminine training, including speech training, was to ensure women
expressed their femininity and learned that modesty demanded overall reticence, a soft
voice, a polite and feminine style of speech, an avoidance of exposing the oral cavity (the
wide-open mouth should be covered with a hand) (Endo, 1997: 42). Through training, the
Meiji government supported the genderization (Tanaka, 2004: 26) of the Japanese
language. In other words, Japanese womens language has been shaped by male-dominant
authorities and politically determined throughout history.

As Beauvoir (1949) writes in her epoch-making book The Second Sex, a man is
the One, a woman is the Other. Beauvoirs logic is applicable to Japanese society. The
role of women was rigidly clarified through the nation-building process, and not only
language, but also behaviour is still highly gendered in society. There is an iron ceiling
with a few holes in it rather than the glass ceiling as some data show; the percentage of
Japanese female chief executives is 0.8 %. In contrast, that in Britain is 10 % and in
Sweden it is 23%. Only 30 % of Japanese women are reinstated into their former post
after giving birth to a first baby (The Independent online, 7 March 2008).

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Hiroko Furukawa

Spender (1980) explores womens language in English and indicates that mens
language is the standard, and womens language is marginal. In Japanese, there are
distinctive disparities between how men and women speak. When standard Japanese was
established, the concept of the language was mens standard language: the Japanese
government adopted the language of middle-class educated males in Tokyo as the
standard Japanese language at the turn of the 20th century (Nakamura, 2007b: 43-45).
Womens language, though, is a version of standard Japanese which emphasises
femininity (Nakamura, 2007b: 35). Because the establishment of standard Japanese was
closely related to nation-building (McConnell-Ginet, 2003: 278), standard Japanese is for
men, and womens language is considered marginal. The characteristics associated with
being polite, formal, sympathetic, soft-spoken, indirect, hesitant, and non-assertive
(Inoue, 2006: 2; Okamoto, 1995: 307)create an image of powerlessness, social
sensitivity, and femininity (Okamoto, 1995: 307). For men, apart from the standard
language, it is possible to use mens language, a masculinised version of standard
Japanese which is mainly used in informal situations. The language identifies masculinity
with characteristics such as offensiveness, roughness, and violence.
Whilst men are rarely taught to use mens language especially in formal
situations, women are still repeatedly taught to speak like women through their
upbringing (Tanaka, 2004: 26). There are many books available that educate women in
how to speak in the correct way. A female writer points out in her bestselling book that if
women do not use polite language properly, they will be considered ill-mannered and
inappropriately brought up women. This book, titled Kashikoi Hito ni Narinasai:
Utsukushiku Ikitai Anata ni [Be a Wise Woman: To You Who Want to Live Beautifully]

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Hiroko Furukawa

(Tanaka, 1986), was reprinted 73 times between 1986 and 1995. The big success of this
book shows the popularity of how-to-speak books for women (Okamoto, 2004: 42).

According to Inoue (2003: 314-315), Japanese readers hear the most authentic
Japanese womens language from foreign female characters such as Scarlett OHara,
Queen Elizabeth, or even Minnie Mouse, in translated novels, magazines, newspapers,
or film subtitles and dubbing. This supposedly authentic womens language is very
different from lived experience. As indicated above (Mizumoto, 2005), typical features of
Japanese womens language, which indicate speakers femininity, are almost dead among
Japanese women under thirty. And yet, female characters in translation continue using
such gender-marked language (Nakamura, 2007b).
A further study, Nakamura (2007b: 49, 60-61, 81-82), analyses representations of
female speech in translation, and translated speech in newspapers and advertisements. In
the Japanese translation of J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone
(1999), 11 year-old Hermione Granger speaks with conventional womens language
which gives an impression of sophisticated, adult, and middle-to-upper-middle class on
the readers. In an interview on the illegal immigration crackdown in a newspaper, a
Mexican American female teachers comment was translated with a stereotypical female
sentence-final particle wa (Asahi Shinbun [national newspaper], 12 April 2006). In a
newspaper advertisement of the Japan committee for UNICEF, Audrey Hepburns phrase
Childrenis there anything more important than a child? was translated with a
quintessential feminine sentence-final particle kashira (Asahi Shinbun, 17 December
2006). Both these particles are considered stereotypical features of womens language but

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in fact are already pass among contemporary Japanese women, as indicated above
(Mizumoto, 2005). Furthermore, Yabe (2001: 176-179) analysed athletes speech at the
1996 Atlanta Olympics in three Japanese national newspapers and found that foreign
athletes tend to be translated with casual forms and with feminine or masculine sentencefinal forms in their speech though Japanese athletes are likely to use formal and neutral
forms. Yabe concludes that foreign athletes remarks are filtered by translators with
stereotypes of feminine or masculine speech. According to Chinami (2007), in
translations of Japanese comics, especially in male-targeted comics, female characters
tend to use excessive feminine forms and the language use functions to index the
speakers youth, good upbringing, good manners, and sexual attractiveness.
Interestingly, however, strong-spirited womens remarks tend not to be translated
with womens language. For instance, the comments of former United States Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice were translated without womens language, but with assertive
sentence-final forms (Asahi.com, 09 January 2009).

Stereotypes are often influenced by social expectations. If Japanese translation is

affected by social expectations, it reinforces the spread of Japanese womens language as
an ideology. When Japanese womens language is repeatedly used in translations, the
repetition helps to implant the vicarious language (Inoue, 2006: 4) into womens minds
and to tell society how women should speak. Stereotypically feminine expressions
reflect gender bias, and help the bias to continue and be justified (Frank, 1989:109iii). At
the very least, the repetitive use of stereotypes in translations may induce women to fit
into a socially-mandated mould even if not in regard to speech itself but in terms of

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general behaviour and aspirations. Japanese readers are used to stereotypical feminine
speech in fiction and translation, and the influence of stereotypes on womens speech,
and on their views of themselves, has not been discussed enough in Japan.

5. Conclusion
This paper has analysed the enormous gap between real Japanese womens
discourse and both the Japanese translations of Bridget Joness Diary, and the Japanese
subtitles of the film version. Also, the translation of swear words has been examined. To
sum up, there are three conclusions in this study. Firstly, both the Japanese translations of
and the subtitles for Bridget Joness Diary incline towards the strong use of gendermarked womens language. Secondly, Bridgets use of swear words is modified or
deleted in the translation and the subtitles. As a result, this new figure of femininity,
especially her foul-mouthed aspect, is not shown to the Japanese readers and audience.
And lastly, translators create and reinforce the consensus as to how women should speak,
and their translations and novels mediate the reproduction of womens language as
ideology.

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Hiroko Furukawa

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The abbreviation BJD1 is used for the Japanese translation of Bridget Joness Diary, BJD2 for the subtitle of the film
Bridget Joness Diary in this paper.
ii
Please note that this section is similar to Furukawa 2010 (forthcoming).
iii
[i]t is clear that language not only reflects social structures but, more important, sometimes serves to perpetuate
existing differences in power; thus a serious concern with linguistic usage is fully warranted (Frank 1989: 109).