Finding Their Voices in a Far-removed Place: The Narratives of Two Women in Australia
Abstract
In their influential work on postcolonial writing, The Empire Writes Back (1989/2002), Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin explain the linguistic and cultural alienation that characterises the relationship between self and place. Discussing the dislocation that particularly results from circumstances such as migration and removal, they note how: ‘The gap which opens between the experience of place and the language available to describe it forms a classic and all-pervasive feature of post-colonial texts’ (9).
We might say that postcolonial writing is also very much about translation in that the translator negotiates the linguistic and cultural gap between the source and target texts. This chapter posits the link between postcolonial writing and translation as an investigative framework to discuss Sayōnara, orenji (2013, Farewell, My Orange), the debut novel, written in Japanese and set in an Australian coastal town, by Australia-residing Japanese author Iwaki Kei. The stories of the two main characters – an African refugee woman and a Japanese housewife – recount their journey to find the language and voice with which to negotiate their self and place in the translational space of their adopted country. Finding a voice is also a prime concern of author Iwaki herself. I investigate how language, migration, self and survival intricately interplay in this work.
About the speaker
Akiko Uchiyama is Senior Lecturer in translation studies in the School of Languages and Cultures at The University of Queensland, where she teaches in the Master of Arts in Translation and Interpreting (MATI) program. She has research interests in literary translation, postcolonial studies, modern and contemporary Japanese literature, and shōjo studies. Her recent publications include ‘Shinseinen no bungaku-teki tenkai: Morishita Uson to ‘tantei shōsetsu’ no hon’yaku’ (Literary Development in Shinseinen: Morishita Uson’s Translation of Detective Novels) in Hon’yaku to bungaku (2021) and ‘The Politics of Translation in Meiji Japan’ in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Politics (2018). Akiko co-edited the collections Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia (2019) and Border-Crossing Japanese Literature: Reading Multiplicity (2024).
About Studies in Culture, and Translation & Interpreting Research Joint Seminars
Studies in Culture
Through the scholarly analysis of many different kinds of cultural products, texts and phenomena, Studies in Culture brings together researchers who seek to understand how the world is understood differently by people coming from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Researchers in this cluster work on literature, film, music, theatre, the visual arts, intangible heritage, testimonies and historical narratives.
Research in Studies in Culture within the School centres around four broad sub-themes of Heritage, memory and trauma studies; Intellectual and cultural history; Literature; and Film and visual cultures.
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Translation & Interpreting
Translation and Interpreting (T&I) is a rapidly developing multidisciplinary area of research. The school’s translation and interpreting research activities cover two main streams: applied research relating to translation and interpreting practice, pedagogy and the T&I industry, and theoretical approaches to translation in the areas of literature, cultural studies and philosophy.
To view more on the research and interests of the Translation & Interpreting Cluster, please click here.
