Japanese offensive language through the lenses of translation: suggestions from the Jinpingmei

Abstract

B.H. Chamberlain wrote in 1905 that “The Japanese vocabulary […] affords absolutely no means of cursing and swearing”. Japanese paucity of offensive lexicon is surely overstated by the pioneer British Japanologist but it is a fact. The present work deals with the way Japanese translators match the profusion and the remarkably meaningful nuances of Chinese swear words we find throughout the sapid prose of the Jinpingmei examining modern translations of some passes from the Ming novel.