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Translating from English to Japanese poses particular challenges for the translator, arising from the significant linguistic and cultural differences between the two languages. This book explores the various options and techniques available to and used by translators when translating from English to Japanese. The work is rich in both the theory and practice of translation and contains numerous examples from popular texts, ranging from classics to detective novels to science fiction. Drawing on these case studies, the author concludes that the translation of popular fiction has evolved in recent decades and developed as a new text type with its own textual and thematic characteristics. First among these is the preservation of cultural otherness and its representation in a way that is enriching to readers and translators alike.

Why has English language proficiency in Japan remained so low in comparison to other Asian countries? Has Vietnam attempted to improve English language teaching because ASEAN has adopted English as its working language? Why do English language teachers struggle with curriculum changes imposed by governments in order to make them competitive in the international community? Do professional development (PD) programs actually meet the needs of teachers? This book addresses issues surrounding these questions by examining how the Japanese and Vietnamese governments have approached and defined the PD of English language teachers and how such PD programs have been delivered. It further analyses the impact of policy changes on individual teachers and explores how PD can help teachers to implement such changes effectively at the micro-level. PD of language teachers or language teacher education is relatively new as a field of inquiry in Applied Linguistics. By including case studies of Japan and Vietnam in the one volume, this book embarks on the challenging task of demonstrating that PD is an essential element of the successful implementation of language policies in Asia, where World Englishes have been shaped by distinct local contexts.

Despite unsubstantiated claims of best practice, the division of language-teaching professionals on the basis of their categorization as ‘native-speakers'or ‘non-native speakers'continues to cascade throughout the academic literature. It has become normative, under the rhetorical guise of acting to correct prejudice and/or discrimination, to see native-speakerism as having a single beneficiary – the ‘native-speaker'– and a single victim – the ‘non-native'speaker. However, this unidirectional perspective fails to deal with the more veiled systems through which those labeled as native-speakers and non-native speakers are both cast as casualties of this questionable bifurcation. This volume documents such complexities and aims to fill the void currently observable within mainstream academic literature in the teaching of both English, and Japanese, foreign language education. By identifying how the construct of Japanese native-speaker mirrors that of the ‘native-speaker'of English, the volume presents a revealing insight into language teaching in Japan. Further, taking a problem-solving approach, this volume explores possible grounds on which language teachers could be employed if native-speakerism is rejected according to experts in the fields of intercultural communicative competence, English as a Lingua Franca and World Englishes, all of which aim to replace the ‘native-speaker'model with something new.