Translating Controversy: The Role of Translation in Amplifying Counternarratives About “Comfort Women”

This study examines how translators exercise political agency to bolster revisionist perspectives on Japanese military “comfort women.” It analyzes five trans-editing techniques identified in ten excerpts from the first Korean compilation of J. Mark Ramseyer's works on the comfort women issue. The findings indicate that these techniques were strategically employed to defend Ramseyer and to enhance the argumentative power of his claims in the sociopolitical context of South Korea. The study sheds light on various aspects of translation that support far-right beliefs about Korean comfort women, a topic that is seldom covered in existing scholarship. In particular, it explores the collaborative relationship between the author and the translator/editor, demonstrating how the translator's rewriting can reinforce certain ideological positions.