Boy Erased in Japan: an analysis of women’s language in the subtitled and dubbed version of Joel Edgerton’s feature film.

This study analyses women’s language in the Japanese-language version of the American movie Boy Erased (2018). Building upon audiovisual translation and recent Japanese sociolinguistic and media studies, this article intends to highlight the gap between the non-native female characters’ language and the actual speech of Japanese voice actresses, as well as the hyperfeminization of fictional speech aimed at indexing a series of stereotypes around which the style of the so-called Japanese women’s language (joseigo) has crystallized. By intertwining the analysis of the Japanese female markers in dubbed texts with the phonetic analysis of the original voices and Japanese dubbing, this study testifies to a different orientation in the Japanese dialogues compared to those in English and highlights the exploitation of the speakers’ bodies, which become themselves vehicles to portray certain ideologies of femininity. In particular, this study tries to highlight how Japanese dubbing and subtitling have converged towards an adaptation strategy with the aim of consolidating gender discrimination, which in contemporary Japanese society is still difficult to eradicate.