Beyond Words: Understanding Japanese Society through Literature and Translation

Date: Friday 23 January 2026, 6pm GMT (In-person and Hybrid Event)

Venue: The University of Leicester

With: Dr Michael Tsang (Birkbeck, University of London); Ms Joanna Dare (De Montfort University, Leicester); Prof. Nana Sato-Rossberg (SOAS, University of London)

This talk is available to watch on our YouTube Channel!

To watch the video recording of this lecture, click here.

Talk Description:

In recent years, Japanese literature has been gaining attention in the UK. Reading literature offers much more than the enjoyment of a story; it provides a window into the social and cultural values that shape it. This session explores how literary works help us understand Japanese society and the wider world, and how we can make sense of Japanese literature's recent growth in popularity. We will also consider what happens when such works are translated from Japanese into English: how is the cultural context of the original text conveyed, adapted, or transformed in the process? For example, we will consider how onomatopoeic expressions used commonly in Japanese can be translated to be understood worldwide.

To discuss these questions, we will bring together a literary scholar, a specialist in translation studies, and a professional translator working between Japanese and English.

Click here to read our full report of this lecture.

Speaker Profiles

Dr Michael Tsang

Dr Michael Tsang is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies and Programme Director for BA Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. His research focuses on world literature, postcolonial literature, and popular culture with an emphasis on East Asia. He has published widely in journals and edited volumes, including Murakami Haruki and Our Years of Pilgrimage (co-edited with Gitte Marianne Hansen: Routledge, 2021). He is also a creative writer and has published tanka poetry in English.

Ms Joanna Dare

Ms Joanna Dare is University Librarian at De Montfort University in Leicester. Alongside her work as a university librarian, Joanna Dare is active as an emerging literary translator and Coordinator of the East Midlands Regional Group of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. She studied Japanese at the University of Sheffield, and Translation Studies at Portsmouth University. She currently studies Japanese through the Languages at Leicester programme at the University of Leicester. In 2020, she won second prize in the 4th Japanese Literature Publishing Project International Translation Competition, followed by first place in the Institute of Translation and Interpreting Japanese Network Translation Competition in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Professor Nana Sato-Rossberg

Professor Nana Sato-Rossberg is a leading scholar in the field with expertise in Japan and East Asia. She is currently Chair of the Centre for Translation Studies at SOAS, and the programme convener for the BA Translation pathway and MA Translation and Intercultural Studies. She is also an Executive Council member of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies and the co-founder of the East Asian Translation Studies conference series (since 2014). She is author of three monographs and five co-edited books, including Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese Context (co-edited with Judy Wakabayashi, Bloomsbury, 2012) and 「翻訳と文学 (Translation and Literature)」(ed. Misuzu, 2021).