The State Library Victoria contains a rich, multilingual dataset of wartime Far Eastern Liaison Office (FELO) propaganda leaflets with translations. Each leaflet in the collection shows an English text with a paired translation. Here, four leaflets with translations in the Malay, Chinese and Japanese languages are highlighted for discussion. 

FELO and translation: the historical context

FELO was set up in June 1942 as an Australian military organisation during the Second World War under the authority of the Australian Chiefs of Staff. Its headquarters were in Melbourne. It was responsible for propaganda work, that is, the distribution of information to the enemy and to the neutral local population who lived in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA).[1] The small selection of leaflets discussed here are represented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Overview of the four leaflets discussed in this commentary. 

Little is known about the translators of the leaflets. Research shows that they were linguists attached to the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, including Australian Japanese linguists and linguists trained by the Royal Australian Air Force Language School at Melbourne.[2] The majority, however, were Nisei linguists. Nisei refers to second generation Japanese Americans who were, however, considered Japanese citizens by the Japanese government.[3] Though the US government forced Japanese Americans to be interned in detention camps, some Nisei volunteered for service and became psychological warfare warriors (psywarriors) in the Pacific War, hence the presence of Nisei linguists in the SWPA.[4]

Leaflets with Malay translation

It is not clearly stated in any of the leaflets in the collection which is the ‘translation’, although it may be surmised that the leaflets were written in English first and then translated into Malay.[5] In Figure 2, the English source text looks like an initial brief, as it shows the first and last paragraph in bold, and also states the ‘target’, ‘latest date’ and latest date of distribution, all of which are not captured in the Malay target text. In this case, the Malay text is an almost word for word translation. For example:

Source text: JAPANESE RULE BRINGS POVERTY AND MISERY

Target translation: Pemerentahan Si-jepun membawa kemiskinan dan sangsara

Back translation (translating Malay back into English): Japanese rule brought poverty and suffering

The texts evoke nostalgia and hearken back to the ‘happy days’ of colonisation. They insinuate that there was no poverty and misery before Japanese rule and depict colonial life before the war as an idyllic one. Likewise, in Figure 3, the Queen of the Netherlands looks dignified in fur and she is literally supported by two men in military uniform. This portrayal of colonial rule is in direct juxtaposition with the Japanese army’s version of overthrowing anti-Western imperialism, promises of Asian ‘brotherhood’ and bringing independence to Indonesia. In the leaflets shown in Figures 1 and 2, there is no mention of liberation from colonialism. Rather, they clearly show that the imperial powers are keen for their empires to be restored to them after the war.

Leaflet with Chinese translation

Figure 4. C3告油田區域之華僑工友 [To the Chinese Workers on Oil Fields]

Turning to the leaflets addressed to a Chinese target audience, there is a distinct difference in format. Most of these Chinese leaflets in the FELO collection held at State Library Victoria consist only text, without graphics or images.[6] The leaflet C3 shown in Figure 4 is an exception.

The language used in the English text is terse and focuses on the killing of Chinese civilians and attacks by the Japanese army. Unlike leaflet BM8 in Figure 1, it does not mention the ‘happy days’ of old before the Japanese invasion. The English source text uses the general words ‘Japan’ and ‘Japanese power’. The Chinese text, however, uses a more specific word日寇rikou [Japanese bandits].[7] There are other strong words and insertions condemning Japanese brutality and these raise the ‘emotional temperature’ of the text.[8] In other words, the Chinese target text contains nuances that are missing in the English source text, creating differences in emotional equivalence among the two texts. As if to match the emotional temperature of the Chinese text, its accompanying image shows thick, billowing smoke from an Allied explosion.

Leaflet with Japanese translation

We now turn to a leaflet targeted at the Japanese army. The target audience in this case is not the colonised peoples, but the Japanese soldiers fighting on the ground in the Philippines. Some of the other Japanese leaflets in the collection were in the form of personal letters from a Japanese soldier to his fellow counterparts, arguing that to fight is futile. The ultimate aim of these leaflets was to urge the Japanese army to surrender voluntarily. In Figure 5, leaflet J264 seems to be aimed at breaking Japanese morale by emphasising Allied strength and military action.

 
 
Figure 5. J264 前線画報 [Japanese Pictorial]

What seems worthy of note is that the headline of the English text is ‘Japanese Pictorial’, while its  equivalent in the Japanese text is more specific: zensen gahō 前線画報 [front line illustrated news bulletin]. Furthermore, the order of the captions (from 1 to 8) in the English text does not correlate closely with the order of images shown in the Japanese text.[9] Similar to the leaflets shown earlier in Figures 2 and 3, Figure 5 shows captions describing members from the British and Dutch military forces as benevolent figures in the carnage of war, feeding Filipino children and helping an old lady to safety. 

Conclusion

The multilingual FELO leaflets demonstrate the Australian connection in the psychological warfare fought in the Southwest Pacific Area during the Second World War. This short commentary provided a broad comparison of leaflets with translations in the Malay, Chinese and Japanese languages, highlighting differences in format, emotionality and ideology.

[1] Allison Brooke Gilmore, “In the Wake of Winning Armies: Allied Psychological Warfare against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific Area during WWII” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1989), 43–44, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (9014424).

[2] Gilmore, 124, 301–2.

[3] Encyclopedia Britannica, “Japanese American Internment,” Encyclopedia, Britannica, February 22, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/Japanese-American-internment.

[4] Gilmore, “Allied Psychological Warfare,” 301.

[5] Gilmore, 124.

[6] This is in sharp contrast to many of the Malay leaflets, which had dramatic illustrations or caricatures. See M308 Saudara2 Di Indonesia [People of Indonesia], which shows a cartoon depicting Japan as Gulliver.

[7] ‘Bandit’ is the dictionary meaning for kou 寇. The secondary meaning is qiangdao huo wailai de qinlüe zhe强盗或外来的侵略者[robbers or invaders]. “寇 Kou,” in Xiandai Huayü Cidian [Modern Chinese Dictionary] (Singapore: Shanghai shujü, 1990).

[8] The more specific the word, the more emotional the text. See Yucheng Li, Frank Guerin, and Chenghua Lin, “The Secret of Metaphor on Expressing Stronger Emotion” (arXiv, January 30, 2023), https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2301.13042.

[9] The leaflet in Japanese was printed double-sided, and it may have been folded in half and then read from right to left, as per the standard in Japanese culture and language. Even so, however, the English numbering of the captions do not seem to correspond exactly with the order of the images.