Study on Speech Level Shift as a Means of Communication and How It is Translated - With a Focus on Conversations among Characters in the Japanese Novel "OUT" - This paper examines speech levels and their shifts in the Japanese language by looking at the Korean translation of a Japanese novel. Speech level shift refers to a situation where the style at the end of the sentence, which reflects the speaker's relationship with the listener, i.e, the speech level, changes while the speaker actually speaks the sentence during the conversation. In the Japanese language, the speech level is basically determined by social factors. Nevertheless, it is frequently found that within a conversation, the speech level shifts, returns to the original level, and then shifts again due to various factors. In other words, the basic speech level determined by social context shifts to another level which is chosen by the speaker. Such change in the basic speech level is intended to send a certain message to the listener. This paper studies conversations among 4 characters in the Japanese novel "OUT," and focuses on how speech level shifts that occurred in the conversations are translated in the Korean language. It analyzes conversations that the main character has with 3 people with different levels of intimacy, and then examines how the basic speech level has been determined in those conversations by looking at the ratio of polite forms and informal forms in the expression at the end of each sentence. Based on the analysis, the paper concentrates on cases of speech level shifts, and examines how they are dealt with in the Korean translated version. In addition, the paper further aims to explore whether the effects that were produced by changing the basic speech level in the Japanese conversations are also captured in the Korean translated version.