7 ms·

As someone who does fan translation of Japanese stuff, I've come to the conclusion that all non trivial translations are inadequate. Even my own. There's so mu

• coldtea 8y ago
  Well, as the Italians put it succinctly (and in rhyme): "Traduttori traditori" ("translators are traitors") -- they betray the original work.
  • masklinn 8y ago
    Translators can't really win. They can either stick to the literal of the original work and betray its meaning, or convert the meaning and lose the literalness. The second one yields the best translations, but is akin to writing the work yourself and may not be acceptable for either the original author, the fans, or the publisher. Some of Terry Pratchett's translators (like the recently deceased Jan Kantůrek) won awards for their work because they had to use the second option, the first one would have made the translation completely pointless.
• pluma 8y ago
  The problem is that there is never a phrase-by-phrase exact match when translating. Everything is ambiguous and in order to translate from one language into another you need to resolve that ambiguity while you're also adding new ambiguity. The "I will bury you" example is entirely plausible: it might have been a fitting translation if the intent was merely to say "We will still exist when you are long gone" but the connotation is "We will kill you before you can kill us", which might have been completely lost on the translator (or even worse: it might be a misunderstanding of the original phrase's intentions resulting in an intentionally hostile translation). Really the only way to avoid this problem is to use extremely specific registers in both languages, but that's rarely feasible outside of legal or technical documents. And even then the two languages might have slightly different meanings to some seemingly shared vocabulary translators need to be aware of.
  • randcraw 8y ago
    But depending on context, multiple connotations are possible for every euphemism. That's part of their charm in a literary context. But in politics it's the responsibility of the speaker not to be euphemistic, because deliberately trying to be being misunderstood is always a stupid tactic. "We will bury you" can mean either a) that we will kill you or b) we will outlast you. But either way, we will be alive after your death and present at your burial. Regardless of which meaning was intended, Khrushchev's decision to bring up the topic of the death of the entire "first world" at the UN was deliberately provocative, so it's hardly a mistranslation to conclude that the US and NATO have just been threatened, no matter how obliquely.
    • pluma 8y ago
      My point was that a phrase that might have meanings {A,B,C} when translated might end up having meanings {A,D,E} (keeping its primary intended meaning A but also gaining unintended meanings D and E while losing B and C) or, at best, {A,B} (merely losing the nuance of also meaning C). There's still a difference between mere provocation ("I will live longer than you...") and a direct threat ("...because I will kill you first"). The former could still merely be a statement of confidence (i.e. "our form of government is more stable and resilient than yours, whereas you're overextending yourselves and will deplete your resources").
  • xamuel 8y ago
    >you need to resolve that ambiguity Better yet would be to preserve the original ambiguity. Especially important for fine literature where sometimes the ambiguity is the whole point.
    • CarVac 8y ago
      That indeed is one of the hardest things, I find. Japanese writing is especially fond of intentional ambiguity, and it's really hard to decide how much to localize away. Keep the ambiguity and it sounds unnatural, but if you want it to sound natural you need to cut away the ambiguity.
• azernik 8y ago
  One of the better anime subtitles I've seen (can't remember the anime - I think Genshiken? Because of the sheer density of cultural references) included "footnotes" above the subtitles to indicate those nuances and connotations and cultural references.
  • CarVac 8y ago
    In the fansubbing world, footnotes are kinda reviled, such as the infamous Death Note "Just as keikaku. (Keikaku means plan)" translation. But for things that make cultural references, like Gintama, even someone who knows the language itself won't know every cultural reference, so they can be useful.
    • azernik 8y ago
      Like everything, it is possible to do footnotes badly.