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As a native speaker of Russian, I often see lamentations from native Russian speakers how "real cool" phrases in print and movies when translated from Russian i
by mathgame 5y ago
As a native speaker of Russian, I often see lamentations from native Russian speakers how "real cool" phrases in print and movies when translated from Russian into English become ugly and simplistic as if rendered by a caveman.
That's because a lot of Russian speakers are under the impression English is just a linear calque of Russian with English vocabulary[0]. But natural languages are not isomorphic to each other. I was just watching Family Guy and remembered this scene where Peter responds "I know my way around a joke or two" to a question "who's the funniest dude in the house?" or something to that effect[1]. The phrase "to know one's way around something" doesn't exist in Russian in its literal form. Speaking of "ways", the phrase "I fought my way to the top" is another one that doesn't have a direct Russian counterpart. These phrases are the product of English speaking mind. Russian has its own unique phraseology that usually gets butchered when ported into English. The point is what one thinks sounds cool in one's native tongue doesn't have to sound just as cool in the target language as natural languages never sat down at a round table to agree to have 100% linear correspondence between each other. By the way, in one Russian translation of that Family Guy episode they make up their own (I should say funny) joke instead of translating "I know my way around a joke".
[0] Obviously, you can replace "Russian" with any other ethnicity/nationality and "English" with any other language.
[1] "To that effect" or "along those lines" are yet other English phrases that do not stand in one-to-one correspondence with any idioms in Russian.
- bombcar 5y agoA good example of this is the translations of Asterix and Obelix - so much of the humor is puns which don’t translate, so they have to rework the jokes to make new puns - and it works surprisingly well.
- theresistor 5y agoA particularly interesting note is that Asterix and Obelix actually gets different English translations for the US and UK markets, and they frequently rework the puns differently, presumably due to idiomatic differences.
- doublepg23 5y agoThis happens frequently in anime translations as well.
- krisoft 5y agoThat is true. One famous example where perhaps this went wrong are the jam doughnuts in pokemon. The heroes are eating some rice balls (onigiris) on the screen and perhaps to make the snack more relatable the US dub translates it as jam doughnuts. Which was probably a good choice when one can only see the script, but when on one can see something which is clearly not a jam doughnut it causes some confusion. :) Similarly somehow in the Hungarian translation of the Harry Potter books they translated Slytherin's Locket as Slytherin's padlock. (which was probably just a mistake) And when in later books it become clear by the character's interactions that it is very much not a padlock they just changed the translated name like it never happened. :D I don't envy translators. It is a really hard business. Especially for dubs, they don't just have to match the meaning and the emotion, but also have to match the lip flaps too. Not easy at all.
- kbenson 5y agoThat's why translation is its own art when done well. I've seen it done both ways, and both have their place. I remember watching fan subbed anime around twenty years ago that kept all the idioms intact, but also but notes onscreen which you could pause to read, explaining a bit of what it meant and how it was supposed to be used. I also remember more recently reading the dark forest trilogy, which is translated by an author that is amazing in his own right, and you can tell. That example is also extremely interesting because you can clearly feel a very non-English and non-western philosophy at play that the translator allows to come through, while also making everything very clear to an English reader. Things like this are what translations of famous works in history (such as the Odyssey and the Illiad) are often referred to along with which translation it is. IIRC there was actually a new translation of some of these works within the last decade where it was translated to by much more modern English, which was supposed to be a very fun read. I always meant to get around to trying one of those, but honestly forgot until just now.
- tryauuum 5y agoI'd translate "I fought my way to the top" into "Я прохавал эту жизнь с низов". Though the latter reeks of gopnik mentality.