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"What would a native speaker of [target language] say if they found themselves in the same situation?". It gets even trickier if you are translating fict
by JohnBooty 3y ago
"What would a native speaker of [target language]
say if they found themselves in the same situation?".
It gets even trickier if you are translating fiction. If you are translating, say, Japanese anime/manga with a Japanese setting for an English-speaking audience you don't necessarily want the characters to sound like Americans or Brits or Canadians or what have you.
So you may have to use language that Americans understand, but still make them sound Japanese. Somehow.
- sam0x17 3y agoWhat's funny about it though is as an English speaker who knows no Japanese but often enjoys reading subtitles, I'd much rather see the weird literal translation so I know "oh, this is some cool idiom in Japanese" rather than translating it to boring English idioms. Like I get much more out of the meaning when I see the raw original idiom literally translated, and I prefer that. I think we take for granted that idioms from other cultures/languages are incomprehensible... often they make a lot of sense when literally translated even if they aren't a "thing" in the language to which they are being translated.
- hnben 3y ago10 years ago there was a big fight/shift in the anime translator scene about exactly this. More literal translations with long translator notes were common back then, but eventually the less literal translation won as anime became more mainstream.