it can't be helped perfectly cromulent in Knife Crime Island English tho
March 7, 2022 1:21 PM Subscribe
One of the more annoying 'controversies' in anime/manga/etc fandom is that of localisation versus literal translation, with a small core of (often right wing) fans prefering their subtitles to be as exact to the Japanese as possible. Professional translator Sarah Moon thought to prove them wrong by using the excellent official slang laden subs of currently running anime romcom My Dress-Up Darling/Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi o Suru and providing a literal alternative for them.
... (often right wing) fans prefering their subtitles to be as exact to the Japanese as possible
I have no knowledge of the anime/etc. world. This phrase immediately jumped out at me, because that seems (to me at least, in my ignorance) like an unlikely group to want that particular thing. What is the cause behind it?
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:07 PM on March 7, 2022
I have no knowledge of the anime/etc. world. This phrase immediately jumped out at me, because that seems (to me at least, in my ignorance) like an unlikely group to want that particular thing. What is the cause behind it?
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:07 PM on March 7, 2022
Oh! I just taught a lesson on this issue in my technical communication classes. Like, literally just ended 10 minutes ago. Usually I have some opinionated anime fans who help me carry the discussion with a lot of examples, but my classes were dead silent today, so I talked about making Windows work in Hebrew vs. the Phoenix Wright games.
posted by Tesseractive at 2:09 PM on March 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Tesseractive at 2:09 PM on March 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
I liked the more literal ones. "You're the one who's no way" is a much funnier retort.
posted by bleep at 2:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by bleep at 2:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
What is the cause behind it?
Maybe it's similar to wanting a literalist interpretation of the Bible or interpreting the US Constitution as the founders "would have". Some appeal to an untainted original source which is attractive to those on the Right.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:13 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
Maybe it's similar to wanting a literalist interpretation of the Bible or interpreting the US Constitution as the founders "would have". Some appeal to an untainted original source which is attractive to those on the Right.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:13 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
They had a dog, named Crom, therefore, things became cromulent.
I'm missing the joke, right? In case I'm not: cromulent.
posted by The Bellman at 2:13 PM on March 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
I'm missing the joke, right? In case I'm not: cromulent.
posted by The Bellman at 2:13 PM on March 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
The social dynamics of regarding every bit of Japanese entertainment media as scriptures in a holy language are complicated. There are a lot of internet nazi types who regard Japan as an “honorary white country” (to an even greater extent than society as a whole), and they tend to share a strong conviction that in Japan, cartoons are mainstream entertainment meant for adult audiences (they are generally for kids, and/or usually air in time slots your average job-haver would be asleep for).
There’s also this widespread belief that because Japanese contains grammatical features that do not exist in English, that they must be slavishly reflected in English Just in Case, in order to feel like one isn’t missing out on anything (though, for my money, English offers so very much more when it comes to ways to add richness and nuance and fun to the spoken word).
It also cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the “artless literal translation is Better, Actually” crowd rounds off to 100% “doesn’t actually speak Japanese.” Usually it’s types who have memorized many of the kana, and are thus self-proclaimed experts in Japan and Japanese, because of social clout conferred by Knowing About Japan.
The end result is basically like someone building their identity around “you haven’t REALLY engaged with the cultural context of the Smurfs unless you’ve read a dictionary-based word-for-word translation from the original Belgian French”
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:22 PM on March 7, 2022 [54 favorites]
There’s also this widespread belief that because Japanese contains grammatical features that do not exist in English, that they must be slavishly reflected in English Just in Case, in order to feel like one isn’t missing out on anything (though, for my money, English offers so very much more when it comes to ways to add richness and nuance and fun to the spoken word).
It also cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the “artless literal translation is Better, Actually” crowd rounds off to 100% “doesn’t actually speak Japanese.” Usually it’s types who have memorized many of the kana, and are thus self-proclaimed experts in Japan and Japanese, because of social clout conferred by Knowing About Japan.
The end result is basically like someone building their identity around “you haven’t REALLY engaged with the cultural context of the Smurfs unless you’ve read a dictionary-based word-for-word translation from the original Belgian French”
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:22 PM on March 7, 2022 [54 favorites]
I mean, I am definitely not On The Right, but the literal translations sound more like how real people talk in English than the overly "literaturized" translations that are using "the way people write" type english. I think there's a better balance to be found. The literal ones just need some grammar adjustments.
posted by bleep at 2:22 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by bleep at 2:22 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
What is the cause behind it?
From my observations of these arguments, it's about wanting the translations to be "pure" or "untainted." Because that's what makes them a "true fan," and not like "those people" who just accept a localized version.
It's another form of gatekeeping.
On preview, both any portmanteau in a storm and DoctorFedora explain it better.
posted by ralan at 2:24 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
From my observations of these arguments, it's about wanting the translations to be "pure" or "untainted." Because that's what makes them a "true fan," and not like "those people" who just accept a localized version.
It's another form of gatekeeping.
On preview, both any portmanteau in a storm and DoctorFedora explain it better.
posted by ralan at 2:24 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Yeah the purity angle is definitely very real I think. Nicely noted.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:25 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:25 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
There will sometimes be subs where even I can tell they don't remotely match what's being said.
At some point in the One Piece manga they changed one of the main character's names from Zoro to Zolo, which is annoying because I had probably been reading fan-made scanlations for the longest time that called him Zoro and then in a relatively recent arc started reading the official issues where they call him Zolo and it was way too late in the game for me to change his name in my mind, and the name of a place from Raftel to Laugh Tale and I'm not sure if this is a translation issue a la Zoro/Zolo or some larger plot point.
TBH I generally prefer dubs because there's enough happening on screen that I'd rather focus on that instead of some words at the bottom and also being able to read to the end of the line well before it's spoken can take a lot of the actual drama out of what's on screen.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:45 PM on March 7, 2022
At some point in the One Piece manga they changed one of the main character's names from Zoro to Zolo, which is annoying because I had probably been reading fan-made scanlations for the longest time that called him Zoro and then in a relatively recent arc started reading the official issues where they call him Zolo and it was way too late in the game for me to change his name in my mind, and the name of a place from Raftel to Laugh Tale and I'm not sure if this is a translation issue a la Zoro/Zolo or some larger plot point.
TBH I generally prefer dubs because there's enough happening on screen that I'd rather focus on that instead of some words at the bottom and also being able to read to the end of the line well before it's spoken can take a lot of the actual drama out of what's on screen.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:45 PM on March 7, 2022
> often right wing
i read the transcript and unless i missed something i didn't see anything about that in the linked content. this appears to be MartinWisse's unsupported assertion.
posted by glonous keming at 2:48 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
i read the transcript and unless i missed something i didn't see anything about that in the linked content. this appears to be MartinWisse's unsupported assertion.
posted by glonous keming at 2:48 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
I think there's an assumption that the translations are cleaned up, removing some of the non-PC elements, and that the literal translation will keep in the lovely, lovely (hypothetical) racism, sexism, etc., IOW a roundabout way of sticking-it-to-the-libs.
posted by signal at 2:51 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by signal at 2:51 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
and the name of a place from Raftel to Laugh Tale and I'm not sure if this is a translation issue a la Zoro/Zolo or some larger plot point.
Without spoilers, I'm pretty sure this is a plot point and not just a translation thing. The characters who use "Laugh Tale" are people in the past deeply in the know about the world (or people who directly knew those people) and the ones who call it Raftel are people coming later with much less information. In fact, I'd wager that learning why those original people called it "Laugh Tale" is the key to the nature of the One Piece and therefore the whole series.
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:51 PM on March 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Without spoilers, I'm pretty sure this is a plot point and not just a translation thing. The characters who use "Laugh Tale" are people in the past deeply in the know about the world (or people who directly knew those people) and the ones who call it Raftel are people coming later with much less information. In fact, I'd wager that learning why those original people called it "Laugh Tale" is the key to the nature of the One Piece and therefore the whole series.
posted by star gentle uterus at 2:51 PM on March 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm not right-wing, but I'm also someone who (perversely) likes literal translation, especially of slang. But that's because I don't speak other languages, but I am fascinated by the colour and texture of all the different slang in the world, and literal translations are like a little taste of how that language frames things, like the Chinese insult "running dog" or the Polish phrase "Not my circus, not my monkeys", which should definitely be adopted into English.
She's right, of course, that this makes for bad translation overall, but I do like things to be peppered or coloured with local idiom (like the phrase bleep notes, "You're the one who's no way").
posted by jb at 2:54 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
She's right, of course, that this makes for bad translation overall, but I do like things to be peppered or coloured with local idiom (like the phrase bleep notes, "You're the one who's no way").
posted by jb at 2:54 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
I think there's an assumption that the translations are cleaned up, removing some of the non-PC elements, and that the literal translation will keep in the lovely, lovely (hypothetical) racism, sexism, etc., IOW a roundabout way of sticking-it-to-the-libs.
Ironically enough, in the "You're the one who's no way" example, the original was replaced with an ableist slur, albeit a very common one in English.
posted by jb at 2:57 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
Ironically enough, in the "You're the one who's no way" example, the original was replaced with an ableist slur, albeit a very common one in English.
posted by jb at 2:57 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
I encounter "not my circus, not my monkeys" in English regularly so I think that one must at least be regionally widespread? I had no idea it was a Polish expression.
posted by Tesseractive at 2:57 PM on March 7, 2022 [20 favorites]
posted by Tesseractive at 2:57 PM on March 7, 2022 [20 favorites]
I personally speak 4 languages (though not Japanese) and I regard "literal" translations as demonstrations that one has NOT mastered the language, but instead, is translating the words in one's head, instead of the whole sentence. In other words, one is not thinking in the destination language. Thus the results, while understandable, demonstrate one's LACK of true mastery.
Part of it may be reliance on translation software, which lets you reuse a previous translation, without taking into context of the speaker, so you end up with repeated "It can't be helped." instead of "Nothing we can do" or "Inshallah", or "It's the God's hands now" or "C'est la vie"
I wonder if the "cause" behind such deification of "literalness" translation can be pinned on the non-Japanese speakers who had to disguise their lack of language skills with Google Translate?
posted by kschang at 2:58 PM on March 7, 2022 [16 favorites]
Part of it may be reliance on translation software, which lets you reuse a previous translation, without taking into context of the speaker, so you end up with repeated "It can't be helped." instead of "Nothing we can do" or "Inshallah", or "It's the God's hands now" or "C'est la vie"
I wonder if the "cause" behind such deification of "literalness" translation can be pinned on the non-Japanese speakers who had to disguise their lack of language skills with Google Translate?
posted by kschang at 2:58 PM on March 7, 2022 [16 favorites]
Often right wing? Really? No. Don’t generalise from your fandom corner to all Japanese media fandoms.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:04 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 3:04 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Really good video. I've seen people claim that the literal meaning of the sayings should be preserved, even when there's some sort of play on words that can't be translated literally and maintain both meanings.
Like, let's say you had a person who was startled by a frog and said "I'm going to croak," which would be a play on words (although not a well-written one). If you're translating that to another language that doesn't have that double-meaning, do you keep the literal "frog sound" meaning, the "die" meaning, or try to come up with a similar play on words that values the play on words part the most?
Different situations would call for different approaches, naturally, but some people seem to consider the play on words secondary or completely unimportant, when that's an intentional part of the writing.
posted by No One Ever Does at 3:05 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
Like, let's say you had a person who was startled by a frog and said "I'm going to croak," which would be a play on words (although not a well-written one). If you're translating that to another language that doesn't have that double-meaning, do you keep the literal "frog sound" meaning, the "die" meaning, or try to come up with a similar play on words that values the play on words part the most?
Different situations would call for different approaches, naturally, but some people seem to consider the play on words secondary or completely unimportant, when that's an intentional part of the writing.
posted by No One Ever Does at 3:05 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
For some follow up fun, Games with Famous Bad Translations INTO Japanese by Clyde Mandelin.
The most memorable? Anyone remember, COD: MW, the "No Russian" mission? The sentence was "Remember, No Russian". The meaning was "Don't speak any Russian." In the Japanese version, it was translated as "Kill them. They are Russian.". Yes, even the Japanese audio matches. YIKES!
posted by kschang at 3:09 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
The most memorable? Anyone remember, COD: MW, the "No Russian" mission? The sentence was "Remember, No Russian". The meaning was "Don't speak any Russian." In the Japanese version, it was translated as "Kill them. They are Russian.". Yes, even the Japanese audio matches. YIKES!
posted by kschang at 3:09 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
In practice, literal translations of Japanese entertainment media tend to be literal not because of a choice, but because of a lack of comprehension. Back in my younger days when I would actually watch anime, I’d frequently notice things like false friends being translated “literally,” which is to say, incorrectly.
One easy example is the English loanword “juice” rendered phonetically in English. If you ask a Japanese person what their favorite jūsu is, odds are good that they’ll say “Coke,” because the word is used not to mean “juice,” but cold, sweet, non-alcoholic drinks in general. Similarly, in Japanese, manshon is at least seemingly cognate to “mansion” in English, but it means “condominium.”
I’ve definitely seen the former rendered as “juice” even in professional subtitles. As someone who turns Japanese text into English text as my primary source of income, I would argue that the “literal translation” of jūsu would usually be “soda,” even though it doesn’t match the mouth sounds being played back.
There are all sorts of false friends like this, and “literal translations” usually build on the misinterpreted meaning, and/or use Japanese coinages that contain English components (like keeping “twintails” instead of the existing English equivalent, “pigtails”).
Of course, on the other hand, the literal translation brigade loves to put cusses and stuff in to make things More Mature, even though in Japan about the rudest a word can innately be is on par with English “crap,” so maybe a 4 out of 10.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [26 favorites]
One easy example is the English loanword “juice” rendered phonetically in English. If you ask a Japanese person what their favorite jūsu is, odds are good that they’ll say “Coke,” because the word is used not to mean “juice,” but cold, sweet, non-alcoholic drinks in general. Similarly, in Japanese, manshon is at least seemingly cognate to “mansion” in English, but it means “condominium.”
I’ve definitely seen the former rendered as “juice” even in professional subtitles. As someone who turns Japanese text into English text as my primary source of income, I would argue that the “literal translation” of jūsu would usually be “soda,” even though it doesn’t match the mouth sounds being played back.
There are all sorts of false friends like this, and “literal translations” usually build on the misinterpreted meaning, and/or use Japanese coinages that contain English components (like keeping “twintails” instead of the existing English equivalent, “pigtails”).
Of course, on the other hand, the literal translation brigade loves to put cusses and stuff in to make things More Mature, even though in Japan about the rudest a word can innately be is on par with English “crap,” so maybe a 4 out of 10.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [26 favorites]
Crom was the Odin-analogue in Conan the Barbarian's tribe's pantheon, and I always assumed Cromulent could be traced back at least that far — and I’ve always disliked it, so the fact that it achieved its final form on an episode of The Simpsons seems perfectly congruent to me.
posted by jamjam at 3:30 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 3:30 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
Anyone who wants word-for-word translations from Japanese has never tried to learn Japanese, and especially has not tried to read slangy, non-standard dialogue in Japanese without another translation for context.
Japanese idioms are the HARDEST thing about the language. Not Kanji, not politeness levels, idioms. Take the phrase "Naru hodo". It literally means "To become to that extent". WTF does that even mean? It translates to, "Oh, I see", but you're never gonna get that from the literal meaning of the words, and that's not even a particularly slangy phrase. There are turns of phrase that are MUCH much worse. If I were to read or watch something with a lot of slang, I'd WANT someone to translate the idioms and make the characters sound western because I'm reading/watching for entertainment. I don't want the extra translation layer of trying to figure out what characters are trying to say. I just want to find out what happens next.
If I were judge, jury and executioner of the world, I'd convict those folks of stupidity, and sentence them to a solid year of reading manga in the original Japanese with nothing but a dictionary to guide them. Full-time, eight hours a day.
posted by fnerg at 3:35 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Japanese idioms are the HARDEST thing about the language. Not Kanji, not politeness levels, idioms. Take the phrase "Naru hodo". It literally means "To become to that extent". WTF does that even mean? It translates to, "Oh, I see", but you're never gonna get that from the literal meaning of the words, and that's not even a particularly slangy phrase. There are turns of phrase that are MUCH much worse. If I were to read or watch something with a lot of slang, I'd WANT someone to translate the idioms and make the characters sound western because I'm reading/watching for entertainment. I don't want the extra translation layer of trying to figure out what characters are trying to say. I just want to find out what happens next.
If I were judge, jury and executioner of the world, I'd convict those folks of stupidity, and sentence them to a solid year of reading manga in the original Japanese with nothing but a dictionary to guide them. Full-time, eight hours a day.
posted by fnerg at 3:35 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
The harshest punishment is to try to figure out the meaning of 適当 in actual use based only on what is listed in bilingual dictionaries (the opposite meaning)
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:38 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:38 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
This gif kind of summarizes anyone who wants a literal translation:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f7/e4/46/f7e4464c6d8e1cc13b2c7735cca03ab4.gif
posted by fnerg at 3:41 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f7/e4/46/f7e4464c6d8e1cc13b2c7735cca03ab4.gif
posted by fnerg at 3:41 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
i read the transcript and unless i missed something i didn't see anything about that in the linked content. this appears to be MartinWisse's unsupported assertion.
If you had just approached the concept of anime and translation, having never experienced any other facet of Japanese culture, stereotypes of it, and overseas fandoms and their very, very different reasons for being fans, sure, I could see how you’re confused, and encourage you to run from this cursed ground as fast as you could.
Then again, in anything language nerdy enough to warrant a video trying to explain it, we need to pay attention to wording, and “unsupported assertion” is just one of those phrases that acts as a blazing neon sign as to the user's intent. I don’t see anything in your comment that links directly to very strong feelings about the glorious purity of Japan, or how wonderful it is that Japanese women have accepted their place as subservient to men in an otherwise completely pure racial paradise. On the other hand, the world is not limited to this discussion, allowing us context for discussions that have happened elsewhere, and the wherewithal to understand the difference between people who are genuinely curious, and those who are “just asking questions.”
posted by Ghidorah at 5:02 PM on March 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
If you had just approached the concept of anime and translation, having never experienced any other facet of Japanese culture, stereotypes of it, and overseas fandoms and their very, very different reasons for being fans, sure, I could see how you’re confused, and encourage you to run from this cursed ground as fast as you could.
Then again, in anything language nerdy enough to warrant a video trying to explain it, we need to pay attention to wording, and “unsupported assertion” is just one of those phrases that acts as a blazing neon sign as to the user's intent. I don’t see anything in your comment that links directly to very strong feelings about the glorious purity of Japan, or how wonderful it is that Japanese women have accepted their place as subservient to men in an otherwise completely pure racial paradise. On the other hand, the world is not limited to this discussion, allowing us context for discussions that have happened elsewhere, and the wherewithal to understand the difference between people who are genuinely curious, and those who are “just asking questions.”
posted by Ghidorah at 5:02 PM on March 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
This gif kind of summarizes anyone who wants a literal translation
I really thought this was going to be the old Zero Wing meme.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 5:19 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
I really thought this was going to be the old Zero Wing meme.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 5:19 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
Too bad subtitles can't also have footnotes.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:26 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:26 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ugh. Weebs.
This type of argument used to be known as transliteration - looking up each individual word in a dictionary and copying them back in place - versus translation - converting a concept from one language to another, using alternate words or phrases.
Transliteration immediately fails at anything idiomatic, or puns, or archaic references, or where the connotation is different from the denotation (those shoes are sick, bro) or 'language #2 doesn't have a word for that'.
Let's say I have a character, a middle aged woman time traveller, who for comedy purposes often gets her dates mixed up.
I name her Auntie Ayé. That's kind of a cute pun; but only if my audience is bilingual in Spanish. One you can't really make in direct English, because it doesn't have anteayer, a single word for 'the day before yesterday'.
Or suppose I want to convey the same exact meaning as the phrase ¿plato o plomo?; but it's in some fantasy setting where they dont use silver for coins or lead for bullets. Rather than literally translate the original words, all I have to do is change the metals, and the meaning is preserved.
[jingles purse in one hand, draws sword with the other] What shall it be, boys? Do I bribe you, or do we fight? Copper, or Steel?
posted by bartleby at 5:46 PM on March 7, 2022 [19 favorites]
This type of argument used to be known as transliteration - looking up each individual word in a dictionary and copying them back in place - versus translation - converting a concept from one language to another, using alternate words or phrases.
Transliteration immediately fails at anything idiomatic, or puns, or archaic references, or where the connotation is different from the denotation (those shoes are sick, bro) or 'language #2 doesn't have a word for that'.
Let's say I have a character, a middle aged woman time traveller, who for comedy purposes often gets her dates mixed up.
I name her Auntie Ayé. That's kind of a cute pun; but only if my audience is bilingual in Spanish. One you can't really make in direct English, because it doesn't have anteayer, a single word for 'the day before yesterday'.
Or suppose I want to convey the same exact meaning as the phrase ¿plato o plomo?; but it's in some fantasy setting where they dont use silver for coins or lead for bullets. Rather than literally translate the original words, all I have to do is change the metals, and the meaning is preserved.
[jingles purse in one hand, draws sword with the other] What shall it be, boys? Do I bribe you, or do we fight? Copper, or Steel?
posted by bartleby at 5:46 PM on March 7, 2022 [19 favorites]
At this point we need to take a moment to remember Anthea Bell, translator of genius, who got the job of translating the Astérix comics—which depend completely on French-language puns and specific Francophone cultural knowledge—into English, and of course, all the other Astérix translators into other languages. A literal translation of the source would have rendered it completely meaningless, and confusing, and unfunny; what was required was new jokes that matched the French ones in spirit. And then, as an adult reader, when you start getting the jokes that need familiarity with e.g. Latin and German phrases imported into English, you start realising it's the translators who actually make the literature...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:49 PM on March 7, 2022 [22 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:49 PM on March 7, 2022 [22 favorites]
yeah, a lot of the time I am reduced to faux outrage at the notion that translators would have the gall to try to make entertainment media for kids be entertaining to kids
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:58 PM on March 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:58 PM on March 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
Too bad subtitles can't also have footnotes.
You’ve never seen a fansub, I take it.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:58 PM on March 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
You’ve never seen a fansub, I take it.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:58 PM on March 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
I just want to know whether All your base is belong to us a good translation or bad?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:03 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:03 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
I just want to know whether All your base is belong to us a good translation or bad?
Not good. Something got lost because it's, "All your base are belong to us"
posted by mikelieman at 6:08 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
Not good. Something got lost because it's, "All your base are belong to us"
posted by mikelieman at 6:08 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
Something something in ur base killin yr d00dz
posted by bartleby at 6:13 PM on March 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by bartleby at 6:13 PM on March 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
i wrote a long-ass reply to Ghidorah trying to defend myself but upon reflection, it's not about me and i shouldn't let my ignorance and stupidity waste y'all's time. you have all always been way over my head and i thank you for letting me participate in the site at all. ✌&❤
posted by glonous keming at 6:20 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by glonous keming at 6:20 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
A large part of the resistance to "localisation" surely comes from memories of the terrible localisations of the '80s, '90s and '00s which happily mangled dialogue, filed off cultural references, altered characters beyond recognition and tore out whole storylines, recasting everything in an ultra-American idiom designed to make these mysterious foreign works less challenging for the US market.
Do the people who ask for more "literal" translations really want translators to robotically transcribe the first dictionary definition of every expression then put it in the original word order? No doubt some of them do, but there has to be a middle ground between that and localisers going "I don't like that story, so I'm going to tell a better one that I made up myself".
Take that line "mama went to the bank". It's a lot funnier than the original (which is basically "I took some money out on the way here"), but it has a very different tone and connotation. It's hard to tell whether it's a genuine attempt to tell the same story in a slightly different way, or whether the translator just thought that character was too boring so they decided to make them more fun and quirky.
Also, "you're the one who's no way" is perfect.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:29 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
Do the people who ask for more "literal" translations really want translators to robotically transcribe the first dictionary definition of every expression then put it in the original word order? No doubt some of them do, but there has to be a middle ground between that and localisers going "I don't like that story, so I'm going to tell a better one that I made up myself".
Take that line "mama went to the bank". It's a lot funnier than the original (which is basically "I took some money out on the way here"), but it has a very different tone and connotation. It's hard to tell whether it's a genuine attempt to tell the same story in a slightly different way, or whether the translator just thought that character was too boring so they decided to make them more fun and quirky.
Also, "you're the one who's no way" is perfect.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:29 PM on March 7, 2022 [13 favorites]
It gets really strange when you turn on both the English dub and the English subtitles at the same time, which may be strikingly different. Or being used to the fan sub, then buying the DVD and having to sit through an official, inferior sub. But, I mean, it's Japanese. You literally can't translate it literally into English, just badly.
posted by jabah at 6:34 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jabah at 6:34 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
At this point we need to take a moment to remember Anthea Bell, translator of genius, who got the job of translating the Astérix comics—which depend completely on French-language puns and specific Francophone cultural knowledge—into English, and of course, all the other Astérix translators into other languages.The difference here, I think, is that Bell took something that could not possibly be translated into English and made something new out of it without losing any of the spirit of the original. That's not really what anime translators tend to do.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:41 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
"Maybe it's similar to wanting a literalist interpretation of the Bible or interpreting the US Constitution as the founders "would have". Some appeal to an untainted original source"
The one (non-political) use a word-for-word translation of the Bible has is that you can skim along in English looking for a specific word or phrase, and jump more quickly to the Biblical Hebrew or Greek. When working in English, I prefer the New Revised Standard Version (as many theology people do). But like a lot of English-speaking theology people, if I'm working in Hebrew or Greek, I'll use a 1611 KJV alongside. Which, without getting into the strengths and weaknesses of the KJV generally, is valuable because the translators worked very hard to preserve the word order, especially in Hebrew. So with a working-but-not-fluent knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, a KJV allows you to work a lot faster in Hebrew (with your trusty scholarly dictionary and your Strong's concordance, of course).
You see facing-page relatively-literal translations (original on the left, local vernacular on the right) of great works of world literature like Dante's Inferno, or Shakespeare, or Dostoyevsky, where there's value to students and scholars (and literature fans) of being able to really appreciate the original language while still reading in your native tongue.
It's intriguing to see people wanting very literal word-by-word translations of pop culture. Which I imagine is something people have always wanted (well, which I know, because I know the history of scriptural translation), but publishing was such an expensive undertaking before the internet ... being able to crowdsource translations of just about anything you want (instead of having to be King James literally convening 47 scholars to expert-crowdsource your translation) is such a novel idea, that had to wait for the internet. Being able to demand a literal word-by-word translation of any random bit of popular culture, rather than just officially-canonized great works of literature of vast interest to scholars, is so insanely modern!
It's interesting to see WHAT people want word-by-word translations of, and even more interesting to inquire into WHY they want them. Because it could be for scholarly reasons or for enthusiast reasons, and either one of those could be very straightforward ("I'm trying to learn the language or appreciate the language and find this helpful and interesting") or very political ("I have strong opinions on linguistic or cultural 'purity'/'originalness'/how to interpret things in exactly the specific way I prefer").
I'm trying to think of what (not-yet-canonized) pop culture I personally would be interested in seeing a literal, word-by-word translation of, and I'm going to be thinking about this concept and playing with it and on the lookout for it for a long time. Because I think it really is extremely interesting as an internet-era phenomenon compared to historical hyper-literal translation efforts!
I'm reading this back over and realizing there's a lot of Chicago ending-a-phrase-in-a-preposition-ing going on, but fuck it, it's hard for me to avoid. Probably makes language localization of Chicagoans sometimes weird in other languages? I mean it's legit weird and confusing to English-speaking Americans three states away, so.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:42 PM on March 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
The one (non-political) use a word-for-word translation of the Bible has is that you can skim along in English looking for a specific word or phrase, and jump more quickly to the Biblical Hebrew or Greek. When working in English, I prefer the New Revised Standard Version (as many theology people do). But like a lot of English-speaking theology people, if I'm working in Hebrew or Greek, I'll use a 1611 KJV alongside. Which, without getting into the strengths and weaknesses of the KJV generally, is valuable because the translators worked very hard to preserve the word order, especially in Hebrew. So with a working-but-not-fluent knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, a KJV allows you to work a lot faster in Hebrew (with your trusty scholarly dictionary and your Strong's concordance, of course).
You see facing-page relatively-literal translations (original on the left, local vernacular on the right) of great works of world literature like Dante's Inferno, or Shakespeare, or Dostoyevsky, where there's value to students and scholars (and literature fans) of being able to really appreciate the original language while still reading in your native tongue.
It's intriguing to see people wanting very literal word-by-word translations of pop culture. Which I imagine is something people have always wanted (well, which I know, because I know the history of scriptural translation), but publishing was such an expensive undertaking before the internet ... being able to crowdsource translations of just about anything you want (instead of having to be King James literally convening 47 scholars to expert-crowdsource your translation) is such a novel idea, that had to wait for the internet. Being able to demand a literal word-by-word translation of any random bit of popular culture, rather than just officially-canonized great works of literature of vast interest to scholars, is so insanely modern!
It's interesting to see WHAT people want word-by-word translations of, and even more interesting to inquire into WHY they want them. Because it could be for scholarly reasons or for enthusiast reasons, and either one of those could be very straightforward ("I'm trying to learn the language or appreciate the language and find this helpful and interesting") or very political ("I have strong opinions on linguistic or cultural 'purity'/'originalness'/how to interpret things in exactly the specific way I prefer").
I'm trying to think of what (not-yet-canonized) pop culture I personally would be interested in seeing a literal, word-by-word translation of, and I'm going to be thinking about this concept and playing with it and on the lookout for it for a long time. Because I think it really is extremely interesting as an internet-era phenomenon compared to historical hyper-literal translation efforts!
I'm reading this back over and realizing there's a lot of Chicago ending-a-phrase-in-a-preposition-ing going on, but fuck it, it's hard for me to avoid. Probably makes language localization of Chicagoans sometimes weird in other languages? I mean it's legit weird and confusing to English-speaking Americans three states away, so.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:42 PM on March 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
A long time ago my wife joined a crew to do fan scanlations of a manga but didn't get very far before the laptop she was using got stolen (bad luck and an open door) and I had set up throwaway accounts for all of that so she didn't have any way of getting in touch with them to say what had happened. Ironically, her brother-in-law is now a mangaka but his series hasn't been translated to English yet and I don't see any scanlations of it either. Maybe if fate had worked differently she would have kept in touch with the crew and they would do scanlations of his manga and I'd be able to read them. Instead I've got a stack of tankobon of it at home that I can't read because my Japanese reading doesn't go much beyond place names and menu items.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:07 PM on March 7, 2022
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:07 PM on March 7, 2022
Much respect to translators of any creative text. I took a literary translation class (Korean to English) a zillion eons ago and discovered that my Korean language fluency was actually just fluency in scholarly written Korean. I was totally flummoxed by nearly every sentence in the first short story we were assigned. Even the most literalist translation style required at least some flexibility to make things read smoothly. I recall the short story author wrote something like "my two cheeks (두 뺨) turned pink from embarrassment" but "two cheeks" reads weird in English.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
>>...how that language frames things, like the Chinese insult "running dog"
The funny part is the Chinese character 走 can mean either walk or run depending on the context.
Usually, it means walk like 走路 / walking (even though literally it says walk on road)
But when used in context like 快走! / Let's get out of here! (literally: rapid move/ quickly run) it means run
posted by kschang at 7:15 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
The funny part is the Chinese character 走 can mean either walk or run depending on the context.
Usually, it means walk like 走路 / walking (even though literally it says walk on road)
But when used in context like 快走! / Let's get out of here! (literally: rapid move/ quickly run) it means run
posted by kschang at 7:15 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
Oh! I have opinions on this, but I'll keep it short (ish).
I like localisation (of any language) so long as is it focuses on general readability/language flow BUT! I do not like it when culture (jokes, accents, idioms, etc) are localised by replacing them with an English one that the translator deems is close enough. For example, a Chinese novel where "有眼不識泰山" (~I had eyes but failed to see Mt. Tai) is instead replaced with, "I could not see the forest for the trees." I prefer that a translator try to keep this sort of thing as intact as possible and just include footnotes explaining them, even if that means it doesn't really make sense until you read the footnote. You learn so much more about the source culture and the creator when it is done this way. I recently read a Chinese novel that was translated in this way and learned so much that I didn't know to look into.
Regarding western anime culture: yes, there is definitely a chunk of it that is a very right wing audience. You have to remember how much of today's alt-right percolated in places like 4chan where anime culture was dominant pre-gamergate. I also think there is a not-insignificant amount of incel/redpill types that identify with hikikomori and NEET characters, of which there are many in anime. Another part of me wonders about how western perceptions of Japanese gender roles might be part of the attraction as well.
Last thought: I find it surprising how many people I've encountered (online and off) that have an encyclopedic knowledge of anime and approximately zero knowledge of Japanese live action film. It is interesting that all of these adults have this idea of what Japanese media is while having an enormous blindspot towards one of the most influential and important film industries in the world. How many anime are making visual (and otherwise) references that are being totally missed by a huge chunk of the western audience? Cowboy Bebop alone is substantial.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 7:26 PM on March 7, 2022 [19 favorites]
I like localisation (of any language) so long as is it focuses on general readability/language flow BUT! I do not like it when culture (jokes, accents, idioms, etc) are localised by replacing them with an English one that the translator deems is close enough. For example, a Chinese novel where "有眼不識泰山" (~I had eyes but failed to see Mt. Tai) is instead replaced with, "I could not see the forest for the trees." I prefer that a translator try to keep this sort of thing as intact as possible and just include footnotes explaining them, even if that means it doesn't really make sense until you read the footnote. You learn so much more about the source culture and the creator when it is done this way. I recently read a Chinese novel that was translated in this way and learned so much that I didn't know to look into.
Regarding western anime culture: yes, there is definitely a chunk of it that is a very right wing audience. You have to remember how much of today's alt-right percolated in places like 4chan where anime culture was dominant pre-gamergate. I also think there is a not-insignificant amount of incel/redpill types that identify with hikikomori and NEET characters, of which there are many in anime. Another part of me wonders about how western perceptions of Japanese gender roles might be part of the attraction as well.
Last thought: I find it surprising how many people I've encountered (online and off) that have an encyclopedic knowledge of anime and approximately zero knowledge of Japanese live action film. It is interesting that all of these adults have this idea of what Japanese media is while having an enormous blindspot towards one of the most influential and important film industries in the world. How many anime are making visual (and otherwise) references that are being totally missed by a huge chunk of the western audience? Cowboy Bebop alone is substantial.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 7:26 PM on March 7, 2022 [19 favorites]
Eyebrows McGee—the other instance where transliteration, not translation, is called for is legal language and arrangements between different countries; when a group of people draw up a contract, or draft regulations or make a treaty or pass a set of laws, or make a universal declaration, it's important the language works and does the job of making people do things.
Whether that appeal to power, and a universal meaning that can be referred to as authority, is what the anime literalists are after, I don't know and couldn't say.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:30 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Whether that appeal to power, and a universal meaning that can be referred to as authority, is what the anime literalists are after, I don't know and couldn't say.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:30 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
a literary translation class (Korean to English) a zillion eons ago
/me googles, blinks... if the story was 아름다움이 나를 멸시한다, I think I was in the same class?
I too became keenly aware of the limits of my translatorial abilities.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:34 PM on March 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
/me googles, blinks... if the story was 아름다움이 나를 멸시한다, I think I was in the same class?
I too became keenly aware of the limits of my translatorial abilities.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:34 PM on March 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I have noticed, over the years, that there is a strong tendency toward believing a "literal translation" is desirable — hell, even possible — among people who do not meaningfully speak the language in question. Meanwhile, if you simply ask someone "how do you say 懐かしい in English?" then the better they speak Japanese, the more likely they are to respond to the question with a thousand-yard stare. It largely comes down to the distinction between learning about a language, versus learning a language, and the former category tends to be full of Well Actually types who love to make confident incorrect statements.
On the other hand, well, as I saw one translator put it, of course there's no such thing as a perfectly faithful translation. The entire job literally consists of putting words in other people's mouths.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:39 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
On the other hand, well, as I saw one translator put it, of course there's no such thing as a perfectly faithful translation. The entire job literally consists of putting words in other people's mouths.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:39 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
you haven’t REALLY engaged with the cultural context of the Smurfs unless you’ve read a dictionary-based word-for-word translation from the original Belgian FrenchYeah, I agree that's probably not true. But it is true that the original faux-German French name Les Schtroumpfs is way better than "The Smurfs"
posted by 3j0hn at 7:57 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
I prefer that a translator try to keep this sort of thing as intact as possible and just include footnotes explaining them
This is also what I prefer when it's possible. Obviously, there's a line, and that line will depend on the medium and the audience ... but for me, that line is very far away from replacing "onigiri" with "donuts."
It's interesting that you brought up Chinese novels, because I've noticed that many of the people pushing for more "faithful" translations of webnovels are Chinese diaspora who are uncomfortable with the assumption that English speakers can't (or won't) tolerate unfamiliar cultural terms/references/idioms/practices. It's a pretty different group than the right-wing anime avatar bros.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:06 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
This is also what I prefer when it's possible. Obviously, there's a line, and that line will depend on the medium and the audience ... but for me, that line is very far away from replacing "onigiri" with "donuts."
It's interesting that you brought up Chinese novels, because I've noticed that many of the people pushing for more "faithful" translations of webnovels are Chinese diaspora who are uncomfortable with the assumption that English speakers can't (or won't) tolerate unfamiliar cultural terms/references/idioms/practices. It's a pretty different group than the right-wing anime avatar bros.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:06 PM on March 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
The entire job literally consists of putting words in other people's mouths.
Yeah, but...
I'm also pretty scarred by the bad old days of early anime translations like A Thousand Baited Hooks describes. I think a lot of this "literal translation" stuff is fandom PTSD from that era and fear of its return. Kutsuwamushi alludes to the nadir/most infamous example of that, the Pokemon "jelly donuts" scene.
Now the glib response to this might be if you really care about onigiri not being translated as jelly donuts then learn Japanese or shut up. But surely there's some medium between a "literal" word-for-word translation and translators completely changing the work as it suits them/their employers? Is there no point where this concern is valid?
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:21 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yeah, but...
I'm also pretty scarred by the bad old days of early anime translations like A Thousand Baited Hooks describes. I think a lot of this "literal translation" stuff is fandom PTSD from that era and fear of its return. Kutsuwamushi alludes to the nadir/most infamous example of that, the Pokemon "jelly donuts" scene.
Now the glib response to this might be if you really care about onigiri not being translated as jelly donuts then learn Japanese or shut up. But surely there's some medium between a "literal" word-for-word translation and translators completely changing the work as it suits them/their employers? Is there no point where this concern is valid?
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:21 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
I visited the author's channel and one of her top links is an hour-long discussion of how translators recieve accusations of being "Leftist SJWs"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H0puY91ZpMk
So at the very least, "often right-wing" isn't editorializing in a way that runs counter to the author's body of work. I'm not familiar with the scene, but it sounds like this is something she's dealt with a lot.
posted by ®@ at 8:36 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H0puY91ZpMk
So at the very least, "often right-wing" isn't editorializing in a way that runs counter to the author's body of work. I'm not familiar with the scene, but it sounds like this is something she's dealt with a lot.
posted by ®@ at 8:36 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
I think it's also a pattern of discourse that's only possible because it's mainly between two imperialist cultures which means there're certain modes of thinking that very much prefers mediating everything foreign into something that's 'digestible', as well as the reflexive attitude of 'of course my culture is perfectly understandable and it's not my problem you're a foreigner' and the wide swaths of anime fandom, being part of the general population, reproduce it unthinkingly. I'm trying to think about how translations of Japanese animanga into my local language (more habituated to behaving like a recipient culture regardless so there's a certain desire for readability combined with exposing one's self to foreign cultural trivia, for the cultural flex you know) works and there's enough differences there that a lot of the subtleties of the back-and-forth covered here isn't present. Usually this is where i roll my eyes at monolinguals tho, especially when they discover subtitles and dubbing have different linguistics logic/motivation.
Anyway, try being a non-cantonese speaker being told repeatedly by your friends that no subtitles are ever perfect enough for Chow Sing Chi movies, lol.
posted by cendawanita at 8:43 PM on March 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
Anyway, try being a non-cantonese speaker being told repeatedly by your friends that no subtitles are ever perfect enough for Chow Sing Chi movies, lol.
posted by cendawanita at 8:43 PM on March 7, 2022 [7 favorites]
I've noticed that many of the people pushing for more "faithful" translations of webnovels are Chinese diaspora who are uncomfortable with the assumption that English speakers can't (or won't) tolerate unfamiliar cultural terms/references/idioms/practices.
I think that's a reasonable worry. The idea that all media is made for "me" and should therefore be presented in the easiest way to digest in my context is somewhat troubling and missing part of the importance of the arts in providing alternative perspectives.
I recently watched King Hu's 天下第一, which has the translated title of All the King's Men, a clever enough reference to Humpty Dumpty fit to the broad plot of the film. The literal translation, according to several online translation sites is something like First Under Heaven referencing a belief set in Chinese governance during the era in which the film was set, around 959 just prior to the rise of the Song Dynasty. The movie is enjoyable enough as spectacle around political machinations, but it's also thick with references to events and concepts that are entirely opaque to an outsider who might choose not to look into them and only somewhat more clear after digging in to the extent the info is available and accurate without knowing the specific context in which the Hong Kong audience of the film would be taking into it.
This matters because the movie hinges on the transition between the Five dynasties/Later Zhou period and the Song dynasty where Zhao Kuangyin, who would later become Emperor Taizu of Song, is introduced as a minor character early on and not signified as important in any way throughout most of the film, the ending of which is an odd sort of re-imagining of the transition that ignores the Coup at Chen Bridge which gained Zhao Kuangyin the throne. The movie is clearly invested in ideas of governance and rule, so not only do the specifics matter but what was changed and some notion of why matters to if you want to try and get some idea of what King Hu is trying to say and that's all tied to context. You can read the reviews that ignore all this and treat it like it's unimportant, as if King Hu was making the movie for them, but that's a narrow minded approach to a work.
A translation needs to be understandable of course, so some liberties are useful in getting ideas across, but retaining as much of the specific contextual references can be every bit as important to moving towards a better understanding of the work beyond immediate pleasure.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:44 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
I think that's a reasonable worry. The idea that all media is made for "me" and should therefore be presented in the easiest way to digest in my context is somewhat troubling and missing part of the importance of the arts in providing alternative perspectives.
I recently watched King Hu's 天下第一, which has the translated title of All the King's Men, a clever enough reference to Humpty Dumpty fit to the broad plot of the film. The literal translation, according to several online translation sites is something like First Under Heaven referencing a belief set in Chinese governance during the era in which the film was set, around 959 just prior to the rise of the Song Dynasty. The movie is enjoyable enough as spectacle around political machinations, but it's also thick with references to events and concepts that are entirely opaque to an outsider who might choose not to look into them and only somewhat more clear after digging in to the extent the info is available and accurate without knowing the specific context in which the Hong Kong audience of the film would be taking into it.
This matters because the movie hinges on the transition between the Five dynasties/Later Zhou period and the Song dynasty where Zhao Kuangyin, who would later become Emperor Taizu of Song, is introduced as a minor character early on and not signified as important in any way throughout most of the film, the ending of which is an odd sort of re-imagining of the transition that ignores the Coup at Chen Bridge which gained Zhao Kuangyin the throne. The movie is clearly invested in ideas of governance and rule, so not only do the specifics matter but what was changed and some notion of why matters to if you want to try and get some idea of what King Hu is trying to say and that's all tied to context. You can read the reviews that ignore all this and treat it like it's unimportant, as if King Hu was making the movie for them, but that's a narrow minded approach to a work.
A translation needs to be understandable of course, so some liberties are useful in getting ideas across, but retaining as much of the specific contextual references can be every bit as important to moving towards a better understanding of the work beyond immediate pleasure.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:44 PM on March 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
The Pokémon jelly donuts thing is a complicated point of reference because, like… it's fundamentally a show meant for eight-year-olds, being dubbed for consumption by eight-year-olds who live in a different country, and even today, I think it is generally pretty reasonable to expect that American third-graders would not consider onigiri to be an ordinary thing to pack for a picnic. If this sort of change were made to, like, a Murakami novel, I could see being indignant about it, but "know your audience" is a vital factor in this sort of thing, especially for light brand-driven entertainment fluff.
(On the other hand, I had to explain to a client today that just because, say, "35‰" is used by specialists in a given field isn't a great reason to use it instead of "3.5%" in an informational pamphlet meant for the general public, in no small part specifically because it is used by specialists)
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:49 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
(On the other hand, I had to explain to a client today that just because, say, "35‰" is used by specialists in a given field isn't a great reason to use it instead of "3.5%" in an informational pamphlet meant for the general public, in no small part specifically because it is used by specialists)
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:49 PM on March 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
The Pokémon jelly donuts thing is a complicated point of reference because, like… it's fundamentally a show meant for eight-year-olds, being dubbed for consumption by eight-year-olds who live in a different country, and even today, I think it is generally pretty reasonable to expect that American third-graders would not consider onigiri to be an ordinary thing to pack for a picnic
My third world counterpoint is that my generation grew up on Doraemon and we had no idea what the heck is a dorayaki. Nowadays though, you can find it at the night markets (usually sold as 'doraemon cakes', and it's not really dorayaki, just repurposed apam balik/martabak manis batter). So I'm quite skeptical american children aren't as smart or curious.
posted by cendawanita at 8:52 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
My third world counterpoint is that my generation grew up on Doraemon and we had no idea what the heck is a dorayaki. Nowadays though, you can find it at the night markets (usually sold as 'doraemon cakes', and it's not really dorayaki, just repurposed apam balik/martabak manis batter). So I'm quite skeptical american children aren't as smart or curious.
posted by cendawanita at 8:52 PM on March 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
The right-wing anime fan stuff is also entwined with hentai and adult anime - the SJWs of localisation BOWDLERISED their favourite anime by not replicating what they see as the "real" gender roles and politics. Its associated with animation changes as well.
posted by geek anachronism at 8:54 PM on March 7, 2022
posted by geek anachronism at 8:54 PM on March 7, 2022
My favourite anime meme of all time is Just According to Keikaku which was fansubs taking the footnote thing too far
posted by vespertinism at 9:00 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by vespertinism at 9:00 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Pokémon jelly donuts thing is a complicated point of reference because, like… it's fundamentally a show meant for eight-year-olds,
I would hope you'd understand that it was just a famous example chosen to illustrate the point but regardless, I even more strongly disagree with the rest of your comment. Kids aren't that dumb. I remember even as a kid watching dubbed shows and knowing something was wrong even if I didn't have the specific knowledge of what. A child can tell what's being said doesn't match what's being shown because they're familiar with the "localized" word.
As pointed out above, I think this attitude of "people must be protected from the foreign and unfamiliar" is a problematic one. You might say you just meant for children, but why not expose children to new things? Isn't that how they learn? If they're watching foreign media, what's wrong with letting them being exposed to foreign foods and names and places and ideas?
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:03 PM on March 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
I would hope you'd understand that it was just a famous example chosen to illustrate the point but regardless, I even more strongly disagree with the rest of your comment. Kids aren't that dumb. I remember even as a kid watching dubbed shows and knowing something was wrong even if I didn't have the specific knowledge of what. A child can tell what's being said doesn't match what's being shown because they're familiar with the "localized" word.
As pointed out above, I think this attitude of "people must be protected from the foreign and unfamiliar" is a problematic one. You might say you just meant for children, but why not expose children to new things? Isn't that how they learn? If they're watching foreign media, what's wrong with letting them being exposed to foreign foods and names and places and ideas?
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:03 PM on March 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
"But surely there's some medium between a "literal" word-for-word translation and translators completely changing the work as it suits them/their employers? Is there no point where this concern is valid?"
That is totally 100% completely valid, and literally the work of translation! One of the things that's really interesting about this specific instance was that there was an eager English-speaking audience for Japanese-language material, but that somewhere in the chain between the exporters and the importers of the material, people decided that foreign translation wasn't important, or English-speakers weren't a big enough market, or English-speakers simply wouldn't know better or care. They did care! They cared a lot! (Some of them cared for bad reasons, but a lot of them cared because they just super-loved the source material and wanted to enjoy it more richly!)
One of the things we did in both my undergraduate and graduate survey courses on the Bible was look at both the modern NRSV (Protestant) and NAB (Catholic) translations of the Bible. They're both really good, they both want to make the original texts as transparent as possible to modern readers, and they're both available in heavily-annotated scholarly editions that explain translation choices and highlight original manuscript variations. But they make specific choices, in how literal to be and how poetic to be in translating. They make choices for doctrinal reasons; they make choices for liturgical reasons (each is the basis of lectionaries in their respective realms, and will be read aloud to an audience daily); they make choices for reasons of the specific scholar who was the final editor of this specific book had opinions, which were typically highlighted in the material before the individual book, explaining the scholars and their context for their choices. We had a couple of those specific dudes come address our classes!
This is an incredibly valuable set of information if you're interested in translation of ... basically anything. You get to see and compare translations that are building on a 2,000-year tradition that have approximately a bazillionty people involved and having strong opinions, responding very directly to political events of the past 500 years (since the Luther Bible, I'm benchmarking), and somewhat less-directly to political events of the past 2,000 years. Both of these translations are very good, and they both use up-to-the-moment scholarly information, and yet they still come down in very different places on their translations.
(If you want a layman's attempt at home, I think Song of Songs (/Song of Solomon) is kind-of atypically divergent for the two texts, and the editors in question make pretty specific choices that aren't necessarily reflected text-wide, but it's short and you can compare the two easily and see where they've made literal vs. poetic choices, if you want to. And read verses out loud, to "feel" how the English is smooth or awkward -- it's very noticeable in Song of Songs. The New Oxford Annotated NRSV and the Catholic Study Bible NAB are the two typically used in college theology classes, and your library should have or be able to ILL them. Also always worthwhile to compare to a 1611 KJV, because as an English-speaker there's some of that you'll have heard quoted your whole life without realizing, and the cadences of it will resonate in your bones because it's been so influential.)
Anyway, when I read a novel in translation, the first thing I always want to read is the translator's note, to hear their view on what's been difficult and unique and interesting about translating the work. And then the last thing I read is the translator's note again, now that I've read it, and I want to review what the translator has to say about the choices they made, so I can better understand how they've digested the original language and its nuances/jokes/references for me. If there's a translator's note before the text that addresses their general approach, and one after the text that addresses specific jokes/nuances/choices, I'm in heaven.
When I read something in translation, I am necessarily reading it through someone else's lens, and I appreciate more than anything when that person can articulate that lens and help me understand what layer they've (unavoidably) added to the text. Like, just knowing that enriches my reading of the translation and adds dimension to my experience, even if I can't read a single word of the underlying language. I'm totally not mad about it! I want to understand the filters and choices they've applied, so I can better appreciate the beauty both of their translation work and of the original author's words. It adds layers and beauty for me, to know what I'm seeing!
Some people get very upset. They want there to be one true translation, or one real way to say X in English, so they're sure they clearly KNOW the underlying text. But there just isn't. Even if you learn the "target" language, you're a language learner who hears it differently than someone who's heard it from the cradle. I think that's beautiful and enriching, but some people find it really threatening that they can't "know" a text authoritatively if they don't speak the language, or weren't born in 1601, or didn't personally know Cervantes. To me, knowing a text "authoritatively" means being able to appreciate its flexibility in time and in translation. But to a lot of people, it means Knowing. The. One. True. Meaning.
It's just -- again -- so interesting that these debates are playing out over popular culture works rather than just over scriptures and liturgical texts (and laws, as Fiasco noted above). That is such a change, and in a really short period of time, and I'm really interested to see how expectations around translation of pop culture works evolves in the next 20 years, and 50 years. And how that enters into conversation with more "traditional" discussions around translations of holy texts and Official Great Literature.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:03 PM on March 7, 2022 [15 favorites]
That is totally 100% completely valid, and literally the work of translation! One of the things that's really interesting about this specific instance was that there was an eager English-speaking audience for Japanese-language material, but that somewhere in the chain between the exporters and the importers of the material, people decided that foreign translation wasn't important, or English-speakers weren't a big enough market, or English-speakers simply wouldn't know better or care. They did care! They cared a lot! (Some of them cared for bad reasons, but a lot of them cared because they just super-loved the source material and wanted to enjoy it more richly!)
One of the things we did in both my undergraduate and graduate survey courses on the Bible was look at both the modern NRSV (Protestant) and NAB (Catholic) translations of the Bible. They're both really good, they both want to make the original texts as transparent as possible to modern readers, and they're both available in heavily-annotated scholarly editions that explain translation choices and highlight original manuscript variations. But they make specific choices, in how literal to be and how poetic to be in translating. They make choices for doctrinal reasons; they make choices for liturgical reasons (each is the basis of lectionaries in their respective realms, and will be read aloud to an audience daily); they make choices for reasons of the specific scholar who was the final editor of this specific book had opinions, which were typically highlighted in the material before the individual book, explaining the scholars and their context for their choices. We had a couple of those specific dudes come address our classes!
This is an incredibly valuable set of information if you're interested in translation of ... basically anything. You get to see and compare translations that are building on a 2,000-year tradition that have approximately a bazillionty people involved and having strong opinions, responding very directly to political events of the past 500 years (since the Luther Bible, I'm benchmarking), and somewhat less-directly to political events of the past 2,000 years. Both of these translations are very good, and they both use up-to-the-moment scholarly information, and yet they still come down in very different places on their translations.
(If you want a layman's attempt at home, I think Song of Songs (/Song of Solomon) is kind-of atypically divergent for the two texts, and the editors in question make pretty specific choices that aren't necessarily reflected text-wide, but it's short and you can compare the two easily and see where they've made literal vs. poetic choices, if you want to. And read verses out loud, to "feel" how the English is smooth or awkward -- it's very noticeable in Song of Songs. The New Oxford Annotated NRSV and the Catholic Study Bible NAB are the two typically used in college theology classes, and your library should have or be able to ILL them. Also always worthwhile to compare to a 1611 KJV, because as an English-speaker there's some of that you'll have heard quoted your whole life without realizing, and the cadences of it will resonate in your bones because it's been so influential.)
Anyway, when I read a novel in translation, the first thing I always want to read is the translator's note, to hear their view on what's been difficult and unique and interesting about translating the work. And then the last thing I read is the translator's note again, now that I've read it, and I want to review what the translator has to say about the choices they made, so I can better understand how they've digested the original language and its nuances/jokes/references for me. If there's a translator's note before the text that addresses their general approach, and one after the text that addresses specific jokes/nuances/choices, I'm in heaven.
When I read something in translation, I am necessarily reading it through someone else's lens, and I appreciate more than anything when that person can articulate that lens and help me understand what layer they've (unavoidably) added to the text. Like, just knowing that enriches my reading of the translation and adds dimension to my experience, even if I can't read a single word of the underlying language. I'm totally not mad about it! I want to understand the filters and choices they've applied, so I can better appreciate the beauty both of their translation work and of the original author's words. It adds layers and beauty for me, to know what I'm seeing!
Some people get very upset. They want there to be one true translation, or one real way to say X in English, so they're sure they clearly KNOW the underlying text. But there just isn't. Even if you learn the "target" language, you're a language learner who hears it differently than someone who's heard it from the cradle. I think that's beautiful and enriching, but some people find it really threatening that they can't "know" a text authoritatively if they don't speak the language, or weren't born in 1601, or didn't personally know Cervantes. To me, knowing a text "authoritatively" means being able to appreciate its flexibility in time and in translation. But to a lot of people, it means Knowing. The. One. True. Meaning.
It's just -- again -- so interesting that these debates are playing out over popular culture works rather than just over scriptures and liturgical texts (and laws, as Fiasco noted above). That is such a change, and in a really short period of time, and I'm really interested to see how expectations around translation of pop culture works evolves in the next 20 years, and 50 years. And how that enters into conversation with more "traditional" discussions around translations of holy texts and Official Great Literature.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:03 PM on March 7, 2022 [15 favorites]
If this sort of change were made to, like, a Murakami novel, I could see being indignant about itTwo words: "Sharpie cakes".
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:08 PM on March 7, 2022
(For what it's worth, "All according to keikaku" was originally meant as a parody of fansubbers' overzealous explanatory notes)
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:12 PM on March 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've always sighed at the "honorifics or GTFO" crowd, but I do appreciate some explanation of how or why certain things were translated the way they were. Though I'm the type who reads the translator's notes if possible before reading a book.
In some cases, like Ebichu and FLCL, notes are pretty much necessary because there are puns and references you would not be able to catch on the fly if you don't speak fluent Japanese.
Then there are cases like Evangelion, the Netflix translation for which changed a very important line to "I like you" instead of "I love you," seemingly because that's somewhat the literal way of putting it — but misses the point. (And let's not even get into Asuka's untranslatable final line.)
Anyway some healthy discussion is good but boy do I get tired of people pushing the "right" translation based on a totally superficial understanding of the culture based almost entirely on anime. They're seldom polite about it to boot!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:45 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
In some cases, like Ebichu and FLCL, notes are pretty much necessary because there are puns and references you would not be able to catch on the fly if you don't speak fluent Japanese.
Then there are cases like Evangelion, the Netflix translation for which changed a very important line to "I like you" instead of "I love you," seemingly because that's somewhat the literal way of putting it — but misses the point. (And let's not even get into Asuka's untranslatable final line.)
Anyway some healthy discussion is good but boy do I get tired of people pushing the "right" translation based on a totally superficial understanding of the culture based almost entirely on anime. They're seldom polite about it to boot!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:45 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
w/r/t translation of the familiar, one of my favourite examples is a translation of Brecht's Mein Bruder war en Flieger:
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:49 PM on March 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
...Der Raum, den mein Bruder eroberteRendered into English:
Liegt im Guadarramamassiv
Er ist lang einen Meter achtzig
Und einen Meter fünfzig tief.
The space in the Spanish mountainsBecause even in English speaking countries that use the metric system, there are certain cultural measurements—like the depth of graves—that are always measured in feet. The last lines almost need to be localised because a measurement in metres just doesn't convey Brecht's allusion to death.
My brother got to keep
Measures just six feet in length
And is five foot deep.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:49 PM on March 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
The paradox of translation is that there's just one source text, but there is never an end to the translations, or to arguments about them. If you're Italian, you can just go read Dante... maybe you have to look up a few words. But you have over a hundred choices in English, and none of them will be perfect or definitive.
Purposes and audiences differ, and also tastes differ over time. My impression is that what the OP calls a "localized" approach is out of fashion-- sanding over the difficulties is not in vogue, and is even politically suspect. But the alternative isn't being literal, it's letting the text retain its original locality, without actually baffling your readers.
I expect the hardest audience to translate for is one that knows a little of the language. If you don't know any of it, you just want to know what the text says. If you know the language well-- don't read/view a translation, get the original. If you're in the wide range in the middle, no translation will completely satisfy-- and the more you know, the more hopeless the whole problem will seem.
But hey, why get upset over it? Translators do the best they can, and if you can't read or view the original, it can still be a great experience.
posted by zompist at 9:54 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
Purposes and audiences differ, and also tastes differ over time. My impression is that what the OP calls a "localized" approach is out of fashion-- sanding over the difficulties is not in vogue, and is even politically suspect. But the alternative isn't being literal, it's letting the text retain its original locality, without actually baffling your readers.
I expect the hardest audience to translate for is one that knows a little of the language. If you don't know any of it, you just want to know what the text says. If you know the language well-- don't read/view a translation, get the original. If you're in the wide range in the middle, no translation will completely satisfy-- and the more you know, the more hopeless the whole problem will seem.
But hey, why get upset over it? Translators do the best they can, and if you can't read or view the original, it can still be a great experience.
posted by zompist at 9:54 PM on March 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
One that really bugs me is how some fan translators really want to die on the hill of R vs L.
Like i know that there is an ambiguity in translating from japanese, and the R and L are the same i think? but just use some context clues!
Dracula's secret identity, Alucard, vs Arucard?
Holy Church of Light's capital city, Luminous vs Ruminous?
I don't think it's hard to figure out what the original intent was supposed to be.
posted by Iax at 11:22 PM on March 7, 2022
Like i know that there is an ambiguity in translating from japanese, and the R and L are the same i think? but just use some context clues!
Dracula's secret identity, Alucard, vs Arucard?
Holy Church of Light's capital city, Luminous vs Ruminous?
I don't think it's hard to figure out what the original intent was supposed to be.
posted by Iax at 11:22 PM on March 7, 2022
I prefer that a translator try to keep this sort of thing as intact as possible and just include footnotes explaining them, even if that means it doesn't really make sense until you read the footnote.Oh gods no. So many scanlators do this and it always wants to make me smack them upside their heads. That's not translating, that's being difficult for no reason.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:39 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
I do think it's fine, even good, to say: "I like the odd, hybrid-cultural product that comes out of a literal translation, even if it's unrepresentative of the source material; in some way I like it more than the source material."
I don't know much about Japanese, but in Latin I like the odd syntaxes you get by rendering literally, say, an ablative absolute. "With those tasks accomplished, he gave thanks to the gods" has a grandeur in English that the original wouldn't have particularly been aiming for. In that way, it's inaccurate. But I don't want to translate it as "He did all of that, then he prayed." That might be closer to the original connotation, but it's further from what attracts me to the subject in the first place.
I'd imagine the same is true of anime. An honorific is just part of ordinary speech in Japanese, so a translator can be justified in removing it when translating to a language where it isn't. But lots of people enjoy the sense of Japan as fascinatingly different to the culture they know - it's what draws them to anime in the first place. I think you can politicise that impulse, but it's reasonable (imo) for people to want, from art, a stranger world, rich with dignity, rather than something mundane.
posted by wattle at 4:59 AM on March 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
I don't know much about Japanese, but in Latin I like the odd syntaxes you get by rendering literally, say, an ablative absolute. "With those tasks accomplished, he gave thanks to the gods" has a grandeur in English that the original wouldn't have particularly been aiming for. In that way, it's inaccurate. But I don't want to translate it as "He did all of that, then he prayed." That might be closer to the original connotation, but it's further from what attracts me to the subject in the first place.
I'd imagine the same is true of anime. An honorific is just part of ordinary speech in Japanese, so a translator can be justified in removing it when translating to a language where it isn't. But lots of people enjoy the sense of Japan as fascinatingly different to the culture they know - it's what draws them to anime in the first place. I think you can politicise that impulse, but it's reasonable (imo) for people to want, from art, a stranger world, rich with dignity, rather than something mundane.
posted by wattle at 4:59 AM on March 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
I prefer that a translator try to keep this sort of thing as intact as possible and just include footnotes explaining them, even if that means it doesn't really make sense until you read the footnote.
The flipside of this is that you are completely changing the experience of reading whatever it is. A light and fun novel becomes almost a scholarly text. Which in my opinion is equally a failure of translation. I prefer some sort of middle ground - not going to the jelly doughnut level, but leaving the footnotes for important references or items that really can't be easily translated.
I also really don't like a lot of the attempts at "keeping the grammar", particularly for Asian languages, as it tends to only enforce the "inscrutable" and "mysterious" stereotypes. Day-to-day language gets turned into something that seems more exotic. (It's a bit different, of course, if the original is deliberately written in a more stylistic way - in that case I would prefer if at least a hint of that style comes across in the translation.)
posted by scorbet at 5:00 AM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
The flipside of this is that you are completely changing the experience of reading whatever it is. A light and fun novel becomes almost a scholarly text. Which in my opinion is equally a failure of translation. I prefer some sort of middle ground - not going to the jelly doughnut level, but leaving the footnotes for important references or items that really can't be easily translated.
I also really don't like a lot of the attempts at "keeping the grammar", particularly for Asian languages, as it tends to only enforce the "inscrutable" and "mysterious" stereotypes. Day-to-day language gets turned into something that seems more exotic. (It's a bit different, of course, if the original is deliberately written in a more stylistic way - in that case I would prefer if at least a hint of that style comes across in the translation.)
posted by scorbet at 5:00 AM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
I wonder how much the group of literal translationist anime fans overlaps with that segment of western animation fans who are constantly interpreting their favorite shows from the 1990s and 1980s to be "edgier" or "more profound" than modern-day reboots.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:29 AM on March 8, 2022
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:29 AM on March 8, 2022
if you're a person who prefers a more literal translation, what do you want the translator to do with a character who speaks kansai-ben? please tell me, i am honestly curious about this.
posted by emmling at 6:23 AM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by emmling at 6:23 AM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
I personally *hate* it when localization "went too far"... as to completely rewrite or changes so fundamental it may as well be.
Who can forget the atrocity TokyoPop done to Initial D, when they replaced all the Eurobeat soundtrack with rap and indie punk? AND gave all the characters Western names? Apparently they're trying to shift market segments and decided it was necessary. Fortunately they went under and Funanimation learned and didn't do the same mistakes.
The only really successful case of fundamental rewrite done successfully was Robotech, but that brought on decades of lawsuits that it's considered a separate IP from the original Macross Saga.
posted by kschang at 6:47 AM on March 8, 2022
Who can forget the atrocity TokyoPop done to Initial D, when they replaced all the Eurobeat soundtrack with rap and indie punk? AND gave all the characters Western names? Apparently they're trying to shift market segments and decided it was necessary. Fortunately they went under and Funanimation learned and didn't do the same mistakes.
The only really successful case of fundamental rewrite done successfully was Robotech, but that brought on decades of lawsuits that it's considered a separate IP from the original Macross Saga.
posted by kschang at 6:47 AM on March 8, 2022
In the "literalist" vs "interpretation" debate, I lean toward to interpretation side. If you want a literalist experience, learn the language and experience it in the purest form: the original text and dialogue. When you are getting a translation, you're not getting anything literal anyway.
As they joked in Star Trek VI: "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the Original Klingon!"
posted by kschang at 6:51 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
As they joked in Star Trek VI: "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the Original Klingon!"
posted by kschang at 6:51 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
As they joked in Star Trek VI: "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the Original Klingon!"
That's not just a good link, but pertinent to the discussion, as it's positing an interpretation of Shakespeare--itself often interpreting historical events and other cultures through the lens of Elizabethan England--done by a culture which is very much intended to be Shakespeare IN SPAAAAACE, with its great houses jockeying for power, legendary warriors, obsession with honor and glory, and endless duels. I've read the claim that Klingons would see Hamlet as a comedy, with its title character endlessly dithering about what to do when it would seem obvious to the average Klingon, and I bet that they'd love the crap out of Titus Andronicus. There's a lot here about what gets lost in translation, but what about what might be gained?
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:12 AM on March 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
That's not just a good link, but pertinent to the discussion, as it's positing an interpretation of Shakespeare--itself often interpreting historical events and other cultures through the lens of Elizabethan England--done by a culture which is very much intended to be Shakespeare IN SPAAAAACE, with its great houses jockeying for power, legendary warriors, obsession with honor and glory, and endless duels. I've read the claim that Klingons would see Hamlet as a comedy, with its title character endlessly dithering about what to do when it would seem obvious to the average Klingon, and I bet that they'd love the crap out of Titus Andronicus. There's a lot here about what gets lost in translation, but what about what might be gained?
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:12 AM on March 8, 2022 [7 favorites]
There's a lot here about what gets lost in translation, but what about what might be gained?
Ads for soup!
More seriously , it did seem like Dan Brown's books were improved somewhat by translation into German, at least based on discussions with my coworkers at the time.
posted by scorbet at 8:10 AM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ads for soup!
More seriously , it did seem like Dan Brown's books were improved somewhat by translation into German, at least based on discussions with my coworkers at the time.
posted by scorbet at 8:10 AM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I notice in the official subs they're still including honorifics. She refers to him as "Gojo-kun" and he refers to her as "Kitagawa-san."
He dresses in this old style of clothing at home, and he has an old-fashioned hobby like making hina dolls, so it makes sense he's also supposed to be talking more formally, and having her use slang helps contrast with that.
posted by RobotHero at 8:56 AM on March 8, 2022
He dresses in this old style of clothing at home, and he has an old-fashioned hobby like making hina dolls, so it makes sense he's also supposed to be talking more formally, and having her use slang helps contrast with that.
posted by RobotHero at 8:56 AM on March 8, 2022
> That might be closer to the original connotation, but it's further from what attracts me to the subject in the first place.
But doesn't that mean that the thing that attracted you to the subject is not an actual part of the language (as spoken and understood by its original hearers) but just an artifact of the fact that clunky translations sound a certain way to you, a modern English speaker?
posted by timdiggerm at 9:01 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
But doesn't that mean that the thing that attracted you to the subject is not an actual part of the language (as spoken and understood by its original hearers) but just an artifact of the fact that clunky translations sound a certain way to you, a modern English speaker?
posted by timdiggerm at 9:01 AM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
i read the transcript and unless i missed something i didn't see anything about that in the linked content. this appears to be MartinWisse's unsupported assertion.
Given the connection between pedantic Japanophiles, 4chan types, and the right wing i assume it’s an assertion that corresponds to a real group of people. But I thought the editorializing in the post unnecessary - it’s a basic issue of translation, it has significance outside online culture war associations.
posted by atoxyl at 9:37 AM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Given the connection between pedantic Japanophiles, 4chan types, and the right wing i assume it’s an assertion that corresponds to a real group of people. But I thought the editorializing in the post unnecessary - it’s a basic issue of translation, it has significance outside online culture war associations.
posted by atoxyl at 9:37 AM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a dude who who ends up on the border looking in on anime/manga twitter, please believe me do as another one confirming that there is a not insignificant overlap between the "literal translation is the only real translation" and the "SJW localizers have censored my anime/manga therefore and/or inserted their own content to make this anime/manga political thereby ruining the original author's vision" crowds.
Less right-wing-related, who else remembers the recent brouhaha with "Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro" because the localizer had a slang-using character using the word "sus"?
If you weren't following it, that last bit sounds like I'm being funny. It was a lot less funny and a lot more tiring when it was happening around me.
posted by KChasm at 10:47 AM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
Less right-wing-related, who else remembers the recent brouhaha with "Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro" because the localizer had a slang-using character using the word "sus"?
If you weren't following it, that last bit sounds like I'm being funny. It was a lot less funny and a lot more tiring when it was happening around me.
posted by KChasm at 10:47 AM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
For what it's worth, the linked video has a screenshot of a tweet that I'd read as right-wing at 5:08:
> I'll take machine translations over shiity woke "localization" any day!
posted by No One Ever Does at 10:56 AM on March 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
> I'll take machine translations over shiity woke "localization" any day!
posted by No One Ever Does at 10:56 AM on March 8, 2022 [5 favorites]
please believe me do as another one confirming that there is a not insignificant overlap
Oh I believe you, it’s just also an issue on which a range of positions can make sense just as far as personal taste or approach to translation as an artistic endeavor.
posted by atoxyl at 10:57 AM on March 8, 2022
Oh I believe you, it’s just also an issue on which a range of positions can make sense just as far as personal taste or approach to translation as an artistic endeavor.
posted by atoxyl at 10:57 AM on March 8, 2022
For a far more EXPLICIT explanation on why there's no SJW agenda despite "right-wing" reactions... (also from Sarah Moon) Feminist SJW Anime Translators (featuring Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid) (circa 2020)
posted by kschang at 12:12 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by kschang at 12:12 PM on March 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
But I thought the editorializing in the post unnecessary - it’s a basic issue of translation, it has significance outside online culture war associations.
It irritated me because in my fandoms, the right-wing/incel/military otaku/2D crowd don’t like literal translations because they’re “too gay”.
Also, I took translation in grad school and somehow there would be 15 opinions in a seminar with 10 people. It’s more than an anime issue.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:02 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
It irritated me because in my fandoms, the right-wing/incel/military otaku/2D crowd don’t like literal translations because they’re “too gay”.
Also, I took translation in grad school and somehow there would be 15 opinions in a seminar with 10 people. It’s more than an anime issue.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:02 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Overlocalisation isn't limited to anime; in one Swedish TV series on Netflix, the English-language subtitles translated Swish (a mobile cash sending system used in Sweden) as “Venmo”. Which, from context, I understand fills the same role in the USA, but that's assuming that all Anglophone viewers are either American or sufficiently accultured to the American quotidian to not only know that school buses are yellow, fire hydrants are knobbly and you buy durable goods at Wal-Mart, but also what Venmo is. (Surely PayPal would have been a more sensible choice, if a generic "send me the money" wasn't acceptable?)
posted by acb at 2:32 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by acb at 2:32 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Oh gods no. So many scanlators do this and it always wants to make me smack them upside their heads. That's not translating, that's being difficult for no reason.
In this thread, more than one person has shared that they have different preferences than you do; they've also shared some of the reasons for those preferences. Some of those are serious, in fact, worthy of consideration even if you ultimately disagree.
Do you have to be so aggressively dismissive, so unwilling to engage? I mean, this response makes it seem to me that you're less interested in a discussion and more interested in ranting and putting people down. Here you are outright denying that people have any reason for thinking about the issue differently than you, despite the fairly nuanced discussion occurring in this thread you started.
It's really unnecessary and it does not actually make me think that your opinions on the issue are any more well considered than mine.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:55 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
In this thread, more than one person has shared that they have different preferences than you do; they've also shared some of the reasons for those preferences. Some of those are serious, in fact, worthy of consideration even if you ultimately disagree.
Do you have to be so aggressively dismissive, so unwilling to engage? I mean, this response makes it seem to me that you're less interested in a discussion and more interested in ranting and putting people down. Here you are outright denying that people have any reason for thinking about the issue differently than you, despite the fairly nuanced discussion occurring in this thread you started.
It's really unnecessary and it does not actually make me think that your opinions on the issue are any more well considered than mine.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:55 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
A light and fun novel becomes almost a scholarly text
I just... don't experience it this way. I've never found that a light and fun novel with a few unfamiliar references and explanatory footnotes is a slog; it's still a light and fun novel, and I enjoy the footnotes. I've read a lot of scholarly texts and really, they're nothing alike.
Yes, the existence of footnotes is a change from the experience of reading the original, but anything you do to handle unfamiliar references will be a change. You can prioritize a frictionless reading experience by removing or replacing the reference, but that's also a change, yanno? You will never replicate the experience of reading the novel in the original language.
There's also the question of audience. Different audiences come with different levels of background knowledge and preferences. The audience for an obscure fan-translated manga is different than the audience for an anime playing on Cartoon Network.
I've been watching with interest as a ... "consensus"... for lack of better term, emerges for how to translate danmei novels in English. Since the fandom has exploded fairly recently, the audience has a lot less background knowledge. There are a lot of unfamiliar terms and references, many of which are important for understanding the characterization, plot, etc - especially in wuxia/xianxia settings. It's a real challenge for the translators.
What's interesting is that as a lot of "common practices" evolve, they resemble what's evolved in Japanese media fandoms in English. Titles and terms of address are often preserved in dialogue, variably in prose. Idioms that have fairly transparent meanings or are difficult to replace are translated more literally and explained in a footnote. And so on.
Why? As far as I can tell, this is actually a response to what many members of the audience want, not translators being pig-headedly literal for no reason. People are interested in the culture and in the original text.
(BTW, I bristle when people say you that if you want to understand the original text, you should just learn the original language and read it that way. It's not a black-and-white, either-or thing. In fact it's impossible for it to be.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:52 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
I just... don't experience it this way. I've never found that a light and fun novel with a few unfamiliar references and explanatory footnotes is a slog; it's still a light and fun novel, and I enjoy the footnotes. I've read a lot of scholarly texts and really, they're nothing alike.
Yes, the existence of footnotes is a change from the experience of reading the original, but anything you do to handle unfamiliar references will be a change. You can prioritize a frictionless reading experience by removing or replacing the reference, but that's also a change, yanno? You will never replicate the experience of reading the novel in the original language.
There's also the question of audience. Different audiences come with different levels of background knowledge and preferences. The audience for an obscure fan-translated manga is different than the audience for an anime playing on Cartoon Network.
I've been watching with interest as a ... "consensus"... for lack of better term, emerges for how to translate danmei novels in English. Since the fandom has exploded fairly recently, the audience has a lot less background knowledge. There are a lot of unfamiliar terms and references, many of which are important for understanding the characterization, plot, etc - especially in wuxia/xianxia settings. It's a real challenge for the translators.
What's interesting is that as a lot of "common practices" evolve, they resemble what's evolved in Japanese media fandoms in English. Titles and terms of address are often preserved in dialogue, variably in prose. Idioms that have fairly transparent meanings or are difficult to replace are translated more literally and explained in a footnote. And so on.
Why? As far as I can tell, this is actually a response to what many members of the audience want, not translators being pig-headedly literal for no reason. People are interested in the culture and in the original text.
(BTW, I bristle when people say you that if you want to understand the original text, you should just learn the original language and read it that way. It's not a black-and-white, either-or thing. In fact it's impossible for it to be.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:52 PM on March 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
if you're a person who prefers a more literal translation, what do you want the translator to do with a character who speaks kansai-ben?
Preferring a more literal translation when possible doesn't mean that it's always possible. Some things will always be lost or changed. Dialects are usually one of those things. You can attempt to render an English dialect that will give a similar feel, but you'll still lose something since the sociolinguistic context is never completely the same.
I personally think that's probably still the best option, although if it's print media that's the type of thing I enjoy seeing in translator's notes at the end of the work. The fact that the character is speaking kansai-ben is something I'd just like to know, even though there's really no good way to preserve that in the text itself.
(There's also a difference between preferring more preservation of cultural terms and preservation of things like grammar. This is the latter.)
What do people who prefer less literal translations want?
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:03 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Preferring a more literal translation when possible doesn't mean that it's always possible. Some things will always be lost or changed. Dialects are usually one of those things. You can attempt to render an English dialect that will give a similar feel, but you'll still lose something since the sociolinguistic context is never completely the same.
I personally think that's probably still the best option, although if it's print media that's the type of thing I enjoy seeing in translator's notes at the end of the work. The fact that the character is speaking kansai-ben is something I'd just like to know, even though there's really no good way to preserve that in the text itself.
(There's also a difference between preferring more preservation of cultural terms and preservation of things like grammar. This is the latter.)
What do people who prefer less literal translations want?
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:03 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just to beat the topic to death...
Anime Subs Should NOT be Literal | The Case for Localization by Sarah Moon, circa 2019.
So yes, she's been making the same case for YEARS.
posted by kschang at 9:45 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
Anime Subs Should NOT be Literal | The Case for Localization by Sarah Moon, circa 2019.
So yes, she's been making the same case for YEARS.
posted by kschang at 9:45 PM on March 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
I swear the next time I encounter Osaka dialect being transposed to a US Vaguely Southern accent I shall scream
what's the US dialect equivalent of a character who speaks with a Manchester accent in a British thing, or a Bavarian accent in a German thing
what dialect of Spanish does an American speaking in an Upper Midwest accent correspond to
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:13 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
what's the US dialect equivalent of a character who speaks with a Manchester accent in a British thing, or a Bavarian accent in a German thing
what dialect of Spanish does an American speaking in an Upper Midwest accent correspond to
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:13 PM on March 8, 2022 [4 favorites]
I personally speak 4 languages (though not Japanese) and I regard "literal" translations as demonstrations that one has NOT mastered the language, but instead, is translating the words in one's head, instead of the whole sentence. In other words, one is not thinking in the destination language. Thus the results, while understandable, demonstrate one's LACK of true mastery.
This may be true, but doesn't mean that you can't be more comfortable with dialog that has the local flavor shining through.
(background: part of a pretty leftwing, for the record, group that has too many people who've studied Japanese language and culture longer/more than I have, who watches more than our fair share of subbed, mostly 70s-90s anime. )
There's a certain level of language study at which you start to think in the base language. It's not "mastery" by your standards, because it still relies on understanding the stilted translations to English, or whatever native tongue, but you do start to internalize the way that the grammar and construction works, using that stilted understanding.
To take an example I recall from high school French, I was fascinated by how many common phrasings in French, while not directly analogous to standard American English, *were* analogous to non-standard Southern (american) English. In particular, "pourquoi" vs. "What for?" These became valuable tools for parsing (and remembering) syntax in French, along with all the bad accented french-type character archetypes from countless cartoons of my youth.
You start to be able to hear where the subtitles deviate from the original voice overs, too, and it's confusing to hear one thing and read another, especially when what you heard was a pretty bog-standard phrase that comes up all the time.
To put these points another way, a literal translation can serve as a pidgin linking the origin language and destination languages together. While the pidgin may seem rough and unpolished to native speakers on either side, being able to understand, converse in, and obtain information and nuance using the pidgin is still valuable.
Yes, I think localization deserves its place. It provides an important tool for accessibility and interpretation for larger audiences. However, it isn't always the only answer. There is a lot that stands to be learned from poor or uninspired direct translations. There is a subtitled version of the original anime adaptation of Devilman (which itself is interesting for many other reasons) that was very clearly not done by someone with American or UK English as their native language. But they are consistent in the decisions that come off as very strange, and it becomes almost part of the rules of the world the show takes place in. It's not unlike becoming acquainted with any fantasy or sci-fi culture in genre fiction.
Someone else above commented about keeping the misogyny, racism, etc intact as a feature that would attract right wing fans, and while I'm not able to say whether that is in fact the case for that demographic, the value for people who aren't misogynist, racist, etc, is to maintain perspective on the fact that people who have animated such beautiful things are not necessarily beautiful people themselves. There are rampant issues with the attitudes many Japanese people have towards others who are queer or foreign (particularly dark-skinned foreign). Glossing over these issues instead of providing context for them is a fantastic way to elevate mere humans to some sort of demigodhood. but context can be difficult to provide in a 23-minute episode without running into
"Translator's Note:" meme territory. That's actually one of the things I value about my group is that many members are able to provide a lot of context for the things we watch.
All that aside, using slang and dialect is a great tool for representing cultural differences between the characters inside some story, event if they do not necessarily map well to one another. I think it would be a little strange to go with a stereotype of American-Italian mafia speech for a story about Yakuza characters. The main connection (AFAIK) between the two sub-cultures are organized crime and being known for violence, so what reason would there be to push mob boss imagery into focus with every speech act? On the other hand, using it as shorthand for visual or audio cues that the characters in a scene would be expected to pick up on is a great way to share those cues with an audience not familiar with the Yakuza and how an average person would feel having encountered someone with those connections.
anyways, in this essay I have explored the value of literal (or bad) translations and how they don't automatically make you a fascist, and how you can learn about a culture without having mastered its language.
posted by rubah at 1:36 PM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
This may be true, but doesn't mean that you can't be more comfortable with dialog that has the local flavor shining through.
(background: part of a pretty leftwing, for the record, group that has too many people who've studied Japanese language and culture longer/more than I have, who watches more than our fair share of subbed, mostly 70s-90s anime. )
There's a certain level of language study at which you start to think in the base language. It's not "mastery" by your standards, because it still relies on understanding the stilted translations to English, or whatever native tongue, but you do start to internalize the way that the grammar and construction works, using that stilted understanding.
To take an example I recall from high school French, I was fascinated by how many common phrasings in French, while not directly analogous to standard American English, *were* analogous to non-standard Southern (american) English. In particular, "pourquoi" vs. "What for?" These became valuable tools for parsing (and remembering) syntax in French, along with all the bad accented french-type character archetypes from countless cartoons of my youth.
You start to be able to hear where the subtitles deviate from the original voice overs, too, and it's confusing to hear one thing and read another, especially when what you heard was a pretty bog-standard phrase that comes up all the time.
To put these points another way, a literal translation can serve as a pidgin linking the origin language and destination languages together. While the pidgin may seem rough and unpolished to native speakers on either side, being able to understand, converse in, and obtain information and nuance using the pidgin is still valuable.
Yes, I think localization deserves its place. It provides an important tool for accessibility and interpretation for larger audiences. However, it isn't always the only answer. There is a lot that stands to be learned from poor or uninspired direct translations. There is a subtitled version of the original anime adaptation of Devilman (which itself is interesting for many other reasons) that was very clearly not done by someone with American or UK English as their native language. But they are consistent in the decisions that come off as very strange, and it becomes almost part of the rules of the world the show takes place in. It's not unlike becoming acquainted with any fantasy or sci-fi culture in genre fiction.
Someone else above commented about keeping the misogyny, racism, etc intact as a feature that would attract right wing fans, and while I'm not able to say whether that is in fact the case for that demographic, the value for people who aren't misogynist, racist, etc, is to maintain perspective on the fact that people who have animated such beautiful things are not necessarily beautiful people themselves. There are rampant issues with the attitudes many Japanese people have towards others who are queer or foreign (particularly dark-skinned foreign). Glossing over these issues instead of providing context for them is a fantastic way to elevate mere humans to some sort of demigodhood. but context can be difficult to provide in a 23-minute episode without running into
"Translator's Note:" meme territory. That's actually one of the things I value about my group is that many members are able to provide a lot of context for the things we watch.
All that aside, using slang and dialect is a great tool for representing cultural differences between the characters inside some story, event if they do not necessarily map well to one another. I think it would be a little strange to go with a stereotype of American-Italian mafia speech for a story about Yakuza characters. The main connection (AFAIK) between the two sub-cultures are organized crime and being known for violence, so what reason would there be to push mob boss imagery into focus with every speech act? On the other hand, using it as shorthand for visual or audio cues that the characters in a scene would be expected to pick up on is a great way to share those cues with an audience not familiar with the Yakuza and how an average person would feel having encountered someone with those connections.
anyways, in this essay I have explored the value of literal (or bad) translations and how they don't automatically make you a fascist, and how you can learn about a culture without having mastered its language.
posted by rubah at 1:36 PM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’ll just share my current amusing annoyance, which is that if you watch NHK world food shows, the translations are a little too earnest. (一生懸命すぎます。)
So instead of “bonito flakes” you get “skipjack tuna.” Hee. Maybe they don’t realize how many reverse loanwords there are in English? Especially when it comes to food.
Totally a usability of translation issue, in that bonito will get you the right ingredient at the Asian supermarket, while skipjack, maybe? Or you might come home with fresh fish flakes, which I guess could be interesting?
posted by ec2y at 1:36 PM on March 9, 2022
So instead of “bonito flakes” you get “skipjack tuna.” Hee. Maybe they don’t realize how many reverse loanwords there are in English? Especially when it comes to food.
Totally a usability of translation issue, in that bonito will get you the right ingredient at the Asian supermarket, while skipjack, maybe? Or you might come home with fresh fish flakes, which I guess could be interesting?
posted by ec2y at 1:36 PM on March 9, 2022
I will say, after reading further down the thread, my one regret after reading The Master and Margarita was that I hadn't picked up the translation with copious translator's notes.
posted by rubah at 1:49 PM on March 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by rubah at 1:49 PM on March 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think food might be a special case because we often have multiple words for the same (or similar) thing and very often just using the foreign word is clearer. What would you call shichimi in English? 7 spice mix? I have a feeling I'd end up with Mrs. Dash if I went to the grocery store looking for that. Kabocha gets translated as pumpkin but for eating purposes at least we'd call it an acorn squash. Yuzu gets translated as citron which is what, French for lemon? I'm going to get the wrong thing for sure unless it's called yuzu at the grocery store.
Also, I'd be ecstatic if I was able to get fresh skipjack (katsuo) instead of the dried flakes because katsuo tataki is one of my favourite foods but super hard for me to get in Toronto.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:03 PM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also, I'd be ecstatic if I was able to get fresh skipjack (katsuo) instead of the dried flakes because katsuo tataki is one of my favourite foods but super hard for me to get in Toronto.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:03 PM on March 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Japanese ingredient power is strong, basically.
Sadly, our yuzu sapling died in one of the Melbourne hot spells, but the sudachi we planted in 2020 is going strong and now has fruit! An excellent accompaniment to sashimi.
posted by ec2y at 2:20 PM on March 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sadly, our yuzu sapling died in one of the Melbourne hot spells, but the sudachi we planted in 2020 is going strong and now has fruit! An excellent accompaniment to sashimi.
posted by ec2y at 2:20 PM on March 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
oh yeah NHK World has a major issue with overtranslation at times. Unfortunately, Japanese middle managers looking at English translations of things are also highly susceptible to having strong opinions about a language they remember studying once, many years ago
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:25 PM on March 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:25 PM on March 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
DoctorFedora: "Of course, on the other hand, the literal translation brigade loves to put cusses and stuff in to make things More Mature, even though in Japan about the rudest a word can innately be is on par with English “crap,” so maybe a 4 out of 10."
Saxon Kane: "Too bad subtitles can't also have footnotes."
ChurchHatesTucker: "You’ve never seen a fansub, I take it."
I am shocked and appalled the discussion has gone on this long without a link to Prozd's pitch-perfect "official subs vs fansubs"
posted by Rhaomi at 12:12 AM on March 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
Saxon Kane: "Too bad subtitles can't also have footnotes."
ChurchHatesTucker: "You’ve never seen a fansub, I take it."
I am shocked and appalled the discussion has gone on this long without a link to Prozd's pitch-perfect "official subs vs fansubs"
posted by Rhaomi at 12:12 AM on March 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
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