|
Okay, i get the Matrix thing now. But to be fair, Dodge This is such an incredibly lovely, unimaginative and nondescript one liner that the localization seems actually preferable. "Only human." "Only an agent." BAM. That's also a pretty bad one liner in the really?-you-couldn't-think-of-anything-witty? sense, but at least it's an actual retort. The references still work in other films, too, if they're explicitly meant as a reference and you're not just sneaking in parts of better movies into your own. If teenager-with-superpowers blockbuster hero of the season blasts an opponent in a German translation and smugly says "Only an agent" everyone who's seen the Matrix will immediately know what he was going for and peg him as an immature tool, too. Intent delivered, even if the enemy was probably not an agent of any kind. I'm still lost on the "People are looking like garbage" line, because i don't recognize it at all.  Is that from this manga's bad fast translation? I haven't been reading these, 'cause i have a modicum of self-control and don't really need my 3 minutes of entertainment 3 days earlier. Somehow a lot of people seem to have trouble with that.
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 19:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 14:57 |
|
|
HenryEx posted:I'm still lost on the "People are looking like garbage" line, because i don't recognize it at all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 19:47
|
|
|
Shouldn't that just be "The people are like garbage"?
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
I should watch that (it's a movie, right?) some day. Liberal translations are mostly fine as long as you're mindful of the medium you're working in. A big problem i recently noticed is liberal book translations that end up getting a movie. Maybe you guessed it, i'm talking about Divergent.  Here's another German example: In the translations of the novel, the five factions were renamed to make their meaning as clear and familiar as they were in English to an English speaker, which is a good idea and makes sense. I haven't read the books and am just guessing it, but it seems highly likely, considering that more than half the clans are called something completely different than what their written designation says in the film. It's confusing as gently caress when the big stone archway spells ABNEGATION and your narrator talks about the Altruan. Or you see Erudite written everywhere, but the people walking around belong to the Ken faction. I guess it would also make things hella confusing when you're trying to talk across the language barriers about the thing with people. Like trying to talk with a Japanese or French guy about Phoenix Wright is basically an exercise in frustration.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 20:06
|
|
|
Castle in the Sky is a Miyazaki, if you haven't seen it you should get on that. E: the fact that "Laputa" got left off of the American version's title is another bit of localization actually. La Puta: Castle in the Sky would be a veeeery different movie
Shugojin fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Apr 27, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 21:22
|
|
|
XboxPants posted:It's definitely an interesting topic; if one argues that you shouldn't have any foreign words, even when there's no equivalent concept, how far do you go in erasing the foreign-ness? Should "okonomiyaki" be translated as pancake, "shamisen" as ukelele? I disagree with that kind of thinking because the further you go down that hole, the more of the original meaning is lost. If you're going to be doing that much re-writing of a story, then isn't that goal better served by going ahead and just making an entirely new adaptation of the story into the target cultural context? I'm not exactly seeing the problem in those examples. I have no idea what an okonomiyaki is, but I know what a pancake is. I have no idea what a shamisen is, but I know what a ukelele is. Now even if pancake and ukelele are only half correct, I'd still wager that the difference between a pancake and an okonomiyaki isn't particularly important. In any language being understood is more important than being 100% technically accurate and in your examples I don't think the loss of information is going to be harmful. Saying pancake instead of okonomiyaki isn't going to undermine the story... and if it does somehow cripple the story then by all means say okonomiyaki instead, but I'm pretty certain that'd be the exception rather than the rule. Sure you could have a TN saying "okonomiyaki = a type of savory pancake" in which case I'd wonder why you didn't just say pancake. Or you could describe the dish, in which case I'd wonder why you spent so much time explaining such a tangential detail. Yes there are definitely cases where translating everything is difficult (as is the case with noona here and japanese honorifics) and losing information harms the story. But it looks like you're using a slippery slope argument for the small details, that I don't really believe in. I think most people will accept that if you're reading/watching something from a foreign language then some things might not translate well, and that some things might be too important to accept any loss of meaning. IMO the basic goal of any translation is to allow new people to understand and enjoy a work (people will disagree on the best way to do this, but surely this is common starting ground). Trying to preserve 100% of the orginal meaning is futile as any translation will have some loss of information, so you come up with something that makes sense to the new audience. Trying to 'completely purge foreign-ness' smacks of taking localizations too far in a way that goes beyond being simply understood and extends into making things familiar and comfortable. This would be translating an okonomiyakin into a hamburger because hey people eat hamburgers. This is just my particularly preference and thoughts on translations. Other people probably have wildly different opinions, but hey you did say it was an interesting topic. Those are always dangerous words.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 22:21
|
|
|
Elite posted:I'm not exactly seeing the problem in those examples. Well said. I think your view is a totally valid one. I definitely agree that those kind of details (like the difference between ukelele & a shamisen, or if a girl called her friend with "kun" or "san") are most likely something that won't make a large difference in the story, and all the main beats & tones will still be communicated. Even in the case of honorifics, when you take away the "san" or "kun" you should still be able to tell whether the dialog is respectful or casual, and if you can't tell that, then there's an even bigger problem. It's really just a small issue of nuance 90%+ of the time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 23:24
|
|
|
In Pokemon they always localized onigiri as doughnut. That always struck me pretty odd when they could have just called it a rice ball or something.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 23:35
|
|
|
Boy I sure love the taste of these DONUTS the DONUTS are delicious yeah I love jelly filled DONUTS. brock, you make the best DONUTS. Edit: gently caress
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 23:35
|
|
|
I don't see the harm in leaving stuff like Okonomiyaki or Shamisen untranslated. What's the worst that could happen, someone might look the terms up and learn something? Ooh the horror. The bottom line here is that translation is not a science. There is no one correct way of doing it, and to me that's a big part of what makes consuming foreign media so interesting. The way some people get obsessed with translating every little thing is kind of ridiculous really. The whole Nee-san/Onii-san thing for example is one that particularly irritates me though. When people translate that into big sister or big brother it generally comes off so unnaturally in English. Unless you are talking about them, its very rare to refer to a sibling as brother or sister in English, especially when talking directly to them. Basically no one does it! If you are supposed to be localising something, why make them talk in a totally weird way in the end product? I hardly think that it would kill them to just change the line so they are calling them by name, or even to leave off the big or little. If you were really pushing for it, I could see an argument of bro or sis, but even then it probably would change the tone of the conversation drastically, especially if it was meant to be a more dramatic scene. Or, you could just leave it as is, and chances are the people who care enough about stupid Japanese comics enough to read them on the internet are probably already in the know about those concepts. That all said though, its just as bad when people do stuff like "Just as keikaku". What the gently caress is that even about? Sometimes I think that some Fansubbers and scanner just lack basic common sense. Anyway, that is way too many words about stupid translating drama. FiftySeven fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Apr 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2014 23:59
|
|
|
What a huge wall of Elite text that's mostly meaningless. Dude, it's not a korean comic about a generic fantasy wonderland where no expectations exists and anything goes, it's explicitly a korean comic set in Korea. The hell are you even doing not expecting distinctly korean (or eastern in general) things to pop up? Take like 3 seconds to pop a term into Google to educate yourself about what a shamisen is, just like i did. The "onigiri are just ubiquitous handheld snacks, so call them DONUTS which i know, basically the same" argument is and always will be retarded. Foreign cuisine is one of the most exported and imported cultural goods too, which makes it extra stupid, but it applies to almost all arguments. The whole stance is also hella disrespectful. Imagine a story set in France where the main couple goes to the capital city on their honeymoon and visits the Why are they all suddenly in one city? Who the gently caress cares.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 00:02
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjphanrGEKQ
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 00:18
|
|
|
Elite posted:I'm not exactly seeing the problem in those examples. An easy way of doing things is just to add a redundant word. People do it all the time when handling foreign languages. For example, "sharia law" literally means "law law", but it helps people who don't speak Arabic to know what it's about. Similarly, consider "okonomiyaki pancake". The reader has a vague idea of what the food is and they're spared some explanatory note breaking flow, while they aren't likely to be getting the wrong impression. It's like having your gateau and eating it. FiftySeven posted:The whole Nee-san/Onii-san thing for example is one that particularly irritates me though. When people translate that into big sister or big brother it generally comes off so unnaturally in English. Unless you are talking about them, its very rare to refer to a sibling as brother or sister in English, especially when talking directly to them. Basically no one does it! If you are supposed to be localising something, why make them talk in a totally weird way in the end product? I hardly think that it would kill them to just change the line so they are calling them by name, or even to leave off the big or little. If you were really pushing for it, I could see an argument of bro or sis, but even then it probably would change the tone of the conversation drastically, especially if it was meant to be a more dramatic scene. Or, you could just leave it as is, and chances are the people who care enough about stupid Japanese comics enough to read them on the internet are probably already in the know about those concepts. I used to feel the same way, but I'm starting to think that it can sound fine, in the right circumstances. As I see it, the key is for it to be a conscious decision case by case on the translator's part, not just "onii-chan" = "big bro", which is unnatural. HenryEx posted:Dude, it's not a korean comic about a generic fantasy wonderland where no expectations exists and anything goes, it's explicitly a korean comic set in Korea. The hell are you even doing not expecting distinctly korean (or eastern in general) things to pop up? Take like 3 seconds to pop a term into Google to educate yourself about what a shamisen is, just like i did. I'm not sure anyone in this thread is representing the position you're attacking here. Well, a couple of other people brought up similar points to your first; I suppose your take on this is going to be similar to where you might stand on Faulkner's famous criticism of Hemingway. Arguably it's poor form for a translator to leave any part of his job as an exercise to the reader (since they probably aren't as good at it), but I also think that expecting someone to stop and look up something breaks the flow of whatever they're reading. It's a fair bet that the author didn't expect his original readers to stop and look something up. Equally, translating for the sake of translating puts unnecessary work on the translator and risks misleading the reader in some cases. I'm sure you have some examples already in mind.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 00:51
|
|
|
I'm okay with honorifics and untranslated words so long as they are explained in the margins and aren't obnoxious (like that keikaku example). I like learning about foreign culture and the story loses a little something if it's just straight-up removed.The Evil Thing posted:An easy way of doing things is just to add a redundant word. People do it all the time when handling foreign languages. For example, "sharia law" literally means "law law", but it helps people who don't speak Arabic to know what it's about. Similarly, consider "okonomiyaki pancake". The reader has a vague idea of what the food is and they're spared some explanatory note breaking flow, while they aren't likely to be getting the wrong impression. It's like having your gateau and eating it. This is a good idea too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 03:51
|
|
|
I'm not sure how to handle puns--like Zoro's attacks in One Piece, for instance. It's not too hard to translate the odd pun here or there, but when you have a dozen of them all sharing a theme, English, as a langauge, is not equipped for that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 03:57
|
|
|
Silento posted:I'm not sure how to handle puns--like Zoro's attacks in One Piece, for instance. It's not too hard to translate the odd pun here or there, but when you have a dozen of them all sharing a theme, English, as a langauge, is not equipped for that. The thing about puns is, even if you translate them perfectly, they're still puns.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 04:05
|
|
|
HenryEx posted:What a huge wall of Elite text that's mostly meaningless. Your France example is a stupid, blatant straw-man and (I hope) you know it; changing a proper noun is not at all the same thing as changing an innocuous detail to make it familiar to the target audience. Also, I don't understand your "hella disrespectful" stance. Disrespecful to whom? The author, or the native culture? I promise you that, as a native English speaker, I would not feel disrespected if I saw an English to French translation that localized pancake to crepe.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 04:21
|
|
|
Silento posted:I'm not sure how to handle puns--like Zoro's attacks in One Piece, for instance. It's not too hard to translate the odd pun here or there, but when you have a dozen of them all sharing a theme, English, as a langauge, is not equipped for that. If it doesn't translate than just give the literal meaning and leave a note explaining why the characters are laughing or something.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 04:40
|
|
|
Changing food into different food is dumb. Not translating honorifics is a point of contention but overall they should probably be translated as they're not loan words and if we didn't translate words because they had deeper meanings then nothing would get translated. Chinese has words that specifically state whether an uncle is a brother of the father or mother. This kinda thing happens when you have a billion language characters and it's goofy to think that the best way to get the full meaning of something across is to not explain it at all. Not translating manga or manwha titles is evil and everybody should stop doing it because I can never remember manga titles anymore. Seriously people not to stop doing this.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 05:02
|
|
|
Dr_Amazing posted:If it doesn't translate than just give the literal meaning and leave a note explaining why the characters are laughing or something. Because jokes are even funnier if you explain them! Soylentbits posted:Changing food into different food is dumb. I know the video Silento posted was supposed to be tongue in cheek, but I think I'm going to approach from the other direction. The Pokémon world doesn't look particularly Asian; it's more kinda-sorta Western in appearance. It's been a while, but I don't recall seeing any rice paddies or evidence of rice agriculture. Given this, why would the characters be eating rice balls in the first place? In this case, it's not about educating the audience in a foreign culture (translators, don't repurpose someone else's work for this) but providing a prop for the character interactions. For this example, the prop is some staple food that no one thinks twice about because what it is isn't relevant to the plot--like a MacGuffin, you could say--in Japan it's rice balls; in the US it's sandwiches. Really, people like me are why making absolute statements is far more trouble than it's worth.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 09:28
|
|
|
Translating is hard. An important thing to keep in mind is that the translator is essentially creating an entirely new text which maps to the original. The mapping will never be perfect for a lot of reasons. A translator is constantly making compromises. Just like any writer, the translator has to keep their audience in mind, I think. The pokemon dubs are awful, sure, but they were created to be the tv equivalent of candy for five year olds. I can see why they made the choices they did. I think it also makes total sense to keep Japanese honorifics for scanalations. They nerds who are reading that poo poo will know what they mean, and the mapping will be a lot better.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 09:29
|
|
|
The Evil Thing posted:Because jokes are even funnier if you explain them! For example in Full Metal Panic there's a bit where characters are in this competition and one of the teams is "Team Dragon". Another character keeps referring to it as team turnip. The joke being that daikon sounds like dragon. So the translator can just do it directly and the audience is confused why everyone is laughing. They can try to make their own joke that doesn't match the actual words. They can do the first one but note (hey daikon means turnip and sounds like dragon) and everyone moves on.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 15:09
|
|
|
If you want to not lose context and meaning from the original work learn the original language and stop reading translations. In English speaking cultures we often appropriate the foreign language word for prepared dishes so seeing foreign words for food isn't abnormal. Oddly enough leaving honorifics in romanized form never happens outside of the amateur fansub community. Maybe it is correlated to whatever mental defect causes people to meltdown when others steal their work that they are stealing.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 20:59
|
|
|
Sacro posted:If you want to not lose context and meaning from the original work learn the original language and stop reading translations. In English speaking cultures we often appropriate the foreign language word for prepared dishes so seeing foreign words for food isn't abnormal. Oddly enough leaving honorifics in romanized form never happens outside of the amateur fansub community. Maybe it is correlated to whatever mental defect causes people to meltdown when others steal their work that they are stealing. Plenty of official anime/manga translators leave in honorifics nowadays. Although this was clearly influenced by fansubbers. In that sense, you could think of it as a conflict between translation purists like yourself and the market realities of Japanophile fandoms who believe it's impossible to translate nakama (hint: it means "friend" most of the time).
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 21:03
|
|
|
Sacro posted:Oddly enough leaving honorifics in romanized form never happens outside of the amateur fansub community. Persona 4?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 21:03
|
|
|
Sacro posted:If you want to not lose context and meaning from the original work learn the original language and stop reading translations. In English speaking cultures we often appropriate the foreign language word for prepared dishes so seeing foreign words for food isn't abnormal. Oddly enough leaving honorifics in romanized form never happens outside of the amateur fansub community. Maybe it is correlated to whatever mental defect causes people to meltdown when others steal their work that they are stealing. Or maybe it's because the die-hard fans that are downloading & watching fansubs is a different audience than the more mainstream audience commercial subtitles are made for, and it can be more safely assumed that they have a knowledge of things like honorifics?
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 21:04
|
|
|
Sacro posted:If you want to not lose context and meaning from the original work learn the original language and stop reading translations. By a similar token, if you want any say in how fan translations are done then you should be doing them yourself. After a certain point this discussion starts feeling like unproductive whining from leecher ingrates
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 21:20
|
|
|
jackofarcades posted:Persona 4? Yeah I thought of this right after posting but that is done deliberately and is very aware that this is a debate among nerds, and specifically targeting them. XboxPants posted:Or maybe it's because the die-hard fans that are downloading & watching fansubs is a different audience than the more mainstream audience commercial subtitles are made for, and it can be more safely assumed that they have a knowledge of things like honorifics? That's the thing though: learn Japanese or Korean if you shudder at the thought of losing precious context. As has been discussed, translating loses a lot of context and subtlety from the original work regardless of how skilled the translator is or how literal or liberal they are working. Drawing the line at leaving honorifics in is asinine and alienating, just make it fully understandable in the target language. The reason we are even talking about this is because people don't know what the gently caress noona is and it cannot be inferred by context, and this place is about as smelly nerd haven as it gets.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 21:22
|
|
|
Sacro posted:That's the thing though: learn Japanese or Korean if you shudder at the thought of losing precious context. As has been discussed, translating loses a lot of context and subtlety from the original work regardless of how skilled the translator is or how literal or liberal they are working. Drawing the line at leaving honorifics in is asinine and alienating, just make it fully understandable in the target language. The reason we are even talking about this is because people don't know what the gently caress noona is and it cannot be inferred by context, and this place is about as smelly nerd haven as it gets. Alienating to who? If you're suggesting that a significant portion of the people who watch fansubs don't understand Japanese honorifics and are thus "alienated" by their use I'm going to have to disagree with you. You're definitely right that it'd be alienating if people did it in any kind of mass-consumer version, but I'm not talking about that. WRT to the noona thing; your assertion that all nerds can just be lumped into one pile is silly. (you basically say "ADTRW is the best place to go to find people who know about Korean culture, because they are nerds") Yes, ADTRW is a super big nerd haven... of people who know a lot about Japanese stuff. It's fair to assume that anime & manga fans know some things about Japanese culture but that doesn't mean you should also assume they know a lot about Korean culture. (so yeah, of course just leaving in "noona" without even a TL note was lazy bad translating, I don't think anyone's arguing that it was good)
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 21:52
|
|
|
I don't know a lick of Korean, but I just kind of inferred that it meant the same thing as "nee-san" in Japanese, which seems to be correct.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2014 22:38
|
|
Sacro posted:That's the thing though: learn Japanese or Korean if you shudder at the thought of losing precious context. As has been discussed, translating loses a lot of context and subtlety from the original work regardless of how skilled the translator is or how literal or liberal they are working. Drawing the line at leaving honorifics in is asinine and alienating, just make it fully understandable in the target language. The reason we are even talking about this is because people don't know what the gently caress noona is and it cannot be inferred by context, and this place is about as smelly nerd haven as it gets. You are saying both:
You can't have it both ways. Furthermore a lot of people did infer roughly what "Noona" meant from context and as it turns out a simple google search for "noona" yields a whole bunch of articles explaining what the various korean honorifics mean in fairly simple terms. When I first started reading korean comics(I won't say manhwa since that might cause you to blow a fuse of some sort) I simply did a quick google search and five minutes later I knew what these terms meant and they were no longer a problem for me. If actually putting in a very minimal effort to learn something makes me a "smelly nerd" then so be it, I'd rather be that than be ignorant.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 00:25
|
|
|
Hey, lil baby anime. Any chance you can close the thread until this retarded slap fight is out of people's systems?
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 00:38
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:Hey, lil baby anime. Any chance you can close the thread until this retarded slap fight is out of people's systems? If people are annoyed by this then yeah, someone should definitely make a thread for it if anyone still wants to discuss it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 00:48
|
|
|
Lumberjack Bonanza posted:The thing about puns is, even if you translate them perfectly, they're still puns. Yeah, theyre always amazing. Pun haters can go die in a fire.
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 00:50
|
|
|
KoB posted:Yeah, theyre always amazing. I don't give a flying gently caress about dumb translation slap fights, but I will drop kick a motherfucker who denies the utter awesomeness of puns. Why does it seem like the US is the only place where hating on puns is commonplace?
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 01:14
|
|
|
pnumoman posted:I don't give a flying gently caress about dumb translation slap fights, but I will drop kick a motherfucker who denies the utter awesomeness of puns. Puns are the last refuge of scoundrels and I will hear no different. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 02:20
|
|
|
Lumberjack Bonanza posted:Puns are the last refuge of scoundrels and I will hear no different. I was taught by a respected astrophysicist that the last refuge of scoundrels is "but that's a special case".
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
Puns are kisama tachis and I will destroy anyone who claims them as nakamas
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 02:36
|
|
|
lil baby anime posted:Puns are kisama tachis and I will destroy anyone who claims them as nakamas finally, someone in this thread starts speaking sense Law Cheetah fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Apr 29, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 03:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 14:57 |
|
|
The last time a war of this magnitude was waged was the great Dub vs. Sub war of 2003. I think we can all relax, look back, and breathe a sigh of relief that we escaped this conflict with so few casualties
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2014 03:10
|
|