Comment by fenomas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fenomas | Hacker News Reader

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> any attempt to "satisfy the marketplace" will always corrupt a translation

I don't know how you're getting this from the article - everything he says about his efforts boils down to trying to change language that sounds flat and lifeless in translation into something that lives and breathes, and I think he's absolutely right to have made that attempt. (even if he misses the mark sometimes, like with the castlevania "what is a man?" bit...)

Living in JP I wind up seeing a lot of movies and TV with one language in the audio and the other in subtitles, and personally, "faithful" translations drive me bonkers with how flat and boring and explanatory they sound.

My pet theory is that it ultimately stems from the source languages being so linguistically different. I once read a book where the translator said in his notes (about Voltaire) "But mostly I've just tried to stay out of his way, for I find that he speaks very good English already", and I've often thought how hard it is to imagine a JP>EN translator feeling the same way.

I think a less accurate translation can sometimes result in a better product, but the translator needs to be very good to pull it off. The most notable example I can think of is Vagrant Story, which was widely praised for its localization.

Example from The GIA's review[0]:

"Lines as bland in the original Japanese as

"It is because you acknowledge things like freedom of belief. There can be only one God. This sort of incident occurs because you let heretics like them out of your control. That, and our parliament is impotent..."

become:

"All because of this religious freedom! Too much freedom, too many gods. Let those cultist cur-dogs run loose, and they will bite you. Gods! While our Parliament cowers...""

But if a bad writer tries this then you get Working Designs' localization style, where they "improved" the originals with unfunny 4th-wall-breaking jokes and references.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20010608201912/http://www.thegia...

Another controversial translation is the English localization of the "Ghost Stories" anime [1], which the authors were desperate to sell to Western audiences despite flopping in Japan. The show is full of hard-to-translate cultural references, so the translators quite drastically changed the tone of the show.

I would say Ghost Stories is a successful example of "satisfying the market" via something like an "official parody" of the original work, but it definitely doesn't remain faithful to the original. I'm glad it exists, and it has creative value, but it definitely fails as a "translation".

[1]: https://dubbing.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_Stories (not sure

The result is genuinely hilarious. I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed a faithful translation nearly as much.

Hm, I get a different impression from the article. In both examples the author gave, I preferred the "improved" translation over the author's translation! And these were his hand-picked examples! Needless to say, I'm one of the people the author mentions who find more faithful translations "endearing" even when they have small mistakes.

I think I mainly take issue with "cultural translations" that intentionally alters a story (even slightly) in order to make the characters/plot/context more appealing to western audiences. When I consume translated media, I appreciate it when the translator makes an attempt to preserve the aspects which made the work appealing to the original audience.

I don't think the right question is whether translations are "faithful" or "cultural", I think it's whether they translate what was said, or what a native speaker would have said in a similar situation. To me, when JP dialog is translated precisely the results tend to sound overly neutral and explanatory - i.e. you get flat dialog that an English speaker wouldn't say. So the choice before the translator is either to sound unnatural or to editorialize.

But I think there's a second-order thing going on, where audiences who consume a lot of anime/JRPGs/etc are used to a certain kind of translation, and dialog that's too colorful or expressive winds up not sounding "proper" because one isn't used to anime characters talking that way. E.g. when an anime character makes a cultural reference that will be incomprehensible to non-Japanese audiences, I think a lot of anime fans will expect that to be translated "faithfully" (i.e. incomprehensibly), rather than be replaced with a reference they're familiar with (even if the replacement conveys the same meaning to them that the original conveyed to JP audiences).

Regarding your second point--I don't believe that e.g. Japanese cultural references can be replaced with something that has the "same meaning" to Western audiences. If I don't understand a reference, I try to look it up later. I see it see as an opportunity to learn more about the experiences of people who are different from me. It's frustrating to me when e.g. "onigiri" is translated as "hamburger" in an anime.

By cultural reference I meant things like a character quoting a JP movie or saying the catchphrase of a JP comedian - where if translated directly the line would be understandable, but not actually meaningful, to non-Japanese speakers.

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