this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 28 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I do this for a living so I have a few words about it.

1. Obsessing over the meaning of individual words, and wrecking what the text (or dialogue) says on a discursive level. I see this all the time with Latin, but it pops up often in Japanese too - such as muppets translating "貴様" kisama as simply "you..." (literal translation) instead of something like "bastard" or "piece of shit" or whatever. Sure, "貴様" is "ackshyually" a pronoun, and then what?

2. Not paying attention to the target audience of the translation. JP→EN example again - it's fine if you keep honorific suffixes as in the original if the target audience is a bunch of weebs, we get it. But if you're subbing some anime series for a wider audience, you need to convey that info in some other way. (Don't just ditch it though, see #1.)

3. Not doing due diligence. It's 4AM, you got more work than you have time for, you need to keep pumping those translations. Poor little boy, I don't bloody care - spell-proof and grammar-proof the bloody thing dammit. "Its" for possessive, "it's" for pronoun+verb; "por que" if question, "porque" if answer; "apposto" if annexed, "a posto" if it's OK.

4. Abusing translation notes. If your "TN" has four or more lines, or the reader already expects one every single page, you're doing it wrong.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Thank you for caring, on behalf of those of us who have difficulty hearing.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

About #4, where do you even see TN nowadays? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen one in years.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 1 month ago

Books. Mostly paper ones, but sometimes the TN spam pops up in e-books too.

Video typically doesn't have this problem because the translators know that you won't have time to read it.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

I have seen several shows that combined both honorifics and localization e.g. Prinzessin Beispiel-sama (princess example-sama).

Sure if the translation is targeted to folks that would also watch Ghibli (because those audiences can range between casual to hardcore) but I like the hybrid approach.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

Poor little boy, I don’t bloody care - spell-proof and grammar-proof the bloody thing dammit. “Its” for possessive, “it’s” for pronoun+verb; “por que” if question, “porque” if answer; “apposto” if annexed, “a posto” if it’s OK.

This is a good sentiment for general writing.

(also, at least on-line, if you notice later that you messed up, then fix it!)