I consume quite a bit of anime and manga (just look at the communities I moderate), and I see a number of regular complaints about translation in that space. I personally think most of them are overblown and that translators are doing their best. Translation is far from a science and almost every sentence/paragraph has judgement calls that need to be made by the translator. What some people find annoying about a translation might make the work more approachable to somebody else.
One thing that does bother me for Japanese is the exclusion of honorifics. Most subtitles these days include them, which is a definite improvement over official subs of the past. In subtitle form, honorifics are usually the only indication that a speaker is using something like formal language (keigo) unless you have some knowledge of the spoken language.
As a bit of an aside, if you are interested in professional translation and some of the challenges they face (especially with MTL on the horizon), then Anime Herald did an interview with several of them. Check it out!
So, about honorifics: Whether they’ll actually correspond to keigo is a hit and miss depending on the actual relationship between the characters. This happens for a few reasons, but the most important one is that in Japanese using an honorific other than san or sama (or not using one at all) is a declaration of either a large difference in status, a close relationship or shonen protagonist syndrome. It’s more complicated in real life, but this is how it usually goes in anime. So anyway, one common example is that highschooler characters will usually address each other with san even though they never use keigo.
it always takes me right out of whatever i’m watching when a character says the same word twice and it’s translated into two different words. like when “matte! matte!” becomes “wait! stop!” it’s a stupid thing to care about and i’m sure translators have their reasons- very easy for me, an idiot who can barely speak one language, to criticize- but it always shatters my immersion
I’ve learned a little Japanese and can say that repeating words changes the meaning. Like an intensifier. So, “wait” followed by “stop” could be a legitimate translation, showing the increased demand level of the repeated word.
ah, interesting!
Same for those ononatopoeia words like fuwa fuwa, kira kira, etc. right?
Not infuriating, but I got pretty annoyed by the translator in Shogun constantly changing Anjin’s statements.
censorship / changing the original meaning to fit the translators personal agenda
And then getting mad if the publishers of a book/comic/whatever get fed up with it that they decide to replace you for poor quality translations, with human reviewed AI translations no less.
Is there an example of this ?
These were the best I can find right now on short notice.
For Manga and Anime in particular:
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Removal of honorifics which convey a person’s status which can ba explained in a translators notes page or a quick look at Wikipedia
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Giving people with different dialects from standard Tokyo dialect different English accents like southern americanese or Scottish. They’re Japanese, not Scottish or american
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Using american English
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Using american slang which no one outside of america understands
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Even though I don’t watch dubs anymore and prefer subs every dub I’ve seen poorly attempts to imitate the way Japanese people speak
Using american English
I don’t even use American English, but come on. This is a silly hill to die on, and one full of linguistic prejudice.
american English is improper English
Here’s that video with Jeremy Clarkson that’s shows some of the issues with american English
american English is improper English
“Improper” on which grounds?
You do realise that language variation is normal and expected, and it doesn’t make any of the underlying varieties intrinsically “better” or “worse” than the others, right?
Here’s that video with Jeremy Clarkson that’s shows some of the issues with american English
>My source is a 1min comedy video taking the piss out of vocab differences
You are being a bloody muppet. And given that it is not the first time, I won’t waste my time further with you, go lick a cactus.
The United States had an official estimated resident population of 335,893,238 on Jan 1, 2024,
The population of the United Kingdom was estimated at 67,596,281 in 2022.
Sauce: Wikipedia
Have you ever seen the movie “Idiocracy”
america does have a higher population of idiots who think trump is jesus and that democrats have space lazers and weather altering technology
What does this have to do with translation? I love bashing the US as much as the next guy (after all, so does everyone else in the US when they aren’t being hypernationalist 🙃) but we’re talking about subtitle translation, not conspiracy theorists. From a population perspective, there are more people watching who speak American English. If localization only has the resources to target one dialect, that’s probably the one they’ll go for. Fan-subs are another story (and are usually better anyway)
This also doesn’t take into account the percentage of each population that does read manga
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Many years ago, there was a televised interview with Saddam Hussein. I don’t remember which TV network it was on but it was a pretty big deal. This was early 2000’s before the US invasion of Iraq. I think the translator referred to then President Bush as “Bush”. Saddam didn’t understand a lot of English but he understood that. He interrupts the translator mid-sentence to inform him that what he should have said was “Mr. Bush”, with a sort of tone that felt like he did not appreciate being misquoted.
I don’t know if that dude even realized how close he probably came to being strangled to death with a microphone cord.
“I may not know English, but I do know the level of formality I chose to use”
Korean to English is a mess. It doesn’t help that Koreans don’t trust native English speakers to do it, unless they’re ethnically Korean. The fact that ethnic Korean-Americans get hired to do the job over my white friends who are clearly better at the language, that is the most frustrating.
Please understand it.
I think you are preaching to a stubborn asian wall.
Using the wrong register for the material or topic. For example, using very literary language in a technical manual… No, “peculiarities” is not an appropriate synonym for “features” or “specs”.
“Peculiarities” has a much different connotation. I’ve used software which has had features that might have been better described as peculiarities.
Me when I have to code something in JavaScript
On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.
I’m actually fine if the subtitles have to be truncated to communicate the same meaning in less space.
I actually find it harder to comprehend the subtitles when someone tries to be as accurate as possible, especially if the subs transcribe every little stuttering. I’m here to learn the stuff they people on screen are trying to say, I’m not interested in the subtitler’s scholarly digression into the finer points of what they’re hearing.
Some person in reddit once did a hilarious thing where they whipped out a full blown IPA transcript and started analysing the finer dialectual points of a viral video, trying to pinpoint the origin of the speaker. It was hilarious. Probably even more hilarious to linguists. But the point is, that whole thing was not what we were there for, we were just discussing a viral video.
ivxferre is right, so I’ll just state of a few examples:
Baito, which in fact comes from the German arbeit and means a part time job.
Apiiru, which comes from the English appeal but actually means to emphasize or play up something as a way of making yourself more attractive or making a point. For example, you can say “He looks like a good guy but that’s all apiiru”.
Cureemu, which is supposed to be the English claim but refers to complaints or having an issue with something in general.
Or when the character is bilingual but the subtitle just says: [speaking a foreign language]
[Untranslated Wookiee speech]
Zoe: swears in Chinese
Subtitle: “[SPEAKS GALACTIC LANGUAGE]”
FU, everyone knows that that’s a real language and probably a very juicy phrase that would be absolute golden to know for some other occasion!
^(PSA there exists a site with every phrase translated and explained)
site with every phrase translated
Because Mandarin?
Well yeah it’s mandarin, but in the show Mandarin is pretty exclusively used for very creative swear phrases, such as “The explosive diarrhea of an elephant”. Things that might be fun to learn to say…
On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.
Depending on the word, this is actually sensible since borrowings tend to change the meaning of the words being borrowed.
A silly example of that is the Japanese garaigo “ダッチワイフ” datchiwaifu. It’s a borrowing from English “Dutch wife”, and recognisable as such… but you definitively don’t want to translate it as such, as in Japanese it conveys “sex doll”.
I don’t know if that counts but fan translating comics/novels using machine translation WITHOUT DOING ANY PROOFREADING AFTERWARDS.
When books, especially scholarly books, don’t give the original language version, at least somewhere, of names that they Latinize.
When they get pissed off because the publishers/authors decide not to work with them because they want their works to be translated as close to the original while still making sense, so they decide to rant about how it’s unfair for themselves to be laid off for ruining works and calling people Nazi’s on extwitter for criticizing their bad translations.
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.
About #4, where do you even see TN nowadays? I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen one in years.
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.
Thank you for caring, on behalf of those of us who have difficulty hearing.
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.
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!)
When translators dont keep the common honorifics in manga but instead localize them.
Yesterday I read the first volume of oshi no ko and they put a small glossary of common words.
But I actually prefer in-line translation notes under the panel or at the bottom of the page with a small asterisk.Same goes for Anime.
When the translator isn’t a native speaker but thinks they know better than you. (In the case of the language in question being your (or at least one of your) mother tongue(s))
