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| Which would you rather be stuck with? |
| Translation by native English speaker with subpar Japanese skills |
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| Translation by native Japanese speaker with subpar English skills |
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| Total Votes : 19 |
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rothcol_shepard
Joined: 13 Mar 2013
Posts: 475
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 Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 3:40 pm Post subject: When it comes to bad translations |
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Which would you rather be stuck with? Something translated by a native English speaker with subpar Japanese, or a native Japanese speaker with subpar English?
Both suck, but in different ways.
Typically the native English speaker will give you something that is in good English with few to no flaws in grammar or spelling, but at the cost of being a terrible translation from the original source.
The native Japanese speaker on the other hand may give you something more accurate, but in terrible, sometimes unreadable English. Though, at times it could be a worse translation, since he may use English words incorrectly thinking they mean different things than they do.
You tend to see the former with low-budget releases of some anime of visual novels from western publishers, but you tend to see the later with anime companies that include English subtitles on their Japanese bluray releases (it's becoming more common these days). You also saw the later with older video games back in the NES/SNES days, since it wasn't uncommon for the translation to be done in Japan.
Anyways, pick your poison.
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Last edited by rothcol_shepard on Mon May 13, 2013 3:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Arn
Joined: 23 May 2010
Posts: 1075
Location: The Bird Chirps, I Sing
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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What is the ******* difference?
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rothcol_shepard
Joined: 13 Mar 2013
Posts: 475
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Arn wrote: | | What is the ******* difference? |
Quite a bit. One is a product that doesn't appear to have an issue, but when compared to it's source material, has tons of mistakes that could potentially hurt certain plot points or the intended meaning to some scenes
The other may do this better, but can be annoying to read and full of grammatical errors.
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Huff N. Puff 20
Joined: 24 Mar 2005
Posts: 1129
Location: Selene Sestina Approved.
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rothcol_shepard
Joined: 13 Mar 2013
Posts: 475
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 3:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Huff N. Puff 20 wrote: | | On one hand, we have "Flawless Body" and on the other hand we have "All your base are belong to us" |
Basically. I like your analogy.
I know a lot of people who know zero Japanese that will play localized game and say "the translation was amazing" solely based on the fact that it is presented in well-written English, without any actual review of the original to back their claim. There is nothing wrong at all with liking a localized product, but you can't exactly say "its a good translation" when you lack the ability to actually read what it was translated from.
On the other hand, something can be very accurately translated, but presented in readable yet heavily flawed English. The flawed English is something that the native English player will immediately recognize, and thus is far more likely to complain about.
Writing quality and translation quality are not the same thing, and you can excel at one while failing at the other.
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Lunar Eclipse
Administrator
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 21372
Location: U.S.A.
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Great English with a loose, liberal localization is obviously preferable. Playing a game riddled with grammatical errors is horrendous and takes you out of the experience because you can't even focus on what's being said, just the fact that it's being said as if the character were a toddler trying to text. Yes, it's sometimes sad to go back and see what was lost if the localization crew missed something critical, but at least a much larger audience can enjoy the altered product for what it is. If it's not intelligible or not entertaining because of a bad localization, no one is going to like it no matter how good the original was.
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Kratos Auron
Joined: 12 Jun 2005
Posts: 4035
Location: Ka-Boom!
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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From what I've heard, Ar Tonelico 2 was "translated" horribly. There was a lot cut out, and quite a bit changed.
However, I absolutely loved the game for what it was, and I doubt the plot was too far off the original.
So basically, option 1 is better in my opinion. (Though I understand that AT2 may not be a great example because it does have quite a few grammatical errors. I blame this on NISA being Niche though.) I'd rather be able to fully enjoy what I have, rather than struggle to understand what was originally meant to happen.
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jesselt
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 7944
Location: Two years ago
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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You translate things from a foreign language into your own native language. I don't see why you would have someone translate something into a foreign language unless you were really desperate.
Also, translation isn't a science. Often you have to completely change things to have them make sense (i.e. colloquialisms, expressions, culturally significant items, etc.) When you try and keep the translation as close to the original as possible you end up with those horrible fan subs that say things like "Miyuki-Chan ate the Ekiben! (a Bento found at train stations)"
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Taiyz
Joined: 01 May 2004
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Location: Canada, Yes, where assassins try to murder our Prime Minister with plastic knives from KFC!
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Yume Hanabi
Joined: 24 Dec 2006
Posts: 5822
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 8:16 pm Post subject: |
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That series is beautiful, thank you for the links!
I'll never understand fansub politics. Why clutter the screen with tons of lines and waste precious character space with honorifics when that makes it HARDER for the viewer to read the lines efficiently? It's so counter-productive! And he made a good point about introducing people to anime. I tried watching an anime with a friend because she liked the manga and she was so confused by all those "-san" etc - it was so distracting for her, it kinda ruined her immersion in the show.
Anyway, on to the topic, I'd take the first option any day. If the translator is not fluent in the language they're translating in, then chances are high they'll make translation mistakes too, so better have something wrong/different and readable than something wrong/different and unreadable.
Of course we should always aim for "fluent in the source language and perfect in the target language".
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Charlie
Joined: 10 May 2004
Posts: 13412
Location: Nationalist Canada
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 8:18 pm Post subject: |
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I'll take the good English one. As long as the new writer comes up with some good dialog or even writes a completely new story -- that is good, then it's much easier to stomach than Engrish.
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Arrei
Joined: 23 Jan 2010
Posts: 546
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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The loose one is far better as long as it still actually makes sense. A game, show, graphic novel, what have you can still be a perfectly good experience even if it takes certain liberties, but I think that goes out the window if you, say, find completely random plot holes coming out of nowhere because of bad translation. I'd also extend that to weird changes in general, with 4kids' infamous changes like donut rice balls or replacing guns with slingshots.
However, in the case of such a mangled translation, I'd merely set that as being equally bad as the Engrishy translation - both end up completely nonsensical and difficult to follow without considerable irritation, just for different reasons. |
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Ruilus
Joined: 04 Dec 2005
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Location: Right outside your house. Seriously. Go look.
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Taiyz
Joined: 01 May 2004
Posts: 17956
Location: Canada, Yes, where assassins try to murder our Prime Minister with plastic knives from KFC!
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| Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Yume Hanabi wrote: | | I'll never understand fansub politics. Why clutter the screen with tons of lines and waste precious character space with honorifics when that makes it HARDER for the viewer to read the lines efficiently? It's so counter-productive! And he made a good point about introducing people to anime. I tried watching an anime with a friend because she liked the manga and she was so confused by all those "-san" etc - it was so distracting for her, it kinda ruined her immersion in the show. |
In my opinion, when Japanese spoken dialogue is subtitled, honourifics should be present. Sometimes I feel a disconnect if I hear, say, "Kai-kun" but the subtitle only says "Kai." Then again, it's been a long time since I've really paid attention to honourifics in subtitles...I may be misremembering my own opinion. >_>
However, in manga where there is no audible component, or English-dubbed productions, game or anime, there should be no honourifics.
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Suikoden2
Joined: 14 Nov 2012
Posts: 1535
Location: Within Dr. Casey's imagination.
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| Posted: Tue May 14, 2013 1:05 am Post subject: |
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One's not much better either. :/
That being said, the fan trans went a step further and added an awesome opening.
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