Fan translated anything is probably bad
Note: I don’t profess to know Japanese, but I would like to have some level of confidence in my abilities.
Yeah, I dunno. Fan translated things can be good and even better than official translations on a casual level. Although, then there are times where I think that when studying Japanese and trying to learn Japanese it is better to wane off anything fan translated. I mean as far as studying the Japanese original and then comparing your translations to what others have translated in the fanscanlations, fansubs or whatever. I’ve found that it is only going to make you doubt yourself and your confidence in learning Japanese.
I think all people kind of have this feeling that they want to be confident in what they do so they need to check up on what other people do for that extra boost of confidence. I really can’t say of all instances but I’m sure all groups have their own strengths and weaknesses, and I mean ANYONE can just start a fansubbing group and no one really cares about the level of translation or skill the fan translator has.
I really have only this one instance, but I’m reading this manga and this group is translating it. I thought it would be good to see how I thought my translations would match up to there’s. Some lines I personally had trouble with I could understand better with the fan English help but then there were simpler lines that, maybe they were very loose with the translation, just seemed very wrong to me.
Very easy lines that could have been looked online or something. Also, I think it is a little odd when you add lines that weren’t in the original text or even take out words that are essentially important. Maybe I’m being nitpicky. I don’t know. I don’t think there is much to gain in using fan anything to help study Japanese. I know we all want to have reassurance in our abilities by seeing what other people have done. The thing is though they might not be right either. Anyway, what am I doing checking it with an English translation that could be right or wrong? I need to think in Japanese to understand Japanese in the first place!
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess I’m just a little ticked off that the group in question didn’t take my message with the certain errors that I questioned in their translation. I asked to talk to their translator as to why they he translated those lines as such. Hrm, well any case, their latest chapter of this manga is solid and matches with how I would translate it despite there are a few lines that make me wonder why some lines were deleted and such. Also, people hate to be corrected too I guess…
Comments? Insight?
Well if you provided examples instead of just one piece of self-proclaimed evidence, your post might be more believable. I know Japanese, like real Japanese and not the fake shit from anime, and generally, with a reputable fansub/scan group, the translations are correct. Whether or not they are “professional” that’s another thing, but recent pro translations have also left the “chans” and other stuff intact, see Persona 4 US localisation.
Well the thing is I only did it with this one manga so cut me some slack. I said I only had this one instance in my entry. Also, I think anime is a perfectly creditable source for getting familiar with Japanese. Yes, there is a lot in manga and anime real Japanese people don’t say, but if you’re mature about it and you know Japanese culture a side from the garage in anime then you know what is worth remebering. Not only that this stuff IS made for Japanese people so you’re bound to pick up on vocab, grammar patterns and Kanji.
I started a scanlation group and joined fansubbibg just to correct their stupid mistakes.
That’s cool.
I understand where your criticisms are coming from, but you seem to have failed to acknowledge that there are various philosophies involved in translation.
Some translators believe that the best form of translation is to directly translate lines, whereas others believe creative appropriation is better in allowing the audience to better understand the material. Therefore, the latter group might not necessarily translate a line ‘correctly’, but they might do so in a way that would be more appropriate for english speaking audiences.
Yeah, I was kinda getting to that but I guess I didn’t really express that. But I dunno what this group did they were translating things like もうすぐ終わる to already done when it really translates to almost done. こんな奇麗なのにみんな遠慮してるのかな Was one where I noticed they cut on the みんな and instead translated it to mean the character that was cute was the one being reserved. It was really little things that didn’t matter to the story but really would have had a different context.
So yeah, I dunno if this is part of that creative appropriation but those kinds of things they did made me wonder. I’m probably making a big deal out of nothing since they can do whatever they want really, and I guess I’ll just have to wait to see how Tokyopop handles it.
I’d say find a fansub group more to your liking. Some speedsub and get stuff wrong to get it out in time, some go for loose translations which flow better and seem less awkward and confusing, and others try to be as accurate in their translation as they can (often the same ones who do TL notes).
Thanks for the advice.
That might be true in any number of cases, but even supposedly professional translators can completely miss the point of a phrase or word too.
As for not liking corrections, that depends on how mature the individual or group in question is. I’ll leave it at that.
Yeah I’ve noticed this especially when I saw those translations from MangaGamer. But that might be more like an English grammar error than a translation one dunno.
I’m a fansubber. It’s all about finding good groups – some translators in some fansub groups (read: the bad ones) are bad at English, Japanese, or both. While they may be able to understand the Japanese perfectly (i.e. if they’re a native Japanese speaker), if their English is bad, they might not be able to express the translation using the correct words.
Even if the translation is perfect, the text is then edited for spelling, grammar, word choice, flow, etc. Some editors take a more liberal route, meaning they Americanize things, change meanings of lines to make them work better in English, etc. Some take a more literal route, and this results in awkward wording, etc.
In my experience, fansubs are far better than scanlations in terms of average quality. There are a lot more inexperienced people doing scanlations than there are doing fansubbing.
Yeah I would agree that there probably is more inexperience in the scanlations than fansubs.
I did a translation course at university and one of the basis for translation is: forget about the original and sound natural
The point about translation is to translate meaning, not words. That’s why if you want to actually check a Japanese sentence that you tried understanding yourself through translations it may not work, since the actual Japanese text doesn’t have to match word by word (What we are interested in when it comes to learning languages). It’s not that the translation is wrong, as long as it’s faithful to its meaning. It’s just that it’s not useful for the purpose you wanted.
The clearest example is answers to negative questions. If we translate literally, it will be wrong. For example, to the question “見なかった？” the answer はい would have to be translated as “no”, since in Japanese you answer whether the question is right or wrong, therefore “Didn’t you see it” “No (I didn’t)” would be the right translation while “Yes” would be wrong, even if in the original Japanese you have “はい”
Therefore, the point in translation is to sound natural while conveying whatever it was intended in the original. To sound natural, of course, means to sound natural in your own language.
If I translated manga, I would basically try to sound natural in English while keeping Japanese terms (with footnotes) and I would try to stick to standard English – no americanization, no britification. I believe that when you are reading a Japanese manga, even if it’s in English, you are basically aware that it’s Japanese. If you add American (or British) English expressions, it’s being marked (a linguistic term that means that something is an exception and stands out, so to speak) and American/British (or Australian or Irish, let’s be inclusive)-marked English in manga doesn’t sound good do me, because I know it’s Japanese.
But all in all a good translation shouldn’t actually be expected to translate word by word or phrase by phrase, but rather to sound natural
As far as manga/anime for learning Japanese is concerned, I really think it’s useful. I find it funny how many people start talking about “real” Japanese (you know, when it comes to that, they always know the real thing, you don’t so you shut up, becase you don’t know. It’s like Plato’s cave, they have seen reality and you haven’t).
When it comes to a langauge, there is undoubtedly a core – a basic grammar (eg. particles or word order in Japanese), a basic vocabulary (let’s say 80% of it) and pronunciation that are common to all types of Japanese – Anime Japanese, business Japanese, colloquial Japanese, the Japanese of journalism, the Japanese of cooking, the Japanese at school, the Japanese between 16 year old girls, the Japanese between 16 year old boys, the Japanese of salarymen-, etc. I mean, a word like 繋がる (to connect) is present in all styles of Japanese, including Anime, including serious registers. Whether you learn it through anime or through the most respectable Japanese of business, doesn’t matter.
Therefore, the core is present in anime, in spite of all the more specialized words (moe, for example) that don’t exist in other areas, and without some other features present in other registers (for example, formal business Japanese)
Therefore, I’d like to see an example of what real japanese is and what it isn’t. Or aren’t we actually talking about sociolects/registers, etc? The Japanese used in a physics class at university isn’t the same as that used when you go shopping. In fact, an overseas student of phsyics in Japan may have mastered that language, however they may have trouble funcitoning in any other cirucmstances. On the contrary, a Brazilian inmigrant may not have a very good Japanese (while our physics student above may have a good foundation, including a techinical knowledge of Japanese) but be able to use it for daily interaction, for example, to buy stuff. What’s the real Japanese here?
tl;dr
Your comment is kinda off topic. I’m not even talking about sounding natural or whatever. I’m talking about shit translations where words aren’t used in the correct way or sentences being thrown out or added in that weren’t even given in the original Japanese. Also, I stopped at But all in all a good translation shouldn’t actually be expected to translate word by word or phrase by phrase, but rather to sound natural because basically everything you said I said in a previous comment and basically is just what the AJATT guy says too.
Oh and I forgot. About adding lines that weren’t in the original, it depends. Some example would help clarify it. In princple I’m against it, but due to the nature of Japanese (where you can omit pretty much everything) it’s possible that the translator felt it was necessary to add something that clarified the meaning. I don’t know if that’s the case you’ve come across or not.
And by the way, one thing that I really hate about fan translations is that some tend to add quite strong sounding swear words where there were none in the Japanese original
Lolz I posted about this.
http://omisyth.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/the-art-of-translation/
Not bad.