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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Lost In Translation
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
There's something that we've been thinking about for a while now, and I think it might turn out to be a multi-part discussion, mainly because we want to do a study and we don't have time before our next column is due. Of course, we also get easily distracted, so I make no guarantee that the other parts of this discussion will come consecutively. Yay, I used a big word! (Sometimes that makes me prouder than other times. I don't know why.)
Anyway, here's what happens. We'll be totally in love with a series, but then someone will say, “It was alright, I guess,” or something to that effect. Now, of course we have to make allowances for the possibility that we just have really weird taste. But it happens so many times that we're forced to believe one of two things. Either A, we have no taste whatsoever, which is entirely possible, but I have a really hard time believing that so many things we think of as SUPER AWESOME are “Alright, I guess.” Or B, some of the super awesomeness gets lost in translation.
Many months ago, before we stopped downloading anime, we were watching a fansub of something we know to be highly beloved by more people than just the two of us. The series will remain unnamed to spare the innocent. We had already seen the series raw, and only had the fansub version so we could show our friends. The problem there was that then our friends had to deal with our constantly talking over the episode saying things like, “I would have translated it like this,” or, “Augh, that line is so hilarious! If only they'd worded it this way, it would still be hilarious!” We actually had similar problems with another very popular title that we were watching on legal domestic DVDs just a couple of weeks ago. And both of the titles I've mentioned are titles that have been described as “benefiting from movement” by someone who has read non-moving versions of them.
But when we read the non-moving version of the first one... okay, so the first volume of the manga wasn't that great, but as the series went on, it was still pretty darn awesome, and we didn't think the lack of movement was a problem at all. So my current theory is that the movement and voices make up for the lack of clever wording in translation. Basically what I'm saying is that I think that sometimes a series is judged as “not that great” or even “bad” when it was actually very well written in Japanese, just poorly translated into English.
I think that what some people don't always understand is that translation is all about interpretation. Well duh, that's like exactly the same thing, right? Wrong! I think! Maybe? See, that's the problem right there. How do you interpret the word “interpret”? As translators, we sometimes get picky about the fact that when going from one language to another, “translating” is text, and “interpreting” is speaking. They're like the same thing, only in different media. But that's only when you're speaking about translators and interpreters. Of course the word “interpret” has other meanings. So how we translate a manga into English depends a lot on how we interpret, or I guess in this case “understand,” the Japanese, which I feel like we've probably said about a million times before. I hope I'm not too repetitive, but learning is repetition, after all.
The main point we're trying to make here is that the same thing can be translated in lots of different ways and still technically be correct. Think of our last column about “so's your face,” for example. Now, I've definitely come to the conclusion that “so's your face” actually isn't a correct translation. But I still think that “same to you” is a better translation, even though “you are too” means the same thing.
So now, just for kicks, here's a fun thing we did a while ago. We had been thinking about “literal translations” for a long time, and we were pretty upset about it, because people were telling us we needed to translate things more literally. And, in the spirit of being literal, we took that very very literally (which is actually something we tend to do a lot (occupational hazard); it just happened to be about literalness this time). So we opened to a random page of our Japanese copy of Saiyuki volume 1 (non-Reload), and translated it as literally as we could and still have the sentences be in any kind of English grammar (not to say that they entirely make sense; just that the grammar should be correct). And here's what we came up with:
This is page 132 in (the original Enix printing of) volume 1 of Saiyuki. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, this scene has the four main characters traveling in the mountains, and the only place around with people is a temple. It's either stay the night there, or camp out.
Priest: Some sort of business!?
Hakkai: We are travelling persons, but...
Hakkai: Even for only this night, couldn't we humbly partake of being lodged in this direction?
Priest: --Hmph.
Priest: As for this place, due to it being a sacred temple...
Priest: ...it will not go to the reason of inviting in persons of unknowable lineage!
Goku: Wha--...!?
Gojyo: (Feces!) Because of this, as for me, guys called priests are hated!!
Sanzo: Hmm, first ear.
Hakkai: We are bothered, yes? (Hmm)
Goku: Hey, my stomach is diminished! Sanzo!!
And I can't in good conscience use that without saying, “If you want to see how the final version turned out, check out volume one of Saiyuki, from TokyoPop!” Come to think of it, I don't think _we_ know how the final version turned out, but we're sure it's better than that, although that is hilarious. But a Japanese person, if we interpreted it correctly, would probably understand the original Japanese about the same way it turned out in the final version. But if you don't know any Japanese it would be practically impossible to tell how well or poorly the original was written with only a page of Japanese manga and that dialogue to go off of.
Athena suggests that we might want to provide a more legitimate translation, so you can see the difference, but I think the column is long enough as it is. Oh well.
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30 December 2008
MangaLife RoundTable: End-of-2008-Wrap-UpWords of Truth and Wisdom: Happy New Year! 23 December 2008
What I'm Reading - December 2008 16 December 2008
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Support the Industry!
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