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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Meow
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
I've noticed that we have a habit of remembering complaints from reviews of stuff that we translate, and then taking those remembrances and coming up with long rambling explanations justifying why we did what was being complained about. I don't know; I think it's interesting, but then I worry if people might be like, “Gosh, why don't you just let it go already?” Probably because we've had a lot of people tell us that (only that's usually when we're fighting about something, so maybe it doesn't count?). But anyway, I've got another one today. I like to think of it as a way to gently help people understand our translation philosophies.
So anyway, long, long ago, maybe about in June (it might have even been as far back as April), we read a review of My Heavenly Hockey Club. It was a pretty positive review, and sometimes I wonder if reviewers need to find things to complain about because not pointing out flaws might ruin their credibility as reviewers. Not to say that all translations, including possibly that one, are perfect. Someone somewhere (we can't remember if it was one of our Japanese professors or someone on a translators' mailing list) once pointed out that we can always find something that can be better--we only stop translating something because we have a deadline.
Right, review. I don't remember if this was the only complaint or if it was the only one I remembered, but the problem was that the translators (hey, that's us!) chose to have the Iriomote wildcat saying “meow.” The argument was that by now, the fans all know that Japanese cats say “nyah.” We know that a lot of fans like to leave simple Japanese words and phrases in Japanese, but I also like to be defensive, so I'm going to defend the decision to translate it.
I think the main reason we translated “nyaa” (we prefer to spell it that way) into “meow” is habit, actually. See, “nyaa” is technically a sound effect, and most of the time it shows up, it actually is a sound effect and not in a speech bubble. Now, regular readers would know our issues with sound effects--a sound is the same sound no matter what country it's made in. But “nyaa” falls into the category of “sound effects with an obvious English equivalent,” so we would translate it anyway. Also, if you think about it, “nyaa” isn't just a sound effect--it's a cat speaking. That makes it a word, and not just a sound. And when we come across humans speaking words in manga, we usually translate it, because otherwise most of the English-speaking readers wouldn't understand what anybody was saying. And we happen to own cats, and we think of them as family, and therefore on a similar level as humans. So when we come across cats speaking words, we translate those too.
There's kind of an interesting balance in manga, actually, between how much you want to translate and how much you want to leave in Japanese. For example, we're all for leaving the name suffixes like “san,” “chan,” “kun,” etc. in Japanese (only with Roman letters). Oh wait, I have a little tangent here. A lot of the time people call the name suffixes honorifics, but when we studied Japanese, “honorifics” actually referred to a whole set of grammar and vocabulary meant to demean the speaker and elevate the addressee or the honorable person they were talking about. Name suffixes like “san” and “sama” are a part of that, but something like “chan,” which is more familiar than formal, would be a diminutive, and not an honorific. I think? I'm not technically a linguist, much as I often pretend to be.
Aaanyway, where was I? Right. We like leaving name suffixes, because what the characters call each other shows a lot about their relationships and stuff. We also like the idea of noting cultural things, like the eki-ben they kept talking about in volume one of My Heavenly Hockey Club. So the question then is what is it that makes us choose to leave something in Japanese and add a cultural note, instead of, for example, translating eki-ben to “train station lunchbox”? I've been having a hard time focusing lately (personal problems), so I'll just reason this out as I go.
Sticking with the example of the eki-ben, I think importance to the story has a lot to do with it. For example, they mentioned eki-ben like a million times in that volume of Hockey Club (approximately). It was obviously very important to Hana. Still, we would have translated it anyway if not for two things. One, “station lunch” doesn't sound as nice. We actually do consider how a line sounds when translating it into English, though sometimes it's beyond our skill level to make it sound pretty.
The second, and more important factor, is how common things like “station lunches” are here in the United States. Considering that not nearly as many people take trains here as they do in Japan, we would figure they're not that common. Also, we've actually done a bit of train traveling ourselves (which is a bit surprising for us), and we haven't really come across anything like a station lunch. The train station where we live just has a vending machine. Bigger stations we've been have kiosks and cafe type things, but those just don't quite seem like the same thing. And so we add a note.
So I guess my conclusion is that, instead of noting particular Japanese phrases, we note cultural differences, which seems like a pretty obvious answer, considering the fact that a lot of the time such notes are called “cultural notes.”
Well I've pretty much satisfied myself, but there's one more thing we wanted to address--the westernization of Japanese names. I actually have no idea what the general opinion is on this, but we're for it. It's true that when Japanese are speaking Japanese, they say the family name first and the given name second. But it's also true that on almost all (and I only say “almost” because I don't want to check to make sure if it really is “all” all) of our anime/seiyuu CDs where names are written in Roman letters, the given name is first and then the family name. We also noticed that even the Olympics westernize the names of Japanese athletes, even though they don't for Korean athletes. We don't watch the Olympics that much, so we don't remember seeing what they do with Chinese athletes, although we're sure they probably don't westernize those either. We also like keeping Chinese names Chinese style. They sound nicer that way.
And that paragraph reminded me of another thing I wanted to touch on. I'm so rambly this column. Seiyuu. Normally, I like to avoid mixing Japanese into my English writing, and that's the main reason I wanted to write a column on this topic to begin with. Good thing I reminded myself. But first I want to explain why I didn't here, or else my conclusion won't sound as clinching. I usually call them “voice actors,” or even “Japanese voice actors,” but I used “seiyuu” back there with the CDs for clarity's sake. “Japanese voice actor” is too many words and doesn't work with the slash. And American dub voice actors are growing in popularity these days, so I wanted to make it clear that I was talking about Japanese voice actors, because American voice actors wouldn't help my point. Their names are westernized all the time.
The thing is, I'm lazy. I know the correct pronunciation of karaoke, but I say it “carry-okey” anyway, because it's easier. So we take that into our translating. If we left too many Japanese words in there, the readers, especially new readers who know almost nothing about Japan yet, would have to remember too much new information to enjoy the manga properly. And that's basically what it comes down to. Sure, most fans know that Japanese cats say “nyaa” by now, but what about all the new fans? And we're in the camp that wants to share anime and manga with as many people as possible, not just the people who already know how Japanese cats talk. So we don't want to turn readers away by creating a wall of new language for them to have to break through. At least, not any more than necessary (and by “necessary,” we mean “makes the manga sound really cool”).
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19 November 2008
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Words of Truth and Wisdom: Lost In Translation 25 October 2008
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