|
|
 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Not Cavemen
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
It may or may not be obvious from the way we write this column, but we tend to be a bit obsessive sometimes. So I've still been thinking about this article: http://www.tcj.com/?p=1884
More specifically, I've been thinking about the part where it says that fans want translators to write worse. In fact, we have seen this to be the case. Although I'm not sure how common that opinion is, we have heard (or read, actually, since it was online) a fan say that she likes to see bad grammar in subtitles, because that's how she knows it's closer to the original Japanese.
I feel like we've probably addressed this subject before, but I want to address it again. I want the fans to know that just because Japanese grammar is radically different from English, that doesn't mean that Japanese people speak in incorrect grammar. And if the grammar isn't bad to a Japanese reader, then an English-speaking reader won't have the same experience as the Japanese reader if the translation's grammar is bad. Of course, with the cultural references and stuff, the native English speaker probably won't have the same experience anyway, but there's no reason we should make it worse by having all the characters using poor or stiff English.
I think of cavemen. Except for the Geico commercials and the very short-lived sitcom, cavemen are generally made to speak with bad grammar. (Brief tangent: The Geico commercials and the sitcom would have been way funnier (in our opinions) if the cavemen had actually lived in caves. They could be well-furnished caves with art on the walls, electricity, a grand piano, etc., but they still should have been caves. Otherwise, what makes the cavemen “cavemen”?) And unless I'm understanding things incorrectly, the reason we make cavemen speak in bad grammar is to demonstrate that they are of lesser intelligence. So when someone translates manga, and lets the translation sound weird because it's “true to the Japanese,” then the people who grew up associating constant bad grammar with cavemen and people of lower intelligence are going to think that everyone in Japan is of lower intelligence, and so is anyone who reads anything from Japan. And that is incredibly wrong (not to mention racist).
We happen to have a sister and brother-in-law who generally reject manga, and, while they haven't told us why, based on their attitude they seem to be of the opinion that all manga is “stupid.” It's quite likely that they sampled some manga (I seem to remember our sister saying something about being an extra for some movie that was being filmed at Comic Con, and picking up some manga to read there...) and thought the script was very poorly written. Also from their attitudes, it seems like they don't realize that when that happens, it's usually the fault of the translation. I've tried to illustrate this a few times with our literal translation posts, but here it is again: the quality of writing in a translation can be completely independent from the quality of the writing in the original language.
To be fair, there are manga characters who do use bad grammar, just as there are native English speakers who use bad grammar. Heck, even we use bad grammar on purpose sometimes (I think we mentioned that in another column). But, like with native English speakers who use bad grammar, they don't do it all the time. So in order for it to stand out when they do, they need to be using decent grammar the rest of the time.
Anyway, the point is, as translators, we want fans to realize that it's appropriate for a translation to sound good; now the industry just needs to make sure that translations actually do.
: :
|
30 August 2010
MangaLife: On Culture
Share 25 August 2010
Words of Truth and Wisdom: I Put A Spell On You
Share 11 August 2010
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Filters
Share 6 August 2010
Maybe You're Not Using It Right :On Japanese Load Words
Share
|
