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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Translation Notes
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
The other day we were lamenting the fact that translations mainly seem to get noticed in reviews when people think there's something wrong with them. This makes sense, because most people can't really tell how good or bad a translation is, because not only would they have to know both languages involved, but they'd have to have a copy of the original plus the translation to compare them.
Of course, they could probably tell how good or bad the writing of the translation is based on whether or not it sounds like natural English, or if the characters have unique voices, etc. But in most cases the reviewers tend to focus on the story, the art, and maybe whether or not there are a ton of translation notes. Then, as I said earlier, if the translation does get mentioned, it tends to be something like, “I wish they'd left that title in Japanese and given a note instead of translating it,” or, “I can't believe they used a Southern accent again!”
As translators, it makes us sad that nobody seems to notice our hard work unless they want to point out what we did wrong. So we came up with a brilliant idea! We can point out when a translation has been done well!
But this idea has not been easy to implement, mostly because we like to think we're better than everyone else (a fact which is obviously debatable). Of course everyone thinks differently, and every time we see someone else's translation we're going to want to think of how we would do it better. I want to say it's an occupational hazard but it probably isn't necessarily. Even so, there are times when we'll see a translation and think, “Wow, that was really good!” So we decided to ignore all the thoughts of, “But they didn't get this part right!” and write down some specific translations we thought were well done.
The easiest way to compare a translation with the original language is through subtitles! And, since we happened to be watching Soul Eater at the time we came up with this plan, we wrote down some examples of nice translations that we came across while reading FUNimation's Soul Eater subtitles. I think these are from around episode 24 - 26.
The first one is very simple, and may be a pretty common one, but since it hadn't occurred to us before (and if we'd seen it in subtitles before, we probably forgot about it, eheh), I wrote it down. It was a fight scene, and in fight scenes, you tend to get the line “saseru ka!” a lot. Literally, “saseru ka” means “Am I going to let you?” The unspoken continuation is something like, “Heck, no!” So it could be translated to, “You think I'll let you?” or “I won't let you!” But the FUNimation subtitles said, “No you don't!” It gets the meaning across really well, and it really sounds like the kind of thing someone would say in that situation if they were speaking English.
The next one might take a little context explanation. For those of you unfamiliar with Soul Eater, basically the bad guys are trying to revive some ancient evil, called a Kishin, and the good guys are trying to stop them. One of the good guys (Black Star) shows up and does something cool and thinks he's pretty much beating the bad guys (because he always thinks that) and says “Kishin fukkatsu wa nashi!” Literally, that means “There will be no Kishin revival!” but that sounds a little more sophisticated than something Black Star would say if he were speaking English (it doesn't sound quite so sophisticated in Japanese). The subtitles said, “No Kishin revival for you!” That really seemed to capture Black Star's personality while still meaning basically the same thing as what he said in Japanese, so it gets a thumbs up!
The last example we have for today is... a line that I don't quite remember the context for. I can't even quite remember who said it. I think it was one of the bad guys talking about her sidekick/pet thing. I also don't remember all of the Japanese line, but it was something “o muda ni shinai!” (There might have been a “wa” or a “yo” or something at the end, but that wouldn't change the meaning, so don't worry about it.) It literally means “I won't waste...” whatever it was that went before the “o.” The subtitle translated the whole line to, “I won't let your bravery be in vain!” It means the same thing, but adds a fun sense of melodrama. It's not an especially original or creative translation, but sometimes cliches really work best. The line is cliche in Japanese, after all, so why not use an English cliche, too, right?
And that's all we have for now, but we plan on doing more of these every so often. We hope everyone will remember that there are good translations out there! And remember that there's more to translation than trading one word for another and deciding whether or not to keep name honorifics.
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