When the translator isn’t a native speaker but thinks they know better than you. (In the case of the language in question being your (or at least one of your) mother tongue(s))
when the subtitle does not match the same language translated voice line
I don’t know if that counts but fan translating comics/novels using machine translation WITHOUT DOING ANY PROOFREADING AFTERWARDS.
On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.
Or when the character is bilingual but the subtitle just says: [speaking a foreign language]
[Untranslated Wookiee speech]
Zoe: swears in Chinese
Subtitle: “[SPEAKS GALACTIC LANGUAGE]”
FU, everyone knows that that’s a real language and probably a very juicy phrase that would be absolute golden to know for some other occasion!
^(PSA there exists a site with every phrase translated and explained)
site with every phrase translated
Because Mandarin?
ivxferre is right, so I’ll just state of a few examples:
Baito, which in fact comes from the German arbeit and means a part time job.
Apiiru, which comes from the English appeal but actually means to emphasize or play up something as a way of making yourself more attractive or making a point. For example, you can say “He looks like a good guy but that’s all apiiru”.
Cureemu, which is supposed to be the English claim but refers to complaints or having an issue with something in general.
On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.
Depending on the word, this is actually sensible since borrowings tend to change the meaning of the words being borrowed.
A silly example of that is the Japanese garaigo “ダッチワイフ” datchiwaifu. It’s a borrowing from English “Dutch wife”, and recognisable as such… but you definitively don’t want to translate it as such, as in Japanese it conveys “sex doll”.
I consume quite a bit of anime and manga (just look at the communities I moderate), and I see a number of regular complaints about translation in that space. I personally think most of them are overblown and that translators are doing their best. Translation is far from a science and almost every sentence/paragraph has judgement calls that need to be made by the translator. What some people find annoying about a translation might make the work more approachable to somebody else.
One thing that does bother me for Japanese is the exclusion of honorifics. Most subtitles these days include them, which is a definite improvement over official subs of the past. In subtitle form, honorifics are usually the only indication that a speaker is using something like formal language (keigo) unless you have some knowledge of the spoken language.
As a bit of an aside, if you are interested in professional translation and some of the challenges they face (especially with MTL on the horizon), then Anime Herald did an interview with several of them. Check it out!
So, about honorifics: Whether they’ll actually correspond to keigo is a hit and miss depending on the actual relationship between the characters. This happens for a few reasons, but the most important one is that in Japanese using an honorific other than san or sama (or not using one at all) is a declaration of either a large difference in status, a close relationship or shonen protagonist syndrome. It’s more complicated in real life, but this is how it usually goes in anime. So anyway, one common example is that highschooler characters will usually address each other with san even though they never use keigo.
Korean to English is a mess. It doesn’t help that Koreans don’t trust native English speakers to do it, unless they’re ethnically Korean. The fact that ethnic Korean-Americans get hired to do the job over my white friends who are clearly better at the language, that is the most frustrating.
Please understand it.
I think you are preaching to a stubborn asian wall.
When they get the AI to do the work.
I think people are unreasonable when they want media too be literally translated word by word.
Japanese for instance, like English, is filled with word play, sayings etc that doesn’t make sense when translated.
I love FFXIV, yes the dialogue is localized, not translated, but this allows for so much word play and humour in the English version. Japanese is not a very humerous language I’m told.
Just, don’t mistake translation and localization.
Afaik they don’t know any sarcasm and swearing (swearing in comparison to english)? I believe to have read somewhere on Lemmy how a english/japanese bi-lingual mentioned to their japanese friends how much nuances and jokes were left out to make Deadpool 3 work for the audience.
Japanese uses sarcasm (“needling” through words) and irony (a statement conveying its opposite) heavily, perhaps even more than English does. The problem is that how you convey sarcasm and irony changes from language to language, and Japanese relies heavily on context to do so.
I’ll give you an example: in English you can show deference towards a person using Mr., Ms., or similar. If I were to do this here, and wrote something like “Mr. Appoxo”, it would sound weird (as there’s no reason to show deference), but not insulting.
In Japanese however this would be interpreted as ironic and belittling towards you. Specially if I used a “stronger” honorific like -様 / -sama.
In that situation you mean “Mr. Appoxo” as in my given name?
Yeah, pretend that I used your name instead of your username.
censorship / changing the original meaning to fit the translators personal agenda
And then getting mad if the publishers of a book/comic/whatever get fed up with it that they decide to replace you for poor quality translations, with human reviewed AI translations no less.
Is there an example of this ?
I do this for a living so I have a few words about it.
1. Obsessing over the meaning of individual words, and wrecking what the text (or dialogue) says on a discursive level. I see this all the time with Latin, but it pops up often in Japanese too - such as muppets translating “貴様” kisama as simply “you…” (literal translation) instead of something like “bastard” or “piece of shit” or whatever. Sure, “貴様” is “ackshyually” a pronoun, and then what?
2. Not paying attention to the target audience of the translation. JP→EN example again - it’s fine if you keep honorific suffixes as in the original if the target audience is a bunch of weebs, we get it. But if you’re subbing some anime series for a wider audience, you need to convey that info in some other way. (Don’t just ditch it though, see #1.)
3. Not doing due diligence. It’s 4AM, you got more work than you have time for, you need to keep pumping those translations. Poor little boy, I don’t bloody care - spell-proof and grammar-proof the bloody thing dammit. “Its” for possessive, “it’s” for pronoun+verb; “por que” if question, “porque” if answer; “apposto” if annexed, “a posto” if it’s OK.
4. Abusing translation notes. If your “TN” has four or more lines, or the reader already expects one every single page, you’re doing it wrong.
Poor little boy, I don’t bloody care - spell-proof and grammar-proof the bloody thing dammit. “Its” for possessive, “it’s” for pronoun+verb; “por que” if question, “porque” if answer; “apposto” if annexed, “a posto” if it’s OK.
This is a good sentiment for general writing.
(also, at least on-line, if you notice later that you messed up, then fix it!)
Thank you for caring, on behalf of those of us who have difficulty hearing.
I have seen several shows that combined both honorifics and localization e.g. Prinzessin Beispiel-sama (princess example-sama).
Sure if the translation is targeted to folks that would also watch Ghibli (because those audiences can range between casual to hardcore) but I like the hybrid approach.
About #4, where do you even see TN nowadays? I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen one in years.
Books. Mostly paper ones, but sometimes the TN spam pops up in e-books too.
Video typically doesn’t have this problem because the translators know that you won’t have time to read it.
it always takes me right out of whatever i’m watching when a character says the same word twice and it’s translated into two different words. like when “matte! matte!” becomes “wait! stop!” it’s a stupid thing to care about and i’m sure translators have their reasons- very easy for me, an idiot who can barely speak one language, to criticize- but it always shatters my immersion
I’ve learned a little Japanese and can say that repeating words changes the meaning. Like an intensifier. So, “wait” followed by “stop” could be a legitimate translation, showing the increased demand level of the repeated word.
Translators - ehh. I don’t speak any other languages so I have no basis for comparison.
But closed-caption writers for TV shows… all of the fucking rage.
I have some audio-processing issues meaning that closed-captions make life vastly easier, but I’m not actually hard of hearing per se.
Why do they always dumb down the dialogue? I can understand abridging rapid-fire chatter if there’s just too much to fit on screen, or not enough time to read it, but they’ll dumb down a six-word sentence with ten seconds of on-screen time.
You know hard of hearing people aren’t fucking stupid, right? If I did lose my hearing and I were denied the actual writing as written by real writers, in favour of the rough gist supplied by some glorified typist, I would be absolutely goddamn livid. How dare they assume I’m semi-literate just becasue my hearing is crap?
I think I read once that was due to outdated standards related to low resolution television sets. If too much text was on screen at once you couldn’t make it out on a standard definition TV. They kept doing it that way for a while after HD became ubiquitous just because that’s how they always did it.
I share your frustration though
As another guy who finds life easier with CCs (suspected audio processing issues + not a native speaker): Holy fuck this sounds terrifying. Both in a “what the fuck are you idiots doing” sense and in because having your perception of reality (or “reality” in this case) distorted by dumbasses on a keyboard is actually a scary idea. What are they even thinking?
Yep, simple fact is we can read waaaaaay faster than most people because we’ve always needed subtitles!
There was that one time the translator fucked up royally and I lost my shit in The Devastation of Baal by Guy Haley.
To understand we have to look at the pronoun „you“ and it’s German equivalents “Ihr“ and “du“. English doesn’t differentiate between a formal and an informal “you”. It’s just “you”. So you can use “you” in both ways and the reader gets the meaning and tone from context.
For example: “My lord, you have to act!” Gives you everything you need and you know from context how the power dynamics between the characters are.
The German equivalent for that sentence would be: „Mein Herr, Ihr müsst handeln!“ To be fair, you can confuse the possessive pronoun “Ihr” with the regular plural pronoun “ihr”. Both of which are completely different. That’s German for you.
But our translator used the common “du”. The sentence “Mein Herr, du musst handeln!” Not only makes my ears bleed, it also makes no sense in universe. You cannot stand before one of the most well known and revered ANGELS OF MOTHFUCKERING DEATH and say “du”! You uncivilised donkey!
We have the same principle in French with (so learning Ihr in German was easier!), but frankly this is a reason why I prefer working in an english professional setting. Some people, generally older, get offended if you ever use the ‘du’ with them. But some others will want to look shill/younger and will get offended or mock you if you use ‘du’ with them. So yeah, using “you” to talk to the queen, my boomer customer or my nephew makes it so much easier!
When they get pissed off because the publishers/authors decide not to work with them because they want their works to be translated as close to the original while still making sense, so they decide to rant about how it’s unfair for themselves to be laid off for ruining works and calling people Nazi’s on extwitter for criticizing their bad translations.
Many years ago, there was a televised interview with Saddam Hussein. I don’t remember which TV network it was on but it was a pretty big deal. This was early 2000’s before the US invasion of Iraq. I think the translator referred to then President Bush as “Bush”. Saddam didn’t understand a lot of English but he understood that. He interrupts the translator mid-sentence to inform him that what he should have said was “Mr. Bush”, with a sort of tone that felt like he did not appreciate being misquoted.
I don’t know if that dude even realized how close he probably came to being strangled to death with a microphone cord.
“I may not know English, but I do know the level of formality I chose to use”
