Clarification vs adaptation makes a huge difference in book translations. I don’t envy the translators having to translate witty jokes/references that really only work in the original language
Punch Time
Submitted 3 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/e7fc5391-521c-4806-b742-780170ccfd09.png
Comments
Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The interesting thing about clarifying and localising is that you’re always consciously making a trade-off between multiple competing factors - the original direct meaning, the emotion, tone and intent, and the ease of consumption in the target context.
And so how you choose to translate depends not only on the text, but the, circumstance, the speaker, and who you are translating for.
If in a manga for example a character says (in Japanese) “the child of a frog is a frog,” you could make the choice to localise that with an equivalent English idiom, as “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” or you could perhaps instead take the speaking character’s personality into stronger account and preserve their meaning, such as “He’s a piece shit, just like his old man.”
But it all depends on context. If that idiom showed up in a piece of poetry you might decide to leave it exactly as “the child of a frog is a frog.” - Perhaps there is related symbolism to preserve, and the ‘frog’ metaphor is important. But in that situation you can do it, because the reader will have more time and desire to study it, and preserving the original words is more important than making it easy on the reader.
Context is everything.
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Translation is as much of an art as writing is.
Business Idiots: let’s destroy translation jobs with LLMs while preserving none of the skill or context needed! 🤑
BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I read a lot of fan translated content and I always appreciate the translation of “the child of a frog is a frog” (translator note: idiom similar to “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”)
I find you get to learn an approximate translation of an idiom and get the intent of the phrase at the same time.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That’s something that occurred to me playing Breath of the Wild. A lot of the item names like “rushroom” or “armoranth” are pun-based. And this game was written in Japanese and translated to English, along with at least a dozen other languages. Did they have teams of multilingual people sitting around coming up with puns? It occurs to me there are things like “Swift Violet” that aren’t punny…in English at least. But then you’ve got Hot Footed Frog, and the frog model has red feet.
What about…there’s a Gerudo or two that you can rent sand seals from, and there’s a lot of seal-based puns. “Seal ya later” “Let’s Seal The Deal” etc. How was that implemented in Japanese, Russian and Portuguese? I imagine that in some cases you’d just drop it and put straightforward dialog there, but make another character quirky in a language where that does work.
What about in TOTK, the quest about exploring in underpants? That quest outright relies on two sentences that mean two specific things can be mistaken for each other, they would have had to translate “All other paths/in underpants” into like 20 languages. What a pain in the ass that had to be.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Earlier today I was playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics remake, and I encountered the line: “Then we’ll have two birds… and one stone!” (Referring to capturing two characters and retrieving a magic stone).
That struck me as a particularly witty line in English to the point where I’m wondering if that saying is as common in Japanese. I wonder what the Japanese version of that line is.
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
huf@hexbear.net 3 weeks ago
the good ones just invent entirely new jokes to replace the untranslatable ones.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
One of my favourite instances of adaptation got to be Ted Woolsey’s “son of a submariner! They’ll pay for this…”, for the English localisation of Final Fantasy III / VI.
In the game, Kefka (the villain) is saying this as the heroes escape him, but the original only says “ヒーーー くっそー！このかりは必ず返しますよ!”; literally “heeee shit! I will definitively return this debt” or similar. However:
- That “ヒーーー” interjection has no meaning on its own. It’s only there to highlight the character’s emotional state. It could be safely removed, without loss of meaning.
- くそ / 糞 kuso “crap! shit!” is vulgar, but by no means as vulgar as English “shit”. Specially given the 90s, and this game being marketed to kids. But it means the villain is being rude towards the heroes (makes sense, right).
So, translating it as simply “hey you!” or similar would mutilate the original, by removing the rudeness. But at the same time, Woolsey couldn’t use “shit” or “crap” or similar. So he looked at the context:
- Kefka is crazy, and the way he uses Japanese in the original is odd. For example, he uses the pronoun “ぼくちん” bokuchin to refer to himself, as if he was a kid - and yet he’s a court mage of an empire dammit. (It’s a bit deeper than that, but let’s focus.)
- a bit before Kefka says this, there’s a city in the desert also fleeing Kefka - by going underground instead, as if it was some sort of “sand submarine”.
So Woolsey went with “son of a submariner!”, something he likely made up on the spot. And you know what? It’s perfect - it’s completely on-character for Kefka to insult people in such a weird way.
MalikMuaddibSoong@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy Tactics with the translation-so-bad-it’s-might-be-a-masterpiece.
Actually interesting and novel ability names
Japanese: Dance with knives
1997 Localization: Wiznaibus
WotL Localization: Mincing Minuet
Dialog that pulls no punches
Japanese: My bad, but it’s between you and your god
1997 Localization: Tough luck…Don’t blame me. Blame yourself or God.
WoTL Localization: Forgive me. 'Tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I.
Other gems lost in the improved localization:
- “heavens wish to destroy all minds”
- “the doom of a planet”
- “evanescence, such a sad word”
- “time, save your kindness for the worthy”
All that being said, the final fantasy gang is generally spectacular with English mastery. It’s like you can tell which books they like to read when they choose obscure words like Eidolon.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Today I found out that Eidolon isn’t just the name of a Warhammer 30k character.
vateso5074@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
O.G. San is such a good name.
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
お爺さん怖い。
MurrayL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is exactly why lazily throwing your game’s text into a machine translation tool is not the same as hiring an actual localisation specialist.
Aeao@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I watch everything with subtitles on and it’s clear when someone used a machine vs an actual person.
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth did a good job with localization. I remember one character speaking with a thick Southern US accent, and at one point mentioning that she was from Kansai. I didn’t previously know that Kansai was rural, but I was able to get that from the context.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’ll take the machine translation if nothing else is available, but it pales in comparison to a real person doing it. You have to translate the machine translation in your head in realtime.
Tonava@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
At least the english ones are usually somewhat understandable; as a native finnish speaker, the machine translations to finnish are notoriously bad. The worst case has been some random anime from netflix, where I had to change the subtitles to bad machine translation english, because the finnish ones were just straight up complete gibberish and I could understand more of the japanese than those (and I don’t know japanese outside some words and common expressions!). Reading them felt like I was having a stroke lmao.
I have no idea why they’re even made in finnish because they’re very often just fully unusable.
Unboxious@ani.social 3 weeks ago
A certain subset of anime fans would be very angry right now if they could read!
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I will transliterate where I want to preserve the original context of words. Otherwise I generally just go for stage 3 to get the gist of what a writer or speaker means, and usually it’s a combination of the two, I don’t try to use different idioms.
So “I’ll punch your lights out” might likely become “I’ll beat you so that the lights in your eyes go out” if I were to translate to Japanese (transliterated back).
It’s a neat way to show how each person translating has their own style. (And how Japanese news and diplomatic translators have had a rough time with Trump, forced to sanewash a lot).
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Transliteration is another thing entirely: it’s translating the sounds. “I’ll beat you so that the lights in your eyes go out” translated to Japanese is “君の目の光が消えるまで殴ってやる”. Transliterated back, it’s “Kimi no me no hikari ga kieru made nagutte yaru”.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
It’s a bit more complicated: if you’re dealing with the sounds it’s transcription, if you’re converting from writing system into another it’s transliteration.
So for example, what you did is transliteration. But if you were to record some Japanese guy speaking and wrote it down (in kanji+kana, Latin, or even IPA), it would be transcription.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Oh yeah you are right… let me edit it
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
“Here’s a knuckle sandwich!” --> “I hope you have enough room in your stomach, because I am going to ram my fist into it and break your goddamn spine!”
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“How ‘bout a nice Hawaiian Punch?”
“Sure!”
assault
kibiz0r@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
assault
Actually, I think it’s made with a sugar
niktemadur@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
HEY KOOL AID! HERE!
Chakravanti@monero.town 3 weeks ago
At least Kool-Aid kills you but this looks like a real Snow Crash ala Neal Steaphenson via the Raven. Careful, he’s got a nuke in that sidecar of his motorcycle and the FBI will stop you from doing shit about him taking your gold for no dope.
fascicle@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
I got so confused, I thought this was trying to show how bad llm’s translated things
Meh@hexbear.net 3 weeks ago
O.G. San really tickles me
cdf12345@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I pray that if I ever get into a fist fight I remember to say “I hope you’re thirsty because I brought punch” before swinging
bytesonbike@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
“That will go well with my crackers and cheese because here’s a block!”
LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 3 weeks ago
“I hope you’re thirsty because I brought some punch” is an even more idiomatic way to phrase things than “I’m going to punch your lights out”
gnu@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s not a translation, it’s demonstrating different ways of approaching a translation. Note how the first panel is telling you to assume it is in a foreign language - it is supposed to be an idiom that needs to be translated into English. The ‘foreign’ idiom also being written in English is to allow the English speaking intended audience to understand the differences between what the the following panels are saying and the original text.
AtariDump@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
DO NOT WANT!
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
One of my favorite bad translations ever has to be Jubei of Samurai Shodown’s win quote: “All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That’s the law of samurai.” I sometimes like to think of any kind of massive destruction as “all the things will be broken.”
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
This is not a “raw” translation it is a bad translation
Malgas@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
It’s a decent enough illustration of the sort of thing that can happen when you translate an idiom literally. To be truly accurate that panel would have to be in a language other than English, but then it would be useless to anyone who doesn’t also understand that second language.
huf@hexbear.net 3 weeks ago
a raw translation is a bad translation, this is trying to demonstrate translation without actually translating, using just one language, which is why it fails to demonstrate much of anything.
eg:
- original: ez egy vérgeci
- raw: this is a blood cum
- translation that carries the meaning: this person is thoroughly unpleasant and mean
- idiomatic translation: he’s a fucking asshole
Chakravanti@monero.town 3 weeks ago
Are you accusing literality of being…exactly what? What does “bad” mean in your language? Which context are you deriving from without pointing properly at the derivition? Are you attempting to attack the meaning or the purpose of failure or accusing intent of…exactly what here??
I’m a little confusing here. That kind of seems to be the purpose. What’s yours?
Sculptor9157@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
My initial impression from the thumbnail was that this was Ellen DeGeneres being quoted.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
But AI can do that! - my first attempt at rage bait.
Dojan@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I mean, honestly? Yeah. This isn’t how you should translate if you wish to adhere to the original material. You need to understand meaning and context in both languages. AI doesn’t grasp that on account of not grasping anything at all, and the game of telephone that the image is suggesting is completely obliterating it as well.
Example; Lipton, in an ice tea advert had an actress dance and sing, and in the middle of it, took a sip of tea and said 「美味ちい」
If you were to translate that directly, she sips the tea and says “Tasty!” or “Yummy!” which is acceptable. However, you’ve lost the double entendre of how チー (ちい) sounds like the English word tea, which is kind of relevant given what they’re advertising and so you’d lose the opportunity to make the same pun in English; “Tealicious!”
Now apply it on a larger scale and suddenly characters and stories end up diverging between the versions. Sure the overall picture might be similar but the nuance can be vastly different. I saw it all the time in Final Fantasy XIV. Sure, not all media needs that kind of meticulousness and hell, a lot of media doesn’t even care for it. People can be perfectly happy with basic, but they also don’t necessarily know what they’re missing.
Granted, sometimes you have to settle for that method of translation, because you can’t easily or appropriately convey the original intent in another language.
Hackworth@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Just for fun, this was Opus’s attempt at translation with the prompt: “I saw this in a commercial for tea. Please translate: 「美味ちい」Keep an eye out for wordplay or cultural difference that would matter in the translation.”
This is clever Japanese wordplay! 「美味ちい」 is a pun that combines:
- 美味しい (oishii) = "delicious"
- 茶 (cha) = “tea”
They’ve replaced the し (shi) in “oishii” with ち (chi), creating a portmanteau that sounds like “oichii.” This blends “delicious” with a phonetic hint at “tea” (since ち/chi is close to ちゃ/cha).
Translation: “Deli-tea-ous” or “Tea-licious”
In English, we’d need a similar pun to capture the playful spirit. The commercial is essentially making a tea-specific version of the word “delicious” - it’s a fun bit of marketing language that suggests the tea is so good it deserves its own special adjective!
Interestingly, Anthropic’s newer (but smaller) model, Sonnet 4.5, doesn’t catch on without following up with something to the effect of, “What is tea in Japanese?” LLMs showed pretty amazing multilingual capabilities before they even started intentionally training them with more languages. That said, you definitively still need someone who speaks both languages to check/guide em. As it is their way to bullshit.
Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml 3 weeks ago
Can you imagine what the foreign press must go thru trying to interpret the shit that comes out of Trump’s mouth. Then, having translated his garbage, explaining that it is all a lie. He’s a nightmare in US English.
Godort@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
This is a way better threat than "Im gonna punh your lights out
Wilco@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
The “I hope you’re thirsty” one is classy imo.
emuspawn@geostationary.orbiting.observer 3 weeks ago
The art of diplomacy is making em love you while you knock their punch out.
abbadon420@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
All you base are belong to me
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Much more impressive too!
tdawg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh no don’t slightly inconvenience me. Darn you cut your hands & wrists bad enough to go to the ER? Whatever shall I do
pigup@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hypersonic
Assault and
Neutralization
Device