Discussion TTNH, Translations and Mistakes

So just as the title said, I found that the translation N.Saga did on TTNH has some..inaccuracies. I just want to share t to you guys, my thoughts down below.

I will only be addressing the critical issues which is the problems with the accuracy of the translation.

I'll not mention the grammar problems although I can't resist for some bad bad ones. ( Although I can see more than that of course, with a few awkward sounding sentences too. ). My explanations are inside the spoiler tag.

I copy-pasted this doc yesterday ( 21/02/17 ) around 12a.m US ( NY ) Time. Any changes that are made on their site means that it was done afterwards.

Down below is the parts where I notice the mistakes. For the full chapter, you can visit N.Saga's site since I don't feel like posting the whole chapter here is appropriate.


TTNH 294 N.SAGA


Chapter 294 – The Sword pierces through the Golden Horse Riders Department!

Even in the presence of a bright moon and countless dazzling stars in the sky, the radiance of this waning moon was still dominant enough to make it look quite magnificent like a bright silver spoon! Its hazy luster still made it appear as dreamy as the fantasy itself!

Spoiler

To start it off, I found that even the first sentence already has mistakes.

Below is the Chinese raw :

月明星稀，残月的光辉，在这一片漆黑的夜晚，依然是那样明亮！朦胧的光影，也依旧是如梦如幻！

月 : Moon

明星 : Star ( fun fact : Do you know IRAS ? Well this is the 'star' in I'm Really a Superstar. )

稀 : Now this is the problem. 稀 [xi] directly translates to; rare, uncommon, watery, sparse.

Where in N.Saga's translation, it was translated to ' countless ' instead. [ :/ ]

If we look at WTJH's..

Bright moon, few stars; the moon shined brightly in this endless night! Its light seemed surreal like a dream.

However, during this phase of tranquility, there came a loud shout which resounded like a thunderclap all of a sudden: “Don’t let the Moonlight Sword escape! Follow it!”

Spoiler

I actually missed this one and saw my friend speaking about this so credits goes to her.

" Don't let the Moonlight Sword escape! "

While the raw stated..

“留下冥月剑再走！”

留下 : Leave Behind

明月剑 : Moonlight Sword

再走 : Then, leave.

And so..I don't think I need to say anything.

People saw a stunning sword light soaring high into the sky. A man was rapidly fleeing at the speed of lightning; he was being closely followed by another man with a sword light, ~~which~~ who seemed reluctant to part with him!

The sword light was moving toward the west while hopping along the way to dodge away from the obstacles in the path. The person who was holding the Moonlight Sword suddenly came to a halt, and just then, bursts of bloody light dispersed everywhere in the sky.

Spoiler

" The sword light was moving toward the west while hopping along the way to dodge away "

Honestly this sentence is so bad I almost can't believe it. Did they even proofread?

The raw was :

剑光一路往西，沿途也有跳出来拦阻的，但那手持着冥月剑的人一停不停的疾冲而过

The first part, " 剑光一路往西，" was okay, but the next sentence...

沿途也有跳出来拦阻的

沿途 : along the sides of the road

也有 : also have

跳出来 : jump out

拦阻的 : obstruction

I am even wondering how did the translator even translate it like THAT.

Just for reference, WTJH's was like this.

" Along the way, there were people who jumped in, but that person holding Moonlight Saber never stopped. "

It was clear that this item had a significant level of intelligence.

Spoiler

I'm completely speechless at this point.

This was the raw :

这次目标可是明确了。

这次 : this time ( referring to a second sequence)

目标 : the target/ goal/ objective.

可是 : but/ however / indeed.

明确了 : already definite.

I'm even wondering just where did the Tler got the ' intelligence ' part from.

Dong Wu Shang began to fall down in the direction of his brother Dong Wu Lei and his guards, and immediately shouted: “If you try to catch me, you die; you don’t get injured!”

(TLN: Wu Shang means ‘to not get injured’. Dong Wu Shang basically called out his given name at the end of the sentence.)

Spoiler

I did this part on TTNH's LCD thread so you can view it there.
Alright, someone requested me for this so I'll just post it here >_>

I saw the chinese raws ( even though it's from piaotian ) and with my grade-school level Chinese I can totally see that what N.Saga's translating in this line..

' Catch me so I Wu Shang ( Don't get injured ) '

Is COMPLETELY WRONG

These are the the words on the raws ( remember it's chinese since I'm completely blind on the vietnamese )

' 挡我者有死无伤! '


I will give you every meaning of each word from the dict.

挡 : to resist, to obstruct, to hinder, to keep off, to block, etc.
我 : I or me.
者 : (after a verb or adj ) one who ( is ).../ (after a noun) person involved.
有 : to have / to be / etc.
死 : To die.
无伤 : This reads " wu shang " which is Dong Wu Shang's name. ( No/ not injuries/ injured )

So if I were to translate this line, I would probably do it like this.

" Resist me and you shall die, not injured! "

Which is extremely similar to Itsumo Misora's..

" Anyone who tries to stop me will be dead, not injured! "

I have to be honest at this point, I haven't seen the other parts yet, only this. Since this is very critical and eye-catching.

It's NOT a matter of raws or source.

This guy is just making a fatal mistake. If I was wrong somehow please respond to me so I can understand & learn from my mistakes.

The reason I did this is not because I hate the N.Saga team because why? Like I said, I'll not be reading it anyway. I just want the others there who are still planning to read to REALIZE that the translation is completely wrong, I can forgive you if it's any other hard sentence but just like the meanings I gave you guys above, you can tell that this sentence is easy to translate and he got it wrong.

Well cheers folks, I just want people to realize this fact.

P.S if any Translator is willing to clarify this case and step up please do so, I will apologize if I am wrong but I will not tolerate such blatant mistake if this is true.

Dong family’s first young master personally went into action, so how could the others not join in on the fun? Moreover, most people were mostly concerned about the Moonlight Sword and this caused a large clamoring crowd of people to swarm in from all directions.

Spoiler

This Line is a VERY contradictory text, there are 3 problems that you can notice without searching for the raws.

1. The paragraph said that " how could the others not join in on the fun? " which indicates that the ' others ' here is either joining the fight of DWS vs DWL or they start fighting amongst themselves. -> which doesn't make sense at all since they won't get anything from either joining the two Dongs' fight or fighting amongst themselves.

2. Then the next line which says " Moreover, most people were mostly concerned about the Moonlight Sword " -> why would they join the fight when they were mostly concerned about the Moonlight Sword which is thrown up into the air?

3. The 3rd problem comes with the next paragraph. " The forces from the army barracks attempted to block them, " -> Weren't they joining in the 'fight'? Why would they suddenly attack the army barracks? This completely doesn't make any sense.

But of course all this problem can be solved with a simple solution. The Translation is WRONG.

These are the text from the raws.

董家公子亲自出手，别人又怎么会去凑这个热闹？而且众人最关心的还是冥月剑啊，一声喊，众人蜂拥而前，不管不顾的突进到了小山包。

I will provide a rough translation of each sentence to provide clarity, you can search in the dictionary to see my accuracy.

董家公子亲自出手 : Dong [董] Family's young master [家公子] personally [亲自] took action [出手].

别人又怎么会去凑这个热闹？: How could [怎么会] other people [别人] dare to intervene?

The critical part in this sentence is this part. " 去凑这个热闹? "

去 : to go.

凑 : has a few meanings but " to move closer to. " is much more appropriate here.

这个热闹 : this quarrel/ bustle.

And if we look at WTJH's Translation...

" Since young master Dong made his move, who would join in the fight? Plus, the thing that everyone was most concerned with currently was Moonlight Sword. With an uproar, they all rushed forward to the place where Moonlight Sword had fallen down. "

I think my point is pretty much proved here. That the translation was WRONG.

The forces from the army barracks attempted to block them, but failed miserably and were basically run over in the blink of an eye.

A fairly strong explosion caused by a king level expert on the front opened a large hole in the hill. At this time, he suddenly shouted loudly with his voice full of surprise and wonder: “Let’s evade these f*kers! There is actually a big labyrinth under the camp!”

*************

All in all, I didn't go through the whole chapters, there are blocks that I just skimmed past.

Why? Because my main reason to do this is not to sht on N.Saga, I just want the readers to be aware that the Tler is making lots of mistakes. Some mistakes which even made me speechless. Whether you continue to read it or not, I don't really care. I just want you to be aware of it, that's it.

I understand that everyone is human, I'll not demand a 100% accuracy but my point is : some of the mistakes the TLer make is just very fatal and it's not only in the quality of the mistakes, but the quantity too. Cheers.

 

Not trying to be rude but HELP HIM THEN
Thats all thanks

 

If another group wanted to translate this, it would probably be pretty easy for them. All they would have to do is prove that they can be more faithful to the original and translate at a reasonable rate. It's a pretty popular novel so you would be working with an established readerbase who would surely prefer a more accurate translation.

Until then, better than nothing I guess.

It's easy to do it for one chapter, but unless you want to be a dedicated editor, you don't want to have to do it all the time. At that stage you might as well just TL it yourself.

 

@_@

 

Thanks for your hard work. I'm definitely keeping this on hold for the time being.

Uh, so he can't criticize the translation quality without helping translate it himself? Your comment makes no sense.

 

You have a lot of free time.

 

And get flamed for all eternity yeah right. we have translators and editors that want to do this but the original translator won't answer emails or posts so nothing we can do. I didn't want to just start translating it like NS did but hey they did.

 

Aici pretty much said it all, and honestly I don't really wanna ruin the experience of reading this novel for me since I love it so much, yeah you can kinda say that I'm selfish for that. Cuz I prefer to sharpen my chinese and wait for 3 years, then read the original content rather then ruining my experience reading it.

To be honest, not really. I did this in around 2 hours or so, and the only reason I'm doing it is because it's my no.1 fav novel

 

Considering the original translator's statement about apologizing for not responding to emails and then wishing 'whoever decides to do [the translation] the best of luck', isn't he pretty much saying it's fair game? Especially because he would have known that NS had already started, but then didn't refer to them specifically. Sure NS jumped the gun but there's not much you can do about it now.

 

I mean, since their translation is now shown to be pretty bad, and most importantly, inaccurate, I'd say it's fair game to take over and compete translations. It's kind of like how people redid chapters from Xian Ni, Record of an Immortal, kumo desu ga, etc.

 

@xant in this case is it fair game??

 

The original translator did post about dropping it. maybe you didn't see, well too late.

Since NS started it before the original translator post something maybe you can do the same

 

Fun fact, the Chinese in TTNH is very beautiful. That's the reason why it's so hard to translate. However , readers aren't asking to get beautifully written translation. We are just hoping to read the story as is. Meaning, what we require is just for the translator to get the meaning straight. We get it if you think that this sentence should be translated this way. Different people have different interpretion of the works. That's fine.

However, as I have pointed out. That "don't let the moonlight sword escape. Follow it" is kinda bloody stupid. The guy was talking to the thief. Also, it was one man chasing another. So is the man telling the thief to not let the sword escape and to ask the thief to follow it? At first I thought it was an army of men chasing on guy but it's not either. So what does that mean :/

I'm not trying to be a know it all and everything but I believe being a TLer isn't a joke. It's a serious job/hobby. Reasons why I'm not a TLer myself. So if I don't take TLing as a joke, can others not too?

But then again, I don't read TTNH so you guys can do whatever you want. Just stating my two cents.

 

This reminds me of the series where they wrote the female startling a cheating couple, when the truth was that the female mc was startled at the sight of the cheating couple.

Ah, good times.

Honestly, the mistakes you pointed out feels trival to me in comparison to stuff like the one I just mentioned.

 

I'll second @AicilaXI in this. I think you should still pick it up if you think TN can do a better job (and I'm sure you can). The drama from last year (or was it before?) should not affect your decision.. The community's unwritten rules serve to regulate fan translation scene, but they should never tie down the community to the degree of preventing progress.

 

Lol, I don't know what novel you're talking about but TTNH is a novel with a Big, Big fanbase. You can see that should you pick it up, at the very least, there is some bit of revenue that is guaranteed to at least cover some things. It's almost like Stellar Transformations at the time where everyone's just scrambling to translate it, however, the difference is that TTNH is a very difficult novel to translate, honestly I would say that it's one of the most difficult one to translate along with others like ISSTH, etc and at least it's easier to translate than IET novels which is pretty much known as the ' fast food novels ' in China.

So if you're trying to translate this novel with subpar skills, I don't think that, that 'you' is a real fan of the novel or honestly respect this work of art itself. And by the way, it has only been 2 chaps, and usually new people try to put their best quality on the first 5 or so chapters, then become tired and put less attention to the quality after that. Can you say that after all those mistakes on a single damn chapter ( which I have overlooked some more probably. ) they can not make an even more ridiculous mistake? Hell no way.

Your welcome ^^, you are the kind of people that this whole message is intended to honestly, not N.Saga. So I'm happy if it can help you make decisions after seeing this.

And by the way, @TranslationNations I think you won't get flamed this time if you decided to pick it up, especially when you can refer to the mistakes they made I mentioned above in a single chapter..

 

Sorry i'm late to the party.

The thing about this ninja-ing is that it leaves a real bad aftertaste.

I can't speak for any translator (i myself professionally translate from English to Bahasa Melayu, (not Indonesian)), so I won't put words into anyone's mouth.

But my impression of the overall picture was that

a) WTJ was still looking for another translator
b) novelsaga suddenly announced they're translating this novel, but
- 1, they supposedly like the series
-2, they haven't read the series before
-3, WTJ alluded that Novelsaga did not contact WTJ
c) other translators that have contacted WTJ but didn't get a response don't know what to do.


Sure, this post can be construed as "against" the entity known as novelsaga, but there is a bigger problem therein:

the intricacy of the storytelling.
I myself subscribe to a school of thought / creed that any translation is the work of the translator, no longer the work of the author. Therefore, the best translation can bring the narrative, the tone, the style that makes if feel as if the author actually wrote the translated work himself. Because no two translators are the same, because they leave their own mark. That's partially due to experience (in my experience), and partially due to proof-reading many translation works myself.

Just as @Dusk have pointed out; there are a lot of what a lot of readers can consider minor, but fatal mistakes. Sure, some readers argue (i get the story, so i don't really care for the intricacies), but I do actually look out for the more subtle stuff.

The reason why TTNH hits the spot with me is that the comedy tone isn't overly slapstick stupid (especially among south east asian slapstick comedies that are downright garbage), but there's this subtlety that reminds me of how Stephen Chow's comedy works. I've emphasized this in my review (I believe) and in my sharing with friends who i wanted them to read this story. In previous translations, it shines. Not so much on Novelsaga, (okay, to give the benefit of the doubt, its only 2, TWO translated chapters), but you can see for yourself the stark difference between the quality shown by WTJ and Novelsaga between the two chapters released.

No dissing at the group, but the quality on 293 and 294 really, really has stark differences. Again, @Dusk pointed out very accurately. (while i cannot read nor write chinese, i am somewhat capable in conversations in cantonese, mandarin and other chinese dialects due to being a Malaysian with chinese ancestry). The previous translation for WTJ has been excellent, even if WTJ did it from a vietnamese translation source material. (yes, if not, there would already be plenty of people making noises about inaccurate translations, rewriting, etc).

I only wish that they understand the gravity of the situation before actually undertake the project.

 

Fun fact, my 8yo sister can translate this sentence
留下冥月剑再走！better than n.saga did.

She said the sentence meant "dont bring moon sword then go away"

Did I mention my sister is 8? Well, she's 8.

I get that translators fuck up their translation. That's normal. I mean, most of the people translatong stuff for us aren't professional linguist or translators. Moat of them are just JP/KR/CN student trying to improve their JP/KR/CN or actual Japanese, Korean or Chinese people trying to improve their english. I even know some translators who uses translation as a way to improve both his/her second and third language at the same time.

So, to me, translating something wrongly is unavoidable. It's when you translate something that even an 8yo little girl can translate (albeit in broken english), then you are doing something wrong.

And yes, the chinese sentence 留下冥月剑再走！(other than the name of the moonlight sword) is made up of elementary chinese. If they can fuck up elementary chinese, then I assume they are either not qualified as translators until they go retake chinese classes or they think of this as a joke. >.>

I'm not being salty btw >.>

 

You can mess up elementary Chinese though, that's why they're called mistakes. Maybe they didn't have a translation checker, maybe their editor didn't see the translation as an obvious mistake.

But I have seen greater disasters of a translator job from other groups. The works they did were not as popular as this, so there wasn't any complains about that one. As someone coming here after raging from reading that piece, I can't seem to find my anger to rage about the current chapter by N.saga.

But the OP(@Dusk ) bitching about it in a forum before trying to pm N.saga (no mention of contacting them was made in the first post) and talking about the mistakes is kinda off-putting to me.