Translating Dialogue

Translating JP>EN Dialogue is kinda weird tbh... Like uhn... I think it's better if I start with an excerpt of what Japanese WN dialogue usually looks like. You don't need to understand Japanese, you just need to look at the form:
「ジェノサイダーちゃんキターーー！！！」
「マ？ 」
「うわ、本当に来てる！！ 」
「こっわ、近寄らんどこ……」

「」 are the Japanese quotation marks btw.

Anyways, this is what dialogue in Japanese usually ends up looking like. It's a bunch of quotations coming one after the other with no text in-between at all. Basically, this means that you technically have no indication of who is the speaker in each phrase at all... Well, technically speaking only though.

What actually ends up happening is that each character tends to have a more or less unique speech pattern, so you can recognize that pattern and notice that it's that character speaking... Also, context tends to help a lot in identifying the speaker as well.

... Though well, that can be kinda harder when your Japanese isn't particularly great, or when the characters speaking didn't have much screen time so far, but... Eh? It's manageable.

What I wanted to talk about is more like how you can translate that into English, because I have seen it in quite a variety of ways... And while I have my own personal preference, I don't believe there is a right or wrong way about it.

1) Keeping it consistent with the original.

Ex:
"Hello."
"Hi, how are you doing."
"I actually beat my high score yesterday!"
"Congratulations, bye!"
"Take care!"

This is the method that basically translates the sentences and nothing more. You all probably saw that at some point... I'm not particularly fond of it because it becomes pretty hard to know who is saying what once there are 4 characters in a conversation, especially because you usually end up missing the Speech Patterns in the JP>EN conversion, so what you end up having to aid you is solely the context... Which doesn't work all the time.

Still, it's functional.

2) Denoting speaker at the start/end of each sentence.

Alice: "Hello."
Shiki: "Hi, how are you doing."
Alice: "I actually beat my high score yesterday!"
Shiki: "Congratulations, bye!"
Alice: "Take care!"

That's another semi-common method you can see around. Sometimes you see the speaker at the end of the sentence in a parenthesis instead of at the start of the sentence, but regardless, it keeps the consistency with how the original was, while also making it clearer for the reader who is saying what.

Personally speaking, I'm not super fond of it either. I like that it is at least making things clearer, but it feels kinda... Unprofessional I guess? I understand that it is a fantranslation in the end, so it doesn't need to be professional, but it just strikes me as weird to have the speaker denoted like this.

Still, it's a very functional method, if I had to choose between this and the first one, I'd go with this because it's easier to understand on the reader while still being about as consistent with the original as one can get.

3) Adapting it a bit to fit English patterns.

"Hello." Alice said.
"Hi, how are you doing." Shiki replied.
"I actually beat my high score yesterday!" Alice exclaimed.
"Congratulations, bye!" Shiki said.
"Take care!" Alice answered.

That's basically the same as the former, but it tries to make it look closer to what an English novel would look like... Tbh, I feel like there isn't much of a difference from the earlier method, you're just adding fluff words when in the end all you want is to denote the speaker anyways.

Still, it feels more "normal" to me, so I actually like seeing things written this way.

4) Giving yourself some freedom.

"Hello." Alice said.
"Hi, how are you doing." Shiki replied curiously.
"I actually beat my high score yesterday!" Alice joyously exclaimed.
"Congratulations, bye!" Shiki said in a hurry as she remembered something she urgently had to do.
"Take care!" Alice answered while feeling a bit confused over how quickly Shiki left.

That is... Not exactly professional either, but it's fun to play around if you have the freedom. You're essentially trying to add some extra color to the dialogue based on the context that the novel gives you.

The obvious problems with this method are that it isn't as consistent with the original, and that you're adding stuff that wasn't there at first, so uhn... If in the next chapter something contradicts the stuff you added, you end up needing to go back and fix it.

I wouldn't say this is a good method, but I'd say it's the one that makes for the most entertaining reading experience. At least to me it does.

Though of course, the translator ends up needing to have some tact and read the context of the conversation properly, so as to not add anything particularly egregious in their own attempts to make the dialogue flow differently.
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As I wrote this, I kinda wondered where I wanted to get with this... In all honesty I dunno. I mean, a translator is probably already aware of what they can and can't do when translating, and they probably already settled on their own style, so this kind of blog post is totally useless for them.

And for a reader... Well, it just doesn't matter much? xD

I guess I just think it's interesting to think a bit about it. I mean... JP novels just have such a wildly different dialogue structure from what we usually see in EN novels, that we end up having some freedom in how to adapt it to the English speaking public. A translation between two languages that tend to have a similar structure probably don't have nearly as much freedom since you'd just stay consistent with the way the author was portraying things.