In a bunch of JP WNs I've read, I see the author just telling the story and hardly ever showing anything, which makes it kinda boring. So, I was wondering if translators should change that to make it more interesting. Not all the time, but just enough so that it doesn't feel too boring.
I thought translators were supposed to keep as close to the original meaning as possible. Otherwise, it won't be the same story anymore.
Japanese WNs are amateur works after all. they just write it because of hobby not for money. if you want something more refined you can read LN instead. also, if people start changing the content then it is not translating anymore.
It’s better if they just write their own novels then lol but I get your feeling, same thing happens to CNs as well
Even if you disregard the whole "stay as close to the source" thing, rewriting sections of the story like that likely require a lot more effort and skill on the translators part, at least if you want it to be consistent.
I think its okay to tell something to a certain extent. . Because sometimes you can mess things up by doing some event just to show something.. and it might make the book needlessly long to just make the extra length to show something that isnt really relevant to the story. But that doesnt meen you shouldnt do it by showing it when it is relevant Everything needs a good balance. People always spam the "show dont tell" phrase to show how theyre an "expert" critics.. when they are sometimes not. And welp.. Author =/= translator
Making a change like that would completely change the story. That would literally be the translator adding content to create a scene.
At most, a translator should rewrite the onomatopoeia. Rephrasing is fine, but why would they think up a story that's not their own? Changing a simple line is easy, but reworking the whole story format would burn them out faster than ever. Rather, I believe it's not the translator's job to do so. Why don't start complaining to the Authors instead?
I think you need to either elaborate or give an example, OP. From what I can see so far, I don't think it would be a good idea. There may be nothing to indicate sensory perceptions of an object, person, or creature. If the translator makes something up due to (1), there may be a later chapter that contradicts what the translator just made up. It's not really the translator's job to add detail. If you were translating a document, would you add details that you were unsure of? I think the translator's job is more to attempt to convey the word in a language different from the original as accurately as possible. Additionally, translators are not necessarily writers.
Just read something else ... like the strongest system Where the MC skills consists of kicking balls, plucking balls, grabbing tits .... etc Don't think too much when you are reading, if you're not entertained, just move on to another novel. If you're making a thread to discuss something you're thinking, you're already 2 steps going to the wrong direction. Edit: There are times when translators are missing all the details though... like the choice of word, which could have meanings. In any case, we're stuck and we have to move on anyway.
Japanese literature doesn't hold to the "show, don't tell" rule half as much as English literature does. But the Japanese WN authors do take info-dumping to ridiculous levels. It's not the translator's job to fix that, though. Try reading more novels by professional writers instead of sloppy amateurs and watch anime adaptations if you like the story ideas in WN/LNs. ■ No, they're supposed to keep as close to the reading experience intended by the author as possible. Meaning is just a part of that, and sometimes it gets sacrificed for the sake of other things, such as puns or innuendo.
The whole "Show, Don't Tell" aphorism was an invention of the CIA during the Cold War, meant to promote literature that was less ideological in order to lower the social cachet of stories (particularly the works of science fiction authors and fantasists to which so much of our beloved low-brow Japanese speculative fiction is indebted!) that wore their lefty ideas on their sleeves, so it's not like it's some kind of unbending, universal rule of writing. That being said, I think that there's a lot of leeway in how you can interpret language, particularly when it comes to metaphorical language. For example, is "to tilt one's head" a literal action that one takes, or is it an expression that denotes any look of confusion, or is it a literal action that only represents a look of confusion through cultural coding that is non-existent in the language you're translating into? I don't believe there's one right answer. When IlkatSumil says "they're supposed to keep as close to the reading experience intended by the author as possible," I'd say that's close, but it's also impossible to know what the author intends without asking them, and even if you, the translator were to ask them, there's no guarantee that every other reader would be privy to their answer anyway, but that doesn't mean the story is any less valid to those readers. Translate the story that you read, and do whatever you think is necessary to make that happen.
Good example. There's also coding beyond the meaning itself. It might be a marker of childishness in one culture and a more neutral action in another. So you can't rely on someone from a neutral-head-tilting culture to read the childishness into the action. Well, a good writer makes it pretty clear in their writing what they're trying to accomplish. (And bad writers don't get to complain.) Ideally, the translator should be good enough of a reader to grasp what the author wants without asking. The point is, though, not to translate as if you're simply telling the reader what the original author wrote, but to try to capture why the author wrote it.
100% support this. If you translate by only reiterating the author's words in another language, then you're missing the point of a human translation imo. The translator's job is to interpret the work, digest it, and the produce an output. There is no reason for one not to rewrite a section that sounds fine in the language you're translating from, but horrible in the language you're translating to so long as the actual meaning is preserved. Personally, I think that anything can be altered, inserted, or removed so long as it's done in a manner that's consistent with the author's style, story and intent. Different languages and cultures capture the same ideas in different ways, after all.
Adding what gets lost or warped in translation isn't a sign one should write one's own novels. If you want a particular example of what @SupremeTentacle and I are talking about, consider the case of coarse language. Japanese tends to have little in the way of outright cusswords and communicates verbal coarseness by having a character use inappropriately plain and blunt speech. But English lacks the intricate system of plain, polite, formal and honorific speech of Japanese, favoring cusswords instead. So it's not wrong to add cusswords to the speech of a verbally coarse Japanese character, even if they're not there in the Japanese. Alternatively, you could modify the dialogue tags (he said, she asked, etc.) to explain how the character's speech comes off to others (he stated baldly; she asked with an air of disregard). Simply translating the character's words as-is, though, won't be read the right way, making the translation less accurate.
I agree, and it's one of the reasons why I don't have a particularly high opinion of Japanese web novels in general. However, it's not something that a translator can fix unless they're wholesale rewriting the original story. And at that point, the resulting work will resemble a piece of fanfiction more than it does a translation. Also, if the book being translated is too boring, then it's more fruitful to drop it and go to something that's better written.