No Wonder Japanese Novel Translations Have A Bad Rep

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Wujigege, Jun 24, 2019.

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  1. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    My Chinese friend says the same thing about Qidian novels and calls them crap. YY novels. Mental masturbation.
    You underestimate the amount of weebs in the world.
    Every Cool kid has an inner weeb.
     
  2. RubberDucky

    RubberDucky Well-Known Member

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    I feel like honorifics are just an extremely prevalent part of the Japanese language and some of them have no English equivalent or an English equivalent that sounds completely out of place, so it's easier to just leave them in. And after you leave one in, you would be more inclined to leave the rest of them in for consistency's sake. It's also just kind of become the norm in terms of translated Japanese light novels, and a good portion of weebs are already familiar with the meaning of most honorifics, often to the point where they're more used to reading light novels with them.
     
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  3. Yukkuri Oniisan

    Yukkuri Oniisan 『Procrastinator Archwizard Translator and Writer』

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    If I translate a German or French novel I might leave Mademoiselle and Fraulein unchanged, since it will remind the reader that the trash they are reading is originally a German or French Wattpad novel...

    Man... I wish Harry Potter is written in thick Scottish English... It will be amazing...

    Oh wait.. It exists: https://imgur.com/gallery/wjkDp#gSO4FRW
    faith for humanity restored!
    gSO4FRW.jpg
     
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  4. Adieu

    Adieu Active Member

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    The problem with Oriental honorifics is that they DO have some degree of functional equivalents in most Euro languages, BUT.... their flow and handling is different.

    Mostly as subject and verb forms for addressing people denoting degrees of respect or lack thereof, instead of pervasive name-modifier "titles"

    Stuff like French "tu vs. vous" / Russian "ты vs. вы"

    English, too, once had some of this stuff, but mostly dropped it as archaic.
     
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  5. LysUltima

    LysUltima Riichi! Tsumo! Toitoi! Suuankou!?

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    People speak differently. It also helps when telling who's speaking. Japanese writing usually does not go like "he said, 'blah blah'" but instead
    "bleh bleh"
    "blah blah"
    "bluh bluh"
    saying that, he left the room.
    You know that Alpha tends to say "bleh bleh," Beta tends to say "blah blah" and Gamma tends to say "bluh bluh," so you understand what's being said.
    It also helps with characterization, where you can tell a lot about characters by how they speak.
    Unfortunately, very little of this gets passed on to English. The most translators can do is append a "he said" to the conversations so readers know who says what, and a little of the character into their words. For example, Sauran and Ryausha from Battle Over Giving Up the Throne. Sauran speaks semi-formally with a masculine tone, and makes evil laughs from time to time. Ryausha speaks a bit less formally, but not casual, and talks like a girl. I can only translate their speaking styles as virtually the same, because English just doesn't have the difference between masculine speaking and feminine speaking, and there aren't nearly as many levels of formal speaking in English as Japanese.
     
  6. otaku31

    otaku31 Well-Known Member

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    Very informative, thank you. No thanks 4 the sneaky advertisement, tho. :blobamused:

    As u hv urself said, in the English written form it's hard to carry over the distinctiveness of characters' voices/peculiar ways of talking through their speech. And when attempted, it often comes off sounding cartoon-ish, giving off the impression that's surely not how a real person would speak. It's best left to anime where speaking style/tone can be better conveyed and differentiated through sounds. Maybe Japanese writing can pull it off w/o sounding unnatural, but English is quite limited in that regard. Sometimes, JPN characters' speech feels like it was simply transcribed as is from the anime version, which, IMO, is at odds with the very style of novel writing.

    Cya! :blobsmilehappy:
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2019
  7. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    It is a shame, some people rather remain in mediocrity instead of aiming to be better.
    This is why Japanese novels will always have a bad rep.
    I have dropped two Japanese novels because of simple mistakes: negative(not) is missing in so many sentences, that it reads worse than MTL.
    Over and out!
     
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  8. Deleted member 41274

    Deleted member 41274 Guest

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    Tbh I only read Chinese stuff now and maybe Korean. I just got over japanese stories maybe due to too much anime and the tropes. Also Korean manhwa are just too beautiful compared to the other two
     
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  9. LysUltima

    LysUltima Riichi! Tsumo! Toitoi! Suuankou!?

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    but you don't even translate...
     
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  10. steveshaji60

    steveshaji60 Active Member

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    Btw you say you hate honorifics

    But why does your name has one
    Gege 哥哥(elder brother)....
    .......
     
  11. hikaharu

    hikaharu Well-Known Member

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    Just wanted to clarify..
    Yes, they do add -san to a foreigner's name when they talk in English.. As per Ai san example, those phrases are very common.. At least with the Japanese i worked with.. I believe Japanese that worked in companies that have international dealings can good a pretty good English email just fine too~ Mostly because they'd to adapt to us foreigners i think :D
     
  12. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    It's a screen name. I would not read a novel that has Wujigege in it. That is just lazy.

    If my screen name was "You are an ass"
    Calling a character such a name would also put me off a story.
    Like I said in earlier points, it makes sense in an eroge but not in a novel especially those set in Western society
     
  13. LysUltima

    LysUltima Riichi! Tsumo! Toitoi! Suuankou!?

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    Keep drinking the kool aid.
    Unlike some blind idiots
    I know I wont have gotten to read Mushoku Tensei or Battle Over Giving Up the Throne if not for Jpanaese novel translations.
    No one,nothing is perfect.
    Are you 100% morally perfect?
     
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  14. Adieu

    Adieu Active Member

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    Korean digital color is usually frikkin gorgeous

    Japanese have an odd trend where artists who came up drawing seinen or especially hentai stuff (they sometimes change their pennames, but you can still tell!!!) are generally expressive.... while shounen mangaka are shite.

    Also Japanese are oddly good at "digital handdrawn" stuff, but pretty meh at full digital

    Chinese...are getting there. Seems these things really benefit from some healthy internal rivalries and one-upmanship
     
  15. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Maybe Korean comics are better because the industry pays amateur and isn't like Japanese that is an oligopoly.
    Good income stream promotes increase in quality.
    Selling per chapter/episode online is more lucrative than selling one tankobon.
    Least I forget, there is zero printing costs in Korean comics as it's all online and digital
     
  16. Kuro_0ni

    Kuro_0ni Cocooned in a Life transition

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    I see since we are all on the same line of thought, I decided to copy-pasta this exact post on all threads, that start with no wonder.
     
  17. aj20010

    aj20010 New Member

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    I guess you just kinda get use to it lol.
     
  18. Sai101

    Sai101 Well-Known Member

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    I find it irrating to read because the TL's often use:
    < Character speaks > or L and reverse L (or is it upside down?) instead of " ... ". How hard is it to replace with speech marks when "Character speaks." Instead [ ] - 'oh but that is what is in the raws!' Sometimes... just sometimes I wanna reach through the screen & back hand you TL!
     
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  19. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    It's common for translators to have quirks that bug me. Usually, it's stuff like this that slavishly adheres to the original for no real reason that are a bigger deal than things like honorifics. I can see the point of keeping honorifics even though they make way more sense for subtitles than they do in a translation. This particular one is pretty bad, but it's still better than the books which refuse to specify who is speaking. That kind of thing may be fine in Japanese, but it's utter crap in English.

    Still, the biggest problem with Japanese translations doesn't lie in translator quirks. It's more that they tend to translate Japanese webnovels and Japanese webnovels are sort of terrible. Not that this isn't true of Japanese literature in general. Japanese writers are some of the best in the world, but their webnovels share in any of this quality.
     
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  20. philosopher17

    philosopher17 Well-Known Member

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    This is not a hallmark of the japanese language but a testament to the poor writing quality on the part of OG authors, either because they are still kids or they just are poor at writing. These are light novels after all.

    Books by haruki murakami for example don't have this feature and have been conveniently translated into pretty good and grammatically accurate english language with large success (Although he has also written books in English).

    In the end it is a combination of poor choice of translators of novels, the fact that this genre of story telling is being written by amateurs for whom quality of the writing plays second fiddle to 'plot' and that the translators themselves are amateur. This community in the end is largely populated by asians many of whom have english as their second or even third language of fluency and might not care about presentable writing at all, but characteristics like wish fulfillment, plot, mystery elements etc more than the writing itself.
     
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