I am going to protest

No more li
No more zhang
No more mu
No more shi chen

We read translations because they are supposed to be in English.
A novel had 4 shi chen when they could easily just say 2 hours
It even uses fewer words to translate to English.
Who is with me?
What is the point of a translation if you leave behind so many untranslated words that someone news needs and a Language dictionary to read?
I say we strike.
Any translator that uses zhang, mu, li, cun etc for measurements should be boycotted and have their website sprayed with toilet paper.


@otaku31 @Shiki

 

I have to agree I get annoyed when someone decides to leave time/distance measurements untranslated... I can understand leaving some things untranslated, but... Time measurements, really? That's just silly... >.>

 

I think theres no problem. even official translation of "Art of War" uses li.

If they give modern equivalent in METRIC then there's no prob.

 

I vote for converting them to imperial units; that way the objective would be achieved while still maintaining the spirit of pissing readers off.

 

I got used to li and mu, the distance doesnt convert well in English. For eg: many cultivation novels have these special numbers. Like 33 or 9, etc. But these are in li or mu. The moment you convert them to SI units or MKS/CGS, the number changes or if you keep the number and simply replace the units then the value changes. So can't help there.
But, wherever there is no numerical significance, like 250 catties, I sure would like the numbers to be converted, so I can better relate to the story. Same goes for time, like what the hell is an incense stick or breath of time ? I know now that it's 15 min and ~3 second respectively. But it becomes hard to relate in the flow of reading.

 

The only real way of measuring lengths and areas is in faces.

 

One shi chen is 2 hours so they should be saying 8 hours lol, no?

But yeah, I agree, all the pinyin popping up in places English should be just makes me go

 

Only at li, maybe. But for those... I don't understand chinese. So it may be a good feature to switch the unit of measurement. Like, you can have the measurement auto convert between metric system, chinese system, or for those US people, whatever they use. Some people like to use it to add feeling of slight nuance, not unlike the honorifics that is in japan/korea. But... as it is easily convertible, maybe give us an option to convert it in settings/toggle button? Not that hard to code anyway. Just find and replace.

 

I think the one that made me roll my eyes the most was a story where the little boy always called his mother "niangqin." The translator explained early on that it was left that way because it couldn't be translated as "mother" because it was supposed to be cuter and less formal.

...I had to wonder if the translator actually knew English. Virtually NO little kids call their moms "mother" BECAUSE it feels too formal. Mom, mommy, mama, and other intimate variations exist, but somehow it had to be left as "niangqin."

 

On this subject though, I am curious if somehow we can turn the novel translation into an exercise. Like, first, translate these words. Then translate these sentences. Then paragraphs, then the whole chapter.

 

Tbf, sometimes when you're translating it is pretty easy to think "Oh, this has no English equivalent, better leave it as is and leave a footnote explaining it instead."

I learned to stop doing that only when I started translating while actively trying to avoid using footnotes... You often surprise yourself by how you can find a way to rephrase things to make them make sense in English without needing any footnote. But that usually requires a conscious effort on the translator's part.

My first translations had like... 10-20 footnotes per chapter, nowadays I usually have 0. It's a learning process in a way.

... Not saying footnotes are useless though, they definitely have their uses, but it takes some time to get used to not using them as the default method whenever a word without a direct translations appears.

 

Hahaha my insides are hurting from laughter.
I know people like to think English is not a flowery language but it can be if we want it to.
Instead of John-sama or whatever super polite honorific. We have things like kind sir, esteem guest etc

I think the whole leaving things behind is fetishist.
It is the believe belief that the other language is so cool that things must be left behind.
It is even more annoying when all the characters have English names and it is set in Europe..
The excuse to leave Japanese honorifics on European names and characters and European nobility makes no sense.
You could argue that there is no equivalent for Samurai for novels set in Japan
but if you have to call the ruler of Europe, King John-sama then I drop the novel

 

I certainly do appreciate the effort, and I'm certainly no translator myself, which is why I usually just shrug and move on. It can be a headache to try and find an equivalent for some concepts, and it takes a lot of effort to take a one-word Chinese concept that needs a sentence to explain in English and pare it down to acceptable yet convenient lengths in a translation. The "niangqin/mother" one just struck me because it was so...simple to fix with a common English equivalent.

 

I am saying that it is a lot more common than you think.
Like I said, I have spoken to them and they feel leaving the words untranslated adds flavor

They are aware of the equivalent. I even had people harassing me because I made a similar thread to this.

 

I've read books my whole life, and there is little I enjoy more than reading an author who has masterful command of the English language. It's less what is written, but how it is written. There are so many words and creative ways to use them that people don't know about or appreciate. An example I often bring up is Alistair MacLean. His books were mediocre, great, and everything in between, but they were almost always a joy to read just because he displayed such rich control of the language.

I do enjoy reading a lot of translations around here--it's kind of like the fast food of the literary world, enjoyable with fun stories but not necessarily the deepest in the genre--but one of the things that drops me out of a story the fastest is simplistic/lazy use of English that feels like it squeezes all color and depth out of a story. And untranslated pinyin can (not always, but often) add to that.

 

Yeah, some numbers do have significance, so in those cases leaving it untranslated (but adding the approximate conversion in parentheses or footnote) makes a lot of sense. Most of the time numbers in chinese novels make no sense whatsoever anyway though, so I never really cared what unit of distance or time or weight they used. The numbers were just pulled out of the author's ass anyway, so why would you bother converting them?

... I understand where you're coming from, but specifically with measurements, I feel like people would only enjoy the novels less if they understood the exact weight, time, and distance better.

 

Interesting opinion, but I have to say that I mostly disagree.

Sometime translators (usually those who are not paid, and thus they translated these things for fun and because they enjoy the culture) got just a li~ttle too over the top and we got "niangqin" instead of mother and phrases like "all according to keikaku."

but for things like shi chen-- well usually shi chen is used in ancient setting right? So if what you want is properness, then they need to find the ancient equivalent for "two hours" in English and not just changing it to the hour equivalent. The author especially used the word "shi chen" to show a certain feel of "oldness", so the translator must either use "shi chen" or find some obscure/ancient equivalent for time reference.

anyway, I got what I paid for-- I paid nothing so honestly I have no say in how the translator translate their stuff. Maybe I could go to their comment section if it's too much, but in the end they do what they do for free, so like if I really don't like it and they don't feel like changing things, I could always run to mtl instead, or read something else.

 

I think the reading audience is important to determine if it is reasonable.

If you are translating for Diaspora Chinese then leave behind words to seem more ancient but for your average English reader it flies over our head

 

First of all, I agree that the consumer is important in determining whether or not to translate certain words.

However, rather than making a wide-ranging statement such as "This Word, This Word, and This Word should always be translated", I'd much prefer for it to be done on a case-by-case basis by the readers.

In my own experience, translators often like to ask the readers at the bottom of the chapter: "Hey, so, I didn't translate this word, it means blablabla, but I feel like using blablabla doesn't really have the same implication as the original word because... what do you think?" or "Edit: I changed this word to this word, which one do you guys prefer?"

This is the plus side of reading online, the translator could have realtime feedback from the readers and the two sides are able to converse.

Moreover, aren't you being a bit too.. narrow? If we're talking about random English reader who mostly read classics or western novels, sure, maybe they wouldn't understand. However, I feel like at least most LN/WN readers have been acultured with certain phrases and vocabulary that is most often used in these translations. The latter are the consumers of these translators, aren't they?

Furthermore, some of us read these novels because we wanted some break from the prevalent western media, and does enjoy learning random little tidbits about another language and culture. Or at least I do, don't know about others.

 

I agree that readers of Translated novels/mangas will naturally end up learning some terms... Like the usual Japanese suffixes of -kun -chan -sama and the like, and maybe some Chinese suffixes as well...

It's also not a stretch to expect readers to know a Japanese word or two, like Kokoro or Keikaku and stuff... Mainly because they either appear a lot or because they're part of memes.

But I think it's a big stretch to compare knowing what -chan means and what "word that signifies a different measurement of time than what we usually use", I mean... I remember when I was translating a novel that used a different word for the time passage, I always translated it to a measurement in hours and stuff... Then I took a break from translating it, and when I came back to that novel I couldn't for the life of me remember what that word meant, so I had to look it up and find out that it was a different time measurement.

And like, I was the one translating that novel... I can easily imagine that all readers would instantly forget that time measurement if they read it once in one chapter and I released the next chapter one week after... >.>

And for the record, I don't remember the word anymore, nor do I remember if it meant 2 hours or 1/2 an hour. Which means I'll have to look it up again when I try picking that novel up since I'm still not done translating it... >.>