Small advice when translating 'aa' and 'ha'from Japanese.

Discussion in 'Translator's Corner' started by Nikko Anderson, Nov 15, 2022.

  1. Nikko Anderson

    Nikko Anderson The Second Apprentice of The Fourth Librarian

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    This has bothered me a lot lately. Maybe because the translator was inexperienced he/she keep translating ああ as aa. And I think I found it in many sites. While sometimes it was indeed an expression for shocked character, it often actually mean as affirmation (basically casually saying yes)
    Here copied from Jsho:
    Ah!; Oh!; Alas!|Yes; Indeed; That is correct|Hey!; Yo!|Uh huh; Yeah yeah; Right; Gotcha

    The same also with はっ! Of course sometimes it could be written as is it, but in case you are translating a dialogue of soldiers or similar profesion, and especially if they talked to the superior it could mean affirmation like "Yes, Sir/Mam"

    Oh and I pesonally don't really like people keeping affirmation うん as un. There are a lot of ways saying yes in english. Same case with ええ(yes).

    It's half a rant, but I hope it help improve some.
     
    aneliese, Tiktiktika and Shio like this.
  2. aegis062

    aegis062 Chaotic Demon Emperor

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    Part of it can also be because of how the author wrote it and sometimes the reader misunderstands the context since it might not be their 1st language.

    then there are lazy translators that really don't care for properly translating every affirmation and just use 1-2 of the same kind without caring for the context.
     
  3. hayakuchi

    hayakuchi New Member

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    This is certainly a peeve of mine, and I'm trying my best to avoid it myself.

    It can get difficult at times though. The ones you've listed are easy, but there are others that are a lot harder to translate. Japanese uses a lot of onomatopoeias, and sometimes it's not easy to find a good replacement. Even if there's one that matches the situation, the tone might feel off. Sometimes I just convert directly because it comes across fine, sometimes there is a better way to translate it into English, and sometimes I want to convert directly but I can't because the phonetic systems are different (looking at you small ッ).

    I wish I had a wide vocabulary / dictionary for onomatopoeias that would help me just find an appropriate one to use when I needed.
     
  4. boocross

    boocross Active Member

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    Well it seems like I shouldn’t assume the readers have watched a lot of anime.
     
  5. Tiktiktika

    Tiktiktika Member

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    My favorite is when I found something like this :
    ええ! えッ······えええ⁈
    I'm sad for the loss of wordplay in the translation, but it's unavoidable.