Eastern novels on western settings

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by dweenator, Oct 18, 2019.

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  1. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    This sounds to me that it's the translator's fault. I'm only familiar with Japanese, but I assume that Korean honorifics work somewhat similarly. When talking about European nobility honorifics, Japanese writers will use the same Japanese ones that they use in everyday life. So you'll have things like "lord" or "sir" rendered as "-sama" or "-dono". A good translator should know what context the writer is using so he should adapt his translation to whatever is appropriate rather than leave all the honorifics in romaji.

    As a side note, this wouldn't be a problem in Chinese because the Chinese language has a million honorifics anyways, so all of these European terms will have unique honorifics rather than using the native ones.
     
  2. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    Well, with novels (translation) that are given little context, those honorifics can help a lot.
    Ah, wait, this only applies to those who have read Japanese/Chinese/Korean novels and have a grasp of how things go and still not forgetting it .
     
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