I know people around here have very strong opinions about honorifics in translations and whether they should be translated or not, I'm not gonna touch that lol. But I'm wondering about the names of sects and cultivation techniques etc, how do people feel about translating those? Do you prefer they be left in pinyin? Some swords have names that sound badass in English and convey something about the sword, for example in the BL novel The sword named no way out, the ML's sword is named ... No way out lol. Which sounds OP, explains the sword's power, because when it kills someone it damages their soul so they can't reincarnate (aka left with no way out) and this is important to the plot of the novel. But MC's sword in English is called something like White is my master, which sounds kind of goofy. This is related to the MC and his personality, Bai is his nickname for the ML so it can be a pun on that, and he named the sword casually, which shows his mindset at the time. But in battles, it just doesn't sound threatening for an OP sword to be called that. I think it's fine to leave one in English and one in pinyin but others may want everything consistent. Same with the names of sects, some sound cool in English and some sound dumb. And with the names of techniques, especially if they are only 3 or 4 words long in Chinese, there's many different things they could be translated as in English. If there isn't really additional context, how do you chose what meaning to use? What do you guys think?
depend from the story, for example in the novels "world of cultivation" i liked the fact some terms are in pinyin because i could immerse myself i the story. but for most novels i prefer the translation. so in the end it's the translator job to see what is most needed for the story.
For me it depends on the coolness factor. If the name sounds cool in English then sure use the English version. But if it sounds awkward then I'd rather see it in Pinyin. Either way I don't understand what Pinyin means so it has that mystery factor which adds to the coolness.
We don't care about what names like Shaolin or Wudang translate into so there's no need to be dogmatic about translating these names and phrases. It's a lot like translating poetry; sure you can translate the words and sometimes the meanings, but aesthetically it's always going to look a lot worse than the original.
Yeah, I figured some people would be dogmatic, as you say, about "you must translate ALL the names, or leave ALL of them in pinyin" but I wasn't sure how many people that would be. None of them have replied to this post so far anyway haha! Translating poetry/poetic things is indeed the hardest form of translation, especially from a language like Chinese. I think something like "Floating frost sword" is pretty aesthetic, though I'm not sure how well it conveys the original name. The reason I would consider translating at least part of the names is when you have a ton of sects or whatever, all the pinyin starts to blur together if you're someone who doesn't speak Chinese.
meh cool stuff to go for weapon you can go to original cuz it may reference to something beside imo english kinda dry on coolness opness name beside people will get used to such thing~ all according keikaku foundation stage as long as you consistent on the name it ok~ hey you may care if ya professional translator who slapped by company to make localization if not just smack ungrateful reader as you pest to noisy!
I think that we're all used to seeing Quanzhen and Emei next to the Beggar Sect or the Red Flower Society, so readers are trained to be used to accept both forms of translation. Outside of fiction, we still have stuff like Yangtze River and Yellow River. I'm probably one of the most dogmatic about this kind of thing on NUF, and I think both are fine and that whatever is appropriate should be used. Translating from Chinese to English is hard enough without shackling translators to some impossible standard. I don't think you need to be too concerned about how much the translation conveys the same connotation as the original. You're bound to lose a lot of meaning in the process anyways so getting decently close without sounding awkward is the ideal way to do things. Ponder this: the accepted translation for 倚天屠龙记 is "the Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre" and it looks pretty decent. But on closer examination, it's an inaccurate translation! It doesn't even deliver the proper connotation! But that doesn't matter because the title is pretty cool, it's distinctive, it's memorable, and it looks sort of right if you squint at the original title. I'd even posit that a more accurate translation would make for something that would result in a weaker title. Hah! I read these books in Chinese, and whenever I see a lot of pinyin, it still blurs together!