I decided to make a mini essay which talks about my translation flow and some ideas to help others. In it, I talk about the overall steps I go through, some things that I look for specifically when translation English and Japanese, and also some ideas to help with efficiency (like pipelining). I thought that maybe some people who are doing translation as a hobby or want to get into it can learn something from this. http://selftaughtjapanese.com/2016/...ess-for-translating-from-japanese-to-english/
Oh wow, so you just found out about NU? Anyways, thanks a lot, this may help me in the future. P.s maybe you should pm a mod or something to have this pinned cuz this looks pretty neat. What do you think? @Parth37955
Thanks, glad you found some use out of it. Who do I ask to have it pinned? BTW, I found about NU a few weeks ago when somebody was nice enough to link a few of my translations.
The moderators, like parth who I just summoned, just dm them and they will answer you. None of them are online currently though.
Hello Parth. This thread is about a link to an article I wrote which goes into detail about my translation process. Dusk said that maybe we can make it pinned. If you get a chance check it out and if you think it should be pinned or whatever maybe you can do that. Your call. Thanks!
Couldn't be more truer than that. If you're bad at Japanese or just starting to learn it, you at the very least need to be able to articulate well in english. If not, I personally think you aren't qualified to translate. It's just an impossible task to convey the context(not even the full meaning) properly, no matter how paraphrased it is, when you don't even know what you're writing. And yes, even with the help of a dictionary, or an editor. The dictionary and/or the editor can only help so much. I have to disagree. Like I said, no matter how great the editor is, he can only help with the English side of the translation, you can mask bad grammar, but you can't mask poor translation. But you can however try to convey what the meaning is to your editor. But then again it's only limited to what you can convey and perhaps not what the actual text means.
@locksleyu I like your pipeline. Never thought of doing it like that too. Reading that link you gave was worth it.
Cough cough "The Art of Translation War: My Process for Translating from Japanese to English" Minor text fixes
My experience is that an editor can make all the difference. But, it really depends on the editor, as well as the dynamic between the editor and translator. I will be the first to agree that an editor can make very little difference. There are only 2 editors I have personally seen at work that I really think can pull it off on their own. One of them was just really good at figuring out nuances and was able to do wonders with text. It was incredible to see, as he would somehow even recreate humour that the translator missed. Granted, he was working with manga, and not novels, so he had some context from images to go on. The other had basic knowledge of japanese, not quite enough to translate, but enough to go read the original when it was unclear and work with the translator's text to come up with a good flow. These two are obvious exceptions though. Even a brilliant editor can only achieve those results when the original text was intuitive or natural in a way that the editor can discern the nuances and iron things out. I think what locksleyu was getting at though is that any editor and translator can work closely together. He didn't say "the editor can figure it out based on the draft translation" but rather I used to help edit for a korean translator and I would always follow an intensive process: 1. Editor reviews and write suggestions in track changes into manuscript (or flag those parts that are too unclear) 2. Translator reviews changes and flags ones that need more discussion 3. Discuss (either over skype or chat) each of the flags, 4. QA the whole chapter again a and repeat 3 if necessary. This can be a lot of work, both for the translator and the editor (I remember frequently getting to 4 or 5 drafts, let alone 3 before releasing a chapter...) but it made good quality releases despite the fact that english was not the translator's first language. And, personally, I found this really fun. Working with someone to get the best possible wording as well as sharing insights into what the author meant, or influences on the novel can be really rewarding parts of working with an editor/translator rather than working in silo. One more thing to add. In the novel translation world, there are so many novels I've seen that just don't have the greatest english quality. Even if an editor won't make the translation perfect, they can still make a big difference. And I completely respect speed releases (cookies sooner = better cookies) but it would be totally legitimate for an editor to go work on the chapters after they were released for all the readers after that (and for their group's legacy). So if you are trying to decide if an editor will make a difference, they will, for sure. And sorry to dive into that particular discussion locksleyu - I did read over the guide and I think it's great you put so much analysis into it. I have to admit I was always a "translate while reading" type of translator, so I skipped that crucial step 1. The momentum from wanting to see what happens next always helped me translate faster, which was important to me, but reading over the text first certainly is a higher quality technique. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, I misread that, I thought he/she meant a 'native english speaker'. I completely even missed his/her point in that paragraph. He/She was referring to EN->JP translation. I'm sorry, I'm dumb. But anyway, if we're talking about an editor who has some knowledge in JP/CN/KR or even another translator who has an exceptional command in English, then yeah of course I'm pretty sure you'll be steam-rolling through those high-quality translation. But you'll be damn lucky to find that needle in a haystack. And if you're one of the unlucky ones, I think the only thing you can do in that position is to nurture your editors, so that even if they aren't fully-capable now, they will be competent/capable sooner or later. Yeah those can be a lot of work, but that's the proper way of doing things. So if you want the quality of your translation to come up reliably decent, you need to do that much or even further. Unless the editor is a beast in both languages >.> The translator would've been irrelevant by then. Kek. Yup. They will for sure. That's why editing is a vital part of a translation. You can even go so far as to have it proofread twice or until you're fairly certain that you didn't miss anything. Anyway, I just reread the whole article again. And I'm really sorry for completely misinterpreting some things, I guess my brain was a mush when I first read it. It's really well-written and very comprehensive. I can go so far as to say that before people start translating, they should give it a read.
Pretty sure the OP can only translate from Japanese... Otherwise, he would have said so. What does that have to do with the thread's topic though?
Well, im just asking if he can translate chinese to english or not. "Just asking no topic related though"