The art of translation?

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Aetherfukz
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The art of translation?

Post by Aetherfukz »

Bad title, eh, but couldn't think of anything better.

Anyway, a question that is on my mind for some time now, especially since I've been watching a lot of Fansubs recently:
How "exactly" do you guys translate the mangas? I know the basic steps, raws, cleaning, translation, editing, etc. but what I mean is: Your translators are obviously excellent in speaking and reading/writing japanese. So I recon, are they japanese people who are also fluent in english, or rather english people who studied japanese insanely hard?

It interests me because, well I'm interested in japanese and want to learn more of it, but also because I'd say most fansub / manga groups are around the age of 20-30 (as am I), and if they are english men fluent in such a radically different language (and on top of that, writing) at such an age, I'd say thats a pretty remarkable feat.

I don't know, maybe at US schools / colleges / universities japanese is a regular class? I tried to get into a japanese class when I was at university here in austria, but there weren't any but 600 kilometers away at another uni.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Berserked »

That's also a question that has floated in and out my brain. Then I figured, what the fuck...as long as the mangas/anime keep coming I will not question the existence of English 20-30 year olds have learned Japanese or did a Japanese person learn English.

Actually didn't cost me a bit of effort...

Not even a forum post..


:P



Just messing mate...I actually would like to know too who does the translating...most likely a Jap dude that learned English..
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Rolos »

I think in most cases it is a japanese guy who has learned english.
Having been born in a non-english speaking country, I think I can declare pretty confidently that its not so hard to learn english. I learned english by myself.
Not an extraordinary level of english, but a decent one, the kind that can get you out of almost any conversation without letting the fact that you are not a native speaker being too obvious.

Japanese, on the other hand, is a bitch. As you said before, it is a remarkable feat to be able to learn and fluently speak (or translate) this "impossible to peel" language. I mean......I tried to learn japanese. I tried hard. I gave up almost a week after I started, because I realized It was simply beyond my self-teaching capabilities.


On a lighter note: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20080325.gif
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by LordMune »

I'm not supposed to tell you this, but; here at EG, we don't actually translate anything. The way it usually goes is that we clean the raws, Eldo gets drunk and does some stream-of-consciousness writing, we correct the typos and typeset that, then release.
Rolos wrote:I gave up almost a week after I started, because I realized It was simply beyond my self-teaching capabilities.
Japanese is pretty neat and well-ordered grammatically, but I imagine it would be hard to learn the language on your own.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Femto »

It's worth adding that Eldo anally rapes me in his drunken stupor.

Again and again.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by LordMune »

Femto wrote:It's worth adding that Eldo anally rapes me in his drunken stupor.
This is where the "translated" sound effects in Biomega originate.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Aetherfukz »

ROFL.

Anyways, I too am not a native english speaker, but I learn it for about 15 years now, and activly use it for about 10. While I might (and actually am) not perfect, it's more than enough to watch every film/series/anime ever made in english, read Lord of the Rings in its original language, and generally not have any problems speaking or writing besides the occasional lookup of a non ordinary word.

And as Rolos said english is pretty much one of the easiest languages to learn. Even german is harder (from what I've heard, it's my native). And while I (try to) learn japanese for a bit more than half a year now, I do know that I wont probably know japanese anywhere near as good as english ten years from now. I got a multimedia course to learn it myself, and of course the internet (and fansubs :o ) is a huge resource.

But, it's a hobby, just as a workmate of mine goes to a hungarian language class once a week.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Rolos »

mmmmmm.....hungarian.

How many countries speak that language besides Hungary?
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Xandarg »

Hey Aether,

Well, I can only speak from my own limited experience, but I've been translating for a few months now--maybe I'm not supposed to talk about the project I'm working on, so I won't say more, is it a secret release? Who knows, I'm just a lowly translator. But anyway, I'm mother tongue English and have taken only 3 years of college Japanese. Am I a pro? No. Do I go it completely alone? Fortunately, no. I do have some friends who are proficient enough to help me when I'm really stuck on some frustratingly esoteric Japanese grammar. The point is this, even though I'm far from fluent in Japanese, I understand enough of the core substance of the language to be able to translate pretty effectively with dictionary in hand (and Nintendo DS Kanji recognition software in the other hand).

I think (my opinion here) that it's more important to be fluent in the destination language than it is to be fluent in the source language. For me, it's a process of racking my brain for long hours (I'm a perfectionist) to understand really the core meaning of what the Japanese text is trying to convey, and once I have that basic understanding, I simply write it in English, in the way that is most appropriate to convey that same meaning in English (I'm a proficient writer too, as it's a fairly important part of college major--International Studies). If I were fluent in Japanese but not English, I would be able to understand the source material immediately (instead of after hours of deliberation) but then no matter how hard I tried I wouldn't be able to be sure of the exact way of communicating that same meaning to an English speaker (which is more fundamental to a language than just simple grammar).

So there you have it, the personal experience of a translator that isn't fluent in Japanese. Hehe, have I completely ruined your faith in me as a translator? Basically, I'm above average in my classes for someone who is going from English mother tongue to Japanese--Koreans, for instance, have a MUCH easier time learning Japanese because of core linguistic similarities--but I just haven't studied long enough to have a vast command of vocabulary and kanji, so I require constant use of dictionaries. But I wouldn't want to give the impression that my translations are inaccurate due to this, it's just that it takes me a lot longer. Though I'm actually going to Tokyo for 5 months starting this Monday (31st), so hopefully before long I'll have a much easier time of things in the translations department.

Hope you found my post edifying. I'm also interested to hear of the experiences of other translators, if they'd care to share. A more seasoned translator will probably have a different take on things.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by uncempt »

Aetherfukz wrote: How "exactly" do you guys translate the mangas? I know the basic steps, raws, cleaning, translation, editing, etc. but what I mean is: Your translators are obviously excellent in speaking and reading/writing japanese. So I recon, are they japanese people who are also fluent in english, or rather english people who studied japanese insanely hard?
Like Xandarg said, your Japanese doesn't have to be world class. That's the source language so you have time and space to work out what's going on exactly. Usually I read manga without help but when translating I work with a kanji dictionary, electronic dictionary and google japan. You do need to be good with English though, as that's the target language. It's got to come out perfect or people will scratch their heads or just not understand. I think we've all read enough Engrish t-shirts to know what happens when a poor English speaker tries to knock together even a one-line translation. So I think more of our TLs are native English speakers (including me) rather than native Japanese. (Think I saw on the front page poll that we have 0 Japanese speakers here...). We have some guys here who translate from a 2nd language into a 3rd though and they are properly hardcore and deserve serious respect. :worship:

I've been studying for about 3 or 4 years now. Japanese is hard but it's not that hard. Different, sure. You just need time to get your head around the central ideas I reckon. Of course the best place to do that is in a class or in Japan. I've never had a formal lesson, but I never had that much success teaching myself until I moved to Japan.

As for technique... Read it, take a few notes, try and convey everything important in English and make it flow properly. The hard part for me is deciding what to throw away. Sometimes you can't keep all the info in a 5 word japanese phrase without ending up with some 25-word-hyphenated-English-monstrosity-of-doom. Some words and subtleties just don't translate well. And others are easy to translate badly. I really find it challenging to put together a script that I'm actually satisfied with. I started translating last summer and it turns out that it's more of an art than a science. Your title was spot on :wink:
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Berserked »

Reading all this actually boosts my drive to take up on my Japanese again..

Nice, thanks! ;)
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Aetherfukz »

Thanks for your insight guys, it's very appreciated!
Xandarg wrote:The point is this, even though I'm far from fluent in Japanese, I understand enough of the core substance of the language to be able to translate pretty effectively with dictionary in hand (and Nintendo DS Kanji recognition software in the other hand).
Kanji recognition software, as in you stroke in the kanji with the stylus and the software tells you what it is? Sounds sweet. I usually use this online kanji lookup and this online dictionary for my simple needs. But being able to just draw the kanji sounds awesome, instead of typing in some strange SKIP code or number of strokes to look it up. I'll have to search if such a software is available for Palm Handhelds. If it is I may use my Palm again, which I stopped when I "upgraded" it to a laptop.
Xandarg wrote: Hope you found my post edifying.
Hmm, edifying, lemme look that up... :)
Oh yeah, very edifing indeed!
uncempt wrote:I've been studying for about 3 or 4 years now. Japanese is hard but it's not that hard. Different, sure. You just need time to get your head around the central ideas I reckon. Of course the best place to do that is in a class or in Japan. I've never had a formal lesson, but I never had that much success teaching myself until I moved to Japan.
Alas, there aren't any japanese classes around here, which sucks. So I have to resort to self-leaning. Though the self-courses I got (and all the others I looked up)only use the romaji writings to teach japanese, and no kanji at all. I recon that's the right way for a starter though?

I plan on going to japan, at least for a trip, for more than a year now. Problem is that while my friends are all just as much into anime/manga as I am, they don't really have much to do with japanese language and culture, so I'd have to go on my own, which... I dunno. Maybe summer next year when I know more japanese than now. :)

But our company has a japanese sister-company from which a few officers come over to our facility about once a year, to train on our (new) machines. So if there's ever the chance for one of our guys to go over to them (to repair a machine or whatever), I'll volunteer in an instant!

Your posts have rekindled my hope that one day I too may be able to (barely) read a raw japanese manga. :o
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by uncempt »

Aetherfukz wrote: Kanji recognition software, as in you stroke in the kanji with the stylus and the software tells you what it is? Sounds sweet. I usually use this online kanji lookup and this online dictionary for my simple needs. But being able to just draw the kanji sounds awesome, instead of typing in some strange SKIP code or number of strokes to look it up. I'll have to search if such a software is available for Palm Handhelds. If it is I may use my Palm again, which I stopped when I "upgraded" it to a laptop.
I don't know what OS you use, but if you setup Japanese input on WindowsXP there's a language toolbar thingy that lets you draw a kanji to look it up
Aetherfukz wrote:Alas, there aren't any japanese classes around here, which sucks. So I have to resort to self-leaning. Though the self-courses I got (and all the others I looked up)only use the romaji writings to teach japanese, and no kanji at all. I recon that's the right way for a starter though?
Kanji is bad for beginners but you need to get into hiragana ASAP. It's kinda like learning a new alphabet with 40 odd characters. I think it's just about impossible to have good pronunciation without knowing hiragana. Romaji is pretty misleading, especially if you're teaching yourself. Have fun :wink:
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Xandarg »

Aetherfukz wrote:I usually use this online kanji lookup and this online dictionary for my simple needs. But being able to just draw the kanji sounds awesome, instead of typing in some strange SKIP code or number of strokes to look it up.
Here's a great online Kanji dictionary that I still use when I want to lookup a character by radical:
http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html

And this site is just a fabulous resource that I still use when my grammar memory gets fuzzy or I need help with slang (and I imagine you'll find it even more useful, especially since the first thing it starts with is--- Hiragana and Katakana! Yay!):
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/

Once you're much farther along in your studies (memorized hiragana, katakana, and a couple hundred kanji) I could even send you my typed manga translations (of which, there aren't many yet...) that include the entire Japanese text re-typed and then translated into English (I do it for practice since I'm a newb). Good luck!
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Shaka Zulu »

Interesting thread, not just for Japanese but languages in general are fascinating.

Just corious, are any of you two translators for EG? Or is it just Eldo's sodomizing that does the trick?
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Re: The art of translation?

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Shaka Zulu wrote: Just corious, are any of you two translators for EG? Or is it just Eldo's sodomizing that does the trick?
Yeah, we both work here, that's why our names are in blue :)

I mostly translate Zetman but I did half of BReaction and help out with everything else when I'm needed. I was pretty lucky to start on BReaction actually, you could practically just guess the lines from looking at the pictures... "Ooh panties!" I can't say I enjoyed the one chapter of Berserk I did though, there's too much pressure. I mean, you could leave out a hint or nuance that ends up foreshadowing something 10 volumes later and get in big shit. It's in safe hands with Mystic though :D
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by miyagiCE »

Though I'm not a (Japanese) translator myself, I have to confirm and reiterate what's been stated in this thread already. In fact, I have never once met a Japanese person that lived in Japan for all their life and translated manga into English for the internet (and I've been with my fair share of scanlation groups (I don't know about the fansubbing scene though)). The only time I worked with translators of Japanese origin was when they lived in English speaking countries in the first place.

It is also a great exaggeration to believe that translators mostly reside in the UK or the US. While that does make sense of sorts, it is a simple fact that there are more English speakers world wide than there are residents in those countries. To give you an example of the scales I'm speaking of: Of the various translators I've worked with I remember 2 of them being from the UK, 2 from the US and 1 from Australia. Now compare that to 2 from Sweden, 1 from Israel, 1 from Russia, 2 from Taiwan, 2 from Malaysia, 1 from Austria (might've been Switzerland), 1 from the Netherlands, 1 from India, 1 from the Phillipines, and a couple from France. Yeah, there were a couple from Japan too, but those were usually people who moved there from a foreign country, so that doesn't count.

I think this should pretty much prove that Japanese is not that insanely difficult language to study some people make it out to be. It's a language like any other. As a matter of fact, you begin to see patterns of the grammar without ever having opened a book if you only deal with the culture enough (in this case manga/anime). Sure, manga and anime should not be the scale Japanese should be measured at, but it does indeed come in helpful to get started. My two cents.

Edit:
There's an application quite similiar to the DS Kanji dictionary. It's called "Tejina" and it basically permits you to do the same on any PC with a mouse. Here's a download link: http://www.cnet.de/downloads/0,10000011 ... 31s,00.htm (It's German, click on "Jetzt herunterladen". For some reason the original developer doesn't seem to share this anymore.)
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Aetherfukz »

miyagiCE wrote:I think this should pretty much prove that Japanese is not that insanely difficult language to study some people make it out to be. It's a language like any other. As a matter of fact, you begin to see patterns of the grammar without ever having opened a book if you only deal with the culture enough (in this case manga/anime). Sure, manga and anime should not be the scale Japanese should be measured at, but it does indeed come in helpful to get started. My two cents.
Yeah I must say that I learned a whole lotta japanese already just by closely watching anime. Of course it helps that fansubs usually have subtitles closer to the original, with puns etc. explained, unlike licensed DVD subtitles.
miyagiCE wrote: Edit:
There's an application quite similiar to the DS Kanji dictionary. It's called "Tejina" and it basically permits you to do the same on any PC with a mouse. Here's a download link: http://www.cnet.de/downloads/0,10000011 ... 31s,00.htm (It's German, click on "Jetzt herunterladen". For some reason the original developer doesn't seem to share this anymore.)
Whoa, that's one sweet ass tool! Thanks for that link.

Edit: Tried out the tool a little. It says beginner version and that you need a license for the full version. So I recon there aren't all kanji available in the beginner version? And you can't even purchase a license anymore, and the internet doesn't seem to give a keygen/crack either?
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Rolos »

Wow.
Man, I was an asshole back then.
Jesus.
Anyway, I'm bringing this thread back from the dead. (hahahaha, classic)
Suck it, thanatos.

Question~!

From what I've learned, the "ッ" kana symbol is used to represent a repeated consonant (ステップ = Suteppu = Step), or a repeated vowel in garaigo (but only when it precedes a "De Capucha (of hood in spanish, mnemonic device, ignore it)" letter, i.e. DKPCH, or ck, tch, dge or x), which is why I'm kinda baffled when I see it at the end of sentences or onomatopoeia in manga. Same goes for the other little "tsu" sound, the hiragana one, っ.
It's confusing, I don't understand what they're supposed to stand for.
Stating it more explicitly:
Why is it that little kana "tsu" sounds are at the end of so many sentences, when they're not supposed to be there?
Is it just me hallucinating, and they were never there to begin with, or is there a legitimate use for those little suckers as sentence endings?
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by tsubaimomo »

Kana refers to both Hiragana and Katakana characters.

The ッ/っ at the end of sentences represents a forced stop of the word, which makes the last syllable sound very brief or cut-off. So, it's often found during quickly spoken and intense dialogue. It also appears after grunts, such as け(ke), げ(ge), む(mu), etc. I generally think of it as adding an "h" sound at the end. Since it's hard to write that kind of sound in English, it sometimes takes the form of an exclamation mark.

Translators dilemma:
え?
Let's translate this as "Eh?".

えッ?
Ok, now add another "h" or instead add an exclamation mark? Damn you ッ.
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Re: The art of translation?

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tsubaimomo wrote:Damn you ッ.
Look at him, just smiling so smirkingly at us. Thinks he can't be translated. When the machines take over... won't need....
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Re: The art of translation?

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Rolos wrote:From what I've learned, the "ッ" kana symbol is used to represent a repeated consonant (ステップ = Suteppu = Step)
It's closer to the truth to say that the small ツ or つ represents any kind of forced stop, at the end of a word or sentence, as Tsuba said, and also within a word. When we write Japanese words with the English alphabet that have this stopping sound, the convention has been to use dual consonants to denote the forced stops within a word. (So what I'm saying is that it always denotes a stopping sound, so every time you see it you don't need to think of it as working under some new and different grammar rule. It's just that in English we have to represent it in different ways because we don't have its equivalent)
tsubaimomo wrote:Translators dilemma:
え?
Let's translate this as "Eh?".

えッ?
Ok, now add another "h" or instead add an exclamation mark? Damn you ッ.
As for using "h" to represent forced stops at the end of a word, I always thought that adding an "h" just emphasizes that the vowel sound is soft. :? I don't think we have any way to denote that a sound is abruptly stopped or cut off other than writing only part of the word and than using ellip.... Or an exclamation mark, as you said.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by tsubaimomo »

Xandarg wrote:As for using "h" to represent forced stops at the end of a word, I always thought that adding an "h" just emphasizes that the vowel sound is soft. :? I don't think we have any way to denote that a sound is abruptly stopped or cut off other than writing only part of the word and than using ellip.... Or an exclamation mark, as you said.
Ya, perhaps a dash at the end could also work.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Rolos »

Dashes are gay.
:colbert:

P.S. Hyphens FTW.
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Re: The art of translation?

Post by Rolos »

Flamboyant denizens of fabulous EG! I, Rolos, have something to ask of you! Concede I shall that it is a request of a most curious nature, an atypical solicitude without precedent nor consequence, yet the urgency of this petition is such that I cannot postpone it any further, no matter how dire the need for a proper venting of the extraneous purple verbosity that in circumlocutory rage within me resides.

Do you, by any chance, happen to know of a good website where I could find good Japanese exercises, that is to say, grammar exercises the likes of which can be found in any schoolboy's bag alongside the dessicated heart of his grandmother and arithmetic books?
The book I've been using to study grammar has displayed nothing but scorn for my desire to practice the things it teaches me, and is even refusing to eat his food when I'm not around, food which subsequently rots and stinks up my basement. His passive-agressive behavior is starting to tire me.
Perhaps I should get another book.
Lot's of them on the subway.

On an unrelated note, how many kanjis should a person know before being able to translate simple stuff?

Oh, I have to leave this thread.

All hail the decomposing composers.

P.S. I already found some sites by means of the Google machine, I'm just asking for recommendations.
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