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Translating the Cyberpunk Future

blog.neocabgame.com

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Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#21

Post by taneq »

s21n wrote: post #12

Recently there was a huge backlash in Poland over the translation of the anime series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix [1]. There's a non-binary character named Double Trouble and the translators decided to change its gender to male and named it Kłopotowski (Mr Trouble). All this despite the fact that we do have neutral pronouns in Polish. Unfortunately not everyone agrees on the use of neutral form beca…

We've just encountered Double Trouble and they're hilarious. Sorry to hear they got a bit mangled in translation.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#22

Post by eru »

sdfjkl wrote: post #17

I grew up in Germany and we suffered a lot from badly translated Games (and worse so in dubbed movies). Almost everyone of my generation ended up just learning English and played the original instead. Most of the time that was all that was available anyways. Except of course for the games translated by Boris Schneider. They arguably were better in German because of his excellent (and hilarious) translations, most not…

I wonder if Germany is still the biggest market for dubs, or whether China has taken over.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#23

Post by eru »

tanbog wrote: post #18
toyg wrote: post #2

Italian here and vouching for the correctness of this. They picked an interesting way to "get out of jail", helped by flexibility in the scenario. Another solution would have been to use the antiquated and formal "lei", which is gender-neutral, replaces the second person with a third, and technically defaults to feminine even when talking to a male (because it's short for "your person", "la sua persona", which is fem…

Also Italian here. The other issue with using "Lei" is everyone would sound like some overly formal grand parent or maybe a government official... it would be like people suddenly breaking into the royal "we" in english.

Though funny enough, English has settled on the formal 'you' even when addressing peers.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#24

Post by frostburg »

tanbog wrote: post #19
blotter_paper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it would be unfair to ask you to defend the author's writing simply because you speak their language, but I would be grateful if you (or anybody else who speaks Italian) could explain this part of the article for me: > We also analyzed the solutions currently adopted by some activists, like the use of asterisks, “x,” and “u.” > Siamo tutt* bellissim* . > Siamo tuttx bellissimx. > Siamo tuttu bellissimu. > I’d…

The "U" would be readable and pronounceable in Italian. Stringing a few "U" ending words together does sound a bit wierd though... like your making a hooting sound or something.

It would read like a bad parody of someone from Sardinia speaking in Italian with a thick accent.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#25

Post by incompatible »

toyg wrote: post #2

Italian here and vouching for the correctness of this. They picked an interesting way to "get out of jail", helped by flexibility in the scenario. Another solution would have been to use the antiquated and formal "lei", which is gender-neutral, replaces the second person with a third, and technically defaults to feminine even when talking to a male (because it's short for "your person", "la sua persona", which is fem…

Another solution in such a language would be to abandon the feminine forms and use solely the masculine. The justification would be that since we want to treat sexes equally, they should use the same grammar. The masculine forms are chosen because they are already sometimes used as the "default".

A version of this in English is to take a traditionally gendered term like Actor/Actress and switch to using Actor for all.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#26

Post by trianglem »

haecceity wrote: post #11

This reminds me of a funny story about Chinese writing. Chinese is not a gendered language. A little while ago they decided to split the third person pronoun into masculine and feminine forms because that's what Western cultures do and they thought it'd be progressive. And now we're fighting back against our thousands of years gendered language inheritance.

Why exactly are we fighting gendered language? Don’t we want to know if the subject is male or female?

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#27

Post by sammorrowdrums »

sdfjkl wrote: post #17

I grew up in Germany and we suffered a lot from badly translated Games (and worse so in dubbed movies). Almost everyone of my generation ended up just learning English and played the original instead. Most of the time that was all that was available anyways. Except of course for the games translated by Boris Schneider. They arguably were better in German because of his excellent (and hilarious) translations, most not…

Is it possible you remember some of those German Monkey Island quotes? Do any of them work when translated back into English? I'm intrigued...

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#28

Post by contingencies »

The body touches on common problems in internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) which should be familiar to programmers who have done properly internationalized software in the past. The canonical implementation is gettext.

https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html and https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural...

The final quote is a one-sided view of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, a fundamental debate in 20th century linguistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I must say I was excited at the URL because I thought it was a Quarantine remake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(video_game)

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#29

Post by riquito »

blotter_paper wrote: post #8
toyg wrote: post #2

Italian here and vouching for the correctness of this. They picked an interesting way to "get out of jail", helped by flexibility in the scenario. Another solution would have been to use the antiquated and formal "lei", which is gender-neutral, replaces the second person with a third, and technically defaults to feminine even when talking to a male (because it's short for "your person", "la sua persona", which is fem…

I know it would be unfair to ask you to defend the author's writing simply because you speak their language, but I would be grateful if you (or anybody else who speaks Italian) could explain this part of the article for me: > We also analyzed the solutions currently adopted by some activists, like the use of asterisks, “x,” and “u.” > Siamo tutt* bellissim* . > Siamo tuttx bellissimx. > Siamo tuttu bellissimu. > I’d…

In this example, the ending u sound like you have some mental issue.

Anyway, that's an oversimplification of the problem. There hare many words that don't have just the final letter changed, like actor/actress (attore, attrice)

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#30

Post by sdfjkl »

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #27
sdfjkl wrote: post #17

I grew up in Germany and we suffered a lot from badly translated Games (and worse so in dubbed movies). Almost everyone of my generation ended up just learning English and played the original instead. Most of the time that was all that was available anyways. Except of course for the games translated by Boris Schneider. They arguably were better in German because of his excellent (and hilarious) translations, most not…

Is it possible you remember some of those German Monkey Island quotes? Do any of them work when translated back into English? I'm intrigued...

Here you go: http://www.int33h.com/test/mi/index.html?lng=de
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