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What makes a translation great?

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Re: What makes a translation great?

#21

Post by pjc50 »

feikname wrote: post #10

To me a great translation should have Translator Notes (TN) and not be afraid of using neologisms. It seems TNs used to be more common but are increasingly rare.

    All according to *keikaku*

    (TN: keikaku means plan)
This meme comes from the overuse of TNs in anime fansubs to explain obvious things, things that did not need explaining, or where there would be a perfectly straightforward English word that would do the job.

Neologisms: do you mean neologism in the source language or the target language? This usually happens in the other direction, where the English words for things get copied straight over to other languages to refer to new items. There must be examples in the other direction but I can't immediately think of one.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#22

Post by pjc50 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #8

To answer what is a great translation, we first need to ask to whom it should be great. The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are reading a translation! The publishers or whoever hired the translator(s)? The…

> Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality

I'm surprised that you feel that way, because I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always strongly) about the translations. Hence the fansubs in the first place. It's only really a thing for anime in the first place; there aren't many people fan-translating Spanish telenovellas or Kdramas into English, for example.

> Accuracy and reading well are secondary to speed. Time is money.

Looks like AI will accelerate this tendency. We'll get more, cheaper, but worse, translations. Which I see as a qualified good, since it means more amateur and "long tail" from other languages can make it to the English Internet.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#23

Post by dudeinjapan »

Dwedit wrote: post #20
dudeinjapan wrote: post #17

Only a truly great translator can fundamentally alter the meaning of the source and get away with it. (Well played, Ted Woolsey.)

Except for the search-replace error (The Impresario on the Train!)

Also the train didn't even have a “conductor” did it?! (Well probably not anymore after I suplexed it!!)

Re: What makes a translation great?

#24

Post by Dalewyn »

pjc50 wrote: post #22
Dalewyn wrote: post #8

To answer what is a great translation, we first need to ask to whom it should be great. The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are reading a translation! The publishers or whoever hired the translator(s)? The…

> Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality I'm surprised that you feel that way, because I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always…

>I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always strongly) about the translations.

As I came to find, most watchers simply couldn't care. How could they? They don't know Japanese! They certainly appreciated anime, but they couldn't appreciate translating and I won't blame them for not appreciating what they don't know.

Of those who did care, though, most of them judged translations for all the wrong reasons and usually without realizing. Kind of a similar vein to how most ham radio guys know enough electricity to be dangerous but not enough to be useful.

All in all I found the work was ultimately a thankless one and I burned out real bad after serving as a translator for a couple animes.

But the fansub group I was with were a great bunch, and the flame wars I had with other translators in other fansub groups were awesome. Flame wars between passionate people who know what they're talking about are a sight to behold.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#26

Post by cafard »

haunter wrote: post #4

>A good translation wants to be read So much this. For example I think a lot of people would actually enjoy Iliad and Odyssey more if their first experience weren't in dactylic hexameter.

Who translated the Iliad and Odyssey into (English) hexameters?

Re: What makes a translation great?

#27

Post by soundnote »

pjc50 wrote: post #22
Dalewyn wrote: post #8

To answer what is a great translation, we first need to ask to whom it should be great. The readers? The only thing that makes a translation great for them is whether the translated text reads well. Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care, that's why they are reading a translation! The publishers or whoever hired the translator(s)? The…

> Personally, speaking as a Japanese-American who has done amateur translations (anime fansubs) at one point, being a translator is terrible; the absolute worst thing about it is that the work is thankless. Whoever reads your translations simply can't appreciate quality I'm surprised that you feel that way, because I've always associated the anime community with caring very strongly (not always correctly, but always…

The translations in anime at least are unlikely to actually be worse, since a lot of the English anime translation industry are obsessed with inserting woke politics and cringey zoomer jokes into their translations and more or less hate the people who buy their products. There's a reason a lot of people are laughing at the activist translators losing their jobs to AI.

In areas where the translators are actual, responsible professionals, the quality will suffer.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#28

Post by haunter »

cafard wrote: post #26
haunter wrote: post #4

>A good translation wants to be read So much this. For example I think a lot of people would actually enjoy Iliad and Odyssey more if their first experience weren't in dactylic hexameter.

Who translated the Iliad and Odyssey into (English) hexameters?

Rodney Merrill is the only who translated both in english hexameters. If just one there are a lot of translations https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/homer/homertranslations....

Re: What makes a translation great?

#29

Post by giraffe_lady »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #3

The objective of a translator should be to retain the spirit of the original, and have the translated piece stand on its own two feet as a work of literature. This is why Ezra Pound and Christopher Logue were such good translators. Pound translated into English the Analects of Confucius, a bunch of Noh Plays, and many other works of Chinese and Japanese literature. But he was barely capable of reading Chinese or Japa…

Le Guin's version of the tao te ching fits into this category too.

Re: What makes a translation great?

#30

Post by numpad0 »

wkjagt wrote: post #16

I feel that I am very sensitive to "translations sounding like translations". A feeling of "that isn't quite how a native person would say that, but I can't really identify what's wrong". My mother tongue is Dutch, and the strange thing is that with the strong influence of the English language, even a lot of content written in Dutch today sounds like it was translated from English. I find it really hard to explain it…

Universal grammar theorists freak out whenever this is said, but I think that's because those translated sentences and possibly even logic beneath it just aren't valid in that language and culture, in your case Dutch. Else everything should perfectly translate between any arbitrary languages without adding unnatural or uncomfortable components.
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