Anyway, in my searching, I found this article about Manga Translation and the industry and it got me thinking about a lot of things!! Translation things, anyway. I'm not here to talk about the Manga Industry.
Here's the article, if you wanna read the full thing!
Word-for-Word Translations
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The author made the comment about how, apparently, a lot of translations these days have a word-for-word translation, and even as someone who's done some amateur translation, it absolutely baffled me! Manga is a story, and just as a comic would need to have natural sounding dialogue, so would a manga, I imagine!
Here's an example they provided:
田中： ミキさん、昼御飯に行こう？
ミキ： 田中さん申し訳ございませんまだ仕事がありますから。。。
The more literal translation (or, the translation a lot of people would apparently go with!) is:
Tanaka: Miki-san, let’s go to lunch!
Miki: Tanaka-san, I can not go, regrettably. I still have work to do
While the translation the author this article would've gone with:
Tanaka: Hey Miki, wanna go get lunch?
Miki: Sorry Mr. Tanaka, I still have a lot of work so unfortunately I must decline.
Doesn't that second translation sound a lot better, comparatively? The first one isn't necessarily wrong, it just, it doesn't feel exactly right! Especially Miki's line.
I mean, personally, I would've translated Miki's line more like:
"Sorry Mr. Tanaka, I'll have to decline, unfortunately. I still have a lot of work to do."
Because it sounds more natural, in my opinion! The author's translation seems a little stiff, and I get that politeness is the point of what Miki's saying, but there's a difference between being polite and being stiff, (if not a little stand-off-ish!)
No one really talks like that in real life, even when being polite! I mean, really, when was the last time someone you know used "must" in casual---even polite---conversation? Almost everyone says "have to" regardless of context of the conversation.
And though you don't need it, here's another way I thought of to word this:
"Sorry Mr. Tanaka, I still have a lot of work to do. I'm afraid I'll have to say no."
We're further away from the word-for-word / direct translation, but the point still gets across, and that's really all that matters!!
Complying with English Grammar
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The author of the article brought up another point on how translations also need comply to English grammar rules, and how a lot of translators, apparently, leave sentences in Japanese-word-order, as we saw with the first translation of Miki's line.
This made me think of a lot self-imposed Spanish homework I've been doing, namely, translating songs from Spanish into English. (Though never so that the English lyrics would be singable, good gravy, that's a whole 'nother task entirely!)
Spanish often---though not always---formats sentences in a different way than English's Near Standard Subject/Verb/Object order. It's often not about the Object of the sentence, though, but rather about Prepositional phrases.
For example:
- "De ti aprendí lo mejor" / "From you I learned the best"
- "En tu voz estoy perdido" / "In your voice I am lost"
- "Con fuego yo quiero jugar" / "With fire I want to play"
- "A sueños me llevaba" / "To dreams it carried me"
My English translations of these sentences sound okay, but wouldn't you agree that "I learned the best from you" or "I'm lost in your voice" or "I want to play with fire" or "It carried me to dreams" sound much, much better?
Sentences formatted another way than SVO (or, SVP) sound alright in English, of course. It's certainly not wrong to put a prepositional phrase first in an English sentence, either, we just don't do it a lot, so most of the time it sounds unnatural! I've noticed my translations sound much better when I put them in SVO order.
Anyway, those were the thoughts I had about this article when I was reading it, and I thought I better put the thoughts on this blog!
I hope to do a post on Splatoon's recent Splat Fest event soon, so keep an eye out for it, alright?
