Forum - View topic

Answerman - Subtitle Hues and Cry

John Thacker wrote:

Huh? Are you claiming that a translation has to have the same number of sentences as the original language? Considering the meaning and what is common usage in the two languages, I see absolutely nothing wrong with translating the Japanese sentences of "X は Y [copula omitted]。[topic omitted]NP です。" with a single sentence using an appositive.

Ok, I guess I will have to back track a little on my statement. Do I think having the same number of sentences is an absolute rule? No. There are times when it makes sense to combine. There are also times when you might have a crazy japanese sentence that will just look like a horrible run on sentence if you leave it as one.

That said, a translation is not the same thing as a summary. You shouldn't be combining or separating sentences 'just because'. Here we have two sentences written down, well spaced out, and on entirely separate lines in a notebook. So yeah, that fails as a translation. They just took the key points and summarized it in a single sentence. Maybe in the middle of a continuously flowing conversation I could agree that it is an acceptable sacrifice to make the translation more fluid.
...
Late Edit: Basically, I'm saying a translation needs to convey what was there without dropping or adding anything unless absolutely necessary. If the japanese is presented in a way that one sentence is suppose to naturally flow into the next, then something is lost if your translation comes off as choppy. In that case, you in fact lose something whether you combine or not. However, if the japanese is presented in a way where there is not only not a clear flow, but a clear break, you are no longer doing it to maintain the integrity of the original japanese. You are just changing things because you feel like it. This is what the translation in question did, and that is why it fails as translation.

Except that the Japanese is not "presented in a way that one sentence is supposed to naturally flow into the next." Even though there was a period there, those are not considered grammatical complete sentences in Japanese according to prescriptive grammar as taught in Japanese schools to Japanese. There are written sentence fragments similar to how one might speak (or write informally, poetically, or classically, since all prescriptive language rules tend to be violated in practice-- note that similar "sentence fragments" are not that unusual in English practice.)

I really don't know what you're saying about the translation as performed "coming off as choppy." I actually find the English much less choppy than a translation of "I [am] X. [I] am a soldier from Y," which is apparently what you would prefer. (I will grant that there's actually a case for making the English choppy in this case, since the Japanese is arguably choppy.)

The translation as presented is to my mind superior to using two sentences. It succeeds as a translation, and what you are proposing strikes me as choppy and ignorant of either English, Japanese, or both.

OK, I do feel the need to defend myself here, because a certain degree of context was left out of the post. My major complaint isn't typesetting (though companies like Funimiation cannot complain about the technical limitations, since they hardsub), it's about basic knowledge of the English language.

Certainly not every release, but some have clearly never seen someone that is fluent in English. These aren't typesetting errors, they're basic mistakes in English grammar that simply shouldn't happen. It's not too much to ask that they fix errors that I can find by skimming the script, and can have completely fixed within a few minutes.

Except that first note fails as a translation. It was two separate sentences. You shouldn't be just combining stuff as you feel like as a translator.

These are extreme cases sure, but the thing I wanted to point out is that before doing fancy stuff with a sub, make sure you can read it quickly while still being able to follow the actual animation. If that is not possible, then no matter how cool the effects, the sub failed in its most basic and important function. A sub should support the anime and not take the spotlight. It's as they say for football/soccer games... The best referees are the ones you don't notice (-> complain about).

On a sort of related note, while I don't care that much if a sub reverses name order, it does annoy me greatly when you can hear a character being called by their family name but the sub uses their given name. It just feels really disjointing when what I'm hearing is vastly different from what I see.

Yeah that happens when the offical subs end up being good enough, but sometimes, even when the official subs were problematic, some editors end up changing nothing. :/ (those editors may or may not end up being fired from their fansub groups)

To which I would argue, what world do you live in? I see this as perfectly normal. Two hyphens is the way that Word uses to auto-generate an em-dash, except that... often it decides not to. I could tell people that they should use an alt-code to do it reliably, but a double hyphen is the most well known way. Unfortunately this means that people who primarily use Word will often also use a double-hyphen when not using Word, that is just how the world works.

For this reason while editing I find double hyphens all the time, it is a common error and easily missed. If it was a editor who knew what they were doing they would of course do a find and replace for all such common errors. But I am not going to hold that against them. As an educator I find peoples knowledge of computer programs is pretty low.

That said, a translation is not the same thing as a summary. You shouldn't be combining or separating sentences 'just because'. Here we have two sentences written down, well spaced out, and on entirely separate lines in a notebook. So yeah, that fails as a translation. They just took the key points and summarized it in a single sentence. Maybe in the middle of a continuously flowing conversation I could agree that it is an acceptable sacrifice to make the translation more fluid.

Here those 2 sentences are never even spoken so that doesn't apply. I would maybe even be willing to concede the point if they were written like you did in your post (as in back to back with just a space between them), but they were on entirely separate lines. So yes, that fails as a translation.

In my experience, people who use talking points like "bumblebee subs" come from a faction that's determined to redefine anything the industry does as bad. People survived yellow subs in fansubs for ages without getting "eyecancer" or whatever.

jymmy wrote:

While it may be deliberate, it distracts in the same way as does a spelling error.

Some distraction, if you never noticed it in all the comics you read.

your basic problem here is that you're confusing your aesthetic preference for rule; broken-line dash is one of the possible variations of the dash punctuation

If the japanese was presented in a way that was originally suppose to flow together, you could use choppy english as a reasonable justification to combine the sentences. Here though the japanese is clearly separated and not intended to flow together. So you are not maintaining the original intent by combining them. There is no reasonable justification to do so.

And what you are saying is suggesting ignorance of the difference between a summary and a translation. You're certainly allowed to decide for yourself which one you find superior. However, one is a translation and the other is simply not.

Do you know how it's done on a Mac? I never figured it out. I can get – and —, but not the long em-dash.