Forum - View topicOtakon 2009 - The Art of Translation with Trish Ledoux
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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As someone who eventually wants a career in translation (not necessarily in anime and manga, though), I would love to have been at this. Thanks for the article!
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6901 Location: Kazune City |
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I should've gone to this panel -- there was zero need to stand in line for the "Fansubs & Industry Discussion" panel that began after it ended. Although I have seen similar panels at other cons from other presenters, so the ground covered was familiar to me. Either way, it's nice to see coverage, especially since panels of this nature aren't "big news" events.
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eyevocal
Posts: 137 |
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Ironic of her to advise "leave your ego off the page," when she has proven time and time again that she's incapable of doing that herself. Maybe she's trying to serve as a bad example?
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2248 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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For hosting a panel on "translation" she seems to have very little experience as one. Rewriter and editor, sure, but not the actual first step translator.
In my view there are 3 types of translation. 1. Something done for speed, accuracy, by a single person, not too worred about naturalness in target language. Most technical translation is like this. 2. The type she described where someone produces a translation as in step 1, then it's edited/adapted/rewritten into something more natural in the target language. Usually goes through multiple people. 3. Something done by a single person, maybe with an editor/checker that works closely with that person, done carefully and slowly... Most novels and serious literature is translated this way. The "best" translators work like this. In the manga world most everything is done the way she describes like #2, but in many ways I think the end product often ends up inferior to what a single, skilled translator could produce by themselves given enough time. By taking the "creativity" part away from the translator, you invariably further distance the result from the original, and dilute the translation through multiple people's visions. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Apologies if I'm misinterpreting her quote, but does this mean that matching the lip flaps is sometimes considered to be of a higher priority than striving for realistic speech? Personally, I'd consider the latter to be more important; Japanese dubs often diverge from the mouth movements on-screen, and the complaints I've heard about that from fans are minimal. That said, the broader appeal aimed for by recording an English dub may well require a general correspondence between what is seen and what is heard. |
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tasogarenootome
 Posts: 593 |
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Actually she got on this subject because she was saying that a mistake of early translators was to obsess over matching the lip flaps instead of having realistic speech, so they would throw in random speech to force it to work. She was saying something more like you need realistic speech that fits the flaps relatively closely. It's interesting to see the reactions here - I don't have the Inu Yasha and Lum singles anymore, so I can't go back and look at her old work and I'm not sure how she was in the 90s. Even between my room mate and I, we both walked away with completely opposite opinions. I thought she was quite honest and that times are hard. My roommate really saw her as egotistical and trying to push people away for job security. Either way, Otakon needs more panels like this and I did regret missing Fred Schodt on that note. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1853 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Whatcha talking about? |
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fuuma_monou
Posts: 1853 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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She did have an expensive habit of buying Japanese LD boxes when she was Animerica's editor in chief, so she's fluent enough. Agree with you on the preference for a single translator/adaptor rather than two (or more) people. That's what they do for translated prose. Anime/manga translation pays too low these days to make it practical, though. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2248 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Being fluent and being a translator are two different things, as any bilingual person will tell you. It's possible to know two languages perfectly but be almost completely incapable of going smoothly between them. What's important with translation is building mental links between grammars/vocab, and as such things are rarely 1 to 1, experience and study are crucial to being skilled. |
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fuuma_monou
Posts: 1853 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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True enough. Most Filipinos understand English (or should), but Tagalog-dubbed American shows suffer from overly-literal translations; only time Johnny Rico sounded Filipino, though. Funny thing is most local dubs of anime (and Asian dramas) are based on raw English translations; the resulting scripts don't have the problem. |
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eyevocal
Posts: 137 |
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For one, destroying the flavour of the stories she worked on by cramming them full of Western pop culture references (which weren't in the original story) and California slang which had died on the launching pad five months ago in a lame attempt to appear hip. For another, having Chinese girl characters (Shampoo in Ranma 1/2 and Ku Fei in the Negima manga) talking baby talk to make them appear to be cute idiots. Between the two of those, I wouldn't even trust her to translate a Japanese restaurant menu for me. |
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fuuma_monou
Posts: 1853 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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So you hated her English rewrite/adaptation work, therefore you don't trust her raw translation work? That makes perfect sense! Given that you apparently registered just to hate on Trish, I don't think you have much credibility here.
ETA: she's not the rewriter on Negima, just the translator. RTFA. Better luck next time, troll-san. |
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eyevocal
Posts: 137 |
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Because she has stapled her quirks all over other people's stories and sold them with blood trickling down their faces for money as "official translations" and I haven't? In translation, the end result is what comes out, and her work is similar to a better-known end result that comes out. While it's not as rancid as Peter and Kathleen O'Shea David's wholesale rewrite of the first four volumes of Negima, it's still bad. Face it--okonomiyaki ain't pizza.
Read 'em yourself. She's credited for "adaptation" for several volumes (translation by Toshifumi Yoshida). The last I checked, she was off it and Ikoi Hiroe was doing it, starting with working from Yoshida's translations. |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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I'm wouldn't call myself much a fan of Ledoux; I'm not so much a fan of the gratuitous use of slang or street-isms to capture all of the improper grammar that appears in the anime and manga she's worked on, most notably Ranma 1/2. But I understand where she would be coming from making that decision though its not something I necessarily agree with. And, while I cannot speak for how Ku Fei is written in the Negima manga/anime, I can speak for Shampoo in both the Ranma 1/2 manga and anime in that here Japanese is pretty broken, much like a native Chinese speaker might. If anything, Ledoux could be cited for over-compensating on a close translation. Again, it's not much a style I like but it's no more Ledoux's fault than it is Takahashi Rumiko's. |
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Asrialys
 Posts: 1164 |
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Cute idiots? What? As SalarymanJoe was saying, Shampoo's Japanese was broken. As was Ku Fei's. I always figured that if her Japanese was broken, then why not her English. |
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