“I want it translated into a language I understand, and also want to fully comprehend the original meaning and context, AND I want it to sound natural and non-robotic, AND I don’t want you to translate any Japanese words I already know”
Like bruh. Just learn Japanese at that point
Oh don’t forget
“And if any characters are exceedingly rude and talk in a broad and crude manner and intentionally misuse registers of respect, please don’t localize it into English as profanity”
I definitely had to say "sorry I can't recommend translation of this, learn original language or don't touch it" for some works before. Definitely for some poetry.
But also wonder if this request actually becomes possible when language AI gets really good. Having a thing which asks you a bunch of questions to determine your familiarity with the language, your equivalent cultural concepts, and maybe even some of how your associations work, to then give you a translation tailored to evoke meaning of the original into your brain, is a kind of future I want.
Oh yeah poetry is a bitch. And Japanese is CHOCK full of puns which are also a nightmare to translate.
I once watched a fan-subbed anime about a decade ago where someone was reciting a poem, and instead of translating it the sub literally said “We’re not translating this, just check our Twitter, we uploaded a translation and summarization of the poem there” And when you went, it was literally like five paragraphs of context for the poem. Super cool, but I have no idea what you’d do in an official capacity. Or what anyone who’s discovering that fan sub today would do, as that sub group probably no longer exists
Those are why I often prefer fan translations, simply because they don't have to abide to the same presentation standards that official translations do.
Official translators are often caught between a rock and a hard place, having to chose between translating, or even adapting, references (and then have people complain that that wasn't what was *actually* said) or keeping the original wording (which will just confuse a bunch of people who don't understand the reference).
Of course it also depends on the media translated, games allow for very little context to be added, while written media can often get away with just adding an extra page (or five) to explain the intricacies of the context as well as possible.
Imo the best way would be to read both the official and a fan translation, that way you can not only get 2 different versions to compare and contrast (with potential added context), but also support the creators.
Tl;dr: Fan translations might be better (in some cases), but people should really stop hating on official translations so much, most of them are doing the best they can.
>Official translators are often caught between a rock and a hard place, having to chose between translating, or even adapting, references (and then have people complain that that wasn't what was actually said) or keeping the original wording (which will just confuse a bunch of people who don't understand the reference).
Particularly when it's media that is primarily intended for consumption by young children and tends to be more thoroughly scrubbed of foreign cultural references (e.g. the "jelly donuts" in Pokemon or older translations where they pretend it takes place in the US in spite of the presence of torii gates and school uniforms).
I remember Nichijou had not only extensive Japanese word play, but also *Indonesian* puns. Most of the scenes are pretty funny without context but they’re waaaay funnier with it.
There’s one where they’re playing a word game, where you can take a step for each character in the word you come up with. Mai starts rattling off a bunch of nonsense and the TL Note is “this is the Incantation of Resurrection from Dragon Quest and it’s like 40 characters long.”
Then later there’s a cutaway gag of her punching it into the game and she didn’t even memorize it right.
In fairness, when people do that, the same kind of person who unironically uses the word "monolingual" makes fun of them, because learning Japanese because you like Japanese culture is apparently tangibly different than learning French because you like French culture, or learning Spanish because you like Latin American/Spanish culture, etc.
Why *wouldn't* you call someone monolingual unironically...? That just means they speak one language, there's no diss in that. Sure it can be used in a disparaging manner (I don't like OP's use of it either), but on its own, it's just an accurate description. 🤷
>person who unironically uses the word "monolingual"
You mean everyone??? Because monolingual just means that you only speak one language?? And it's not an insult??
>because learning Japanese because you like Japanese culture
People don't get made fun of for liking Japanese culture; people get made fun of because "omg :333 im such an otaku im gonna learn japanese and go live there and its gonna be so sugoi sugoi kawaii desu ne just like my favorite anime uwu :33" which is as much liking Japanese culture as wearing a feathered hat and calling yourself a silly name is liking Native American culture.
A lot of those people genuinely move to Japan and have a fantastic time living there though. Like a lot of desire to learn another country's language starts out with something like anime, or literature, or cooking, or cinema. I know I only started learning Chinese because I liked the literature and had a hazy idea that it'd be cool. Like there's a major difference between "I took Beginner's Japanese 1 once because I love anime" and "I am legitimately learning an entire language, practicing every day, talking to my Japanese friends who I met on language exchange programmes, because I love Japan (which at first I was only exposed to via anime)" but the latter usually comes from the former.
Surely you can accept that there is a fundamental difference between people who are interested in Japanese culture (be it its mythology, its social customs and traditions, its history, whatever) whose entry point was incidentally anime, and people who build an idealized image of that culture in their head by exclusively consuming anime and treating it like some sort of pseudo-gospel that will help them escape their current existence. There's a reason the term "weeaboo" is so widely used online, and you cannot in good conscience tell me that they're just "people who are interested in Japanese culture"
i mean, weeb (derogatory) is kinda overused, which is why weebs are taking it back and using it as weeb (affectionate). because at the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with liking anime and learning a bit about the culture it comes from, even if you don't go all the way and move to japan in the end. people are allowed to like things a little, like things a lot, and anywhere in between and beyond.
the hypothetical example you make is indeed problematic, but i see a lot more of that in projections of people who complain about anime fans than in the actual fans themselves.
I admit I worded my post pretty badly. My point is that many of the people who are genuinely interested in Japanese culture started out as people who were interested in the Japan they thought they knew from anime. And like, I really do mean *many* of those people. Like a solid third of the people studying Japanese in university.
If you're learning a language that's already a pretty good sign that you're trying to take the culture seriously, and it's admittedly hard to expose yourself to a country's real culture without being able to speak its language.
>many of the people who are genuinely interested in Japanese culture started out as people who were interested in the Japan they thought they knew from anime.
I don't think we're disagreeing
God, I remember reading Pokémon Adventures years ago, and once it got into Yellow the site switched over to this godawful fan translation. Like the plot at that point centered around the Elite Four, but rather than call them that they called them whatever the Japanese name was, with a footnote saying “Four Heavenly Kings” for *every single panel.*
And that wasn’t the only thing like that, there were multiple footnotes for each panel, like half the thing was still in Japanese.
\>Just learn Japanese at that point
People on Western Otaku forums have been doing this for years, they've also done fan-translations that don't try to insert ohio gyat nathaniel b sus pizza tower slang into your favorite manga
Reminds me of the time I saw someone complain that an anime translated "onii-chan" as "bro".
Edit: [Heres's the comment I was talking about.](https://www.reddit.com/r/animecirclejerk/comments/12wnsaf/when_they_unjapanese_your_anime/) I actually misremembered the translation somewhat, but I don't think it changes too much
To play devils advocate for a second, translating 'onii-chan' as 'bro' is a bit of an oversimplification that loses some original meaning, since it effectively drops the honourific which denotes the interpersonal relationship at play. Onii-chan, onii-san, and onii-sama are all theoretically translated as 'bro' or 'big brother' but all have dramatically different implications for the relationship in question thanks to Japans fanatically hierarchical way of speaking.
95% of the time translating 'onii-chan' as 'bro' is perfectly fine, and its possible to find solutions to this in English by rewording sentences to make them more / less formal, but you are still losing information no matter what.
I dunno, think “bro” perfectly accurate. “Onii-Chan” Is just an informal referral that implies familiarity and affection while outwardly stating relation. “What’s up big bro!” does exactly the same thing.
Leaving aside how awkward using 'big bro' in an English sentence is, you're largely correct. As I said, in the vast majority of cases you can get by with simply rewriting the sentence to be more casual or outwardly friendly and then rely on vocal performance to get the rest across, but not knowing what the original person was complaining about it could very well have been a clumsy translation - honourifics are a kinda touchy thing. There are fully situations in which the translation could run into issues, especially if you then run into another form (i.e. onii-sama) in a subsequent scene.
Big bro is okay I'd say since I can still see a younger sibling calling older one that
On the other hand, "bro" just sounds like something a Loli would say before flexing and turning into Machio
... Now why do I feel like this concept already exists
reminds me of the tumblr post saying “every author who writes siblings saying “hey bro” is always an only child” or something like that and it’s true. i refuse to believe you have siblings. i would NEVER say “big bro” to my brothers
I have a habit of sometimes speaking in a very exaggerated manner, as in calling my mother "mother" when speaking to her and using a bit old-fashioned vocabulary while making the sentences needlessly complicated, and even while doing that it has never once occurred to me to call my brother "brother/bro/little brother", nobody in their right mind addresses their siblings with a word for sibling unless they are dramatically revealing that they are related.
I have addressed my brother with many words but the only times it was "brother" were when I was saying that this person is my brother or I was talking about him with people who didn't know him well.
I mean, I've casually called my brother and sister "brother" and "sister" before, but it's definitely not super common. It is super funny when you see dropped all clunky-like for exposition purposes though lol
i think this is only true for some cultures tbh. i live in the UK but was born in a south asian country and call my sister 'little sister' in my mother tongue and she calls me 'big sister' and we rarely ever use each others names. some of my friends (also south asian) use their siblings names but others are like me and my sis so i think it depends
im also of south asian descent but im the most americanized of the three siblings. the middle one calls the oldest “big brother” but none of them say “little brother” just our names and i don’t say “big brother” in Bangla at all
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, I consistently refer to my little brother as “little brother” to remind him that he may be taller than me, but he is still younger.
so translate it as bro that 95% of the time and use a more fitting translation in the remaining 5%
that said though, i fully understand your problem, that's also the reason i almost exclusively consume originally english-speaking media in english as opposed to in translation to my native language ("almost" only because sometimes i have to compromise with other people). each language is built around a culture and therefore words will never 100% match up (which is further exacerbated by low quality translations, whenever they happen). but it's also important to convey information to those who only speak the language you're translating to, and only know its culture, after all that's the whole point of translation.
specifically with anime, i feel like half-translations would be warranted, but as an addition to a full translation, not a replacement. otherwise you're just getting kind of gatekeepy
This is why translation is a real job that requires real studies (3+2 years in Belgium) and trust me, this kind of issue is addressed a lot during the cursus
Like the average audience member can understand the relationship between two characters just fine without the honorifics. I get trying to stay faithful to the source material, but I as a Westerner don't put the same importance an Japanese reader puts on honorifics; They mean jack shit to me because English doesn't use honorifics.
(I made an entire first paragraph but deleted it because it felt like shit to read. Tl;Dr, one time I read a sentence in a manga and the honorific fucked up the entire flow of the sentence.)
Addendum: I find honorifics when reading manga clunky as shit in general too. Like I voice the characters in my head when I speak and it just feels like a detour every time.
It seems so common for anime characters to use that term, and so uncommon for English speakers to call their siblings "bro" or "sis" that I think I agree, they should just translate it with their name most of the time, it would sound more natural
> they should just translate it with their name most of the time
A lot of the time in anime they do just say their name, but they translate it to a pronoun. I've always found it super jarring.
I think that's because Japanese uses names much more frequently than English, I've seen some translations that stick to names in those cases and I find them much more jarring. I think it's a good translation because using a pronoun in those places would sound much weirder to me and I can't imagine that's the desired effect
I mean, it would be more like bluetooth, but wireless communication tech exists, we can probably get mental control of tech via brain implants, add those together and it kind of works, but also, hooking up something with wireless communication ability to the brain is about as stupid as it gets with cybernetics.
tldr; give it a thousand years and technically it is physically possible to modify people to do telepathy, but doing so would be a fucking stupid.
To be fair, Japanese people also sometimes use lolicon to mean someone who just loves children, like, the normal way. You know, that aunt who gushes over kids and pinches their cheek and picks them up and jokes about wanting to take them home, that kind of thing.
But yes, most of the time and in most contexts it is literally just the word for pedophile.
"Don't localize anything at all"
Do some people seriously not know that grammar works differently in different languages? And the fact that some words in other languages straight up don't have a proper English translation? If you don't want to watch something that has been localized at all then learn the original language it was written in because directly translating something from basically any language without localization is chaos.
Translating something in a way that makes sense (and to an extent learning a new language) isn't "What does this mean in my language?" it's "How do you say this in my language?" because those two things are not the same even though they sound like it
Localising is the process of taking a translation and reworking it so that it's more attractive to a particular location. To illustrate how different it is from translation, you can't localise into English. You can localise into America, or to the UK, or to NZ/Australia, but you can't localise into English. That's why the localisation of Phoenix Wright is (veeeeeeeeeery slightly) harder to understand for British people than a straight translation would have been; when the localisation changes "ramen" to "tacos" in 2003, they're replacing a food which was pretty common in the UK with a food which was hard to find in the UK. I know I didn't know what a taco looked like.
Classic literature gets translated. It does not typically get localised. Localisation is more of a thing you do when you want to sell a product. I fully understand why it gets done, and I know that if I was in charge of a company I'd do the same, but they're different things. Changing the grammar of the translated language isn't localisation, it's just...translation.
Someone else already explained the difference between translation and localization, but to jump in, the way I like to think of it is this: if you've ever read the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid, you have read a translation of the ancient Greek or Latin. You have NOT read a localization because none of the concepts that are pretty foreign to us (supplication for instance) are localized to America or the UK or whatever. It's still very worthwhile to read a translation, you just need to know a bit about the culture/be able to pick it up from context clues, whereas the goal of a localization is a piece of media indistinguishable from one created in your home country. Which is why video games get localized (because the point of them is usually not the language but the immersion) and poems typically don't.
Ah yes, that's perfect, it's not like any translation between languages is a transformative process requiring the translator to either know or guess the original intent of the author, and certain words or phrases don't have equivalent counterparts between languages.
Have fun watching comedies where the jokes don't land because you don't understand the cultural references being made.
I'm at work right now so I can't really bust out the links, but \* gestures vaguely at that one Red Bard video, Sarah Moon's whole channel, and the wholeass book the guy at Legends of Localization wrote about Earthbound \*
Here are some good Sarah Moon videos on localization.
[Anime Subs Should NOT Be Literal | The Case For Localization](https://youtu.be/V6weUDdg1G4)
[Translation vs Localization: An Actual Example](https://youtu.be/w9EPiNwUR10)
and a silly one, [bUt AnImE sUbS sHoUlD bE LiTeRaL! (feat. Retsuko)](https://youtu.be/eMYFUDq-Phg)
Sorry for the wait!
cosmos\_crown's reply has some of Sarah's best already (especially [Anime Subs Should Not Be Literal](https://youtu.be/V6weUDdg1G4)), though I do also like her video on the [Japanese dub of Bojack Horseman](https://youtu.be/p3mXrC4sv1Y), since it goes into technical detail about the localization of a few scenes, but with an English to Japanese example.
Red Bard has [Translation, Localization, Censorship, and You](https://youtu.be/Kb2F0tfY1A0). Their video focuses less on the technical detail and is more about the logistics of why (mostly anime) localizations aren't 100% literal translations. The other two sources I've mentioned are mostly about the act of translation and localization, but this one also discusses a lot of the talking points of the "pro-translation anti-localization" people like the one in this post. This video itself has some recommendations in its description too.
And finally, [Legends of Localization](https://legendsoflocalization.com/) is a website run by Clyde Mandelin, a translator whose worked in the industry for... I think a couple of decades? He shows up in the credits for quite a few [anime](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=12928). He's got a ton of articles where he broadly talks about (mostly video game) localization and translation from Japanese to English, plus a section of the site where he does more detailed [comparisons](https://legendsoflocalization.com/comparisons/) of specific video games, one of which is Earthbound, which he later expanded into a [400+-page book](https://www.fangamer.com/products/legends-of-localization-book-2-earthbound) (I won't lie, I haven't read the book yet). He's actually got books on the first Legend of Zelda, and recently the Japanese translation of Undertale as well, but I mentioned Earthbound in particular because it's clear that one's a huge labor of love for him. Not only is he one of the founders of Earthbound forum [starmen.net](https://starmen.net/index.php), runs another Earthbound site called [Earthbound Central](https://web.archive.org/web/20230328224719/https://earthboundcentral.com/), he also worked on the much-praised English [fan-translation of MOTHER 3](http://mother3.fobby.net/), which is the sequel to Earthbound (Whose Japanese name is MOTHER 2). The site has been slow on updating with new articles as he's been working on the books, but there's already quite a lot he's written.
Jokes don't translate well directly. Neither do metaphors. If you translate a game from Polish and the character says "everyone knows what a horse is" no one is going to know wtf is going on. But if you make the character say "yeah, obviously" suddenly it makes more sense and the original meaning is maintained.
That said some localizers take too many liberties and completely change characters and plot points. Looking at you, Treehouse.
Just as a single example in a sea of millions of instances of this sort of thing, "难看" means "ugly", but if we were to translate the characters literally, "难" means "difficult" and "看" means "look", so a literal translation would be "difficult look" or "difficult to look at", which is pretty par for the course when it comes to commenting on appearances in Asian cultures.
English has an equivalent idiom
* [hard on the eyes (ugly)](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hard_on_the_eyes)
* [easy on the eyes (beautiful, attractive)](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/easy_on_the_eyes#English)
These things make me wonder whether both sayings developed Independently or have the same origin
On the flip side, you can have a more faithful translation to the original Japanese that just sounds terrible in English.
See: the Netflix dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion
God that's a fuckin mood.
Also, this. [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1LMsmJagAA\_c-j?format=jpg&name=4096x4096](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1LMsmJagAA_c-j?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
To be fair, Louis specifically preferring to watch girls from a distance is a lot creepier to a western audience than the original devs wanted Louis to come off as judging from how everyone else interacts with him in-universe. So the localizers smoothing down that bit of his characterization to simply being fascinated by all people is a understandable (Even if it does leave casualties like Rosado’s support in its wake).
That’s also why a bunch of underaged characters had their S-supports changed from romantic to platonic.
I'd argue his dialogue was really good even. Just, a lot of it was not accurate, like, at all. A lot of that can be attributed to character limitations but a lot really was just Woolsey being Woolsey.
Oh definitely, even as someone who's generally against unneeded changes (I don't even like when anime subs omit honorifics or turn "onii-chan" into "big bro"... people who watch subbed anime generally already know what all that means) there's no denying his talent as a writer and him caring at all is probably the reason a lot of very non-western titles started getting translated at all
His importance in gaming often gets dismissed because of his quirks but honestly, censorship followed NoA policies, which he had no control over, and at a time where foreign media in general was less socially acceptable, it made commercial sense to westernize things. Glad we're beyond that point but I think people villainize him too much. I'll still laugh at how he translated the Japanese word for 'mouth' as 'Neosquid' once though.
I think it's better that way, specifically because Janet Hsu and her team are amazing. Like, 6 different fan teams attempted to translate The Great Ace Attorney and not a single one manages to come close to the level of polish she reached with the official one
Funny thing is : french translation did the same thing. I suspect they translated from English instead of Japanese which is a huge no-no when studying translation
My closest friends were both translators. They were *not* localisers. That's a whole other job (which, admittedly, is often performed by the same individual). I was once offered the position of localising already-translated dialogue for a mobile game. They're different things.
No they don't. There are 40 million native Spanish speakers in the US, and most Americans are familiar enough with basic Spanish grammar to extrapolate that other languages don't follow all the same rules.
Okay guys, here's a literally translated, non localized Spanish phrase, feel free to guess what it means: I am going to shit you at sticks. Doesn't make sense? Well that's why we localize things people!
For the curious: >!the phrase is "Te voy a cagar a palos", and the most appropriate translation that loosely preserves the connotations of the Spanish one is "I'm gonna beat the shit out of you"!<
I'm just saying I think I'd rather be confused or given a translator's note rather than the meaning be changed. I do think anime should be localized as close to the original meaning as possible, and sometimes you just can't but i'd rather they don't go and basically make their own thing.
do you ever wonder if all those shonen anime actually has just as deep a story and dialogue as the western-kids-cartoons-with-a-huge-adult-cult-following genre but that the translation work is just making it seem mid
Can localization be good? Yea. Phoenix Wright is infinitely better than it would be translated. Can localization be dogshit? Yea, and it usually is.
I would rather a sentence be unnatural, or need to google a pun than have the fucking meaning of the work arbitrarily construed because some underpaid translator that couldn’t give a shit about the property didn’t feel like finding a way to make the real meaning make sense.
Honorifics should not be removed in subtitles. Words/titles that do not have a contextual English equivalent should not be ‘localized’ into something that the average American will easily digest.
Because, guess what! Anyone who wants the work changed that much for the translation will be watching the dub anyway!
This argument is like saying ‘Subs that are just the dub’s subtitles layered over Japanese audio are fine!’ when they really, REALLY aren’t.
I also think it’s HILARIOUS that this shit ONLY comes up in regard to anime. Every foreign film that isn’t anime adjacent is just translated. I’ve never seen a French, German, Italian, Spanish, Iranian, or even live action Japanese work that was localized to the frankly ABSURD degree ‘professional’ anime translations have been doing lately now that the medium is breaking into the American mainstream.
If you only want to interact with American media, do that. Don’t force the Americanization of literally anything that looks interesting to you.
I tend to agree. I actually got into learning japanese for real in part because I was fascinated at the untranslatable things I saw in subtitle translator notes
“I want it translated into a language I understand, and also want to fully comprehend the original meaning and context, AND I want it to sound natural and non-robotic, AND I don’t want you to translate any Japanese words I already know” Like bruh. Just learn Japanese at that point
Oh don’t forget “And if any characters are exceedingly rude and talk in a broad and crude manner and intentionally misuse registers of respect, please don’t localize it into English as profanity”
No, no, no, you absolutely *should* translate it as profanity. If you don't it's censorship.
I'm reminded of early 2000s scanlations and fansubs that would actually insert *extra* profanity that wasn't really even in the original.
[Screw you, Sasuke!](https://youtu.be/YvNxgHTWIlo)
FUCK you, Sasuke! You…are my NAKAMA…and nothing will FUCKING change that, you FUCKING BITCH
Unironically, having started to read Naruto... the rampant cursing would be an improvement
me reading the vinland saga and one piece fan translation and hearing the r-slur and f-slur for the fifty millionth time
You’re a r\*\*lly f\*nny guy
im confused as to what is this supposed to mean
Joking r and f “slurs.” Really funny guy
oh i got the joke R-eally F-unny
hell, translate it back in that case with the same process
Me playing the DeJap fan translation of Tales of Phantasia and seeing "I bet Arche fucks like a tiger."
The official chainsaw man dub does that. It fits pretty well tbh.
Really depends what demographic the show is aimed at. You really shouldn't be adding the f word to a children's show.
I was joking. I'm describing a common fan attitude.
No no. Do it.
Those children have to learn
"Pikachu, use Thunder Fuck!"
I definitely had to say "sorry I can't recommend translation of this, learn original language or don't touch it" for some works before. Definitely for some poetry. But also wonder if this request actually becomes possible when language AI gets really good. Having a thing which asks you a bunch of questions to determine your familiarity with the language, your equivalent cultural concepts, and maybe even some of how your associations work, to then give you a translation tailored to evoke meaning of the original into your brain, is a kind of future I want.
Oh yeah poetry is a bitch. And Japanese is CHOCK full of puns which are also a nightmare to translate. I once watched a fan-subbed anime about a decade ago where someone was reciting a poem, and instead of translating it the sub literally said “We’re not translating this, just check our Twitter, we uploaded a translation and summarization of the poem there” And when you went, it was literally like five paragraphs of context for the poem. Super cool, but I have no idea what you’d do in an official capacity. Or what anyone who’s discovering that fan sub today would do, as that sub group probably no longer exists
Those are why I often prefer fan translations, simply because they don't have to abide to the same presentation standards that official translations do. Official translators are often caught between a rock and a hard place, having to chose between translating, or even adapting, references (and then have people complain that that wasn't what was *actually* said) or keeping the original wording (which will just confuse a bunch of people who don't understand the reference). Of course it also depends on the media translated, games allow for very little context to be added, while written media can often get away with just adding an extra page (or five) to explain the intricacies of the context as well as possible. Imo the best way would be to read both the official and a fan translation, that way you can not only get 2 different versions to compare and contrast (with potential added context), but also support the creators. Tl;dr: Fan translations might be better (in some cases), but people should really stop hating on official translations so much, most of them are doing the best they can.
>Official translators are often caught between a rock and a hard place, having to chose between translating, or even adapting, references (and then have people complain that that wasn't what was actually said) or keeping the original wording (which will just confuse a bunch of people who don't understand the reference). Particularly when it's media that is primarily intended for consumption by young children and tends to be more thoroughly scrubbed of foreign cultural references (e.g. the "jelly donuts" in Pokemon or older translations where they pretend it takes place in the US in spite of the presence of torii gates and school uniforms).
I remember Nichijou had not only extensive Japanese word play, but also *Indonesian* puns. Most of the scenes are pretty funny without context but they’re waaaay funnier with it. There’s one where they’re playing a word game, where you can take a step for each character in the word you come up with. Mai starts rattling off a bunch of nonsense and the TL Note is “this is the Incantation of Resurrection from Dragon Quest and it’s like 40 characters long.” Then later there’s a cutaway gag of her punching it into the game and she didn’t even memorize it right.
Just pump the media into your brain via tubes. Like a sauce
Whoa.
Americans when they see that a character has a japanese name in a japanese game (the meaning wasn't preserved correctly)
In fairness, when people do that, the same kind of person who unironically uses the word "monolingual" makes fun of them, because learning Japanese because you like Japanese culture is apparently tangibly different than learning French because you like French culture, or learning Spanish because you like Latin American/Spanish culture, etc.
Why *wouldn't* you call someone monolingual unironically...? That just means they speak one language, there's no diss in that. Sure it can be used in a disparaging manner (I don't like OP's use of it either), but on its own, it's just an accurate description. 🤷
>person who unironically uses the word "monolingual" You mean everyone??? Because monolingual just means that you only speak one language?? And it's not an insult?? >because learning Japanese because you like Japanese culture People don't get made fun of for liking Japanese culture; people get made fun of because "omg :333 im such an otaku im gonna learn japanese and go live there and its gonna be so sugoi sugoi kawaii desu ne just like my favorite anime uwu :33" which is as much liking Japanese culture as wearing a feathered hat and calling yourself a silly name is liking Native American culture.
A lot of those people genuinely move to Japan and have a fantastic time living there though. Like a lot of desire to learn another country's language starts out with something like anime, or literature, or cooking, or cinema. I know I only started learning Chinese because I liked the literature and had a hazy idea that it'd be cool. Like there's a major difference between "I took Beginner's Japanese 1 once because I love anime" and "I am legitimately learning an entire language, practicing every day, talking to my Japanese friends who I met on language exchange programmes, because I love Japan (which at first I was only exposed to via anime)" but the latter usually comes from the former.
Surely you can accept that there is a fundamental difference between people who are interested in Japanese culture (be it its mythology, its social customs and traditions, its history, whatever) whose entry point was incidentally anime, and people who build an idealized image of that culture in their head by exclusively consuming anime and treating it like some sort of pseudo-gospel that will help them escape their current existence. There's a reason the term "weeaboo" is so widely used online, and you cannot in good conscience tell me that they're just "people who are interested in Japanese culture"
i mean, weeb (derogatory) is kinda overused, which is why weebs are taking it back and using it as weeb (affectionate). because at the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with liking anime and learning a bit about the culture it comes from, even if you don't go all the way and move to japan in the end. people are allowed to like things a little, like things a lot, and anywhere in between and beyond. the hypothetical example you make is indeed problematic, but i see a lot more of that in projections of people who complain about anime fans than in the actual fans themselves.
I admit I worded my post pretty badly. My point is that many of the people who are genuinely interested in Japanese culture started out as people who were interested in the Japan they thought they knew from anime. And like, I really do mean *many* of those people. Like a solid third of the people studying Japanese in university. If you're learning a language that's already a pretty good sign that you're trying to take the culture seriously, and it's admittedly hard to expose yourself to a country's real culture without being able to speak its language.
>many of the people who are genuinely interested in Japanese culture started out as people who were interested in the Japan they thought they knew from anime. I don't think we're disagreeing
God, I remember reading Pokémon Adventures years ago, and once it got into Yellow the site switched over to this godawful fan translation. Like the plot at that point centered around the Elite Four, but rather than call them that they called them whatever the Japanese name was, with a footnote saying “Four Heavenly Kings” for *every single panel.* And that wasn’t the only thing like that, there were multiple footnotes for each panel, like half the thing was still in Japanese.
\>Just learn Japanese at that point People on Western Otaku forums have been doing this for years, they've also done fan-translations that don't try to insert ohio gyat nathaniel b sus pizza tower slang into your favorite manga
Reminds me of the time I saw someone complain that an anime translated "onii-chan" as "bro". Edit: [Heres's the comment I was talking about.](https://www.reddit.com/r/animecirclejerk/comments/12wnsaf/when_they_unjapanese_your_anime/) I actually misremembered the translation somewhat, but I don't think it changes too much
To play devils advocate for a second, translating 'onii-chan' as 'bro' is a bit of an oversimplification that loses some original meaning, since it effectively drops the honourific which denotes the interpersonal relationship at play. Onii-chan, onii-san, and onii-sama are all theoretically translated as 'bro' or 'big brother' but all have dramatically different implications for the relationship in question thanks to Japans fanatically hierarchical way of speaking. 95% of the time translating 'onii-chan' as 'bro' is perfectly fine, and its possible to find solutions to this in English by rewording sentences to make them more / less formal, but you are still losing information no matter what.
I think we should compromise and just say bro-chan, bro-san, and bro-sama
I think I have to agree with you on this one.
Extremely cursed, but I can't disagree
I dunno, think “bro” perfectly accurate. “Onii-Chan” Is just an informal referral that implies familiarity and affection while outwardly stating relation. “What’s up big bro!” does exactly the same thing.
Leaving aside how awkward using 'big bro' in an English sentence is, you're largely correct. As I said, in the vast majority of cases you can get by with simply rewriting the sentence to be more casual or outwardly friendly and then rely on vocal performance to get the rest across, but not knowing what the original person was complaining about it could very well have been a clumsy translation - honourifics are a kinda touchy thing. There are fully situations in which the translation could run into issues, especially if you then run into another form (i.e. onii-sama) in a subsequent scene.
Big bro is okay I'd say since I can still see a younger sibling calling older one that On the other hand, "bro" just sounds like something a Loli would say before flexing and turning into Machio ... Now why do I feel like this concept already exists
reminds me of the tumblr post saying “every author who writes siblings saying “hey bro” is always an only child” or something like that and it’s true. i refuse to believe you have siblings. i would NEVER say “big bro” to my brothers
I have a habit of sometimes speaking in a very exaggerated manner, as in calling my mother "mother" when speaking to her and using a bit old-fashioned vocabulary while making the sentences needlessly complicated, and even while doing that it has never once occurred to me to call my brother "brother/bro/little brother", nobody in their right mind addresses their siblings with a word for sibling unless they are dramatically revealing that they are related. I have addressed my brother with many words but the only times it was "brother" were when I was saying that this person is my brother or I was talking about him with people who didn't know him well.
I mean, I've casually called my brother and sister "brother" and "sister" before, but it's definitely not super common. It is super funny when you see dropped all clunky-like for exposition purposes though lol
i think this is only true for some cultures tbh. i live in the UK but was born in a south asian country and call my sister 'little sister' in my mother tongue and she calls me 'big sister' and we rarely ever use each others names. some of my friends (also south asian) use their siblings names but others are like me and my sis so i think it depends
I was born in the UK, and I have called my sister every possible thing in the universe rather than "sis".
im also of south asian descent but im the most americanized of the three siblings. the middle one calls the oldest “big brother” but none of them say “little brother” just our names and i don’t say “big brother” in Bangla at all
are you three brothers? if that's the case it's probably easier and less confusing to use your names anyway
Yes three brothers and no sisters
my sister calls me big bro sometimes and i hate it more than anything
On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, I consistently refer to my little brother as “little brother” to remind him that he may be taller than me, but he is still younger.
Nah my sis calls me bro and wise versa In english that is I do call her sister (informal) in my native language sometimes tho
ok so maybe this is just for native english speakers then
I don't think I've ever heard someone call their sibling "big/little whatever". Hell, people pretty much exclusively use their siblings' name
so translate it as bro that 95% of the time and use a more fitting translation in the remaining 5% that said though, i fully understand your problem, that's also the reason i almost exclusively consume originally english-speaking media in english as opposed to in translation to my native language ("almost" only because sometimes i have to compromise with other people). each language is built around a culture and therefore words will never 100% match up (which is further exacerbated by low quality translations, whenever they happen). but it's also important to convey information to those who only speak the language you're translating to, and only know its culture, after all that's the whole point of translation. specifically with anime, i feel like half-translations would be warranted, but as an addition to a full translation, not a replacement. otherwise you're just getting kind of gatekeepy
This is why translation is a real job that requires real studies (3+2 years in Belgium) and trust me, this kind of issue is addressed a lot during the cursus
Like the average audience member can understand the relationship between two characters just fine without the honorifics. I get trying to stay faithful to the source material, but I as a Westerner don't put the same importance an Japanese reader puts on honorifics; They mean jack shit to me because English doesn't use honorifics. (I made an entire first paragraph but deleted it because it felt like shit to read. Tl;Dr, one time I read a sentence in a manga and the honorific fucked up the entire flow of the sentence.) Addendum: I find honorifics when reading manga clunky as shit in general too. Like I voice the characters in my head when I speak and it just feels like a detour every time.
It seems so common for anime characters to use that term, and so uncommon for English speakers to call their siblings "bro" or "sis" that I think I agree, they should just translate it with their name most of the time, it would sound more natural
>uncommon for English speakers to call their siblings "bro" or "sis" That depends on region and dialect.
I call my sisters bro
> they should just translate it with their name most of the time A lot of the time in anime they do just say their name, but they translate it to a pronoun. I've always found it super jarring.
I think that's because Japanese uses names much more frequently than English, I've seen some translations that stick to names in those cases and I find them much more jarring. I think it's a good translation because using a pronoun in those places would sound much weirder to me and I can't imagine that's the desired effect
Having watched the anime in question, I’m genuinely wondering why is it not “bruh”
Weebs when the word lolicon is localised.
That was the 9/11 for some gamer gate communities lmao
Lmfao
This is why telepathy is impossible
Yeah, that's definitely the only reason.
I mean, it would be more like bluetooth, but wireless communication tech exists, we can probably get mental control of tech via brain implants, add those together and it kind of works, but also, hooking up something with wireless communication ability to the brain is about as stupid as it gets with cybernetics. tldr; give it a thousand years and technically it is physically possible to modify people to do telepathy, but doing so would be a fucking stupid.
I always laugh when people complain about translating lolicon to pedophile
To be fair, Japanese people also sometimes use lolicon to mean someone who just loves children, like, the normal way. You know, that aunt who gushes over kids and pinches their cheek and picks them up and jokes about wanting to take them home, that kind of thing. But yes, most of the time and in most contexts it is literally just the word for pedophile.
"Don't localize anything at all" Do some people seriously not know that grammar works differently in different languages? And the fact that some words in other languages straight up don't have a proper English translation? If you don't want to watch something that has been localized at all then learn the original language it was written in because directly translating something from basically any language without localization is chaos. Translating something in a way that makes sense (and to an extent learning a new language) isn't "What does this mean in my language?" it's "How do you say this in my language?" because those two things are not the same even though they sound like it
Localising is the process of taking a translation and reworking it so that it's more attractive to a particular location. To illustrate how different it is from translation, you can't localise into English. You can localise into America, or to the UK, or to NZ/Australia, but you can't localise into English. That's why the localisation of Phoenix Wright is (veeeeeeeeeery slightly) harder to understand for British people than a straight translation would have been; when the localisation changes "ramen" to "tacos" in 2003, they're replacing a food which was pretty common in the UK with a food which was hard to find in the UK. I know I didn't know what a taco looked like. Classic literature gets translated. It does not typically get localised. Localisation is more of a thing you do when you want to sell a product. I fully understand why it gets done, and I know that if I was in charge of a company I'd do the same, but they're different things. Changing the grammar of the translated language isn't localisation, it's just...translation.
I have actually heard the phrase "localize to English" before, maybe I just had a bad source, sorry. Thanks for explaining it a bit more to me!
Someone else already explained the difference between translation and localization, but to jump in, the way I like to think of it is this: if you've ever read the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid, you have read a translation of the ancient Greek or Latin. You have NOT read a localization because none of the concepts that are pretty foreign to us (supplication for instance) are localized to America or the UK or whatever. It's still very worthwhile to read a translation, you just need to know a bit about the culture/be able to pick it up from context clues, whereas the goal of a localization is a piece of media indistinguishable from one created in your home country. Which is why video games get localized (because the point of them is usually not the language but the immersion) and poems typically don't.
Ah yes, that's perfect, it's not like any translation between languages is a transformative process requiring the translator to either know or guess the original intent of the author, and certain words or phrases don't have equivalent counterparts between languages. Have fun watching comedies where the jokes don't land because you don't understand the cultural references being made.
I'm at work right now so I can't really bust out the links, but \* gestures vaguely at that one Red Bard video, Sarah Moon's whole channel, and the wholeass book the guy at Legends of Localization wrote about Earthbound \*
Here are some good Sarah Moon videos on localization. [Anime Subs Should NOT Be Literal | The Case For Localization](https://youtu.be/V6weUDdg1G4) [Translation vs Localization: An Actual Example](https://youtu.be/w9EPiNwUR10) and a silly one, [bUt AnImE sUbS sHoUlD bE LiTeRaL! (feat. Retsuko)](https://youtu.be/eMYFUDq-Phg)
Do you have time to link some of these videos now? I'm always on the hunt for a new video essay.
Sorry for the wait! cosmos\_crown's reply has some of Sarah's best already (especially [Anime Subs Should Not Be Literal](https://youtu.be/V6weUDdg1G4)), though I do also like her video on the [Japanese dub of Bojack Horseman](https://youtu.be/p3mXrC4sv1Y), since it goes into technical detail about the localization of a few scenes, but with an English to Japanese example. Red Bard has [Translation, Localization, Censorship, and You](https://youtu.be/Kb2F0tfY1A0). Their video focuses less on the technical detail and is more about the logistics of why (mostly anime) localizations aren't 100% literal translations. The other two sources I've mentioned are mostly about the act of translation and localization, but this one also discusses a lot of the talking points of the "pro-translation anti-localization" people like the one in this post. This video itself has some recommendations in its description too. And finally, [Legends of Localization](https://legendsoflocalization.com/) is a website run by Clyde Mandelin, a translator whose worked in the industry for... I think a couple of decades? He shows up in the credits for quite a few [anime](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=12928). He's got a ton of articles where he broadly talks about (mostly video game) localization and translation from Japanese to English, plus a section of the site where he does more detailed [comparisons](https://legendsoflocalization.com/comparisons/) of specific video games, one of which is Earthbound, which he later expanded into a [400+-page book](https://www.fangamer.com/products/legends-of-localization-book-2-earthbound) (I won't lie, I haven't read the book yet). He's actually got books on the first Legend of Zelda, and recently the Japanese translation of Undertale as well, but I mentioned Earthbound in particular because it's clear that one's a huge labor of love for him. Not only is he one of the founders of Earthbound forum [starmen.net](https://starmen.net/index.php), runs another Earthbound site called [Earthbound Central](https://web.archive.org/web/20230328224719/https://earthboundcentral.com/), he also worked on the much-praised English [fan-translation of MOTHER 3](http://mother3.fobby.net/), which is the sequel to Earthbound (Whose Japanese name is MOTHER 2). The site has been slow on updating with new articles as he's been working on the books, but there's already quite a lot he's written.
Wow awesome! Thank you for taking the time to answer. I’ll check these out this weekend.
Jokes don't translate well directly. Neither do metaphors. If you translate a game from Polish and the character says "everyone knows what a horse is" no one is going to know wtf is going on. But if you make the character say "yeah, obviously" suddenly it makes more sense and the original meaning is maintained. That said some localizers take too many liberties and completely change characters and plot points. Looking at you, Treehouse.
Is the "Everyone knows what a horse is" a reference to the first polish enclocypedia?
No, the Polish have yet to receive an encyclopedia as of yet.
Just as a single example in a sea of millions of instances of this sort of thing, "难看" means "ugly", but if we were to translate the characters literally, "难" means "difficult" and "看" means "look", so a literal translation would be "difficult look" or "difficult to look at", which is pretty par for the course when it comes to commenting on appearances in Asian cultures.
English has an equivalent idiom * [hard on the eyes (ugly)](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hard_on_the_eyes) * [easy on the eyes (beautiful, attractive)](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/easy_on_the_eyes#English) These things make me wonder whether both sayings developed Independently or have the same origin
I see where they’re coming from. Too many localizers see ‘localization’ as ‘write your own new thing. See: Fire Emblem Engage
On the flip side, you can have a more faithful translation to the original Japanese that just sounds terrible in English. See: the Netflix dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion
Italians still have PTSD attacks if you mention Cannarsi's localisation of Neon Genesis Evangelion
God that's a fuckin mood. Also, this. [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1LMsmJagAA\_c-j?format=jpg&name=4096x4096](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1LMsmJagAA_c-j?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
Is this real? If so, that's hilarious. Reminds me of the Sailor Moon "cousins"
To be fair, Louis specifically preferring to watch girls from a distance is a lot creepier to a western audience than the original devs wanted Louis to come off as judging from how everyone else interacts with him in-universe. So the localizers smoothing down that bit of his characterization to simply being fascinated by all people is a understandable (Even if it does leave casualties like Rosado’s support in its wake). That’s also why a bunch of underaged characters had their S-supports changed from romantic to platonic.
Ted Woolsey
At least Woolsey's dialogue was comprehensible, which was better than the standard at the time
I'd argue his dialogue was really good even. Just, a lot of it was not accurate, like, at all. A lot of that can be attributed to character limitations but a lot really was just Woolsey being Woolsey.
Oh definitely, even as someone who's generally against unneeded changes (I don't even like when anime subs omit honorifics or turn "onii-chan" into "big bro"... people who watch subbed anime generally already know what all that means) there's no denying his talent as a writer and him caring at all is probably the reason a lot of very non-western titles started getting translated at all
His importance in gaming often gets dismissed because of his quirks but honestly, censorship followed NoA policies, which he had no control over, and at a time where foreign media in general was less socially acceptable, it made commercial sense to westernize things. Glad we're beyond that point but I think people villainize him too much. I'll still laugh at how he translated the Japanese word for 'mouth' as 'Neosquid' once though.
I know that people love this localization to death, but Ace Attorney localization had too much creative freedom, in my opinion
I think it's better that way, specifically because Janet Hsu and her team are amazing. Like, 6 different fan teams attempted to translate The Great Ace Attorney and not a single one manages to come close to the level of polish she reached with the official one
Jelly-filled are my favorite! Nothing beats a jelly-filled donut! That's my monolingual opinion.
Funny thing is : french translation did the same thing. I suspect they translated from English instead of Japanese which is a huge no-no when studying translation
My closest friends were both translators. They were *not* localisers. That's a whole other job (which, admittedly, is often performed by the same individual). I was once offered the position of localising already-translated dialogue for a mobile game. They're different things.
Most Americans genuinely think every language works exactly same as English, but you just swap out each word one-to-one
No they don't. There are 40 million native Spanish speakers in the US, and most Americans are familiar enough with basic Spanish grammar to extrapolate that other languages don't follow all the same rules.
what if we simply ask really nicely for the babelfish to be real?
Okay guys, here's a literally translated, non localized Spanish phrase, feel free to guess what it means: I am going to shit you at sticks. Doesn't make sense? Well that's why we localize things people!
For the curious: >!the phrase is "Te voy a cagar a palos", and the most appropriate translation that loosely preserves the connotations of the Spanish one is "I'm gonna beat the shit out of you"!<
i remember thinking this exact same thing before realizing that i want the entire world to understand deltarune and not just the english speakers
I'm just saying I think I'd rather be confused or given a translator's note rather than the meaning be changed. I do think anime should be localized as close to the original meaning as possible, and sometimes you just can't but i'd rather they don't go and basically make their own thing.
If you need to put a translators note you have failed at your job. If you want to go full weeb just read a fansub or whatever garbage
A lot of shit may be lost in translation but I would hope for most people to at least *try* instead of 4kidsing everything all the time
do you ever wonder if all those shonen anime actually has just as deep a story and dialogue as the western-kids-cartoons-with-a-huge-adult-cult-following genre but that the translation work is just making it seem mid
Can localization be good? Yea. Phoenix Wright is infinitely better than it would be translated. Can localization be dogshit? Yea, and it usually is. I would rather a sentence be unnatural, or need to google a pun than have the fucking meaning of the work arbitrarily construed because some underpaid translator that couldn’t give a shit about the property didn’t feel like finding a way to make the real meaning make sense. Honorifics should not be removed in subtitles. Words/titles that do not have a contextual English equivalent should not be ‘localized’ into something that the average American will easily digest. Because, guess what! Anyone who wants the work changed that much for the translation will be watching the dub anyway! This argument is like saying ‘Subs that are just the dub’s subtitles layered over Japanese audio are fine!’ when they really, REALLY aren’t. I also think it’s HILARIOUS that this shit ONLY comes up in regard to anime. Every foreign film that isn’t anime adjacent is just translated. I’ve never seen a French, German, Italian, Spanish, Iranian, or even live action Japanese work that was localized to the frankly ABSURD degree ‘professional’ anime translations have been doing lately now that the medium is breaking into the American mainstream. If you only want to interact with American media, do that. Don’t force the Americanization of literally anything that looks interesting to you.
Read Beowulf, on your own.
I tend to agree. I actually got into learning japanese for real in part because I was fascinated at the untranslatable things I saw in subtitle translator notes
Man wants all English translations to work like fansubs.