[Inori]

FAST6191, on 06 May 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

Also it might just be a bit too much total war back when but shogun to me translated more closely to a lord in the classical English sense as opposed to the rather more narrow terms general and warlord in that they were (generals- not terribly useful in peacetime other than readiness but lords tend to do the actually running of stuff too) or am I conflating it with daimyo?. Now this might be falling back to the samurai as more than a warrior thing but I sense this is getting off topic.

I think the general concensus is that a shogun is the supreme general and a daimyo is a lord / vassal of the shogun. The daimyo themselves then had samurai underneath them.

But the importation of such words does raise the question of how much of the original semantic value is imported along with it. To my knowledge, a shogun is defined as a "barbarian-quelling genrealissimo", but I would probably equate him to a "commander-in-chief" instead. However, I usually see the term shogun equated with "general", and people seem pretty happy with that.

You can draw a parallel between the "behemoth" issue and 和製英語 ("Japanese-made English"). A deconstruction of the term is enough to give it away: they should be treated as Japanese terms. The easiest example I can think of is テンション. More often than not, I see it being used to mean spirits (e.g テンション高い), and not in the sense that native English speakers would use it "There was a lot of tension between the two".


Extending that argument when it comes to the translation of games: it's important to translate a game on the game's terms (such as how said game "imports" words or how they perceive / treat different terms). This is particularly true for a fantasy-genre game like Blood of Bahamut; real world knowledge is less important than specific lexical knowledge (where the lexicon is the Square Enix lexicon).

Edited by Inori, 07 May 2012 - 11:33 AM.

[shadowmanwkp]

Densetsu, on 18 October 2011 - 09:40 AM, said:

[*]DO NOT call yourself a "translator" or say that you're "translating" if you can't read this image, or don't at least know enough about radicals to look up the kanji in this image. It makes you the translator's equivalent of a script kiddie.

Hey I can legitimately translate text but I can't understand that at all :<

Densetsu, on 18 October 2011 - 09:40 AM, said:

Don't be so hell-bent on keeping translations literal. A lot of times Japanese is difficult to literally translate into English and still make sense to the target audience (those who will be playing the translation patch). Feel free to take liberties with your translations, but don't stray too far from the original Japanese. Taking liberties does NOT mean: "Eh, I don't understand this, so I'm going to make something up."

You know, I once watched discovery on Dutch tv and they actually pulled this one off very nicely. Dubbing is extremely uncommon here, so 90% of all things that originate from abroad is usually in its native language (with a general exception being kid's series). Anyways, I was watching dirty jobs on discovery, and it was about the preservation of the "common tern". Mike Rowe was churning out a lot of corny jokes about the name of the birds (like: why would you preserve a "common" bird).

Sadly that doesn't translate to Dutch at all. In Dutch these birds are called "fish thieves". In a stroke of genius the Dutch translators made their own jokes about the name fish thieves, like: why the hell would you preserve a bird if they are stealing all of your fish away anyways? I listened to Mike and read the subs, and I actually liked the subs better xD.

Edited by shadowmanwkp, 19 May 2012 - 07:00 PM.

[Densetsu]

shadowmanwkp, on 19 May 2012 - 07:00 PM, said:

Densetsu, on 18 October 2011 - 09:40 AM, said:

[*]DO NOT call yourself a Japanese-English "translator" or say that you're "translating" if you can't read this image, or don't at least know enough about radicals to look up the kanji in this image. It makes you the translator's equivalent of a script kiddie.

Hey I can legitimately translate text but I can't understand that at all :<

Fix'd

shadowmanwkp, on 19 May 2012 - 07:00 PM, said:

Anyways, I was watching dirty jobs on discovery, and it was about the preservation of the "common tern". Mike Rowe was churning out a lot of corny jokes about the name of the birds (like: why would you preserve a "common" bird).

Sadly that doesn't translate to Dutch at all. In Dutch these birds are called "fish thieves". In a stroke of genius the Dutch translators made their own jokes about the name fish thieves, like: why the hell would you preserve a bird if they are stealing all of your fish away anyways? I listened to Mike and read the subs, and I actually liked the subs better xD.

Yeah, sometimes you have no choice but to do things like that, especially when play-on-words, puns or jokes in general are involved.

---

Some Examples from the Harry Potter Novels

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5, Harry and Hagrid are deep underground in Gringott's bank:

English 

...they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.

"I never know," Harry called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, "what’s the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?"

"Stalagmite's got an 'm' in it," said Hagrid. "An' don' ask me questions just now, I think I'm gonna be sick."

Japanese 

トロッコはさらに深く潜っていった。地下湖のそばを通ると、巨大な鍾乳石と石筍が天井と床からせり出していた。

「僕、いつもわからなくなるんだけど」トロッコの音に負けないよう、ハリーはハグリッドに大声で呼びかけた。「鍾乳石と石筍って、どうちがうの？」

「三文字と二文字の違いだろ。たのむ、今はなんにも聞いてくれるな。吐きそうだ」
(One has three characters, the other has two.)

The Japanese word for "stalactite," 鍾乳石 (shounyuuseki) contains 3 kanji, while the word for "stalagmite," 石筍 (sekijun) only contains 2 kanji. It's a pretty simple workaround. Now on to something trickier...

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 13, Harry and Ron are in Professor Trelawney's astrology lecture, when Lavender Brown suddenly gets excited:

English 

"Oh Professor, look! I think I've got an unaspected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?"

"It is Uranus, my dear," said Professor Trelawney, peering down at the chart.

"Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?" said Ron.

Japanese 

「うわあ、先生、見てください！星位のない惑星がでてきました！おぉぉー、先生、いったいこの星は？」

「冥王星、最高尾の惑星ですわ」トレローニー先生が星座表をのぞき込んで言った。
(It is Pluto, the tail-end planet.)

「どんけつの星か。ラベンダー、僕に君のどんけつ、ちょっと見せてくれる？」ロンが言った。
(The butt-end planet? Lavender, can I have a look at your butt-end?)

Uranus (your anus) wouldn't work in Japanese for obvious reasons. The Japanese word for "Uranus" is 天王星 (Ten'ousei), which bears no resemblance to anything remotely related to the Japanese words for "anus" (koumon) or "butt" (oshiri). To make this work, the English-Japanese translator had to change the planet to Pluto and add the extra phrase 「最高尾の惑星ですわ」(the tail-end planet), which is not in the original English text.

It should be noted that the phrase 最高尾 (saikouo) isn't even a very common phrase in Japanese (it only gets 9,220 hits on Google), so the translation of this seemingly harmless English pun required some ingenious creativity and a little word stretching on the part of the Japanese translator.

If you think that's crazy, you should compare the English and Japanese versions of The da Vinci Code