I'm by no means a sentimental person, but it's always fun to reminisce. Since this September it has been 23 β yes, let me spell it out, twenty-three β years since I discovered my joy for languages. Specifically the English language. But also my very first hobby (apart from the things you'd call a hobby in my ages such as soccer or watching cartoons/tokusatsu): Translation.
I grew up learning English and French since elementary school. Apparently I also had an affinity for languages, since I had really good marks at school. At least when it came to languages. I barely remember much of what we did at junior high, except that I read "The Monkey's Paw" and that I had two very, very pretty teachers. One of them was, probably, surmising, from her phenotype Indian. Although I don't remember having her an accent in either language. Heck, I didn't think about her race for a second back then. Oh and we also had a Nigerian teacher. He probably came over through something like a JET Program or whatever. Later, there was a rumor about him getting arrested for drug possession and being deported later. Well, I never bothered to find out whether the rumor was true or not, but it ended up being a fun story to talk about.
Fast forwarding to September 2000. I had my own PC and an internet connection! Sooner or later I was introduced to IRC, where I also entered English speaking chatrooms on DALNet, EFNet and Undernet, I believe. I was trying to improve my English and somehow I get to know a girl who was into animes and mangas. Back then I wasn't really that interested in either of them. Sure, I did watch it on TV (I loved the Red Baron opening theme and my first waifu was the chick with the monkey from The Three Musketeers) and I did read some manga, but I preferred western comics more. I remember going out every week with my father to buy (mostly Batman) comics. Especially the cover of Knightfall, where Kane breaks Batman's back is seared in my mind. I was also very impressed by "Batman: The Animated Series." It definitely had a much more mature tone than the anime you'd see on TV. But I digress.
Anyway this girl asked me if I was willing to translate a manga for her. It was Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. Definitely something I wouldn't read on my own, but after pondering a little I was like sure, why not. And so began my long journey as a translator. Of course not without a slip up. She did ask me to translate it and sent me the raws, so what did I do? Open the images with Paint and draw white rectangles over the speech bubbles or I outright cut them out and inserted the translation in the bubbles. Finally I could display my Paint prowess I acquired! Turns out I wasn't supposed to do that, though. Drats! Whatever.
Fast forwarding again. Now I've moved overseas. Trying to learn a completely new language that isn't particularly easy. Meanwhile I did put my newly acquired hobby on the backburner since playing Counter-Strike had priority. Nevertheless, I did manage to get involved in scanlations and fansubbing again. For whatever reason I never wanted any e-peen, so I did keep changing my nicks the whole time. I also stopped lurking in main channels, since (especially Brazilians π) kept asking me if I'd translate anything for them. Looking back to it, it was a great time. I had a lot of fun, there was, of course, a lot of drama and we had good laughs. I met so many different people from all walks of life and I'm still in touch with quite a few of them. I guess this is what you call "it's all about the journey and not the destination."
With the emergence of Crunchyroll, the fansubbing scene kind of died. At first everyone was like the translation of fansubs are much better! Maybe they were, I don't know. And CR most definitely didn't have eye-candy karaoke. But little did the leechers know that at some point MX Media (started(?) by Tofusensei) was supplying quite a few of the translations. I assume MX was a reference to the fansubbing group BakaMX. I never bothered enough to ask him what it stood for anyway. So then, some of the lauded translators were already working for CR, such as Tellu54 from Shinsen-Subs, gshock99 from Anime-Kraze or Rei aka japinabox from ANBU. Guess people who enjoyed fansubs were biased back then and didn't give CR a fair chance. Not to mention, most people don't know enough Japanese to judge it anyway. At some point Tellu asked me if I was interested in doing paid translations. I was quite fast too; I did pump out translations for an episode in an hour. Still, I refused since I was already quite busy and I was definitely making more money from my job than I'd make by translating cartoanimes.
My taste in anime and manga has been quite different. I'd even say paradoxical. I've always liked "edgy" and avantgarde stuff when it came to mangas. You know, stuff involving abuse and gore or where the art style was quite distinct. Perhaps that's the reason why I almost exclusively translated seinen manga. Sure, I kind of made the mistake of helping Null translate a single chapter(!) of One Piece, but that was an outlier. I was drawn to groups like Kotonoha or Manga-Sketchbook (I think I just checked the translation for M-S) because they didn't translate your ordinary manga. What they shared was geared more towards a mature audience. I still consider Omanga, Kotonoha, Mangascreener, Manga-Sketchbook (yeah they usually just scanned the English releases) or Illuminati-Manga to be the most valuable groups that brought manga that wasn't mainstream. And in the more tasteful, the more artistic and thought provoking works.
On the fansubbing side however I mostly (although not exclusively) translated school romance and ecchi animes. In retrospect, I couldn't even tell you why. They all look like utter garbage now. Sure, I did translate all kind of genres but they didn't pique my interest too much back then. That, however, also meant that I couldn't make "good" translations. But I'll explain the why later.
I noticed that translating slice-of-life allowed me to produce better scripts; translations that I actually enjoyed producing and reading. SoL allows me/you to use a much broader vocabulary and let's you use idioms and colloquial terms. Translating technobabble and jidaigeki/samurai limits you a lot. Speaking of the latter, up to this day I'm not sure whether using a Shakespearean English is the "right way" to translate it. No, not that there's a right or wrong, but it kept bugging me a lot. Nowadays I just translate it in a clinically sterile way with no "thou" or "dost". Just like there are many translations of the Bible, the modern version just works better in my humble opinion.
There are some fan translators whose work I really enjoyed. For example Henna's work on Junjou Romantica, or Strato's work on Haruhi and Lucky Star (all SoL shows). Even if they had mistakes in them (intentional choices, which are debatable or outright errors) they were fun to read and captured the spirit of the show. I'd even argue that Haruhi wouldn't have been the hit it was overseas, if it wasn't for Strato's translations.
There are different kind of hell awaiting some translators though. Some are innocuous and deserve a slap on the wrist, while some others deserve to be tortured on a trident and have their balls cut off.
In mid 2000s there was al|together and people who translated visual novels. Translating all that text is by no means an easy task. It also requires a lot of skill and perseverance to translate a (short) visual novel. Among these folks, there was an exceptionally skilled writer from insani called Seung Park (aka gp32). He did translate some stuff, and he did translate some non VN short stories. Yes, I intentionally call him "writer," because he did take some liberties with the translations. My issue with translators like him is that they take too many liberties with the original work and use it as a vehicle to write their own stories. For example let's talk about OMGWTFOTL, or the actual title which is η·εδΈεΊ§ε°η. In this game, we're introduced to the word "genuflect" which may or may not be known to the reader. While this sounds actually funny, genuflection, in modern day use means, and let me quote Wikipedia here, "genuflection or genuflexion is the act of bending a knee to the ground, as distinguished from kneeling which more strictly involves both knees." Dogeza on the other hand means that you completely kiss the ground like a total insect and beg for forgiveness (see the illustration in the link). We clearly see that the nuance is lost, especially if you know that genuflection is more of a religious thing done in reverence. OTL however is brilliant! While not really a translation, the idea to use that as a part of the title is very clever. That being said I've to admit that he's a much more capable translator β and writer β than I am.
I give Seung Park and the insani folks π₯π₯ to melt in the translator hell.
The most egregious sacrilege on translation is done by peopidiots that insert (identity) politics into their translations. They've no regard for the author, whose work they defile nor their audience. They put themselves in the spotlight. The visual novel translation scene and as deplorable as it is, especially the "professional" (i.e. paid people whose qualification is that they took Japanese at college) is guilty of this transgression. It's truly baffling how the companies aren't firing them...
I nail voodoo dolls with the hope of them to fucking rot in hell and get cancer.
I'd consider my translation on "The Beautiful Ones" to be a pretty good one that I've produced. Now looking at it, it has been five years. Time sure flies by... I did take some liberties though, which captured the meaning much better than if I had done a literal translation. I don't know if I should call that a sacrilege or not. This is kind of going further than Nida would call being unobtrusive and "transparent."[1]
Since I kept changing my aliases all the time, I also had to take translation tests of various groups. On one test, a girl was returning to her hometown or something. She was on a ship, returning back home and looking at the city, engaging in a soliloquy that went like "ζγγγζ―θ²..." Most people in the scene would translate this line as the "nostalgic scenery," but I went with "familiar" instead. Quoting Merriam Webster, nostalgia is "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition." When you're returning to your hometown already, almost boarding off and recalling the fondness of this and that, it's no longer nostalgia. It is familiar. Because you have been there before. That's a little nuance that makes the difference between someone translating word by word and someone who stops for a moment and thinks. Thinks slowly, as Kahneman would put it.[2] The guy checking my test also commented on how well I captured that line.
Another example I'd like to give was from some old detective(?) anime, maybe early 2000s. I don't remember the exact line, but they were talking about identifying a gun. Having watched "The Wire," "The Shield" and an ample amount of police/detective shows, I knew exactly the word I was looking for was "ballistics." And no, the Japanese word was something entirely different. The guy checking the translation was (positively) surprised by my choice of word. Again, sometimes you have to think slowly. And a little pinch of experience and a broad mind doesn't hurt.
Furigana is like autocorrect. It can be your best friend or your worst enema. In my case, it has always been my worst enemy. I know that I should pay more attention, but my eyes simply refuse to read it. I've been reading the name δΌηη° as Imuta, as probably 90 % of the Japanese would instinctively read. Turns out there was a furigana that said that it should be read as Imuda π€·ββοΈ. The blame was in another sense also mine, because I didn't do my due diligence and checked the historical figure. Shit happens. Another fuck up I had was by reading ζΈ and knowing fully well that it should be read as "kiyo" but the furigana saying "kyo" or rather/perhaps my eyes misleading me.
Speaking of mistakes, when I churned out scripts, without proofreading them myself β after a good night's sleep β I noticed that I've been on autopilot, that I've been thinking fast. The scripts would omit details that I acknowledged subconsciously but that weren't reflected in the translation. Depending on how high you set the bar, it's a good idea to actively communicate with your editor/proofreader. So I had a pretty good translation of a pun in "The Fable". I was actually proud of it. Then the proofreader butchered that line. It either meant that the translation wasn't as clever as I fathomed it to be, or it wooshed over the PR's head. Either way the blame is mine for not communicating that clearly.
There are also some phrases that have a standardized translation. For example, when Conan or Kogorou discover a body and check the pulse they say γγ‘γ . The fan translation I've always seen is "It's no good." Yeah, the translation is no good! It should be something along the lines of "we're too late/it's too late for him/he's dead." How about everyone's favorite pet peeve γγγγγͺγ? It can't be helped π€·ββοΈ. I've seen many people making fun of this translation, but it's actually pretty accurate. I usually try to use phrases that carry the same meaning, but it's strictly speaking not a bad translation.
Moving on. Honorifics are a pain in the ass. My policy on them has been, for decades to leave them in, if the story is taking place in Japan, and drop them otherwise. Do they carry some deep cultural meaning that you cannot convey in your target language? No. Definitely not. However, it is really hard to circumnavigate them. Let's start with a positive example. The Vision of Escaflowne. How does Hitomi refer to 倩ιε θΌ© in English? As Captain Amano. This is a perfect translation. But it only works because he is the captain of the track and field club that Hitomi's in. What do the usual translations do? Drop the honorific. Then let me give you a negative example. The character is in a deep slumber and hears a girl calling his name. ...γγγ...γγοΌ Well, where's your god now?
All right, here's the catchy part. It makes a huge difference whether you're translating an anime or movie, or a manga or a game. In the former, you actually hear what's being said. When I hear "New York," and read "flowers," I know that something is off. That's why manga and game translators, or should I say localizers can take the great liberties they do. It doesn't just work when your audience can hear the discrepancies. Especially if your audience has some rudimentary knowledge of Japanese. The aforementioned example also doesn't work with changing the naming order. In fact, by changing the name order you can even spoil the show. Of course, you can only do it if you know, let's say the guy's first name. And for that, you must have (depending on the show) watched the entire show first. So you basically give advanced information to the reader that the Japanese audience doesn't even have. Oh, and what are you going to do, when you're translating the show on a weekly basis? You don't even have access to that information.
Now to the translation I saw the other day that triggered this whole wall of text that I barfed out. εθ£½θ±θͺ! Nothing irks me more than reading stuff like "skin ship" instead of the proper translation, "intimacy." But yeah, that's Japanese for you. A pretty bad and crude language. I never liked it, and my Japanese is pretty much stuck at high school level and that doesn't bother me much. To me Japanese (anime, manga and to some degree songs) have always been an excuse for me to produce English text and challenge myself.
To conclude this long ass text I can say that the past 23 years were a blast. I learned a lot; either through the medium or while reading up on the topic I was translating. I had no qualms or ego issues about asking for help on tricky lines or second opinions. Just like a roofer needs a hammer, a translator needs a dictionary. And google. Seriously, there's a reason why there's chiebukuro: Not even the Japanese can keep up with all the neologisms that appear like rapidly reproducing rabbits.
In these two decades I've come a long way. I made a tremendous progress as a human being, intellectually and as a translator. That being said I still have a long way to go. I'd rate myself as a 7/10: Better than the average, better than the median but not at the top. I'll probably still around in ten years, making mistakes and hopefully learning from them and improving myself. For the case you're wondering why my thoughts are all over the place... It's because I didn't proofread this wall of text, duh! π