flemmings | (no subject)

I shall just mention, to mention, that Bleach in Japanese is a faster read than Bleach in English. This says nothing at all about my Japanese skills and everything about the WTFery of Viz's translation.

That's not entirely fair to Viz, of course. When a manga has made-up vocabulary it's always easier to read in Japanese because the kanji alone tells you what the thing means. No need even to sound the Japanese out. Yeah, so that's your cutting-spirit-blade, fine, (unless of course ceci n'est pas un cutting-spirit-blade) and eventually you register 'oh *that's* how zanpakuto is written.' A transliterated Japanese term requires explanation and still doesn't stick, because hell, it's just a random assortment of sounds. That goes double for the names, which are more important than various attacks.

Equally, reading shounen dialogue in Japanese is automatic because it's stock shounen dialogue that we've all read a million times before. Thus one can skim. Unless you've read translated shounen dialogue a million times before, you have to actually /read/ the English and it makes no sense because, hell, it's translated Japanese dialogue that doesn't make sense in English. Like reading someone saying 'I beg you' in a translation from the French, which is an eye-stopper, where je vous en prie would barely register in the original.

Also the artwork is so much better in the original. The loss of detail in translations is one of those things I never hear complaints about, and should.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(nods) "Je vous en prie, grand frere," is so much more... makes so much more sense, perhaps, than "I beg you, big brother". The first can be said. The second feels wrong to the English ear. But it's what she's saying.

Now if the translator would just render it in English as "*Please*, (brother's name)" just about everyone would be happy. But not enough of them do. Petronia said once that her impression was that French manga translations were looser than the English ones, which may be one reason why they sound better to my ear. (French being very much a foreign, not second, language to me is doubtless the other.)

If things like honorifics and family terms really really matter, the sensible French practice seems to be to keep the Japanese, as one would with any quintessentially Japanese item. The blinkered to-English translator idiots seem hell-bent on finding an English word whether it's something that can be said or not. Truly, the world doesn't come to an end from a bit of multi-lingual cosmopolitanism. (Pet peeve here, obviously. Also preaching to choir. Sorry.)

Indeed, that suggestion would work too -- it'd convey the urgency of it, at least.

I honestly can't tell whether the French translations are tighter or looser, because I can't read the Japanese. I will say that they do seem more fluid than the English often is (though again, this may be the fact the French goes through my head and gets translated there). I suppose my best judgment on authenticity is that the dialogue I eventually write in English for all those series that I read in French seems to be reasonably accurate in terms of word choice, formality, speech patterns, etc. If it's managed to get through to me well enough, then the French must have been doing its job.

(Though to be fair, there is some variance between translators and manga publishers. Some of the French manga translators give names as (first name) (surname) rather than the (surname) (first name) pattern, alas. But others not only include appropriate suffixes, they even give a brief glossary at the end of the book. (GetBackers is good that way.))

Don't worry about preaching to the choir. It's reassuring to have some of my thoughts confirmed.

That goes double for the names

Yes, that's very true and why I prefer mine in Chinese. At least the names of things is mostly preserved.

Except when the original Japanese uses katakana names and the Chinese translator must, I assume, find random kanji to fit. Used to compare notes with Greer about how Papuwa's universal katakana got rendered in the Chinese translations she read.

Well ... yes, and it makes fantasy names nearly impossible.

Ohh not to worry, she says blithely. Fantasy names are impossible in English too. These collections of sounds Japanese writers throw together that fit the phonics of neither Japanese, nor French, nor German, nor could-it-be-Russian...? Or none of the above.

Oh well. English is not the language to point fingers. Pot, kettle, Cthulu.