howto:translate

Soljashy said:
We already do this when we translate. Whenever we assume a pronoun, unless we put in a stupid note, the reader has no idea that it was assumed.

Many times it's obvious from context who's being talked about, so the correct pronoun being used wouldn't be assuming anything. When it isn't clear (e.g., cases involving「あいつ」, verb by itself, etc.), it should require an explanation by the translator anyway.

As for the situation involving "I", that's moot because variations of it do not exist in English. The inevitable awkwardness is just something we have to deal with when the time comes.

Consider verb inflections, for instance. English has like a handful of forms for a single verb, where Japanese has a whole bunch of them, each with a slightly different meaning that can't be directly communicated in English. What do we do? Do we write "I will teach you my forte [-te yaru]" or "dad wouldn't want to hear that [-deshou]" or some such crap? Not me, I'm sorry.

Verb inflections != honorifics

Suffice it to say that the intricacies of many Japanese subtleties in verbs can be adequately carried over by the tone of how you construct the English equivalent. There's also the option of using similar constructions that do not deter from the original intent of the author.

The implications behind honorifics, on the other hand, cannot be easily implied in English by way of how the text is worded. It's much more efficient to use the honorifics as a way to stay true to the author's original intent and convey the unspoken relationships among the speakers/listeners, as well as to avoid future inconsistency issues.

The only reason you're arguing for an exception for honorifics is because you and the rest of the userbase happens to be familiar with a couple of them.

I also support the keeping of honorifics, and I'm pretty sure I'm familiar with more Japanese than just that bit.

A great point was made by glasnost about the unique makeup of the general Danbooru public, which I won't regurgitate here, but I will add that familiarity with honorifics is a good thing. Getting to know them will enrich the reading experience and provide additional understanding about characters or situations that may not be implicitly stated.

It may sound unnatural to a native English speaker when they see "-san", "-sama", and the like added to names, but the fact of the matter is that the original was not in English. Language is as much culture as it is syntax, and leaving out this important part of Japanese culture is, IMO, a disservice.

I'm not trying to say that advocates of leaving it out are being disrespectful, but as it enhances the comprehension of what's going on in most circumstances, omitting them feels like doing an incomplete job to me.

Shinjidude said:
Since we are setting policy here, I have two questions, both regarding translation notes.

We're saying here (and it has long been at least
some users' preference) to not use line-breaks before translation notes. Is this hard and fast?

Uhh, I haven't put that in, so it must be スラッシュ's doing, and I don't personally agree. A linebreak before looks better than no linebreak.

The other question is in regards to "In particular, do not leave notes saying 'literally blah blah'". That's another will-be rule I regularly violate, as I like to sometimes point out nuances, connections, or references that aren't essential to comprehension, but can sometimes help better understand the situation, topic, or peculiarities in a passage.

That's not what that point is talking about. It's about things like "I like it (lit. It has become a favourite!)". I've actually seen "translations" like that, and they are usually a mark of Japanese grasp about as solid as the author's command of English.

Yes, your translations are fine, and you're expected to give feedback on the guidelines rather than follow blindly.

Soljashy said:
Honorifics: Please don't force me to leave them in. I honestly think these need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. My personal inclination is to leave them out wherever possible (though if I'm translating a comic someone else has already done half of, I tend to follow their example for the sake of consistency). Anyway, a few thoughts on this.

• In a purely "Japanese" situation, I could understand keeping them in, but as is mentioned in the link memento mori provided, non-Japanese people tend to read a lot more into these than is actually present.

Except that all situations we have here default to "purely Japanese", because they are for the most part written by Japanese, for Japanese, with a cursory understanding of any other cultural context, what it says on the tin notwithstanding.

• When a traditional maid refers to her master as "X-sama", isn't it better to translate this as "Lord X" or "Lady X"? I think it is. There are undoubtedly more cases like these.

First of all, it'd be "M'lady" most of the time. Which shows the danger of touching things like honorifics at all. Where do you stop in transforming the forms used?

• There are funny uses for these honorifics like in "anata-sama" and like "-san" stuck to the end of a company name. I'd say these obviously need to be eliminated – leaving them in is not translating the text.

Obviously, but they're not "real" honorifics in this case, not in the same sense as X-san where X is a person's name.

• What about conventions used in official translations? I normally strive to keep the translation of doujinshi of a game, for instance, close to the style of the English release.

As jxh2154 says, disregard them. Their context and target audience are not our context or target audience.

• Also, for me, this rule kinda contradicts the rule about translations being fully English as far as possible.

As much as possible. Which directly suggests not all is possible. You know this old rule, make things as simple as possible, but no simpler? It's the same thing.

Partial translations: If I'm positive that I understand one part of a comic/whatever, I'm not about to leave the whole thing blank just because I got bowled out at a later part. Also, I'm in a habit of translating long comics as I go. If you're gonna tell me to stop doing this, meh, I suppose I could, but you can expect to see a lot less contributing from me. :(

Again, you're not the target of this point. I'm talking about people who will, out of twenty bubbles, translate two, one saying 好き, the other one saying はい. It's specifically mentioned in there, too.

Soljashy said:
Right. My common sense says to me that when translating something from one language to another, I should discard the things that can't be directly converted from the source language to the target language, unless they significantly alter the meaning of the text, in which case I attempt to communicate them differently.

This is why I don't do "[she] picked [the] flowers" and that type of shit.

Common sense also says that while grammar with a signigicant amout of overlap, such as pronouns, is likely to be transferable, the unique aspects are not. And in Japanese the issues of social standing and relations are such a huge deal that it's built into the grammar on multiple levels, with an entire parallel language for that purpose only. That's not something you can translate, and not something you can omit, so you leave it in.

Frankly, 99% of the time honorifics don't affect the meaning of the text in any way that's remotely significant.

But that 99% is hugely important for the 1% that *isn't* the usual deal, because otherwise you wouldn't know there's anything special. Dropping a honorific in Japanese is a very strong statement which you have just rendered impossible to translate in any way.

In my opinion, they should have just left it "Sakaki". The fact that she's always addressed by her family name already effectively communicates the "social" difference in English.

Bullshit. No-one in the English-speaking sphere would address their good friend by their surname. Similarly no-one in Sakaki's class has ever called her "Sakaki", it's always "Sakaki-san". The difference is very significant.

If you think it's not at all important, try to translate Bakemonogatari's finale without using honorifics. I dare you.

It seems to me your entire argument is akin to IBM developerWorks insisting on expanding "HTML", of all things, in an article about web applications. It's a fucking trade journal, just assume the audience knows it already. I don't want to put up with some kind of retarded lowest common denominator just because there *might* be someone not yet familiar with it. We're a "repository of Japanese media", or whatever that subtitle used to say.

glasnost said:

Of course, you could make the case that the author actually imagined the work occurring in a different language, and simply 'translated it back to Japanese' for their audience's sake.

This is exactly the case I was making. Forgive my proneness to forget how many authors out there write about foreign cultures without knowing much about them. Maybe it is not by chance that I instinctively chose "Emma" as my example.

And regarding the general honorifics question, I do not vow allegiance to either camp, I am just rather interested in both sides' reasonings.

I hope I'm helping if I say that, as a mere reader, I just wish for minimal information losses above everything else.

I sort of agree on the need for a consistent policy, but I hope it stays flexible enough to avoid crippling translations meaning, upon cases where the two will eventually collide.
The translator should be able to make the relevant decision here, though I know that "be sure you know what you're doing" is no rule by itself.

Also, I don't want the comprehension level to be lowered for the sake of audience. If I miss the culture, knowledge, or there's anything tricky to translate properly, I'll be glad to see the translator's note and learn something new.

葉月 said:
Except that all situations we have here default to "purely Japanese", because they are for the most part written by Japanese, for Japanese, with a cursory understanding of any other cultural context, what it says on the tin notwithstanding.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant when the setting/speakers are Japanese, not the language being used for communication, which would obviously be Japanese. :\

葉月 said:
First of all, it'd be "M'lady" most of the time. Which shows the danger of touching things like honorifics at all. Where do you stop in transforming the forms used?

What happens in the specific example here is irrelevant. My point is that in certain contexts, it just reads better with translated titles and not sans and samas all across.

葉月 said:
Obviously, but they're not "real" honorifics in this case, not in the same sense as X-san where X is a person's name.

Exactly. This is what I meant by "case-by-case" basis. We are already doing it in instances like these. Now what about cases like "Oniisama" and "Oneesama"? "Ojousama"? "Ojisama"? Where do you draw the line? You want me to leave all of these terms in Japanese?

葉月 said:
As jxh2154 says, disregard them. Their context and target audience are not our context or target audience.

Fair enough.

葉月 said:
Bullshit. No-one in the English-speaking sphere would address their good friend by their surname.

Sakaki seemed kinda detached from the rest to me, but granted, I don't remember that much about Azumanga, so I'll relent.

葉月 said:
Similarly no-one in Sakaki's class has ever called her "Sakaki", it's always "Sakaki-san". The difference is very significant.

In Japanese, yeah. Why make a distinction there in English when it never plays a part? You're saying use "san" and all that all the time in every translation in case somewhere it happens to get dropped and this results in some social phenomenon that cannot possibly be communicated in English words?

葉月 said:
If you think it's not at all important, try to translate Bakemonogatari's finale without using honorifics. I dare you.

I have been saying case-by-case basis this whole time, but apparently you missed that.

recklessfirex said:
Verb inflections != honorifics

No one said that. My point was that whenever you translate something from one language to another, there are necessarily tiny nuances that get lost. You can't translate a text and hope that every bit of information that was there stays intact. We are at peace with this in so many other cases that we hardly even notice them, but because honorifics are so widely known, people demand to have them left in.

Note to self: Never use examples again when debating on Danbooru forums, for people will inevitably nitpick your specific examples and ignore the greater point you are trying to illustrate.

recklessfirex said:
I also support the keeping of honorifics, and I'm pretty sure I'm familiar with more Japanese than just that bit.

That "you" wasn't directed personally at jxh2154 but was rather used in reference to the userbase of Danbooru in general.

recklessfirex said:
I'm not trying to say that advocates of leaving it out are being disrespectful, but as it enhances the comprehension of what's going on in most circumstances, omitting them feels like doing an incomplete job to me.

I do see your side of it. When I translate something, I attempt to put it into English. When I leave a Japanese term untranslated (and I'm not talking about names of foods etc, an area of English that's already filled with foreign names), that feels like an incomplete job to me.

In the case of Sakaki, she was a central part of the group of friends, even though she was standoffish. The fact that she is the ONLY member of the group consistently called -san is a large distinction in my opinion.

I still don't think there needs to be a hard rule for this. The translators should be able to decide if it is important information or not. My vote goes to keeping them in if we decide on consistency.

Well this is an interesting discussion, but I don't see an emerging consensus, and I think leaving it up to translator preferences has worked well so far.

I guess it's a question of whether the honorifics are mostly an artifact of the language, which we want to translate, or the culture, which we'd like to leave intact.
It seems to me that Japanese people proficient at English don't see the need to use honorifics when they're speaking English, indicating it's the former.

This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread. This thread.

... I'm mostly inclined to agree with Soljashy here, in that all translations need to be done on a case-by-case basis. I know this is a site about Japanese stuff and thus everyone is eager to make pointed observations about Japanese and how it "relies almost completely on context" and how pronouns are ambiguous and honorifics must or mustn't be translated/omitted and how MEANING IS LOST or whatever, and thereupon make up rules about how to translate it, as if it were some sort of secret code that needs to be deciphered, and there were One True Translation or something.

But here's some news: ALL meaning is ambiguous, in ALL languages (except maybe Lojban :3). Some languages are more suited to fine grain in certain areas, and other languages are more suited to fine grain in certain other areas. Translations are not explications, though you can certainly make them explications if you want. There is a sliding scale of how much information you transfer when you translate, which is entirely under your control. On the other hand, however, languages tend to be slippery in certain places, forcing you to include certain information (such as gender / grammatical person in English pronouns, for example), or easily implying things you don't intend. Translation is the balancing act of trying to explicate as much as possible while embellishing as little as possible.

And because it's a balancing act, a translator needs some wiggle room. I really don't think there should be any official policy regarding stuff like honorifics, pronouns, or whatever. Frankly, almost anyone who is spending a significant amount of time on danbooru is already a member of the target demographic for translations, and will thus be perfectly able to direct their translations towards that audience, as they see fit.

Now, as for the actual wiki article that スラッシュ and 葉月 have written... I mean it's great and all that we're getting an Official Translation Policy, I guess, but, for example, really ALL languages "rely almost completely on context". Probably what you mean to say is that Japanese is a pro-drop language. Sure, "Japanese is often ambiguous", as is every other damn language on the planet. Just generally throughout the howto I see a kind of attitude towards Japanese, like I mentioned above, that treats it as some sort of code to be deciphered, or puzzle to be figured out, that only the experienced can even attempt to face without it blowing up in their faces.

It's not. It's a human language that millions of people speak every day. Translators are not hardened veterans who have developed through long experience a long list of tactics and best practices to use in their battle against Japanese. They are seekers of understanding who have managed to espouse the mindset of Japanese, to some extent, and are thus more able to explain it to those of us who have not (yet).

This is probably my most irrelevant rant on these forums yet, and it's probably not very important in terms of how new translators are going to interpret this howto, but that just got on my nerves, somehow. Hopefully I'm not just spouting nonsense.

Not to say you are wrong. All languages do have some degree of ambiguity and any translation between any two languages is necessarily going to lose and warp information.

It'd be wrong though to say that languages like Japanese that are pro-drop regularly omitting the subject and/or object, have no regular distinction for plurality (and sometimes gender), and obligatorily encode social structures that don't exist in other cultures into each utterance aren't at least a bit more sensitive and opaque than most when it comes to translation. This is even more the case when translating into languages like English where many of the omitted features are obligatory and the obligatory features absent.

The more different two languages are, the more difficult it is to make fluent and accurate translations between them. English and Japanese are languages with a lot of differences.

Ignoring the nitpicky details we've been arguing over, I think the principle overarching points of the how-to for new translators are: "be careful" and "if you aren't sure, ask for help". I think those two points are pretty important if we want to strive for accuracy, even if Japanese is just another language.

Soljashy said:
Note to self: Never use examples again when debating on Danbooru forums, for people will inevitably nitpick your specific examples and ignore the greater point you are trying to illustrate.

Oy vey.

0xCCBA696 said:
... I'm mostly inclined to agree with Soljashy here, in that all translations need to be done on a case-by-case basis.

I suppose since I'm one of the perpetrators of huge walls of text in this thread, I should come out and say that I agree with this as well. I don't really expect to change any of this argument's principal parties' gut feelings about how translation should be done, and that doesn't bother me, since they are already good translators without my meddling and I am probably more likely to cock something up while translating honorifics than they are.

(Fun fact: The top 25 note editors, quite a few of whom have posted in this thread, are responsible for nearly 120,000 note edits, over 50% of Danbooru's total. Crazy, huh?)

That said, maybe I'm not giving potential new translators enough credit with regard to their ability to think for themselves (in fact, closet elitist that I am, this is probably the case), but my view is that if someone's come to howto:translate, they're unsure of their own judgment and looking for a hard and fast rule that they can follow until they gain a good sense for themselves of how complicated situations like the hypotheticals we're discussing should be handled. In the case of honorifics, I think, for the reasons I've already laid out twice (and which nobody has really addressed ;_;), that said rule should be to leave them in when in doubt, and to think carefully before deciding that the honorifics don't add anything to a particular image.

So yeah, I guess if we get back to the actual matter at hand, I don't agree with keeping "leave honorifics in place" in the wiki, but all I would do to change it is soften it to a suggestion.

I think that's a good idea. Perhaps there should also be something like "if you are sure of what you're doing, you may bend these points, they are more like guidelines than hard and fast rules. Take it on a case-by-case basis".

Something like that?

How about "if in doubt about honorifics, leave them in place" or something to that effect? Just a suggestion.

Soljashy said:
Sorry, I was unclear. I meant when the setting/speakers are Japanese, not the language being used for communication, which would obviously be Japanese. :\

As I said, "setting" is by default Japanese, because it's written by Japanese, for Japanese, with Japanese assumptions. What it purports to be is irrelevant, with rare exceptions such as Emma.

In Japanese, yeah. Why make a distinction there in English when it never plays a part? You're saying use "san" and all that all the time in every translation in case somewhere it happens to get dropped and this results in some social phenomenon that cannot possibly be communicated in English words?

That is precisely what I'm saying, because it just so happens that English has lost the T-V distinction. So you couldn't even *sketch* an appropriate translation.

I have been saying case-by-case basis this whole time, but apparently you missed that.

And you conveniently dropped the part where I explain that this is stupid because it's the 99% backdrop that makes the special 1% special.

No one said that. My point was that whenever you translate something from one language to another, there are necessarily tiny nuances that get lost. You can't translate a text and hope that every bit of information that was there stays intact. We are at peace with this in so many other cases that we hardly even notice them, but because honorifics are so widely known, people demand to have them left in.

Because it can be reasonably assumed there will be at least basic level of familiarity with the concept. People get annoyed when you drop fine details you absolutely don't need to, what other shocking discoveries have you made? See my comparison to IBM dW, and jxh2154's point about the different audiences. What exactly did you mean by "fair enough" if you completely refuse to take it into account?

Note to self: Never use examples again when debating on Danbooru forums, for people will inevitably nitpick your specific examples and ignore the greater point you are trying to illustrate.

Or rather don't use examples which happen clearly to illustrate that your "greater point" is simply wrong.

I do see your side of it. When I translate something, I attempt to put it into English. When I leave a Japanese term untranslated (and I'm not talking about names of foods etc, an area of English that's already filled with foreign names), that feels like an incomplete job to me.

That's just so *headdesk*. ENGLISH DOESN'T HAVE TERMS FOR EXPRESSING WHAT HONORIFICS EXPRESS BECAUSE IT LACKS THE ENTIRE SYSTEM HONORIFICS WERE DESIGNED TO SUPPORT. It is exactly like sushi -- it's a foreign concept, absent from English, so it has no means to express it other than using foreign terms.

葉月 said:
But that 99% is hugely important for the 1% that *isn't* the usual deal, because otherwise you wouldn't know there's anything special.

So what you're saying here is that it's important that all comics on Danbooru use the same standard, because otherwise readers won't notice an honorific drop/add in comics that use them? I don't agree. If the reader is of an inattentive sort, they'll read over the change without noticing it regardless of the background provided by other comics; if the reader is of an attentive sort, they'll notice the change even if other comics omit honorifics entirely. To put it a different way, the inattentive reader (who is, in all actuality, probably the average reader, though that could be the elitism talking again) will read over "-san" the same way people read over doubled words when proofreading: completely transparently and without even noticing. Adding in a million "-san"s in places where they contribute virtually nothing to the meaning of a comic isn't going to make them more likely to notice an omission or change.

Of course, I still don't think that leaving honorifics in comics where they don't add information/meaning is that horrible of a thing, but I'm willing to accept a compromise of 'put in honorifics when they significantly add to the meaning of a work, leave them out when they don't'.

葉月 said:
it's a foreign concept, absent from English

This is utter pedantry, I know, but the concept isn't really absent from English. You mention the T-V distinction, but that's just a smaller subset of 'the concept', which is something closer to a kinship system -- a part of speech that describes a speaker's relationship to a person with every mention of that person's name. I mention this only to point out that, in some cases, the Japanese relationship system really does map to English's rudimentary version with virtually no loss of information/meaning.

葉月 said:
What it purports to be is irrelevant, with rare exceptions such as Emma.

You admit yourself that there are exceptions. That was my point. Stop arguing with me for the sake of arguing.

葉月 said:
That is precisely what I'm saying, because it just so happens that English has lost the T-V distinction. So you couldn't even *sketch* an appropriate translation.

Again you're treating Japanese like it's some sort of secret code. No two languages are 100% compatible. When I translate from Afrikaans to English or vice versa, there are times when I have to sacrifice information too, and nobody nukes the earth about it. Now watch as he retorts again in ALL CAPS that Japanese is so freaking different!

葉月 said:
And you conveniently dropped the part where I explain that this is stupid because it's the 99% backdrop that makes the special 1% special.

Just like you conveniently sketched me as someone who wants to drop *all* honorifics. We could do this all day, dancing around each other's points and setting up strawmen.

葉月 said:
What exactly did you mean by "fair enough" if you completely refuse to take it into account?

With "fair enough", I meant I'm willing to disregard official translations, as indicated by the quote that was in response to.

葉月 said:
Or rather don't use examples which happen clearly to illustrate that your "greater point" is simply wrong.

Bullshit. :P

I almost don't want to bump this thread, but anyway, I added an explanatory footnote to the list. Not one to defend my own work too much, but I just want to point out that we did call the first category "things to keep in mind before you start translating".

Also, I want to point out that in my opinion, translating is one of the most difficult things in the world. And the more alive a language is, the harder it gets. I've worked as a translator before and it's amazing how underrated it is as an art. It's basically impossible to master one language, let alone two, one of which is not your native tongue. So of course the work by translators on Danbooru is hugely appreciated. (And of course this doesn't just go for Japanese, but all languages. Hell, even "translating" from the thoughts in your brain to a text on paper is almost impossible.)