Translation Levels

Posted under General

I've noticed varying amounts of detail in translation quality in some images. Of course, there's the tag habit most new people throw on the first hiragana/katagana they see on a piece of porn that have exactly 1 sound effect or so, but also notably in some manga/4koma pages some dialogue bubbles are translated and none of the SFX are, etc.

The question is, at what point should "translation_request" be granted/stopped, or what time it should be tagged "fully_translated".

Updated by sgcdonmai

Personally, I do fill in the sound effects as well unless they are largely obscure, repeated, or otherwise awkward in English.

However, I'm also of the impression that it's considered translated when all the speech text is done, regardless of whether or not the sound effects are.

Like Soljashy, I'm not too sure how much the community likes (or doesn't like, for that matter) having note boxes around all the sound effects.

recklessfirex said:
... unless they are largely obscure ...

Do you mean obscure or obscured? I'm guessing you mean the latter (hidden/blocked) since rare/unconventional certainly warrants a translation in my view.

Personally, I'm against translating every groan and moan, particularly in porn. My observation is that in general, people don't like to have too many "pointless" notes (or a few huge ones) cluttering or covering the image -- even though you can click the image to hide them.

My own rule of thumb when translating is to decide if including a given sfx would be informative for readers. For example, the sound in panel 3 of post #585981 doesn't really need translation, since it's quite clearly "attached" to the visual cue of opening of the door. (Even though it is technically the sound of the bell, no meaning is lost.) However, in post #473990, I felt the sounds were crucial since the action is happening out of sight. Also, made up "sounds" e.g. "bosshyuu" in post #542113 warrant a translation, in my view. But it's not a hard science, and I'm not terribly consistent with this myself.

Typically, I'm willing to tag something as (fully) translated once the translations are adequate for someone without knowledge of Japanese to understand what's going on, and get the joke, if applicable. This usually means all speech/thought (w/bubble or not), and excludes common onomatopoeia.

recklessfirex said:

Like Soljashy, I'm not too sure how much the community likes (or doesn't like, for that matter) having note boxes around all the sound effects.

One vote for translating as many sound effects as possible.

Yes, even I recognize enough hiragana to understand "A! A!" or "Aaaa!" But every now and then some minor sound effect adds a lot to the feeling of the picture (as in changes it from what the mere illustration is communicating).

Annoyed by the little boxes? Meh, I finish reading, then click on the pic and take a good look without any boxes.

Thanks for your input, Katajanmarja. We've got a lot of translators describing our own rules of thumb here, but what we probably need more is input from the people who read the translations and don't understand Japanese.

I'd say that it has to be a judgment call sometimes, but any sound that is potentially important to understanding what's going on and not-obvious should be translated.

Also, even if it's not important to understanding what's going on, if a sound effect's meaning is non-obvious it might be worth putting a note on it just because otherwise people might wonder about what it says... which can be annoying, as a reader.

Xabid said:
because otherwise people might wonder about what it says... which can be annoying, as a reader.

If anything, it could be annoying for a reader. Wondering what it means could never be a reader, so what you said makes no sense. Seriously, a discussion about translations should not contain glaring errors like this.

No, it wouldn't, really. That's just a disjunct. A perfectly normal English construction. Everyone please return to your seats.

EDIT: OK, not perfectly normal, but still, I think, within the bounds of grammaticality. Anaphora is hard to pin down, and colloquial usage is full of stuff like this.

Updated by 0xCCBA696

0xCCBA696 said:
No, it wouldn't, really. That's just a disjunct. A perfectly normal English construction. Everyone please return to your seats.

Nope. It's not a disjunct as it's fully integrated into the rest by the preposition "as". It's just done wrong. In no way could you interpret it as a correct sentence, it's just a matter of laziness (or stupidity, as "for" is equally concise and also happens to make fucking sense grammatically).

葉月 said:
Nope. It's not a disjunct as it's fully integrated into the rest by the preposition "as". It's just done wrong. In no way could you interpret it as a correct sentence, it's just a matter of laziness (or stupidity, as "for" is equally concise and also happens to make fucking sense grammatically).

Making such a big deal out of such a common construction seems rather silly. I know we all have our hang-ups, but I didn't think a translator would be so big on linguistic prescriptivism. And stop treating grammaticality as if it's immutable over time; that's not how language works.

I'm more than a little puzzled in the first place. Is it not frighteningly clear that Xabid is making a statement from the point of view of his role? You know, as a reader? Using "for" in this case would distort the thrust of his statement of preference.

"Something as something" has a pretty clear meaning. Yes, the language shifts and morphs over time, but that doesn't make this construct's improper applications any less nonsensical. Neither does the fact I can decipher what s/he actually meant to say. Just as "I could care less" doesn't stop being retarded just because half of the US can't stop for a second and think about what they're saying. And, as a translator (Translator note: this is an example of a proper application of "as X"), I should be and am extra careful about getting the language right, not just being understandable. If being understood was the only thing that mattered, I could speak this and not learn English any good because anybody can know what I trying to say.

Oh, and your claims about distortion are completely wrong, I don't even know how you got there. If he meant to say "for me in particular", he could just said so, or "for me as a reader", or any number of other forms that manage to be grammatical while getting his point across.

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