Korean to English is a mess. It doesn’t help that Koreans don’t trust native English speakers to do it, unless they’re ethnically Korean. The fact that ethnic Korean-Americans get hired to do the job over my white friends who are clearly better at the language, that is the most frustrating.
Please understand it.
it always takes me right out of whatever i’m watching when a character says the same word twice and it’s translated into two different words. like when “matte! matte!” becomes “wait! stop!” it’s a stupid thing to care about and i’m sure translators have their reasons- very easy for me, an idiot who can barely speak one language, to criticize- but it always shatters my immersion
I’ve learned a little Japanese and can say that repeating words changes the meaning. Like an intensifier. So, “wait” followed by “stop” could be a legitimate translation, showing the increased demand level of the repeated word.
Using the wrong register for the material or topic. For example, using very literary language in a technical manual… No, “peculiarities” is not an appropriate synonym for “features” or “specs”.
So, probably not quite what you meant but I find annoying nonetheless… Bible translation
It’s almost impossible to find an English translation that doesn’t allow tradition to seriously skew how ideas are presented. And I say this as a secular scholar (and someone who recognises that the oldest greek text we have is very very very old). Messing with the translation just leaves it open to criticism unnecessarily.
Here are some examples…
An “angel” in the new testament is not a distinct thing. The word simply means “messenger” and was the mundane, every day, word for messenger. It was the word used if someone came from the next town over to tell you something in person. Without any of our cultural baggage added on top the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary is - on face value - Mary being surprised to encounter a man who told her things. Same for Zechariah (both in Luke 1). It’s only when you get to the shepherds the field that the messenger is accompanied by a heavenly glow. But this idea that they’re perfect beings clad in white with wings is completely absent from the text and, imho, promulgated by the persistent use of the word “angel” when it should simply say “messenger”. (The NT itself goes on to say people have had such messengers as guests in their homes without realising, implication being they often look and sound like regular people. Hebrews 13:2)
Same for “baptism”. This is also a traditional translation of the completely mundane word “immersion”. It’s translated that way to retain the idea of baptism as a distinct church idea. But the text literally says “John the Immerser” not John the Baptist. And he stood in the river Jordan immersing people. Which gives a very plain mundane view of what was happening - he was dunking people in the water as a purification rite - something that already existed in Judaism. The traditional translation is used so that churches can wedge in their own view of what baptism is - say, a delicate sprinkling of water from a font or some such.
Even the word “church” itself. The church in the new testament is never a building. It means “assembly” (of people). So the “church” can meet anywhere, and in fact met in houses or sitting on the ground in the temple courts. Allowing a special Christianised word like “church” to be used instead of the mundane translation “assembly” let’s people think whatever they want to picture church as instead of what the text is directly saying.
While we’re on that, Jesus’ name is actually Joshua (if we want to be consistent) and his mum is Miriam. Names that are far too obviously Jewish and connected to the old testament, so we get a traditional rendering of “Jesus” and “Mary” and so on which makes them all sound a lot more white Anglo Saxon.
In a similar vein “testament” is just a weird translation of “covenant” which itself is just a religious way of rendering the word “pact” or “agreement”. The old testament is a pact between God and the Jewish people made through Moses. When the plain meaning is made clearer then other meanings shine through more clearly, namely, the behaviour standards of the old testament “pact” were exactly that, requirements of a pact between God and the Jews. They were never universal requirements that the Jews were supposed to go out and make the rest of the world follow. This translation choice is used by the modern church to obscure the fact that the old testament moral codes were a distinctly Jewish thing - because the modern church would like to piggy back on Leviticus when it suits its narrative.
Finally, the word “Bible” itself doesn’t appear in the bible. Bible means “library” or collection of writings. It doesn’t appear in the any of the writings because none of the Bible writings are self-aware that they’re going to be compiled into such a collection. The word “scripture” is used (literally “writing”) when Peter’s talking about things Paul’s written but that’s about it. When translated straightforwardly it takes the “holy” shine off things and it’s clearer to see these are people making “writings” to communicate with each other or remember things that have happened. A far cry from the “inerrant word of god” that the church traditionally turned the new testament into.
I could go on, but rant over…
(Edit: to be fair the Greek new testament writes Jesus’ name as “ee-soo-ss” which sounds closer to Jesus than Joshua but at any rate they’re the same name and if old testament Joshua had been around he’d have been called “ee-soo-ss” too. No doubt about Mary though, in the Greek it’s written “Mariam”, that is, “Miriam”, like Moses’ sister)
Do you have any sources about this stuff? Looks like something interesting to read.
This is what I’ve gleaned through several decades as an evangelical, ex-evangelical and theology / classical greek student. I don’t know of a specific book that tackles it like this. Though I can recommend pretty much anything by Bart Ehrman for general bible scholarship.
Biblically accurate angel:
Ha!
Worth saying though, even the “biblically accurate angel” meme (funny as it is) is generally wrong. The weird things covered in eyes are not called “angels” in the bible, they’re variously called … (deep breath) … seraphim, cherubim, ophanim, chayot ha kodesh, erelim, or hashmallim. English translations generally call these “heavenly creatures”.
Messengers (“angels”) in the old testament look like regular people too.
This is such an incredible write up! Thank you.
It goes to show how organized religion is a cancer because of propaganda. If they had the literal translations and actually read it on their own with the context that these are a collection of historical thoughts about the world then things would probably be SO much different.
Okay as a Muslim many things about Christianity now make a lot more sense.
This is fascinating stuff. Is there anywhere where more of this kind of thing is written down?
This is what I’ve picked up through several decades as an evangelical, ex-evangelical and a student. I’ve not come across a specific book that lays it out like this. I’m sure there are though. If not and I write one I’ll let you know!
Edit: I’d recommend anything by Bart Ehrman for an accessible scholarly approach to this kind of stuff (he has a blog and plenty of lectures on YouTube)
There was that one time the translator fucked up royally and I lost my shit in The Devastation of Baal by Guy Haley.
To understand we have to look at the pronoun „you“ and it’s German equivalents “Ihr“ and “du“. English doesn’t differentiate between a formal and an informal “you”. It’s just “you”. So you can use “you” in both ways and the reader gets the meaning and tone from context.
For example: “My lord, you have to act!” Gives you everything you need and you know from context how the power dynamics between the characters are.
The German equivalent for that sentence would be: „Mein Herr, Ihr müsst handeln!“ To be fair, you can confuse the possessive pronoun “Ihr” with the regular plural pronoun “ihr”. Both of which are completely different. That’s German for you.
But our translator used the common “du”. The sentence “Mein Herr, du musst handeln!” Not only makes my ears bleed, it also makes no sense in universe. You cannot stand before one of the most well known and revered ANGELS OF MOTHFUCKERING DEATH and say “du”! You uncivilised donkey!
We have the same principle in French with (so learning Ihr in German was easier!), but frankly this is a reason why I prefer working in an english professional setting. Some people, generally older, get offended if you ever use the ‘du’ with them. But some others will want to look shill/younger and will get offended or mock you if you use ‘du’ with them. So yeah, using “you” to talk to the queen, my boomer customer or my nephew makes it so much easier!
Many years ago, there was a televised interview with Saddam Hussein. I don’t remember which TV network it was on but it was a pretty big deal. This was early 2000’s before the US invasion of Iraq. I think the translator referred to then President Bush as “Bush”. Saddam didn’t understand a lot of English but he understood that. He interrupts the translator mid-sentence to inform him that what he should have said was “Mr. Bush”, with a sort of tone that felt like he did not appreciate being misquoted.
I don’t know if that dude even realized how close he probably came to being strangled to death with a microphone cord.
“I may not know English, but I do know the level of formality I chose to use”
I do this for a living so I have a few words about it.
1. Obsessing over the meaning of individual words, and wrecking what the text (or dialogue) says on a discursive level. I see this all the time with Latin, but it pops up often in Japanese too - such as muppets translating “貴様” kisama as simply “you…” (literal translation) instead of something like “bastard” or “piece of shit” or whatever. Sure, “貴様” is “ackshyually” a pronoun, and then what?
2. Not paying attention to the target audience of the translation. JP→EN example again - it’s fine if you keep honorific suffixes as in the original if the target audience is a bunch of weebs, we get it. But if you’re subbing some anime series for a wider audience, you need to convey that info in some other way. (Don’t just ditch it though, see #1.)
3. Not doing due diligence. It’s 4AM, you got more work than you have time for, you need to keep pumping those translations. Poor little boy, I don’t bloody care - spell-proof and grammar-proof the bloody thing dammit. “Its” for possessive, “it’s” for pronoun+verb; “por que” if question, “porque” if answer; “apposto” if annexed, “a posto” if it’s OK.
4. Abusing translation notes. If your “TN” has four or more lines, or the reader already expects one every single page, you’re doing it wrong.
About #4, where do you even see TN nowadays? I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen one in years.
Books. Mostly paper ones, but sometimes the TN spam pops up in e-books too.
Video typically doesn’t have this problem because the translators know that you won’t have time to read it.
Thank you for caring, on behalf of those of us who have difficulty hearing.
On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.
I’m actually fine if the subtitles have to be truncated to communicate the same meaning in less space.
I actually find it harder to comprehend the subtitles when someone tries to be as accurate as possible, especially if the subs transcribe every little stuttering. I’m here to learn the stuff they people on screen are trying to say, I’m not interested in the subtitler’s scholarly digression into the finer points of what they’re hearing.
Some person in reddit once did a hilarious thing where they whipped out a full blown IPA transcript and started analysing the finer dialectual points of a viral video, trying to pinpoint the origin of the speaker. It was hilarious. Probably even more hilarious to linguists. But the point is, that whole thing was not what we were there for, we were just discussing a viral video.
ivxferre is right, so I’ll just state of a few examples:
Baito, which in fact comes from the German arbeit and means a part time job.
Apiiru, which comes from the English appeal but actually means to emphasize or play up something as a way of making yourself more attractive or making a point. For example, you can say “He looks like a good guy but that’s all apiiru”.
Cureemu, which is supposed to be the English claim but refers to complaints or having an issue with something in general.
Or when the character is bilingual but the subtitle just says: [speaking a foreign language]
[Untranslated Wookiee speech]
On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.
Depending on the word, this is actually sensible since borrowings tend to change the meaning of the words being borrowed.
A silly example of that is the Japanese garaigo “ダッチワイフ” datchiwaifu. It’s a borrowing from English “Dutch wife”, and recognisable as such… but you definitively don’t want to translate it as such, as in Japanese it conveys “sex doll”.
Translators - ehh. I don’t speak any other languages so I have no basis for comparison.
But closed-caption writers for TV shows… all of the fucking rage.
I have some audio-processing issues meaning that closed-captions make life vastly easier, but I’m not actually hard of hearing per se.
Why do they always dumb down the dialogue? I can understand abridging rapid-fire chatter if there’s just too much to fit on screen, or not enough time to read it, but they’ll dumb down a six-word sentence with ten seconds of on-screen time.
You know hard of hearing people aren’t fucking stupid, right? If I did lose my hearing and I were denied the actual writing as written by real writers, in favour of the rough gist supplied by some glorified typist, I would be absolutely goddamn livid. How dare they assume I’m semi-literate just becasue my hearing is crap?
I think I read once that was due to outdated standards related to low resolution television sets. If too much text was on screen at once you couldn’t make it out on a standard definition TV. They kept doing it that way for a while after HD became ubiquitous just because that’s how they always did it.
I share your frustration though
Yep, simple fact is we can read waaaaaay faster than most people because we’ve always needed subtitles!
As another guy who finds life easier with CCs (suspected audio processing issues + not a native speaker): Holy fuck this sounds terrifying. Both in a “what the fuck are you idiots doing” sense and in because having your perception of reality (or “reality” in this case) distorted by dumbasses on a keyboard is actually a scary idea. What are they even thinking?
censorship / changing the original meaning to fit the translators personal agenda
When they get the AI to do the work.
I don’t know if that counts but fan translating comics/novels using machine translation WITHOUT DOING ANY PROOFREADING AFTERWARDS.
I consume quite a bit of anime and manga (just look at the communities I moderate), and I see a number of regular complaints about translation in that space. I personally think most of them are overblown and that translators are doing their best. Translation is far from a science and almost every sentence/paragraph has judgement calls that need to be made by the translator. What some people find annoying about a translation might make the work more approachable to somebody else.
One thing that does bother me for Japanese is the exclusion of honorifics. Most subtitles these days include them, which is a definite improvement over official subs of the past. In subtitle form, honorifics are usually the only indication that a speaker is using something like formal language (keigo) unless you have some knowledge of the spoken language.
As a bit of an aside, if you are interested in professional translation and some of the challenges they face (especially with MTL on the horizon), then Anime Herald did an interview with several of them. Check it out!
So, about honorifics: Whether they’ll actually correspond to keigo is a hit and miss depending on the actual relationship between the characters. This happens for a few reasons, but the most important one is that in Japanese using an honorific other than san or sama (or not using one at all) is a declaration of either a large difference in status, a close relationship or shonen protagonist syndrome. It’s more complicated in real life, but this is how it usually goes in anime. So anyway, one common example is that highschooler characters will usually address each other with san even though they never use keigo.
For Manga and Anime in particular:
-
Removal of honorifics which convey a person’s status which can ba explained in a translators notes page or a quick look at Wikipedia
-
Giving people with different dialects from standard Tokyo dialect different English accents like southern americanese or Scottish. They’re Japanese, not Scottish or american
-
Using american English
-
Using american slang which no one outside of america understands
-
Even though I don’t watch dubs anymore and prefer subs every dub I’ve seen poorly attempts to imitate the way Japanese people speak
Using american English
I don’t even use American English, but come on. This is a silly hill to die on, and one full of linguistic prejudice.
-
