wednesday_10_00 | Translation comparison

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Translation comparison

I actually had been thinking about doing a side-by-side comparison of some manga and the translated version, just out of curiosity, but...well, mostly I was too lazy. Then I happened to notice something that seemed off in the English version of Close the Last Door, and I took a closer look. What I found was...not pretty.

Disclaimer: I don't know what process scripts go through at DMP/June; and it's possible all the mistakes are simply due to a rewriter taking too much liberty with the dialogue. However, to my eyes, it looks like a bad translation, plain and simple. So, here we go:

6月の花嫁が幸せになれるなんて最初に言い出したのはどこのどいつたろう。
Translation: I wonder what jerk first said that a June bride will be happy?
June version: I wonder who first told me that an August bride will have a happy marriage?
Notes: "Jerk" is not in there literally, but どこのどいつ is a rather...belligerent way to say "who." It makes it obvious from page one that Nagai is angry about the wedding. But although it's a little off (it's who first said it, not who first told Nagai specifically), I wouldn't mention this line except for the change from June to August, which is so strange to me. Did the translator misread the 6 for an 8? Or is there some American superstition about August brides? (I've never heard it.)

新郎のご友人で会社の先輩でもいらっしゃいます永井篤さまよりご祝辞をいただきます
Translation: Let's hear the congratulatory speech of Nagai Atsushi, friend and coworker [sempai] of the groom.
June version: We have friends of the groom here, as well as coworkers. Let's hear Atsushi Nagai's congratulatory speech.
Notes: I guess I can see getting confused by the masu form there in the first clause, but...no, it's pretty obvious they're connected.

ちょっとぉ　あの人よくない？
Translation: Hey, isn't that guy hot?
June version: He can't say that!
Notes: This is such an amateurish mistake I just don't know what to say. I guess the whole non-negative ない thing can be confusing, if, um, you just started learning Japanese, in which case YOU SHOULDN'T BE TRANSLATING PROFESSIONALLY. Also, way to completely miss the meaning of いい. >.<

とっとと別れちまえコノヤロー
Translation: Break up already, you dumbass!
June version: Shut up already, damn-it!
Notes: Since when is "damn it" hyphenated? No, never mind that. "Shut up"? Where did that come from? It makes no sense when Nagai's the one doing the talking. Does he hate himself for what he's saying or something?

なんか人のモンになると思うとねぇ...
Translation: But when I think about her belonging to someone else...
June version: Just when you think you belong to someone...
Notes: I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to earlier pages, but this was the line that first raised red flags. I read it and was like, "...WHAT is he talking about? He thought he belonged to Remi, what?" It just didn't fit with the rest of what he was saying.

何あんたそっちの人...
Translation: What, you're one of those...?
June version: So you meant the groom?
Notes: Basically, Honda's asking Nagai if he's gay. Maybe this is a rewrite issue, and honestly, the line works by itself, but the next line is Nagai yelling "I'm not gay!" which doesn't make as much sense with the June translation.

...でもまさかホレてたなんてな...　他の奴のモンになるって知って始めて自覚したよ
Translation: But I never thought my feelings were romantic...I only realized when he was about to belong to someone else.
June version: But I never thought I'd fall for him... It was the first time I felt like I belonged to someone.
Notes: Oh yes, this mistake again. Well, at least they're consistent...(Also, despite the way I wrote it, the first part isn't completely off, it just doesn't quite agree grammatically. It's more like "...I'd fallen for him," which doesn't sound very good to me.)

何かもういいやって気に...
Translation: I'm starting to feel like I don't care any...
June version: I'm sure she'll send word...
Notes: Did the translator really just think that いい was 言い? THIS HURTS MY BRAIN.

男の方は半殺しね
Translation: And beat the crap out of [literally "half-kill"] the guy.
June version: Otherwise you're only half a man.
Notes: orz

Yeah, I can't take anymore. I can almost feel my blood pressure go up as I type. Mind you, this is all from the first chapter. (If I went on I would get to the part where "he's good at this" becomes "he tastes good." -_- [Which, since they're kissing, I guess might be understandable...if うまい hadn't been written 上手い.])

So now I really have to wonder: was DMP not interested in hiring me because they already had enough translators? Wonderful translators like this? Because honestly, that's just...sad.

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*speechless*
o_O
I wonder if their proofreaders know Japanese...

Will you send them your thoughts?

PS. If it's not a secret, what are you translating now? I'll buy this book *_* ♥

Actually, I hadn't thought about sending anything to June. I feel like it would get dismissed as normal fannish translation complaints ("That's not what the fansub/scanlation said!"), especially if a person who doesn't know Japanese looks at it.

Thanks! *^_^* This one's not a secret (because the license was already announced): I'm working on Maiden Rose (http://www.amazon.com/Maiden-Rose-1-Fusanosuke-Inariya/dp/1933809574/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0401071-0833615?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192428331&sr=8-1). (I have no idea when it's coming out, though.) Don't buy it because I'm translating it, buy it because it's really good! <3

Ooo, Maiden Rose is so yummie, have it in Japanese of course but I look forward to seeing your translation! ^_^

Thanks! I'm pretty excited about it, so I can't wait to see it myself.

The only American translated manga I own is FLCL, which I bought way back before I started learning Japanese... I really should get the Japanese version and do a comparison too. Hurm.

I don't think this is representative of most English manga. I've met some other translators, and they know their stuff. I think I just happened to find a bad apple.

Well, there wasn't anything particularly jarring about the FLCL translation that I can remember, I'm just curious. I've been meaning to get the original for the longest time anyway, your post just gave me a reason to hurry up the purchase. ^^

Re: sounding like a fannish complaint - If you mention you're comparing it with the original Japanese and not a scanslation/fasub, would it make a difference? I can somewhat understand a loose translation, but when the lines stop making sense in context it makes me sad. =(

That's appalling...

I'm really sad to see one of my favorite manga treated this way. :(

I wouldn't mention this line except for the change from June to August, which is so strange to me.

Maybe they didn't want to say something that sounded annoyed-at-June in the "June version"? That's kind of subtle, though.

The rest of those blunders...yikes. This is why I never read things in English.

Huh, I never would have thought about that. (It's not like the company is named after the month anyway, though I doubt most English readers know that, just like most of them probably don't know the significance of 801 in 801 Media.) It's just so strange to change it to August when June is considered the biggest month for weddings in the US that I feel like the translator just mixed up 6 and 8.

I don't like reading manga in English just because I find it hard to not think about the translation, but lately I've been trying to do so more for research purposes. (Especially for SFX, because even when I know what they mean, they can be hard to express in English.)

Wow. Maybe that'll make me feel better about not having much money to spend at Yaoicon. (The bulk of it would likely go for new English manga.) As it is, since I'm short on cash, I'm planning on spending extended time in the reading room sampling stuff to see what I want to order in Japanese.

There are an amazing number of new titles out!

Ooh, the reading room! I hadn't thought about that. It'll be a good way for me to research English translations without spending money. (Why is English manga so dang expensive? ;_;)

I'm sure you can make up for not spending much money at YC by spending lots of money in Japan. ^_~

I'm sure you can make up for not spending much money at YC by spending lots of money in Japan. ^_~

That's the plan. ^_~ The less I spend in SF, the more I have in Tokyo!

Seriously, the English books just sit on my shelf unread half the time... well, the Japanese ones do too, but at least they're educational when I get around to reading them. I think I buy English books more out of loyalty to the industry than anything, and my loyalty is waning.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I bought a couple books because I wanted to support companies that licensed manga I love, but then I bought them and was like...Do I really want to be spending money on this? -_- (Plus right now I'm too damn broke anyway. I can't even afford all the Japanese manga I want, and that's way more important to me.)

Why is English manga so dang expensive?

I remember back in the day when I paid $25 for a volume of Ranma 1/2. I assume it's gotten better than that by now...?

Sure, it's better. However, when the English versions are two or three times what the Japanese books cost, and have lower quality paper, printing, and no dust jackets (usually), it's still pretty annoying.

*twitch*

See, I have these sorts of suspicions about June manga ALL THE TIME. And that's just from my sensibilities as I'm reading the books, not from knowing otherwise. I truly believe that sometimes ignorance is bliss, because you know, these are just comics and I don't need to stress out about them ... but it doesn't make me FEEL better about buying all their stinking books. >_>

Oh dear, I wonder if this is a typical translation for a June book? *cringe* It doesn't surprise me that you can tell without having read the original. Actually, it surprises me that some people DON'T notice, because a translation that's wrong never flows as well as one that's right.

these are just comics and I don't need to stress out about them

I have to disagree here. For one thing, you're paying these companies a good chunk of money (especially June, their books are freaking expensive!) and you have a right to expect a quality product. Plus, it's true that it's not a life or death situation, but if this is your hobby and you love reading manga, why wouldn't you want them to be the best quality possible? As a manga fan, it makes me really sad that people (especially BL fangirls; I think they really get the short end of the stick) who don't know Japanese have to put up with this sort of crap all the time. (And as a translator, it makes me ANGRY, but that's another rant entirely.)

Hmm, that's not quite what I meant. I DO care about quality work (which is why I do work for DQ and not TP, hey?) and I very much agree with the points you raise, but about a year or two ago I spent a long time being really angry about bad manga stuff and it was starting to ruin the whole thing for me. Not that bad work doesn't bother me - it does: I have multiple volumes of series on my shelves unread b/c just opening the books and seeing badly butchered text/art makes me insanely, irrationally angry - I just meant that Yugioh (or other comic, I picked randomly) just shouldn't be the cause of that much stress.

It's not that I really "gave up" caring about standards, but I've tried to find peace in the middle ground. I guess I feel like I need to prioritize the shitty things in life to anguish over right now. ^_^; Is IS true, though, that we BL fans get the shortest stick around.

Coincidentally, I recently a few volumes of Naruto and came across some lines that I know were 'softened' and it really bugged me -- my point about ignorance is bliss stands well in this example, because in this case the changes actively bothered me for the whole rest of the volume I was reading, thus ruining the whole experience. >_> Sigh.

I guess I understand what you mean about not stressing out, because (especially when you read a lot of English manga, which of course I don't) you're right that it would just kill your love for it eventually. And in that sense, ignorance IS bliss, but if we remain igorant, how can we make the companies see that we do want a quality product? (Actually, the fact that we have to fight for quality like this makes me pretty angry in and of itself.)

...Hmm, and now that I've said this, I'm thinking maybe I should write to DMP after all. :/

Hmm, and now that I've said this, I'm thinking maybe I should write to DMP after all.

I think you should, actually. But I'm the type that DOES give feedback to companies - good and bad. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to review manga for the website, you know?

Also, you're pointing out their mistakes might just interest them in hiring you. It might be criticism, but a good company should be interested in hiring people who can improve their shortcomings. You're right in that it probably depends on who actually reads the letter, but you should send it to a couple of different names/addresses at least to ensure a wider cast of the net. (I have a couple contacts probably, if you want them?)

Do you have contacts that are June specific? Because looking at their webpage, the contact info is all general DMP addresses.

Yes. I will get them from home later. Remind me if I forget. :)

D: It's worse than what you described to me! How is that even possible?

Are the rewriters/editors required to know any Japanese (as sort of a quality check on the translators)? I mean, I can understand taking liberty with the Japanese text (I've done translation before (probably very badly) and came away from the experience thinking of Japanese-to-English translation as "word art"), but those examples show that the translator was just not understanding the language at all.

Well, I was going to tell you more about it, but then we got to your house and got sidetracked by other conversations. (I actually wrote this up a while ago, but I forgot to post it until we were talking about it.)

I'm hardly the authority on the subject, but I think it's unusual for anyone other than the translator to know any Japanese. I would think, with new translators, that they would have someone more experienced check the script, but I have no idea, really. I find it difficult to believe that a person making these kind of mistakes could even pass a test to get into a company, but it may have been something like the test I took for Translation by Design, which had difficult vocabulary, but not difficult grammar...which is stupid, really, because anyone can look up vocabulary in the dictionary, but you have to have good understanding of the language to deal with difficult grammar.

What if the more experienced translator is just someone who's been with the company for a while, but is not actually up to your level. Would that person who translated the book above be able to see that his translation is wrong and admit it? Or even worse, what if they check your translation against the one above and think: "Hey, she's totally off!"

That kinda scares me now.

I guess it's possible, but I just can't believe that. I think it's more likely that either the supervising translator didn't look it over (I'm sure that June has way too many projects to have someone double-checking all of them), or didn't look at it closely.

And as for comparing my translation with the one they published, I can't think they would assume it's my translation that's wrong, because mine, well, makes more sense. Translations that are right just feel right, you know?

Ick. Ick, ick, ick. This worries me - how many of their books are like this? Are they turning out so many because they're cutting corners in the translation and adaptation department? Now, I have doubts, and I'm going to be paying far more attention to things like this...

Ignorance - sometimes, you are bliss.

I was wondering about that too, especially since

collarnojutsu mentioned that she'd had this feeling about their books before. I feel kind of bad saying this, but the credits list Melanie Schoen as the translator for Close, so at the very least, I wouldn't trust anything else done by her.

I applied for all German manga companies and made a very diligent test translation for them for a (as of then) untranslated series. I had a native speaker staying and my place during that time so I asked whenever I was unsure. I had a drop dead gorgeous translation which was spot on. I even did all the background research (it was "The Irresistible Captain Tyler), so everyone had their right rank and so I knew the back story if they were referring to it.

Of course I didn't get the job and when I got the volume and checked the translation there were such terrible mistakes in it (basically as above) that I was only shaking my head. Way to go. Of course they don't want people who can actually translate. Instead they take people who guess the content from what little they understand and what they THINK happens in the picture. Great job. I only read on translated manga now, and that translator at least does an excellent job (Meitantei Conan, currently at volume 51 in German).

Wow, that really sucks! It wouldn't surprise me if the person they hired had some inside connections with the company...somebody's cousin or nephew or whatever. I've had perfectly good translations rejected before and wondered why, too, but I guess sometimes you just don't know. :/ The projects I applied for haven't been released yet, but I definitely want to check out the final versions when they are out.

Call me a traitor to the cause of quality, but I'm more upset by the fact that they haven't released volume 2. I guess it's because I don't trust translations in general and have accepted that I will always be getting a filtered version of the original text until/unless I learn Japanese.

In light of your new project, my one-woman boycott of DQ seems unwise.

Maybe they haven't released volume two because they fired their translator and are looking for one that doesn't suck? >.>

I don't want to tell you what to do, but I personally would appreciate it if you lifted your boycott.

Oh, you finally got a job as a manga translator, congratulations! I'm currently translating Skip Beat, Kingdom Hearts and a secret project into Swedish. I've also been promised to get BL manga to translate once they decide to head down that lane. :)

As for your current post, I see you have discovered the horrible translations that more than often are found in American translated manga. I more or less stopped reading translated manga a few years ago, when the quality was going down by the volume. Most translators do a good job, I'm sure of that, but I'm convinced that the rewriting hurts the scripts a lot. Still, unadapted translations are also really painful to read (especially as a non-native english speaker) if they're too litteral.

Are you adapting your own script? If not, be careful to translate so the rewriter can't misunderstand. I remember how the translator of one of the Gravitation novels wrote the following (from memory):
The power of love is putting our newest single on top of the track list
And the rewriter changed it to:
Our newest single, "The Power of Love", is top of the track list
(Something like that, anyways, I think it's a good example of the perils of rewriting without bothering to let the translator check it afterwards)

I, and lots of other readers fluent in Japanese have tried to open the american manga reading public to this issue, and I've talked to a Japanese publisher about it, but most american readers who frequent the same places the industry representants do seem to just put their heads in the sand once the topic is breached. It's really frustrating that they have to put up with crap translations like that, because a lot of Swedish readers also chose to read in English instead of Swedish (they think manga reads cooler in English), despite the frequent translation problems...

Anyways, good luck on your translations! Waaai!

I have seen and heard lots of things about how much a script changes during a rewrite (and I agree that a too-literal script is painful), but what I find really awful (and, frankly, personally offensive) about these particular mistakes is that, to me, they don't look like they came from the rewrite, they look like they come from a translator who doesn't know what she's doing. I find it sad that any company publishing English translations would either not know or not care that their translator is a hack. (I didn't even get into how she has no grasp of sound effects and was obviously just guessing from the pictures, leading to things like "flush" being translated as "sparkle." I mean, I know sound effects are hard, but that was ridiculous.)

Anyway, fortunately at DQ, the translator gets to work closely with the rewriter, so I won't end up with my translation getting changed to something completely wrong. (I remember reading about that Gravitation thing, too.) And thanks for the congratulations. :) I can't wait until my stuff is actually published. *^_^*

P.S. Have you read Afterschool Nightmare 9 yet? PM me if you have or when you do.

How did I miss this post? Erg, it does look like the translator was misreading some of those sentences. Very very painful, especially since people are paying good money...

Yeah, stuff like this makes me really angry for the fans who are stuck reading the English versions. They shouldn't have to put up with this shit.

The stuff they're getting wrong is basic stuff, too. I usually only see scanlations as I don't bother with the official stuff, so I try not to get too upset since those are fan efforts. But when it's for money? That's a whole different ballgame. -_-

Sorry for just bumping in like this, but wow... I'm so glad I never thought of buying the English version... that's one good story down the gutter...
I had the luck to meet some of these "wonderful translators" who were speakers at my university. I had to point out their mistakes for them, and that was 3 years ago when my Japanese was even worse than it is now. *le sigh*

Oh, ouch. They were professional translators? What were they doing at your university?

And feel free to bump in anytime you like. :)

Ouch. =( Unfortunately, most people can't tell (including me). See the translation section of the review for Close the Last Door here (http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews2/manga/manga.php?manga_view=2853). "Sounds good"!

Anyway, I'm pretty upset also because Melanie Schoen is listed as the translator for A Foreign Love Affair by Yamane Ayano, which I love. I've already purchased it (and paid a ton of money for shipping, 'cause I'm living in SE Asia), but at least I like 801 Media's packaging. =) Well, this makes me even more glad I'm learning Japanese now.

I read your entry, not comments yet, and thought, as a native speaker of J, yours GOOD for publication, DMP's trash..., if I were a manga-ka of it, I'd sue the company for disgracing the work with horrible, tons of wrong translations. (＠_＠;)

It's unfortunate* that, I think, most Japanese manga-ka aren't fluent enough in English to recognize what's happening to some of their works overseas. Because this many mistakes really completely changes the reading experience. :/

*Or maybe fortunate, in the "ignorance is bliss" sense?

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