Thoughts on translation: subtitles and fic practices

[nnozomi]

I’ve been meaning to put up something about translation, and lately I was talking with china_shop about titles in Guardian fic (titles for people, that is, not fics) and with nineveh_uk and azdak about weird subtitle translations, so I figure now is the time. Come and talk to me about problems (or solutions) with subtitles in C- or K- or J-dramas, and how you deal with, or prefer writers to deal with, similar issues in fic. (Not necessarily limited to Chinese/Korean/Japanese etc.! Anything goes.)
I think what I do in fic, and would prefer in other people’s fic and in subtitles, is to translate when I feel like it can be done without losing anything, and otherwise to romanize—Momokan to Coach Momo, Hei Pao Shi to the Black-Cloaked Envoy and so on, versus Chu-ge, Chiaki-sempai, Abe-kun, Xiao Bai (also known as Si-mei, but that’s harder, see below). (I turned on the English subtitles for the Lost Tomb thing to check a particular line, and was somewhat horrified to find “Xiao San-ye” translated as “Mr. Third Junior.” Which is…not actually wrong, but irredeemably clunky, and it’s a shame because that particular nickname/title is an amazing shorthand for Wu Xie’s local prestige/authority, his…to-be-protectedness?, and his connection to Sanshu.)

The sibling words are a headache all their own, especially in Chinese, somewhat in Korean, slightly in Japanese. Even though period/fantasy gives you some leeway, Wei Wuxian might tease Lan Wangji with “Lan-er-gege” but no one will take him seriously if he starts saying “Second Big Brother Lan”; Lan Wangji’s own register is so formal that he could probably get away with calling Lan Xichen “Brother” or “Older Brother” in English, but it still sounds a lot more natural to me for him to say “Xiongzhang.” And that’s before you get into “didi” and “da-ge” and “a-jie” and so on and so forth, and those are people who are related, more or less. Guo Changcheng is characterized in part by his tendency to call his coworkers “ge” and “jie,” but if there’s a way to do that in English, I sure don’t know it. (Even in Japanese, he would quite possibly use “sempai” but he wouldn’t use “oniisan” or “aneki” or whatever in the workplace; not a pan-Northeast-Asian thing.)

Honorific language, pronoun use, dialects. The classic thing in Guardian is in the bomb episode when Zhao Yunlan, annoyed with Shen Wei (for absolutely justifiable reasons, granted), nastily calls him the honorific 您 instead of the usual 你 second person, making Shen Wei protest “Don’t be that way.” There must be a lot of other incidences of this, probably even more in Korean and Japanese, but I can't think of any just now, ideas?

Translation into Japanese etc.—I always like seeing what people do with the pronouns. (My go-to explanation for non-Japanese speakers about the difference between the two male first-person pronouns “boku” and “ore” is “Luke Skywalker versus Han Solo,” and it usually gets through.) For readers of The Westing Game, in the scene where 17-year-old Theo is giving a semi-formal speech, he says “I’d like to explain why my partner and me…my partner and I…called this meeting,” and the Japanese translation has him say 俺、じゃなくて僕… switching from “ore,” teenage casual speech, to “boku,” more formal and polite. Brilliant. Years and years ago I read a Japanese translation of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonquest in which F’lar uses 私 in a formal meeting, 僕 to Lessa and 俺 to his dragon; hat off to translator.

(Almost completely unrelated: I saw an Untamed fic summary recently about how Nie Huaisang basically invents the fantasy-ancient-China makeup industry, and I am so regretful that the author didn’t choose to call it “The Rouge Cultivator.”)
Tell me how you think about all this! Any languages, any context.

Comments

Long comment is long

[umadoshi]

^_^

(I'm focusing entirely on things like honorifics/titles here; in terms of regular nouns and whatnot, I'm generally in favor of translating them whenever reasonably possible, but even that's very much a spectrum. Like, I would say "hot spring" instead of "onsen", sure, but do we then use "raw fish" instead of "sashimi"? Clearly not. But there's a lot of gray area between those things where we don't necessarily have a tidy corresponding word and also haven't adopted the loanword.)

So first off, I think of translation choices and fic practices (when writing fic for a canon where I don't speak the source language) as distinct things, although obviously they're very closely related and overlap heavily. One is "how can I convey what the writer wanted to say?" and the other is "how can I convey what I want to say as a writer?" To me, the former is far more complex because there's a whole extra layer of responsibility in there (to both the writer and the audience) and because there's going to be so much nuance and potential for playfulness the language use that there just won't be in anything I write myself in English.

Like, as a fic writer I make similar choices to the ones I would in working on a subtitle script, because I personally believe that a lot of honorifics just don't translate well/smoothly, but I'm also not going to be trying to do anything especially subtle with the Chinese or Japanese nuances in my own fic.

(I hope this all makes sense--I have time to write a comment now, but am not quite awake yet!)

In terms of translation, this is all something I wrestle with professionally as a manga rewriter. (Emphasis on NOT A TRANSLATOR; I don't speak Japanese, which on the one hand sucks, but on the other hand means I'm very much approaching my own work with an eye to how it'll read to an English-speaking audience, while doing all I can to retain nuance [I ask the translators a lot of questions].) Since I've worked for multiple publishers and their various house style guides are very different, I have a lot of hands-on experience with both approaches to honorifics--some publishers always retain them (in series that are actually set in Japan) and others only keep them if they're "necessary" (which is a call made by the editorial department).

And coming from that perspective, my personal feeling both on the creative side and the audience side is that I generally have an extremely strong preference for retaining things like honorifics from the source language. Often the basic everyday honorifics/titles can be approximated in English, or dropped entirely (as in stories set in high schools, where it reads much more naturally in English to drop the students' use of "-san" or "-kun" etc. entirely rather than try to turn it into them addressing each other as "Miss [x]"...but as soon as you get into any kind of playfulness or characters changing how they address each other, which happens ALL THE TIME in manga, at least, your nuance is out the window, because English rarely happens to conveniently have anything natural-sounding that corresponds to the specific change.

Without going into specific examples, I can say that, when house style dictates not generally retaining honorifics, I've dealt with situations where:

a) characters switch how they address each other late in the story in ways that can't just be reflected by tweaking the form of address in the English version, resulting in a fairly significant change from the literal meaning of their original dialogue (in just a couple of scenes, fortunately) in order to convey the emotional shift and what the change actually reflects about their relationships

and/or b) characters use cutesy or clever variations on everyday honorifics to indicate playfulness or subtle roleplay or any manner of things and we wind up retaining those specific honorifics and footnoting them even though the overall dialogue doesn't have the everyday ones at all, because there HAS to be something there in the English.

(IMO, manga is a pretty extreme example for this sort of discussion, but for reasons that are relevant to any episodic source material. If someone's translating a standalone novel, they can read the entire thing first and see where potential pitfalls or tricky bits are and do the work with that in mind all along; if you know that characters are going to make significant changes to how they address each other, you can make all your decisions in advance. But that's frequently impossible in episodic stories, and retaining at least a reasonable set of honorifics/titles/etc. makes it much less likely that you'll have to do damage control partway through when it's too late to go back and change what you did in the first half.)

(And then there're other similar challenges, like when a character refers to themselves in third person in Japanese, which happens a lot in manga. Is it going to "mean something" later? Is there a rhyme or reason to when they suddenly drop in and out of it and use first person? Is there, heaven forbid, a multi-page conversation in your final volume where a character is asked and then explains WHY they use third person, and God help you if you switched that character to speaking in first person all along? Because there's almost always going to be SOMETHING. But is there any way for a character to refer to themselves in third person that sounds at all natural in English? Nope.

For myself, I will absolutely keep the stilted feel of that third-person speech in English in order to hang onto the significance of it fluctuating and to avoid needing to massively tweak major emotional scenes to work around our own translation choices. But it's frustrating, because there's that constant reminder to the reader that they're ~reading a translation~, when my job is literally to make things read so naturally in English that you can almost forget it's not the original version.)

Re: Long comment is long

[nnozomi]

Long comment is much appreciated! :)

One is "how can I convey what the writer wanted to say?" and the other is "how can I convey what I want to say as a writer?" To me, the former is far more complex because there's a whole extra layer of responsibility in there (to both the writer and the audience) and because there's going to be so much nuance and potential for playfulness the language use that there just won't be in anything I write myself in English.
Yes, that makes sense to me as a translator (although most of my professional work is a lot more boring ;)). I've only once or twice written fic in English for Japanese canons, where theoretically I could know what they would be saying in Japanese, if that makes sense, and it's kind of a balancing act between "what flows naturally in English" and "what would not be outside the bounds of possibility in Japanese."

Often the basic everyday honorifics/titles can be approximated in English, or dropped entirely (as in stories set in high schools, where it reads much more naturally in English to drop the students' use of "-san" or "-kun" etc. entirely rather than try to turn it into them addressing each other as "Miss [x]"...but as soon as you get into any kind of playfulness or characters changing how they address each other, which happens ALL THE TIME in manga, at least, your nuance is out the window
"-san" "-kun" are so simple and such a nightmare for the translator :) I never thought about dealing with changes over a long-running manga etc., but yeah, that does suggest that sticking relatively close to the original forms would be safer whenever possible, oh dear.

there's that constant reminder to the reader that they're ~reading a translation~, when my job is literally to make things read so naturally in English that you can almost forget it's not the original version.)
I suppose one way to think of it is kind of as a dialect of English, so that the English of the translated manga is not necessarily exactly the same as that of something originally written in English for English-language readers, but is still readable and engaging English with its own slightly different conventions...

We could probably swap examples of this for ever, and they're all interesting. For a long time I've been messing around with a translation of some diaries and letters from the 1920s, for which I would really need to read a lot more actual original-English texts from that era so that I can get the voice right in English as well as translating the content accurately, for instance. So much going on.

Re: Long comment is long

[china_shop]

I suppose one way to think of it is kind of as a dialect of English, so that the English of the translated manga is not necessarily exactly the same as that of something originally written in English for English-language readers, but is still readable and engaging English with its own slightly different conventions...

Oh, I love that idea (though I'm mentally applying it to fanfic, rather than manga)! Plus it makes me feel better about the fact that some of my dialogue reads like subtitles. ;-)

Re: Long comment is long

[trobadora]

I suppose one way to think of it is kind of as a dialect of English, so that the English of the translated manga is not necessarily exactly the same as that of something originally written in English for English-language readers, but is still readable and engaging English with its own slightly different conventions...

Yes! I like this way of thinking of it.

Thinking out loud at you

[umadoshi]

(*g* I would like to belatedly say, for the record, that the "character is directly asked why they use third person for themself in the final volume and OOPS that had been changed" is an actual thing that happened to me, and in possibly the greatest stroke of luck I've ever had as an adapter, I'd done a quirky thing earlier on that let me salvage it. But my blood FROZE when I first read that translation. O_O)

I've only once or twice written fic in English for Japanese canons, where theoretically I could know what they would be saying in Japanese, if that makes sense, and it's kind of a balancing act between "what flows naturally in English" and "what would not be outside the bounds of possibility in Japanese."

That makes total sense! A lot of my fic has been for Japanese canons, and as you know, I don't speak Japanese, so my approach in that situation has been "avoid doing anything I know would violate the reasonable possibilities of Japanese" (with my extremely limited knowledge) and otherwise go with "if this character were a native English speaker instead of a native Japanese speaker, how would they express the emotional core of what they're trying to convey?"

I never thought about dealing with changes over a long-running manga etc., but yeah, that does suggest that sticking relatively close to the original forms would be safer whenever possible, oh dear.

It happens a LOT, and I find it frustrating that when the "should we keep honorifics in manga???" debate inevitably cycles around, it rarely if ever gets mentioned as a consideration. (I've been wanting for years to write a proper lengthy post laying out why I believe in keeping them, but: anxiety. Especially since I know a lot of industry folks disagree just as strongly.)

Years ago I was reading a shoujo romance series (no recollection of what; not something I worked on) and one of the sidebar creator notes talked about the manga-ka realizing that honorifics often got taken out and saying they'd asked their editor what would happen when the English version of the series reached the point where the leads switched up what they called each other, and the editor was like "I guess they'll make up a nickname and substitute that."

I suppose one way to think of it is kind of as a dialect of English

Ooh! Hmm. I'll give that some thought. ^_^

for which I would really need to read a lot more actual original-English texts from that era so that I can get the voice right in English

I always wonder about this sort of thing! (And dread the thought of ever being asked to do some sort of period-typical voice in any of my scripts, because I think I'd suck at it.) I absolutely think that's a valid approach, but OTOH, I always think "but English documents from that time are written in their own modern vernacular, and read as dated to us because we know how the language has changed". Matching the general writing style etc. from the time between languages feels a bit like...artificially making it sound old-fashioned when it would've sounded perfectly modern to its original readers? And part of me would rather have it sound as fresh as it would have originally.* Like, if teenage girl's diary is written in the style of her youth but that gives readers the feeling that they're reading something by an old maiden aunt because that's who a reader associates that style of writing with...yeah. I'm rambling. (And still tired.)

Anyway, despite how this may sound, this isn't something I feel strongly about in the sense of "THIS is how I would do it"; I honestly don't know what I'd prefer as a reader, and I'm quite sure that the careful voice-matching you're describing is a daunting, subtle art that impresses the hell out of me. It's just that I feel like there's no way not to lose something either way, and that makes me sad, or at least wistful. (Sorry for the thinking-out-loud at you here. I'll probably look back at this tomorrow and want to carefully rephrase half of it. >.< Because, again, anxiety.)

*Although I wouldn't include any blatantly modern slang--I mean, not in the sense of date-checking every word to see when it came into use, but so often you can get a sense of when a word is likely to only be in use for a few years at most. I try hard to avoid that sort of thing in my modern-day manga series, too, because I don't want someone picking a volume up in ten years and being able to date when I did the rewrite at a glance.

Re: Thinking out loud at you

[nnozomi]

my blood FROZE when I first read that translation.
oh dear, I can imagine that feeling. NOBODY SAID THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN ;)

I've been wanting for years to write a proper lengthy post laying out why I believe in keeping them, but: anxiety
I'll definitely keep an eye out if you ever feel like doing so.

I suppose one way to think of it is kind of as a dialect of English
>Ooh! Hmm. I'll give that some thought. ^_^
It occurred to me after the fact that this sounds like me telling you what to think about your job, which obviously you don't need me doing; apologies! It's one thing I tell myself...

I always think "but English documents from that time are written in their own modern vernacular, and read as dated to us because we know how the language has changed". Matching the general writing style etc. from the time between languages feels a bit like...artificially making it sound old-fashioned when it would've sounded perfectly modern to its original readers? And part of me would rather have it sound as fresh as it would have originally.*
This is a really great comment, including the parts I didn't quote, and I have very mixed feelings about it--we could have a whole thread, and possibly a whole book or two, on this point alone. In this particular case the letters are super grounded in a particular place and time and sociopolitical milieu, and in some ways I feel like clearly modern touches would detract from the effect of Yuriko's (the writer's) left-wing-inflected travelogue of 1929 London. (For instance.) On the other hand I'm not moved to scrutinize them word-for-word to make SURE there's nothing there that isn't precisely period, as long as the general sense is right. I think this is also period- and style-dependent in a way; I'm a little bit obsessed with English-language diaries etc. of roughly this period (1930s-1940s), and while there are stylistic quirks and phrasings that are obviously not 21st-century, there mostly isn't such an "old-fashioned" divide that it's distracting. Something from an older period, or absolutely laden with slang of a given moment (new or old), etc., would want a different treatment again.
As you say, anyway, I'm just thinking out loud at you here, and basically I don't think there's any one right answer for any of this, as long as the final result reads well. Please come talk to me about this kind of thing any time, I love it!

Re: Thinking out loud at you

[umadoshi]

It occurred to me after the fact that this sounds like me telling you what to think about your job, which obviously you don't need me doing; apologies!

That literally did not cross my mind. ^_^

basically I don't think there's any one right answer for any of this, as long as the final result reads well.

Indeed. And it sounds like a really cool project!

Re: Thinking out loud at you

[nnozomi]

♡
They are very cool letters! I'll post some excerpts some time.