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

[falkner]

> “The Rouge Cultivator.”

You're an absolute genius.

[china_shop]

Yay for this post! I'm too tired to be entirely sensible right now, so I'll come back tomorrow with more thoughts, but I just wanted to say:

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

Black-Cloaked Envoy works okay for me in narration,[1] but once I get into dialogue, I usually want a way to distinguish between Hei Pao Shi and Hei Lao-ge that doesn't involve "bro" -- though, granted, now I come to think of it, I could probably use Lord Hei Pao Shi rather than Hei Pao Shi Daren. (Note to self!) And once I'm using Hei Lao-ge, it seems wrong to alternate that with Black-Cloaked Envoy, at least in dialogue. If you know what I mean?

Similarly, it's useful to use -ge so you can distinguish it from -xiong. I love all the nuance and inferred meaning behind the different address forms (even if I only understand a fraction of them), and translation tends to flatten.


ETA: [1] But even in narration, I find Black-Cloaked Envoy a little unwieldy. It doesn't flow in English, the way it does in Chinese, you know? Hei Pao Shi, which is in the same form as a name (at least wrt its three-characterness) becomes this clunky, hard to pronounce collection of consonant clusters: Black-cloaked. (Imagine transliterating that into Korean! 블래크 클로크드!) Which is why I keep abbreviating it to the Envoy, even though that's less accurate and inappropriately informal.

And as I said to you the other day, I keep thinking about -- *checks* yes, teaotter talking to a Chinese-translating friend about it, and saying that one possible conclusion is that Hei Pao Shi is a name, just like Batman is, and therefore shouldn't be translated. I mean, it's not like there have been a series of Envoys, all with the same title. It's not like Chief of the SID. And Batman gets transliterated, not converted to [word for bat]+[word for person/man], right? So in some ways, I'd probably prefer if it we called him Hei Pao Shi more in narration, and mostly I don't because of conventions in the fandom.

I also think that in fandom we can get away with more transliterations because we're all familiar with and share the same source material (the various versions of the subs, notwithstanding). If you were writing original fic for a general audience, and you had Hei Pao Shi as a character, there'd be a lot more implicit pressure to translate, because otherwise you'd need a glossary. But in fanfic, the reader brings a lot of tacit knowledge about/from the source to the fic, even for those of us who don't know a single character of Chinese. And using those Chinese address terms like lao- and xiao- is a useful reminder that this is a Chinese drama fandom when, in this corner of online fandom, the gravitational pull of North American norms can be mighty. :-)

Also, separate point, I'm most likely to use "my Black-Cloaked Friend" or "his younger brother" (rather than Didi) in fanfic when I'm trying to obscure my identity for the purposes of anon periods in exchanges. Heh.

[cyphomandra]

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.

I remember reading a discussion about a character in a manga (I think Atobe in Prince of Tennis, one of those fandoms I only encountered via fic) who used “ore-sama”, which was described as “thinking you were all that and a bag of chips”, which I loved as an explanation :D

If I’m reading something translated from Japanese that’s set in Japan I do like having pronouns, but I’m not sure I notice if they aren’t there, especially if it’s another setting.

[azdak]

Thinking about it, this particular issue perfectly encapsulates the difference between the "find the closest equivalent in the target language" and the "bend the target language to fit the mould of the original language" schools of translation theory. There is obviously a huge amount of cultural and emotional information conveyed by the use of honorifics and, equally obviously, English simply can't do that, so the translator is faced with a choice: do I just lose all this information for the sake of a translation that flows seamlessly, or am I willing to interrupt the flow in order to keep at least some of the information? Indeed, do I regard throwing the reader slightly off keel as a positive advantage because it opens their mind to linguistic and cultural possibilities outside the scope of the target language? I must admit that in my own fic (Nirvana in Fire fandom) I tend to come down on the side of finding the closest equivalent in English - in one, I opted for "cousin Jingyan" as the term used by close-ish relatives because (a) I don't think we ever hear anyone in canon call him any thing but Jingyan, so there isn't a pre-existing association with, say Jingyan-gege, and (b) I didn't feel up to navigating the minefield of who would have called him dage, gege, whatever the Chinese term for little brother is, and so on. It gets a bit harder where in canon a particular honorific is part of the characterisation (eg Nihuang's use of Lin Shu-gege and Fei Liu's of Su-gege), and here I would stick with not translating at all, because that particular form of address is already in the reader's ear and feels almost like a name. But what I absolutely don't want to do is scatter a sheen of minimal knowledge of Chinese honorifics over a fic in a way that makes them distract from the actual story (and would probably end being not quite right anyway. Many years ago I used to be in The Man from UNCLE fandom, and I've lost count of the number of fics I've read where "Illya Nickovetch" would be used as an affectionate mode of address, whereas in fact first name + patronymic is the equivalent of "Mr Kuryakin" in Russian. It would be so embarrassing to commit a similar error with Chinese and I simply don't know enough to be able to tell if I've got it wrong).

[marycrawford]

I know, the Lost Tomb subs drive me crazy - I SO WANT all the nicknames and it would be better not to translate them for me, especially if it means WX doesn't get called "Naive" and "Mr Third Junior". The translations are so clunky and do nothing to get the flavor - and I don't speak any Chinese but what I want is that nuance. I love hearing WX's uncle call him "Xiao Xie" and the subs don't even mention it, sigh.

I like using "Black Cloaked Envoy" because it feels like a title, but when it comes to ZYL's unique variations - well, then I'm back at "Hei Lao-ge" because I see no way to translate that and keep the flavor.

I wish English had formal you versus informal you - my own language has that, and I really miss it. It would give so much more intimacy when a character switches from one to the other...

[trobadora]

It's so difficult! I don't know what I'm doing half the time. And when I first got into Guardian fandom I was so frustrated that there seemed to be no established translation conventions for these things.

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

Yes, totally agreed! Not a clear line at all, alas - when do you start losing something? how much loss is acceptable? Hell if I know. Like, I'm totally for "Black-Cloaked Envoy", except when I'm not, and I still don't know when exactly I use Hei Pao Shi instead. Or when I go for something like "Lord Envoy" as a form of address, which doesn't even have a full equivalent in canon, but just works so well in English! Ugh.

and was somewhat horrified to find “Xiao San-ye” translated as “Mr. Third Junior.” Which is…not actually wrong, but irredeemably clunky

Right???? Also, the many times the subtitles just entirely gloss over what the characters call each other, like ever time someone says "Xiaoge" and it's subtitled as "Kylin". (Which in turn is already a transcription of his name - 起灵, Qiling, not Qilin - that I'm not sure I'm on board with ...)

Totally agreed on the sibling words, and when you get to things like "shijie" it becomes totally hopeless. "Older martial sister"? No, thanks. But it matters that that's what Wei Wuxian calls her, and shows his position in that family. (And is part of the reason, no doubt, why people don't take Jiang Yanli seriously when she claims him as her didi.)

I'm not sure even about completely (non-clunkily) translatable titles/forms of address either. I mean, in German translations we often use "Mr" etc. when something is set in the US/UK, and English texts use "Monsieur/Madame" sometimes, etc., and I don't know where to draw the line. So I go by what feels right, which may change from one day or text to the next. *g*

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

That is such a great detail in a great scene! And so difficult to translate.

Like, German has formal and informal "you", but you couldn't map those onto the Chinese pronouns, and my first instinct would be to go for something more archaic in this case (Ihr rather than Sie, maybe a mocking "Euer Gnaden"), but then you introduce another element that's not present in the original.

and I am so regretful that the author didn’t choose to call it “The Rouge Cultivator.”

OMG!!!!! :D :D :D

[umadoshi]

I have SO MANY FEELINGS about this, and not enough time right to comment properly. But. SO MANY FEELINGS. I'll try to remember to stop by again later!

[tinny]

Okay so nobody is going to be interested in this, but German has that polite address "Sie", and it's such a pain for translation. Because you need to know who addresses whom as what, and how familiar everyone is with each other. (Of course, people can get more familiar with each other over the course of a drama and change that address.)

So, on one hand, this is one more level that the German language can use to get the different addresses in Chinese across (the easiest example is 您 vs. 你 but of course there are a lot more with the -ge's and the -jie's etc).

On the other hand, the team documents for the German viki teams are full of lists like "this person addresses these persons as X" "this person addresses other persons as Y". Which is a pain.

[maggie33]

This is a fascinating post, and a fascinating discussion in the comments.

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 prefer it like that, too. I always use Black-Cloaked Envoy in my fics, although I don’t mind when writers use Hei Pao Shi. But yes, it’s a much harder decision with for instance Hei Lao-ge as china-shop mentioned above. I’ve seen people write Hei Lao-ge, but I’ve also seen Old Brother Black, or even Old Bro Black. I don’t mind that, too, but if I had to write it I would still probably use Hei Lao-ge, despite preferring Black-Cloaked Envoy to Hei Pao Shi.

Funny thing is that I prefer it in an completely opposite way in The King Eternal Monarch fanfic. Lee Gon, the king in the drama is usually called “pyeha” by the people in the palace. It means “Your majesty”. Pretty straightforward translation, but still fanfic writer usually use “pyeha” in English language fics, and I prefer it that way. I don’t know why, really. It’s just sounds nice, I guess, and I love the way my favorite character keep saying that word in the drama. 😊

And I definitely prefer to leave honorifics untranslated. I don’t want to have Brother Chu or Sister Hong instead of Chu-ge and Hong-jie. IMO it’s easy to check if you’re watching Chinese or Korean drama for the first time and don’t understand what it means. And I love to learn new things like that and pondering subtleties of translating them to other languages. And comparing how different streaming services do that.

For instance I admit that when I watch Korean dramas on Netflix I prefer to watch them with Polish subtitles, because IMO they are better than English subtitles. I watched The King Eternal Monarch on Netflix first with Polish subtitles and then with re-watched it with English subtitles out of curiosity and I think the Polish ones flowed better. Even though they just omitted honorifics a lot of times. But the English subtitles on Netflix did that, too.

I watch most of my Korean dramas on VKI, and they leave honorifics as they are, and don’t translate them to English. I’m quite well versed in Korean honorifics already, and I still learn so much with every new drama I watch on VIKI, and I love it. 😊

[solo]

Very late to this party but hey, you linked! :)

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.”

Seconded the WWX part, but for Lan Wangji, the jury in my head is still out, precisely because 'Brother' conveys his formality so well, and non-Chinese readers would pick up on that easily.

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.”

I had to deal with that when going over the subs, and I resorted to ZYL facetiously calling him 'Sir' because there was just no way... Now if I'd translated into German, and they were on the informal 'you' by that episode (which I think they would be from ep 14 onwards), he could just easily switch to the formal version. Alas, English...

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.

That's a great way to explain it!