For Manga and Anime in particular:
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Removal of honorifics which convey a person’s status which can ba explained in a translators notes page or a quick look at Wikipedia
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Giving people with different dialects from standard Tokyo dialect different English accents like southern americanese or Scottish. They’re Japanese, not Scottish or american
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Using american English
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Using american slang which no one outside of america understands
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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
The United States had an official estimated resident population of 335,893,238 on Jan 1, 2024,
The population of the United Kingdom was estimated at 67,596,281 in 2022.
Sauce: Wikipedia
Have you ever seen the movie “Idiocracy”
america does have a higher population of idiots who think trump is jesus and that democrats have space lazers and weather altering technology
What does this have to do with translation? I love bashing the US as much as the next guy (after all, so does everyone else in the US when they aren’t being hypernationalist 🙃) but we’re talking about subtitle translation, not conspiracy theorists. From a population perspective, there are more people watching who speak American English. If localization only has the resources to target one dialect, that’s probably the one they’ll go for. Fan-subs are another story (and are usually better anyway)
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.
american English is improper English
Here’s that video with Jeremy Clarkson that’s shows some of the issues with american English
american English is improper English
“Improper” on which grounds?
You do realise that language variation is normal and expected, and it doesn’t make any of the underlying varieties intrinsically “better” or “worse” than the others, right?
Here’s that video with Jeremy Clarkson that’s shows some of the issues with american English
>My source is a 1min comedy video taking the piss out of vocab differences
You are being a bloody muppet. And given that it is not the first time, I won’t waste my time further with you, go lick a cactus.
When they get pissed off because the publishers/authors decide not to work with them because they want their works to be translated as close to the original while still making sense, so they decide to rant about how it’s unfair for themselves to be laid off for ruining works and calling people Nazi’s on extwitter for criticizing their bad translations.
when the subtitle does not match the same language translated voice line
censorship / changing the original meaning to fit the translators personal agenda
And then getting mad if the publishers of a book/comic/whatever get fed up with it that they decide to replace you for poor quality translations, with human reviewed AI translations no less.
These were the best I can find right now on short notice.
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.
I have seen several shows that combined both honorifics and localization e.g. Prinzessin Beispiel-sama (princess example-sama).
Sure if the translation is targeted to folks that would also watch Ghibli (because those audiences can range between casual to hardcore) but I like the hybrid approach.
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.
This is a good sentiment for general writing.
(also, at least on-line, if you notice later that you messed up, then fix it!)
