Translation Convention: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

When a group of people whose native language is not English are together, away from any English speakers, the audience may nonetheless hear them speaking perfect English.

{{examples}}

== Played straight ==

* The world(s) of ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' can be seen as highly multilingual, though the language preferred by the protagonists is most likely Chinese:

** The ''Bebop'' can frequently be seen anchoring in a Martian Chinatown.

* The manga for [[Mahou Sensei Negima]] provided an elegant solution to the problem of how to imply to the reader that some characters were speaking in English while others were speaking in Japanese. Japanese dialogue was written as normal but English dialogue was written backwards, that is, left to right - as one would expect to see English written. The English Translations provided their own solution by putting the words that are spoken in English (as opposed to being translated to it) in a different font.

** This was also done in ''[[Love Hina]]''.

** Not to mention the United States soldiers speaking to one another in Japanese when no other Japanese characters are present.

* The ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' series has a bizarre partial application of this trope. Humans and familiars always speak Japanese, but their [[Empathic Weapon|Devices]] speak either English or German depending on whether they are Mid-Childa or Belkan. This results in a number of conversations where one side is Engrish and the other Japanese.

* In ''[[Hikaru no Go]]'', when the show cuts to scenes of Go players in France, America, China, etc. talking among themselves, one can assume they are speaking their native languages, although the dialogue continues to be in Japanese.

* In ''[[Thermae Romae]]'' it is obvious that Lucius, the emperor Hadrian and the other Romans would talk to each other in Latin, and would know no Japanese, but they speak in Japanese for the benefit of the anime's audience.

 

=== Comic Books ===

* Editors can sometime get confused about what constitues Translation Convention. In the first post-[[The New 52]] issue of ''[[Blue Beetle]],'' a conversation has an asterisked note saying, "Translated from the Spanglish." Except, it's ''not'' translated from the Spanglish: "Lo siento, mijo, pero there's no way I'm letting you go to la casa de amparo cardenas!" There's no translation in effect here!

 

* In [[The Teraverse]] tale ''[https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-32283/ Over The Line]'', much of the plot involves a police investigation. Most of the first half of the story is narrated by the lead detective, and, as is slowly revealed, the story is taking place in Mexico and therefore in Spanish (''including'' all the dialogue) with Translation Convention in effect. Eventually, the young lady being interrogated, {{spoiler|Teraverse superheroine Sister Marie,}} gives up on her own high-school Spanish and initiates a [[Switch to English]], and at the same time, explicitly declares her American citizenship and requests an advocate from the United States government.

 

=== Film ===

* ''Judgement at Nuremburg'' features Maximilian Schell's defense attorney speaking German for the first few sentences of his opening statement, then waiting for his words to be translated before continuing. When he gets to a more dramatic part of his speech, the camera abruptly zooms in on his face and we hear him speaking English, which he and other German characters continue to speak for the rest of the film. There aren't even any more pauses for translation, though we can assume they are happening in the "real" version of events.

* [[Lampshaded]] in the 1983 [[Mel Brooks]] version of ''To Be or Not To Be''. The actors speak mangled Polish with cartoonishly exaggerated accents, until the announcement, "In the interest of clarity and sanity, the rest of this movie will not be in Polish."

** Conversations between Aragorn and Arwen switch between English and subtitled Sindarin, as they apparently switch between the two.

*** [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] in that some versions have gone out with subtitles missing. The dialogue was so well known, and people enjoyed hearing Elvish so much that ''no one complained'' -- [[Lowest Common Denominator|even on Youtube]].

* In ''[[Moonstruck]]'', many scenes begin with a few sentences in Italian before switching to English. This is presumably intended to indicate when the characters are actually speaking Italian.

* ''Plein soleil'' (or ''Purple Noon'', a French/Italian version of ''[[The Talented Mr. Ripley]]'') inverts this—Tom Ripley and Philippe Greanleaf speak French to each other, when Ripley, at least, would surely be far more comfortable with English. It's not clear whether this French dialog represents the English they're actually speaking to each other, or whether these two Americans are speaking French.

* The Scandinavian ''Arn'' films uses a variant of this where English represents most languages aside from Swedish (the native language of the central characters) and Norwegian. Throughout the film English represents Arabic, Latin and French, to mention a few. Often an initial line or two is spoken in the intended language, and then they switch to English.

* Avoided in ''The Red Violin'': all of the dialogue is shot in the language appropriate to the place and subtitled as necessary (for example, the scene in Italy is filmed in Italian and subtitled for English audiences but not for Italian ones). Settings include Cremona, Vienna, Oxford, Shanghai, Montreal, and France.

* ''[[Ip Man]]'' was originally in Cantonese, with the Foshaners speaking Cantonese while Jin's Northerner troupe speaks Mandarin instead of a true northern Chinese dialect. In the Mandarin dub, both the Foshaners and the Northerners speak Mandarin. However, the Japanese characters still speak in Japanese with subtitles.

* ''[[Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country]]'' uses a technique similar to ''Red October'' in places. In the trial scene, General Chang begins his arguments in Klingon, and then it cuts to Klingon translators rendering it into English, and then cuts back to Chang continuing in English. After one question, he demands that Kirk answer before waiting for the translation. Another scene of the Klingons conferring also has Chang switch to English midway through.

 

=== Literature ===

** He even does this with place-names. He wanted some place-names to have names that seemed homey, familiar (because they were in the language of the Hobbits, the viewpoint characters) and others to have mysterious-sounding names, because they were in languages unrelated to Westron (like the Elven or Dwarven languages or the [[Black Speech]]). If he'd left the place-names untranslated, they all would have sounded equally foreign to English readers--"Karningul" is no more homey than "Imladris". So he translated the Westron place-names into English-derived equivalents, e.g. rendering "Karningul" as "Rivendell".

* In James Clavell's [[Asian Saga]] novel ''Shogun'', the narrative makes clear that the characters are speaking in various languages—mostly Portuguese, but also Japanese, Spanish, and Latin—but all the dialogue is rendered in English. In the TV miniseries ''[[Shogun]]'', all the dialogue which is “really�� taking place in Portuguese is rendered in modern English. In moments of intimacy, the two main characters speak in Latin; this is rendered in ''[[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe|archaic]]'' English, recognisable by the use of singular second-person pronouns (thou) and the "eth" ending.

**** It is, in fact, a frequently recurring joke in the Discworld books that the languages are basically schoolboy-pidgin versions of their real-world counterparts. Pidgin Latin the most frequently seen. Pratchett uses approximations of the languages that are ''almost'' Latin, or Arabic, or French, but with [[Blind Idiot Translation]] in effect so we get the jokes in the other languages.

** In ''Pyramids'', there's a footnote to the effect that Ptaclusp's concern that his accidentally two-dimensional son will spend the rest of his life "sleeping cheaply in hotel trouser-presses" is a rather loose translation, as Ptaclusp's language doesn't even have words for "hotel" or "trousers". It does, oddly, have a word for "press for barbarian leg-coverings".

*** This is because the books, while in third person, are told from Harry's point of view. Harry couldn't tell the difference between Parseltongue and English, thus neither can we. This can be seen easily in a scene later in the book where Harry is trying to speak Parseltongue to open the Chamber of Secrets, but since he doesn't know when he's speaking Parseltongue, it takes him a few tries. Every try, including the successful one, is written as "open" in English in the book. The movie doesn't have this because the movie is completely third person, and is not connected to Harry. Also, when Harry tells a snake "Get away from him!", all observers hear it as hissing and spitting.

** Also, despite the wizarding world's centuries-long separation from the magical world, they don't speak English any different to Muggles.

*** Well why would they? It's not like they live on a different planet.

*** They do have a steady supply of Muggleborn students, so they are probably able to retain modern English through them.

* In [[L. Ron Hubbard]]'s book ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'', the book has a "translator's note" that it is printed in English because of the "unavailability of proper Psychlo fonts".

* ''[[The Culture|The Player of Games]]'' by Iain M. Banks has a rather long translation note on the proper rendering of the pronouns for a race that has three genders. Saying that Marain (the language of the protagonist) has one pronoun for males, females, sexless creatures, robots, and anything else, but saying the pronoun for the third gender will be translated as whatever is most appropriate in your primitive language.

* Most definitely in use in the [[Dragaera]] series. [[Lampshaded]] [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|many times in the]] ''Khaavren Romances'', the beginning of each novel contains a translator's note apologising for using "he", "him" and "his" in place of ''gya'', and states that the alternative was a lot of "he-or-she" constructs throughout the novels. A short piece near the end of the volumes consists of a conversation between Steven Brust and Paarfi of Roundwood <ref>The notional author of the Khaavren Romances</ref> in which Paarfi lambasts and berates Brust for this and other [[Executive Meddling|changes]], including the title.

* [[Rudyard Kipling]] makes an interesting use of different styles of English to represent several languages, particularly noticeable in the novel ''Kim''. Here characters who speak Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Tibetan or Pashtu as their native language will often be shown speaking English brokenly and with a bit of a [[Funetik Aksent]], but when they switch to accent-free English the reader can tell they are actually speaking in the language they are accustomed to most. There are also a few other tell-tale signs, for instance Hindi-rendered-as-English will appear a little more archaic, most notably for including "thou" and "thee" as well as "you" in order to reproduce the distinction between formal and informal address that most languages other than English have. Also, sometimes there are slight changes in vocabulary, e. g. certain special words are replaced by non-English equivalents and near-equivalents ("pultoon" for "regiment", "topkhana" for "artillery") or even by an English synonym (for instance, Kim overhears a British officer saying "this is not a war, it is a punishment" in English, and later reports that in Urdu or Hindi as "this is not a war, it is a chastisement"). And there are also instances where Kipling renders something in English, but also remarks that in the "vernacular" the statement includes a pun that is not present in the English translation.

* A book about Asian-American emigrants, and the oft-resulting culture gap between parents who grew up in the old country and children who grew up here has the main characters spoke Chinese, though it was rendered in English... but since it's about assimilating into American culture, it's inevitable that some of them would start speaking ''actual'' English. When they do, it's entirely in italics.

* In [[Nation]], all the characters' dialogue is written in English, however it is made clear from characters' mutual incomprehension that they are speaking different languages.

* Applies to all the ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' books. Of particular note, in the book ''Sword of the Samurai'', the reader plays a samurai from Hachiman, and all the dialogue is rendered in English. In the later ''The Crimson Tide'', you play an orphaned farm child in the Isles of the Dawn. Again, all dialogue is represented in English - until you meet a group of samurai guarding the Hachiman ambassador, and are completely unable to understand what they are saying.

* T.E. Lawrence's memoir ''Revolt in the Desert'' has an interesting aversion of this. When transcribing spoken Arabic in English, as is explained in the "Publisher's Notes", the author refused to settle on a single English spelling for certain Arabic proper names. He made the point that one language does not completely translate into another, and therefore, in his opinion, any vaguely-phonetic transcription was therefore correct. There are cases where the same character's (or, in one case, a camel's) name may be spelled in as many as four different ways.

 

=== Live Action TV ===

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': In the "Summit"/"Last Stand" two-parter, the seven remaining System Lords meet to decide the fate of the beleaguered Goa'uld Empire {{spoiler|and whether to allow Anubis to rejoin their ranks}}, and the viewers hear them speaking English. However, Daniel Jackson was inserted into the meeting by the Tok'ra, and early in "Summit" Jacob Carter said that the person to be inserted had to speak fluent Goa'uld (which Daniel does). The implication is that there's a translation convention in effect for the duration of the meeting, and possibly other instances where [[Aliens Speaking English|the Goa'uld speak English to each other and their troops]].

** In "Serpent's Venom," we hear Apophis and Heru-Ur talking to each other in English when the POV is ''in the room with them.'' When we go back to the cloaked ship from which our heroes are working sabotage, they and we hear it over the radio in Goa'uld. This ''really'' seems to suggest Translation Convention is at work.

 

=== Music ===

** Then again, Greek was actually the ''lingua franca'' of Ancient Rome itself, as most of the immigrants, travellers, merchants etc. already knew it, but they wouldn't have known Latin.

 

* In ''[[Aeon Natum Engel]]'', it's established that the official written language is the reformed-english, but we otherwise see anything that is written (computers screen's, Rei's notes) as normal english. Also the Migou conversations are translated for our benefit. Almost everything else is untranslated, from German to R'lyan. Most evident in chapter 15b, where Loyalist Nazzadi are speaking in their native language.

** In the rewrite/sequel/wahtever ''[[Aeon Entelechy Evangelion]]'' the use of untranslated nazzadi language is increased, but thankfully it can be understood from context.

 

=== Film ===