Translation Style Choices: Difference between revisions
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So, there are basically five ways translators go about their work (and three in which they hopefully don't):
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{{examples}}
== Cut and Paste Translation ==
* Just about any anime dubbed by [[4Kids! Entertainment]]. This still leaves out stuff like ''[[Funky Cops]]'' and the more recent ''[[Dinosaur King]]'', both which are perfectly faithful to the original.
* ''[[Robotech]]'', the original anime example.
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* Every dub of the original ''[[Science Ninja Team Gatchaman]]'' series (with the exception of the ADV dub), including ''[[Battle of the Planets]]'', ''G-Force: Guardians of Space'', and Saban's ''Eagle Riders''.
== Streamlined ==
▲'''1.5'''. [[Streamlined]]: Somewhere between [[Cut and Paste Translation]] and [[Woolseyism]]. With [[Streamlined]] dubs, the plot is usually kept intact, although almost all dialogue is thrown out the window and replaced. [[Akira|Sometimes]], this works [[Woolseyism|quite well.]] [[Streamline Pictures]], the [[Trope Namer]], and Manga UK were very famous for this style of dubbing.
* ''[[MD Geist]]''
* ''[[Genocyber]]''
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* ''[[Dead Leaves]]'' is either this or the single greatest Woolseyism ever.
== Woolseyism ==
▲'''2'''. [[Woolseyism]]: Named on TVTropes after Ted Woolsey, who was known for his more pragmatic translations of games. This approach is formally referred to as ''dynamic equivalence''; the general idea is that the translation should give the foreign audience the same experience as the original, even if some details have to be altered and some aspects that would [[Values Dissonance|cause]] [[Unfortunate Implications|controversy]] or fail to translate sensibly just have to be left out. The general guideline when using this method is that the work needs to be self-contained; if the script contains references or connotations that wouldn't be obvious to the target audience, those elements should probably be left out or changed. It's probably the best tool for a ''localization'': the purists get their original storyline intact (more or less), but you don't need an introductory lesson in a foreign language and culture to understand what's going on. Of course, the ''hardcore'' purists will still hate it. But when you get right down to it, [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|the hardcore purists hate everything]]—they should probably stick to the original language of the production in question.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]''
* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]''
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* Most games translated by Working Designs, particularly the ''[[Lunar]]'' series.
* Most translations of ''[[Discworld]]'' novels. The first edition of ''The Discworld Companion'' has a piece about the Dutch translator, trying to figure out the Dutch equivalent of comparing Granny's [[Flying Broomstick]] to "[[The Alleged Car|a split-window Morris Minor]]".
▲'''3'''. Formal equivalence: Some productions, however, decide they're going the direct route. The story is getting straight-up translated, [[Values Dissonance]] be damned, and no pesky [[First-Name Basis|honorific changes]], [[Kansai Regional Accent|dialect jokes]], or [[Useful Notes/Japanese Culture|cultural variations]] are going to get in the way. This is the most ''literal'' of the methods, typically translating only dialogue and [[Too Long; Didn't Dub|leaving anything that doesn't directly translate fully intact]]. The downside to this is that a lot of the necessary elements for full understanding don't make the journey overseas with the dialogue; as a result, J. Random Viewer (lacking proper context) is left scratching his head, as some lines will [[Dub-Induced Plot Hole|sound strange]] or seem to come out of nowhere. In the worst cases, some figures of speech may be translated literally, instead of going with an equivalent from the vernacular language or simply translating the meaning. The hardcore purists will probably hate it, too; they'll just use it as another example of "[[Subbing Versus Dubbing|how dubbing is the devil's work]]," for instance.
== Formal Equivalence ==
* ''[[Bleach]]'' is particularly [[Egregious]]. Only three recurring terms in the dub were translated: [[The Grim Reaper|shinigami]] (to Soul Reaper, likely to distance itself from the western conception of the idea); the Gotei 13 (to the 13 Court Guard Squads); and "[[Mana|reiatsu]]" (to "spiritual energy" or "spiritual pressure"). Everything else—shikai and bankai, [[Empathic Weapon|zanpakuto]], spell names and incantations, even wordplay gags about the proper usage of one's first name and philosophical metaphors regarding old parables—was left pretty much completely intact.
** "Soul Reaper" is creator Tite Kubo's preferred translation of shinigami. It even appears on some Japanese ''Bleach'' merchandise.
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* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' hovers along the sliding scale here; the anime drifted more toward Woolseyism, while the otherwise appreciated fan translation by Mirror Moon erred on the side of a [[Blind Idiot Translation]].
** For one example, Mirror Moon often literally translates the expression, "the time the date changes", which Western viewers would understand clearer as simply "midnight".
* Pretty much most, if not all, non-English versions of the ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' series was rooted into this. Tolkien was a [[Onmiglot|polyglot]], and so he himself provided translated names for places, characters, artifacts and so on.
▲'''3A'''. The same, but with footnotes, liner notes, or captions to explain the details. Widely used by fansubbers of anime. [[Don't Explain the Joke|Explaining a joke may make it not be very funny]], but some cultural references work a lot better this way:
== Formal Equivalence with Explanations ==
* The Finnish translation of the ''[[Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin]]'' manga uses footnotes for the translations of the different [[Special Attack|Battougas]]. They are seldom used otherwise.
* Done with the translation of ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' in the anime, though the notes were deleted from the collected edition [[wikipedia:Price discrimination|to encourage fans with more money to buy the more expensive one.]]
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* Common with notes on the top of the screen among [[Fan Translation|fansubs]].
* Towards the end of its individual novel run, ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]'' had 'Translator Notes' in the back to help explain a few things; they did admit to dipping into method 2 for a couple of very language-dependent jokes. Note that the anime actually kept the jokes as is, for the most part. ''Yotsuba&'' seems to be adding the comments in the gutters between frames in the manga.
* Del Rey Manga seems to go this route often, including translation notes (including two pages on name suffixes like "-san" and "-kun") in ''[[Negima]]'', ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' and ''[[
** Too bad the people who adapted the dialogue for the first few volumes of Negima [[Gag Dub|didn't get the memo]]...
* The fansub of ''[[Pani Poni Dash!]]'', a [[Widget Series]] with so many in-jokes you have to freeze-frame to get all of them, had a PDF file accompany each episode explaining the references. These files often ran to ''a page a minute'': over 20 pages for a 22-minute episode.
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** Also done in the Brazilian edition of ''[[Bleach]]'' with the Zanpakutou of the Espadas when they perform the Ressurrección - even though they came in Spanish names, which would be easy enough to understand, the translating team always appends the meaning of the kanji provided by Tite Kubo for the name (for example, Ulquiorra's would be "Murciélago, Great Demon with Black Wings").
* ''[[Lucky Star]]'' technically falls under this one due to its American release. Considering the abundance of many of the anime and cultural references, Bandai Entertainment had the foresight to include a 4 page pamphlet of liner notes for any particular volume. While some of the references are incredibly obvious and don't need mentioning (they do it anyway), they go so far as to include things that can only be noticed when watching the show with the Japanese language track, even if the dub had used language in such a way that none of the original context was lost.
** They're "incredibly obvious" ''to anime fans''. For everyone else, they're [[Just a Face and a Caption]], and thus need explaining.
** Bandai's translation of the manga is the same way.
*** And the first two volumes were a pain to read for anyone who cares about English sentence structure and grammar. Whoever was supposed to be doing the translating (i.e. the anime's translator) wasn't doing a particularly good job, even with the notes at the end, making it almost impossible to know what the joke was supposed to be. The third volume had much better English, and probably because the translator was replaced according to the credits at the end of the three volumes.
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* The legal translation of ''[[RIN-NE]]'' is this out of necessity, as it is being translated and put online a very short time after the Japanese publication. They don't have enough time to even replace visual sound effects, so everything is explained in the margins, and what can't be there is explain on the section of the translators' blog noted.
* The English version of ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei]]'' (manga) features several pages of notes at the back of the volume, and even with that they make a point of saying that there are so many references and details, they don't have enough room to explain them all.
▲'''4'''. [[Blind Idiot Translation]]: What happens when the people responsible for the translation [[They Just Didn't Care|just don't care]]. Grammar rules will be violated and homonyms may have the wrong meaning translated. Fortunately, the vast, vast majority of serious commercial releases rarely fall into this category, but there are a depressing number of 1980s video games that were translated in this manner. And let's not even [[Translation Train Wreck|get started on]] [[Blind Idiot Translation|bootlegs]]...
== Blind Idiot Translation ==
* ''[[Zero Wing]]'' cannot be forgotten to be mention.
* The original translation of ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' [[Memetic Mutation|are sick!]]
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* The English subs on the Hong Kong DVDs of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]] Duel Monsters'' (which are apparently the only subs you can find) are ''infamous'' for this.
* SNK were imfamous for this.
▲'''5'''. [[Recursive Translation]]: The exclusive domain of Hong Kong bootleggers. Want to translate something but don't know any English? Translate it into your language and Babelfish it into English! Better yet, if you don't even know the language you're translating it ''from'', you can Babelfish it into your language and then Babelfish ''that'' translation into English! Now you too can translate anything from any language into any other language without understanding either!
== Recursive Translation ==
* Every single Hong Kong bootleg DVD that doesn't just rip the R1 subtitle track or download an existing fansub script off the Internet.
** [[Memetic Mutation|Do not want]]
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