Translation diffrences

I usually watch whichever sub that comes out first and than to keep on my comp i download AA when it comes out. now i have issues id like to point out. First of all the Shin otaku translation was very VERY different from the AA one. I do believe Shin otaku was a poorer translation cuz AA's translation made a hell of alot more sense.

And that brings me to my question. Can anybody who knows japanese explain why oh why are translations so different? Is japanese a fucked up language or are people just plain dumb and don't know how to translate? Maybe its cuz a simple "oh" can mean fifty things?

It's not a matter of knowing Japanese.
It's a matter of not knowing Japanese...
[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

While I don't speak Japanese (and am thus outside of the scope of people you've asked to answer this question), I'll try my best anyway [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img].

There's a couple explanations for this whole phenomenon. I'll explain a couple of them as I understand them, and hopefully they'll satisfy you too.

1: Cultural Incompatibility. When we say "don't have a cow" in English, it means "don't get excited" - it's an idiom. If we were to carry this to another culture, which doesn't have the same idiom we do, they'd be like "what the hell are you talking about." Japanese, like most languages, is fairly idiom-heavy, so without understanding Japanese culture in great depth, and American (or other English-speaking country) culture in equally great depth, it's very difficult to carry the meanings from one to another. The way the translator does this is very veriable. Which leads us to the next reason:

2: Ambiguous Structures. Generally we depend on the structure of a sentence to give it a direction. But if someone says "go" it can be taken as "go away" or "go faster" or "the light has turned green, hit the gas" or "after you" or "do your best". All of these are compatible with "go", and several of them could be taken as correct depending on the context. Japanese may only have one or two ways to express something, where there might be 50 possible English equivalents, of which maybe ten are valid. Leading us to the next point:

3: Undertones. If the translator is picking up contexts (like say an expression of sexual tension between the two people in a dialogue as an example), that may change the way the translator words the translated sentence. In order to color the scene appropriately, the translator (or editor) may choose a different wording that expresses that undertone. On the other hand, it's possible that those undertones are debatable (ie: perceptions of the translator may not be 100% accurate), so a translator may mis-color the scene by choosing words that express a feeling that isn't there, or by missing something that is there.

4: Editorial flow: Editors fundamentally change the way a raw translation works, in a lot of cases. Some translators self-edit to a great extent, leaving editors to catch errors in spelling and punctuation and such, but most translators don't produce really "final" wordings, and most editors (at least a lot of the good ones) will look at every line in the context of the episode, and look at the episode as a whole, and decide the best wording for something. But of course, if an editor doesn't know Japanese, or is building from faulty assumptions by the translator, they could inherently change the subtle meanings of a line by rewording it, and end up taking a relatively accurate translation into the realm of meaning something completely different.

So, in summary, translating and editing is really frigging hard! Seriously! Especially localizing things that can be localized, and expressing cultural differences that can't be localized away. Because of the cultural differences, because of the ways things can be worded differently, and because of the way perceptions can change how things end up worded, it's really easy to find room for different translations for the same thing. So a lot of different translations can exist, and can be "correct" without being exactly the same.

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Originally posted by: Neji-Aniki-sama
It's not a matter of knowing Japanese.
It's a matter of not knowing Japanese...
[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

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Ok, some stuff is really hard to translate.
Oh can eventually mean yes, as a matter of fact.
Episode 81 by SO was really lousy, and I don't even know Japanese. This last one didn't seem as bad, though.
Nan da ano aho sureba, nama yagate!
(What is that idiot would be doing, being fresh fucking)
What kind of idiot he's fucking daring to making himself? (Comment of Temari about Shikamaru)
He is pretending to be an idiot, what fucking nerve!
How fucking dare he pretend to be such an idiot?
Was what I could figure out so far. As I said I don't know Japanese. And I am still trying to get to the bottom of that...
But it was translated as:
What kind of stupid face he is putting on? It's making me nervous.
As much as I don't know Japanese I guarantee you that there are no words that correspond to face or putting or making me nervous in that sentence.
In any case, it's a simple phrase, but kinda complex to figure...

A great one comes from Inuyasha:
Kikyou, temee, yokumo...
Kikyou, you bitch, how dare you? (that I know for sure)
Was translated as:
Kikyou, but I thought we had...
Simply put, Japanese is a complex language, but some translations are really pathetic.

hey complich8, i gotta say i'm impressed with all your fansubbing knowledge. i've learnt ALOT from you man.

its been my experience that AA tends to embellish on the translations a little......for the most part thats fine, but there are some translations they come up with that seems a little awkward

S-O on the other hand tends to be flat-out wrong on some of their translations.....and i mean wrong as in "damaging the personalities of the characters and the direction of the plot" kinda wrong

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Originally posted by: AssertnFailure
its been my experience that AA tends to embellish on the translations a little......for the most part thats fine, but there are some translations they come up with that seems a little awkward

S-O on the other hand tends to be flat-out wrong on some of their translations.....and i mean wrong as in "damaging the personalities of the characters and the direction of the plot" kinda wrong

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I agree 100%, but I can deal with that, but as for SO. hell no! 82 was the last for me. AA forever [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

it pained me to see 11000 potentially misguided naruto fans download SO 82 [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

wow thats was a mighty fine answer complich8. Guess japanese really is a little bit fucked up. funny how you can twist a sentence into meaning something totally diffrent. Shin otaku are so good at it [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-blush.gif[/img]

I would say its my last Shin otaku as well but AA takes too long [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-mad.gif[/img]

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Originally posted by: AssertnFailure
it pained me to see 11000 potentially misguided naruto fans download SO 82 [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

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Wasn't that bad. Of course, I didn't see A/A yet.
But I guess the less dialogue the better.
I hople Bakasan is back in business soon.

yeah im not gonna let s-o fuck up naruto for me, a&a and bakasan only for me. anyway i know some spanish (my family all speak spanish so i basically can understand what theyre saying) and it seems as if it is backwards compared to english. while watching naruto and trying to figure out some of the words it seemed japanese was 'backward' too, am i right or totally off? i wish my school still had japanese but the teacher who taught it retired. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

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Originally posted by: z0diac
Is japanese a fucked up language or are people just plain dumb and don't know how to translate?

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that's a real smart way of thinking about it. nice one.

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Originally posted by: -Sharingan-Kakashi-
yeah im not gonna let s-o fuck up naruto for me, a&a and bakasan only for me. anyway i know some spanish (my family all speak spanish so i basically can understand what theyre saying) and it seems as if it is backwards compared to english. while watching naruto and trying to figure out some of the words it seemed japanese was 'backward' too, am i right or totally off? i wish my school still had japanese but the teacher who taught it retired. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

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The structure of the sentence is not the same as in English.
I am a woman.
Atachi wa onna desu.
I woman is.
Considering:
1. Atachi =form of I only used by women (and eventually gay men)
There are also I forms for men, though men, older people, to be said when talking to a person more important than you...
2. wa it's a particle that has no translation in English, serves to indicate the function of the word in the sentence. There are quite a few like that...
3. desu. There's no are, is, am or stuff like that with the verb to be in Japanese. And basically, all verbs go in the end of the sentence.
4. There's no a or the in Japanese.
Verbs have polite and bossy forms, for one.
When Saska is breaking Zaku's arms, he says Yamero! Stop.
Sakura says Yamete! Which means exactly the same, but it's a more polite form. Zaku is *ordering* him to stop, while Sakura is *asking* him to stop. Right there, we can see that Sakura has a bit more manners than Zaku, but then again, who'd have manners in that situation???
Exactly the same thing happened in Inuyasha. Sesshoumaru is about to kill Kohaku and Inu says Yamero while Kagome says Yamete.
Check this page
Japanese for anime lovers
If you're interested, it can help you figure out some stuff. Personally, I think that, given that the Japanese society is rigidly structured and that reflects in the language, knowing a few words and some basic grammar adds to the dramaticy of the story.

ah i kinda get it, thanks for the link. also is gotwoot.net not working for anyone else?

I don't think it helps that Japanese is very different from english structurally.

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Originally posted by: Neji-Aniki-sama
Sakura says Yamete! Which means exactly the same, but it's a more polite form. Zaku is *ordering* him to stop, while Sakura is *asking* him to stop. Right there, we can see that Sakura has a bit more manners than Zaku, but then again, who'd have manners in that situation???

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at least sakura didnt add kudasai to it [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]

I wouldn't worry too much about translation differences unless they come to the point of a) inserting gratuitous curse words just for the hell of it or b) affecting the direction of the story. Taking the yamete/yamero example, someone could make a very valid case to translate 'yamero' as "Cut it out" or "Stop that" due to the fact that it's the volitional form. At the same time, since you can use volitional form to give a strong suggestion or an order, it's also possible to argue that both should be translated as "Stop that!" or "Quit!"...but the meaning remains the same no matter which you choose. Although the subtext is different in Japanese, the difference is similar to saying "Are you going to eat that?" versus "You gonna eat that?" in English--not enough to notice consciously.

Although subbing is a huge leap beyond dubbing and I am eternally grateful for folks like AonE who put forth an immense effort to share shows like Naruto with the people, there is simply no perfect translation, especially between languages as different as English and Japanese. Pick whichever one sounds better to you in English, and you'll be fine.

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Originally posted by: jonny-mt
I wouldn't worry too much about translation differences unless they come to the point of a) inserting gratuitous curse words just for the hell of it or b) affecting the direction of the story.

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In the example that I used, obviously it doesn't make any differencence to translate yamero/yamete equally as stop it or cut that out or any equivalent expression. But I used that example to show that Japanese has those small differences that can't be precisely translated, but in *their* context, serve to characterize the atittude of a character.
Both Gama-bunta and Gamakishi, who's a young frog, use the form washi for I. Well, that's the form used normally by older people. Older people *and* Yakuza people. So, listening to that and watching to other references, such as the sake cerimony and the moral code, the way Gama-bunta dresses, you will realize that he is a parody of Japanese Mafia dons, Even the name Bunta is the name of an actor who specializes in such roles in the movies. Somehow, knowing that or not won't change the story a bit, but I found the idea of a huge Mafia don frog, and a young kid calling himself washi, because he's also a mafia member, hilarious.
Neji calls Hinata, Hinata-sama and in the same breath, boss her to kiken shiro (give up). If you call somebody sama you should at least say kikken shite, and I am not even asking him to say kikken shite kudasai. Personally, I when I understood that, I thought it was a small detail, but in a simple phrase, it expressed the whole conflict of the scene. Neji is somehow forced to respect Hinata, but actually thinks she is crappy enough so that, a branch house member like himself, can boss her around. Of course, the whole scene is there to express that particular conflict, so it's expressed in other instances, but if the author can use *all* the dramatic elements, language being one of them, it adds greatly to the enjoyment of the story. That's what makes Hitchcock movies masterpieces, if you know that gray is the color that represents lie, you will understand why he was so adamant in having Kim Novak wearing a gray dress.
My point was that certain dramatic elements expressed in the language cannot be translated, but they are still there to add something to the story. Yes, in many cases, the translation changes little the overall meaning of the story, but somehow, will take away a level of reading of it.
The initial question was, is Japanse such a fucked up language or are people too dumb to understand it, or something to that effect.
My answer to that question would be: both. Japanese has complexities that are hard if not impossible to translate to English, or as sucintly put, it's a fucked up language. Well, in that sense, all languages are so, considering that all languages reflect the social and cultural contexts where their exist, and not all of those elements are present in English-speaking societies.
On the other hand, there are translations that are apparently made by dumb people, such as the one I mentioned earlier, where temee, yokumo is translated by but I thought we had... and I may add that foul language is a dramatic element, too. Inuyasha is an extremelly foul mounthed, uneducated guy, and to take that from him is taking a great deal of his charm.

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Originally posted by: Neji-Aniki-sama
My answer to that question would be: both. Japanese has complexities that are hard if not impossible to translate to English, or as sucintly put, it's a fucked up language. Well, in that sense, all languages are so, considering that all languages reflect the social and cultural contexts where their exist, and not all of those elements are present in English-speaking societies.

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A fair point and a pretty good way of putting it, although I object of course to calling any language a fucked-up language before first taking a good, long look at the train wreck that is English.

My point was that sometimes--most of the time--those differences just don't matter. There are twenty ways to say almost anything in English, and so 99.9% of the time those translation differences are going to come down to word choice; nothing more. I can't tell you how many times I'll be watching a subbed anime (AonE included) and think how I would have translated something different; this isn't to say that the subs at the bottom are wrong or failing to portray the subtext of the line in question, but rather that based on my personal/educational/whatever background, a different set of English words seemed to capture the feeling of the line better than those on the screen.

But of course, I suppose if I did that, then someone else who speaks Japanese might think the same thing about my translation, and back and forth we go. Toss in that, as complich8 said, you may have an editor who does or doesn't understand some Japanese and you wind up with variations in how the translator understands the line in their head, how the translator translates the line into English, and how the editors change the translator's work. In my opinion, the best translations allow themselves to deviate from a pure "word-for-word" translation enough to really convey what the characters have to say. If you can still find it (*sniff*), Anime-Keep's sub of Fullmetal Alchemist 31 is a perfect example of this kind of subbing.

if you're really uncertain and confused about what's going on... just read the manga. toriyamaworld did a pretty decent job of translating and bakafish and inane are pretty good (although i think bakafish is translating better lately). i think inane started to scanlate consistantly after ch 166 or something like that... but the previous chapters were translated fine as well.