Tbf I enjoy it. Dumb translator notes are deeply unprofessional, and therefore a sign that they're being done for the enjoyment of it. They're bad but they're kinda cozy in their own way.
That's probably partly why they do it.
In this instance though, if the original author had just wanted to say bad, they would have put 悪い. やばい is colloquial/slang and has some different meanings:
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If anything what's lazy is not the untranslated word, but the TN just saying "bad"
This is an excellent point regarding translation. Often, so much is lost simply because it would take too long to fully explain the cultural details of how to interpret a word choice.
A good translator can bridge the gap while still keeping the dialogue natural (some of the nuance gets lost nbd), but that brings us back to Shaleesh's comment lol
On that note, I've been reading through an English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front, and it tries to bridge the gap by swapping out German slang from the time for rough English equivalents.
Only it was translated in the 80's, so the people who translated it are operating on, like, media portrayals of ww1 British slang and laying it on way too thick.
It makes for an incredibly weird tone 'cos you have all these German farmers talking like overly stereotypical tommies, asking doctors if their injuries are "blighty ones", etc.
"oh I'm so good at Japanese, look at me! I left a word untranslated btw I know Japanese it's from Japan where things are different and their words are more important so I leave them in occasionally also I don't understand grammar at all so all my translations read like if an alien spoke them"
can you tell that I'm currently reading an old scanlation of Initial D
I like it because it's a sort of cultural explanation for idioms and shit that are culturally specific.
Like reading some wuxia and seeing some dipshit failson try to bully the overpowered protagonist, then get his ass beat and say "I am blind for I did not recognize Mount Tai" first time seeing that you'd go "fuck that mean?"
It's also fun way of getting exposed to modern Chinese lingo like "倒立拉稀"
I love it when they do it for that - certain concepts are impossible to translate one way or another. I remember a long time ago where I read a manga that at the end had an index of all the puns the translator couldn't bring over, but then explained how they functioned.
But when it's just
then don't please
my favorite version of this will forever be the fansub of Yakitate!! Ja-pan, which would at times have infoboxes covering the entire screen in an attempt to explain all the puns
Sometimes i found the long-ass TNs to be funnier than the subtitled dialog. I've always been a sucker for arcane humor.
Some people think it's *kawaii
*that means cute in Japanese
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I think it's at least partially so that you feel like you're part of "the club" for already knowing what words like yabai, keikaku, nazé, ki wo tsukete, kawaii, itadakimasu et cetera mean, and things like TL notes end up "drip-feeding" these words to you.
It was a typo. He meant to say it was all according to kagaku :P
This one made me laugh out loud, it reminds me of my mom screwing up characters' names and stuff
So it feel more mangaish? Like the way they keep oni san? That is my best guess rn.
That one just doesn't translate. They could make it San as mister. However they have like what, eight diffrent words like that? If reading it is a thing you want to do it's fair to learn the nuances between the diffrent forms of address and how they interact.
I think Kiyun is referring to お兄さん (big brother), not さん (as an honorific). Big brother is a literal translation, but kinda weird to use in English since people usually refer to their siblings by name.
Nevertheless, their point about not translating is still often correct.
For instance, IIRC you can call middle aged adult men “uncle” even if they aren’t actually your uncle. I believe Chinese does this too.
Yep, men are oji-san, which is often shortened to ossan, women are oba-san, meaning uncle and aunt respectively.
Vaguely relatedly, in Finnish, the words setä (uncle) and täti (aunt) are used in children's talk to refer to unfamiliar adult men and women
Vaguely relatedly, in Finnish, the words setä (uncle) and täti (aunt) are used in children's talk to refer to unfamiliar adult men and women
Same thing in Russian/Ukrainian.
I wonder if this some specifically Eastern European thing. I'm pretty sure languages like German or Swedish just use their local equivalents of man/mister or lady
IIRC, many Asian languages also have this thing, although I don't remember which ones specificially.
well, Swedish children talk uses "tant" (lady) or "fröken" (miss) for women but "farbror" (paternal uncle) for men so it's probably random for every language
which is often shortened to ossan
TIL.
Interesting that there's a similar concept in Finnish and other languages.
Even in the English-speaking world unrelated close adult family friends can sometimes get called uncles or aunts, no? 🤔
That's kind of on the same wavelength
Oh man, it's so mendokusai* when they do that.
*That means annoying in Japanese
Romanization of long vowels in Japanese is quite frustrating
translator notes are one of my favourite parts of reading something foreign. it's just a small trivia about something and allows me to understand the target culture just a bit more. this is way better than translators aggressively localizing some text to a comon american phase that will anyway make no sense to me.
tns get bad rep because lazy/elitist translators (i would vote the op is a bit more than being lazy) but they are a very important part and can be very valuable when done well
