Seinarukana

[naast]

How about seeing many many many different translations of one same words ?
Seeing something won't gain experience but surely, seeing something many many times that it got imprinted into your mind is good enough right?
Excuse me but, animes is not just about watching the animation, the sub and listening to the voices just for the prettiness of it to me. Its also about translating each and everywrods then use grammar to stick them into lines on the spot to me =o=.

It's not what I meant. Seeing many translations is good, but it doesn't make you a better translator. It only improves your knowledge of a particular language. And when I said "especially anime", that wasn't because I only watch the animation. It's because most of the anime translations (fansub) are especially crappy.

It's basically means after the translation, everything that is left are but the plots. The author's way of writing will not be known to the readers.

Yeah, you have a point, and this is exactly why I find translating is hard. You have to rewrite the sentences so that it looks like better English (or whatever language), but you have to do your best to keep figures of speech.

Anyway, what we are talking about is Formal Equivalence and Dynamic Equivalence, so I should point you to the wikipedia article about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_an ... quivalence.

[iamin7ove]

You have to rewrite the sentences so that it looks like better English (or whatever language), but you have to do your best to keep figures of speech.
.

And what i complained about is that they changed the figures of speech =o=...

[iamin7ove]

Hmm...
Man, this is like final fantasy =o=...Somehow some of the girls are kinda similar to those ... of Eien no Aselia
or is it just the manner of speaking and seiyuu i wonder ?
For example
Katima = Lesteena
Ruptna = Orpha
Nozomi = Well, Kaoru + Kyouko hybrid =o= ?

Is it just my imagination i wodner :\

[lunarium]

Ruputna and Orpha have the same seiyuu (notice their "kick" attack quote XD )
The rest... Nope

[iamin7ove]

Hmm...i guess Katima and Lesteena are a bit similar simply because they are both queens...
Mah,i hope this time this queen have an all around good ending

[Ghaleon]

Sorry if you guys frown on slight topic bumps, but I have to offer my opinion on this translation localization debate.
Localization does NOT butcher the feeling and mood of a translation, it actually translates it, period. Translation isn't just about turning words into another language, it's about making communication understood by another language. Communication is more than just words. Imagine translating English to Japanese, and the story says someone gave someone "the bird". Assuming Japanese people do not associate a certain avian animal with a gesture of disrespect, translating it to mean giving someone an actual avian bird would be a literal word to word translation, but the story it communicates would simply be wrong.

Sorry imin7ove, but you said you're an international student, and your English grammar is good enough. That may be so for you, but if you think it is natural for someone to say "does your body hurt", it just tells me that you have NOT grown up with people whose first language is English, at least, not North American English, probably not European either. Maybe singlish or something. Ever play Gunbound? All I can say is the translation is probably literal, and it is by far the worst I've seen. Even a maniac high on drugs think that stuff is a total riot. Another issue is how Japanese lacks very manditory (for English) like 'is', 'are', and 'the'.

Onamae desu ka?
Am Ghaleon.
That doesn't capture the mood, it changes it to weird.
Speaking of total riot, I think that would also be poorly translated if taken literally into another language. Anyway, if you still are not convinced, that is your opinion, which you may keep. But I say with no disrespect that saying someone's translation is bad because of localization really makes you come across as a bit of a knowitall jerk, even if you like your style better, most people do NOT. A translator doesn't translate for themselves, but for the people incapable of doing it. So it's their Job to cater to those people, whose desire for localization is pefectly natural.

I think I made my point, sorry if I have silly typos, I texted this whole thing on my phone =p.

[iamin7ove]

hmm...i might not have portrayed my idea very well...I don't really think localizing about grammar is wrong (more like its the most necessary)
Anyway, the bottom line is that i dont think 'translating a novel so that its like it was written in another language from the beginning' is right...
as i believe something like that to be disrespectful to the author...
Thats my main idea...is that what ur saying wrong again ?

[Ghaleon]

It's not disrespectful to the author, it's completely neccesary to make their product enjoyable for more people. I've just discovered Touhou a year ago, and I really enjoy playing some of the fan games. One thing I've noticed is that many of them have some relatively obscure Japanese pop-culture references in the text. I rekon that the translators decide to leave them alone not to respect the author, but figure your die-hard Touhou fan who plays Touhou fangames probably is enough of an "otaku" to know about many of these Japanese pop-culture references.

However, if you play a mainstream Japanese game that gets translated commercially (say something like Final Fantasy), most of the fans don't really know much about Japanese cuture. So it's basically either localizing these references (or whatever), or having them completely unenjoyed. One thing that I notice that alot of Japanese games have are parodies to Tokusatsu Super Sentai. Now imagine having a game where you couldn't see the reference other than the text, if you typed that name out to your average English speaker who didn't know Japanese, they just simply wouldn't know what you're talking about, and hence, would miss out on some of the humour for that game (assuming it was trying to be humorous about it). However, many professional translators (ie, those working for Squaresoft or whatever, see Super Mario RPG, they did it in this case for example) decided to change the reference for these characters into "rangers", as they did for Disgaea, and virtually every other commercially translated game featuring parodies of our multi-coloured tights with motorcycle helmet wearing corny-heroes. I can assure you, Square did not intend to disrespect themselves when they decided to change the name of this reference to "rangers" for the English population, they in fact, WANTED to make this change, because they KNOW it will enable the English population to understand and completely enjoy what the author was TRYING to convey to the player.

[iamin7ove]

Well, even though u say that...which one do u prefer ?

[Ghaleon]

Not only do I prefer localization, but I need it. Because I don't understand Japanese, I don't fully understand the game without it.