ebw-translations

[ebw-translations]

I'm not dead! I just haven't been doing a whole lot of translation lately, or at least not non-random translation. I'll probably start up doing the Tofugu sentences again soon. Those actually feel easier to do now, so it seems I have actually improved, though I've reached the point where it doesn't feel like I haven't been making an progress at all.

[ebw-translations]

By Japanese creator ミチル @mitiruxxx

[ebw-translations]

Question, is this showing an author portrait in the corner of my icon? I have it turned off, but it’s still showing it to me, and I’d like to know if it’s because it’s my own blog or because tumblr’s shit.

[ebw-translations]

I don’t wanna get anyone’s hopes up, but I started translating Summer Cider, a novel Kabei-sensei wrote pre-2.43. It’s a coming-of-age, I suppose, with elements of light horror and the supernatural. Here’s hoping it goes well. It certainly feels a bit easier to read, at least, than when I first read it a little over a year ago, so hopefully I can make some actual progress in translating it.

[ebw-translations]

I’m working on translating the 2.43 HaruKou Arc, and I was curious why Google apparently hates “今大会” (“this tournament; the current tournament”), and.

What the fuck are you even on about.

You don’t hate it, you just want me to make the nonexistent verb before it past tense, and for some reason use a single-width period and space instead of a full-width period. And then. And then!

Okay then.

[ebw-translations]

Watched the first half of 2.43 on my Blu-Rays today, and without Funimation’s un-toggleable subs in the way, I can actually read the full text on the eyecatch cards! I may translate them, though I wish I could get screencaps too… Ah, if only the external disc drive I bought for my laptop years ago specifically to play BDs would actually still play them. It plays CDs just fine, and DVDs too even if it can be a little bit laggy at times and occasionally crash… maybe it’s about time to look into getting a new one.

[ebw-translations]

Oh, god, the sexytimes-use euphemisms in this BL novel I’m reading are all “there,” “that place,” “his thing.” On the one hand, yay, I didn’t have to worry about any of them confusing me and/or going over my head like in the first two (not by this author) I read. But on the other hand… why.

[ebw-translations]

If I have a bunch of projects, surely that means I’ll eventually finish one of them, right?

(Today I translated a tiny bit of この本を盗む者は [The One Who Steals This Book] that I read today—like, I read 11 pages and translated maybe 5 lines max, most of it stuff that isn’t a direct translation so I didn’t wanna forget it if I do end up trying to translate this, even just for fun/practice. I don’t even know if this has an official EN translation. Also this is about the same level as 2.43, so it’ll be a while before I can translate more than bits and pieces anyway)

[ebw-translations]

I suppose it’s comforting to know that it’s not only in English that Google will mark perfectly valid alternative spellings as straight-up wrong

[ebw-translations]

This one is objectively hilarious because GT does know that お袋 means “mother.” You type in “お袋の” and it gives you “mother’s;” you add the “味” and it gives you “taste of bag.” (Although that may still be better than “taste of mother”/”mother’s taste”? Psychic-damage-wise, if nothing else.)

This is an expression that means things like “the taste of mom’s cooking” or “the taste of home cooking.”

DeepL at least gets this one right. It is usually better than GT, but still not reliable.

[ebw-translations]

And that, kids, is why you don’t machine translate, or at least don’t rely on it—especially with dialect. It barely knows how to handle standard Japanese, so throwing a dialect, especially other than the popular Kansaiben, into the mix isn’t going to help matters. MTL can be a useful tool to help you get your bearings, but you should always take what it gives you with a grain of salt and use other resources as well.

If this were an imperative the way Google Translate translates it as, it would just be 立て, or 立てよ. Of course, there’s also 立てろ(よ), but that’s the imperative of the transitive verb 立てる, “to stand something up,” and this here is intransitive. Yes, this sentence ends with an エ sound, as many imperatives do, but only く verbs have け as their imperative, and this isn’t one.

So let’s look at what Yuni’s actually saying here.

First, we have the verb. This is the intransitive verb 立つ “to stand (up)” conjugated into the potential: 立てる “to be able to stand.” Next we have け, which is a question particle in Fukuiben and will replace か in many instances.

He’s asking, “Can you stand?”

GT completely changes the tone of this line. Cold and calloused, he orders Chika, who’s slipped and fallen after having already lost the use of his glasses, to stand up. But that doesn’t sound like him, does it? In the original, he’s worried and concerned about his best friend who’s already at a disadvantage and may now have hurt himself too and asks if he’s able to stand... while extending his hand to help him up.

Though it turns out, even if you put it into plain Japanese, GT still doesn’t know what to do with it, for the most part, and neither does DeepL:

The third is because it doesn’t realize it’s the potential form of 立つ, not the plain form of 立てる, and the first may be as well. At least, that’s the closest I can figure. The second... I have no idea. With just の, it gives you “to stand.” But with just んか or のか, it does finally get it. And literally the only difference between these is politeness/formality level.

DeepL, while often more reliable than GT, actually gets it worse, though:

I have no idea how it got “nobleman,” but “house; residence” is from the け reading of 家. Changing the け to か does not make it realize it’s a question, though it does change the translation to “making something stand up.” Which I was somewhat surprised about, considering 家 can also be read か, although that reading has to do with people/professions/etc. rather than houses.

立つ and 立てる can refer to constructing buildings (though I don’t know, if at all, how it differs from 建つ and 建てる), which is where “building” comes from in the second, though you wouldn’t stick の/ん between a verb and a noun since those just attach directly, so I still don’t know how it gets that.

But “liveliness”? “Court noble”? DeepL apparently has a habit of just guessing since it prefers natural-sounding English over an accurate translation, so that could be what that is, though I didn’t see anything about either in Goo辞書’s entry for 立てる.

This habit of guessing could be why it gives you “How are you going to stand up?” (all its alternatives also using “how”) for 立てるんですか, despite there being no “how” in the Japanese. And then for 立てますか it gives “Would you like to stand up?”

For 立てるの, it gives you “Stand.” or “Stand up.” With the period! Even GT didn’t do that when it thought it was an imperative. And this... definitely isn’t. A sentence-final の could be explanatory/emphasis (のです/のだ) or interrogatory (のか) with the second part dropped, but it’s not gonna be used with imperatives. Not to mention that there is no imperative that ends with る. There are verbs whose second-to-last mora is る, but imperatives for ichidan verbs are formed by dropping the final る and replacing it with ろ, while for godan verbs they’re formed by changing the ウ sound of the last mora to an エ (れ for る verbs, て for つ verbs, etc.). Even if a verb exists that ends in -るる, the imperative would be either -るろ or -るれ.

Like GT, with 立てるのか, it does finally give you the correct translation.

[ebw-translations]

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

[ebw-translations]

Well, thanks to reading Where the Wild Ladies Are, I now know how a couple lines of that Clare Harner bereavement poem might be translated in Japanese:

Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there, I do not sleep

わたしのお墓の前で泣かないでください そこにわたしはいません、眠ってなんかいません

Apparently either the poem has been turned into a song in Japan, or there is a song that features lines from it. (Apparently there’s at least a couple songs in English featuring lines from it, as well.)

[ebw-translations]

迷惑メール

[home]

“You have one email in your spam folder.”

Usually, I move spam immediately to the trash, but today, I sort of felt like reading it, so I opened the email.

“Please deposit one million yen into my bank account by tomorrow.  If you don’t, I’ll post your secrets publicly on the internet.”

What a strange email, I thought.  Should I try replying, though?

“I read your email.  I felt it could have been written a little better.  I teach university-level writing classes.  I can teach you how to write.”

Soon enough, I received a response:

“I’m in high school, and I want to be an author when I’m older.  I write spam emails for practice and because I get money for it.

“Truthfully, I don’t like this job.  Will you please teach me how to write?”

A troublesome job, indeed.  The kid should quit as soon as possible.

“Of course.  But, first, you need to quit your job.  After that, I’ll teach you how to write,” I replied.

[ebw-translations]

Tofugu 500 Sentences, #271-280

[home]

271. 三分の二ほど食べてしまいました。 272. 扉をゆっくり押し開けました。 273. この場合は、この方程式を使うのがいいですよ。 274. 母は働き詰めで、一ヶ月以上も夜ぐっすり眠っていないんだ。 275. 第一印象と全然違うよね。 276. 気持ちが高ぶらないと、幸せは感じないんじゃないかな。 277. 何アレ、感じ悪い。 278. 町はシンと静まり返っていました。 279. 黒い虫が窓にギッシリと張り付いていました。 280. 心配しなくても、なんとかなるさ。

English:

271. I ended up eating two thirds of it. 272. He slowly pushed the door open. 273. In this case, it’s best to use this equation. 274. Since she’s been working non-stop, my mother hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in over a month. 275. You’re completely different from my first impression of you. 276. I wonder if you can really call it happiness if your emotions never get stirred up. 277. The hell is that, that’s disgusting. 278. The town was still as death. 279. A black bug was clinging tightly to the window. 280. I’ll be able to manage somehow even without you worrying.

Notes:

278. This is another sentence that follows the “combine adverb and verb that say exactly the same thing” that’s much more common in Japanese than English. シンと (also seen often seen as シーン(と), especially when used as SFX) is an onomatopoeic adverb that refers to utter or deathly silence/stillness. 静まり返る is a verb that means “to fall completely silent; to become as still as death.”

280. This is probably the one I’m least sure of from this batch. I also don’t know if the tone is supposed to be “it’s okay, I’ll be fine” or “you’re annoying, I don’t need you to worry about me.” Or maybe “You don’t have to worry, we’ll somehow manage”...

[ebw-translations]

Yeah... that’s not English, buddy.

This is from when I drew it into Google Translate to look it up in a dictionary app a while back, as I didn’t know how to read it at the time. 沙汰 (さた) means “affair; incident; issue; matter,” and that isn’t a character that’s made it into Japanese and I don’t know Chinese so I don’t know just how lost in translation it is, but uh, yeah that’s not even close lol

Though I tried it again recently and it’s fine now:

[ebw-translations]

Tofugu 500 Sentences, #261-270

[home]

261. あなたが映画スターになるなんて信じることができません。 262. 糖質ゼロのジュースしか飲まないようにしています。 263. やがて春になり、雪は溶けます。 264. 佐藤君は来週からアフリカに転勤することになった。 265. 髪が大分のびてきたよね。 266. こっちに来るといつも飲み歩いてしまう。 267. 今のはいい当たりだった。 268. この色は、何色ですか？ 269. そのうちきっといいことあるよ。 270. それでも、やっぱり彼のことが好きなんです。

English:

261. You, become a movie star? I just can’t believe that. 262. I try to only drink zero-carb juices. 263. Before long, spring will come, and the snows will melt. 264. Satou-kun will transfer to Africa next week. 265. Your hair has grown a lot! 266. I always end up going barhopping whenever I come here. 267. That one was a good guess. 268. What color is this? 269. There is good in everything. 270. Even so, I still like him, after all.

Notes:

261. なんて works as a quoting particle in this and similar instances, except while と and って are neutral, なんて is more negative.

262. I do so that I drink nothing but zero-carb juice > I try to drink only zero-carb juice?

264. Not sure if this になった is just the “it has become that” structure that you’ll sometimes see (for politeness, likely; many things are) or if it’s “it has been decided that (by circumstances or someone other than the one it affects),” but either way, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be translated directly into English.

269. This is one that I struggled to translate into natural English, even though I understand what it’s saying (within that, surely, there are good things), so I just used a saying that’s similar enough even if more general.