#actual transformative work

[egophiliac]

we were fucking ROBBED

[thethunderthedragonfruit]

i was REALLY surprised i hadnt seen anyone animate over anything from the prevenge script reading yet, so i took matters into my own hands. i thought this bit was hilarious

audio from here

[deecotan]

anyway here's wavewave

[absoluteminimum]

an unexpected but in hindsight predictable obstacle to drawing transformers in clothes: I'm bad at drawing the way cloth falls

[bambifornia]

swindle is an open-minded bot. so long as you can pay the fee

[epicfirestormer]

(holds all three in my hands) I just think they're neat

[yuukirita]

you think in the twobee au megatron would rip out newbee’s voice box cause of how painfully similar this imposter sounds to bee or could he not bring himself to do it?

I think he'd want to rip him to pieces the moment he saw him.

I think yellow is such a rare colour for cybertronian because He killed every one of them. It reminded him of Bee.

I think he'd specifically target him if he ever saw him on the battlefield like he does Prime

I think he'd shout 'Impostor' 'impersonator' 'Another one of Prime's trick' just before shooting at him with his cannon.

I think he'd look into his optics if he ever captured him. Tell himself "They really are... the same..." in a sad angry voice.

I think he'd accidentaly speak honestly with the little Bee when he asks what he means by that. Like he'd talk to B-127. Be brought back to the 'good ol' times' instantly and rage over it

I think he'd show kindness when he realizes that this is just a kid- and he's so similar to Bee but this isn't him. He's just another soul that Prime has corrupted.

I think he'd remember a conversation they had under the stars 'I'm not leaving you' and ask him to join him.

I think he'd try a few times to convince him he's on the wrong side.

I think he'd rip out his voice box after Bumblebee said something that his long dead friend used to tell him- but can't bring himself to kill finish the job.

I think he'd regret taking his voice because now he knows he'll never hear his friend ever again

I think he cries over it.

I think he'd ignore him on the battlefield after that

I think he'd ignore he exist

I think he'd force himself to forget about b-127. Pretend he never existed because it's distracting him from his goal.

I think he spares him again and again and again...

I think a lot.

Hug hug :D

[neeeeeoposts]

i said id make character sheets and so i did

plus extra headcanons!!!!!!

[syntiment]

Cicada shells and missed opportunities A song that cries out to be heard.

In some ways, Starscream reminds me of a Cicada. Will I ever stick to drawing a consistent design for him? Probably not. At least he looks cool.

[communistkenobi]

It’s so funny when liberals lecture communists about not knowing how anything works, that we need to grow up and face the real world etc, while publicly demonstrating that their political imagination is so deeply impoverished that they genuinely believe the only thing the leader of the most powerful country on the planet in all of human history can do is block a slightly more fascist guy from taking his place every four years

[mnemo-sick]

sketchy (wip?)

[fatedroses]

Two former military elites taking merc jobs perform absolutely hellish battle tactics together.

[in-the-airducts]

POV ur ambulon

For @lemonomelette's DTIYS! A lot of work but very fun.

[call-me-kitty]

B 127: Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!

B 127: *knife hands*

B 127: But not for me!

[lurkingteapot]

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

[swordmaid]

bhaal’s bride 🔪🩸

my durge yves before the lobotomy 🥳