#dubs and translations

[allykatsart]

Hey someone is posting your comics on Facebook translated to Spanish in HH/HB groups. They give you credit linking back to your masterpost but did you give permission for this?

I'ma be real, I've had a lot of people ask to dub and only a few ask to translate. It's hard for me to keep track sometimes. However, looking at my recent DMs and asks, I don't believe I gave permission for a Spanish translation on Facebook.

Please send me a link or DM with the screenshots? I'm not mad but like... I'd prefer if they'd at least ask permission first? Even if just to keep me informed. Translations take a lot of time and thought, after all. I don't mind people translating to share with others! I just wanna know what's going on lol

[technically-human]

Partner is a difficult word to translate

[papier-ciseaux]

I am very entertained by the french dub's liberal use of swears, it's been fun and never cease to amaze me that they can just SAY that

Tried my best to translate but alas. The meanings get a bit lost.

[slutpoppers]

Agumon

Digimon Adventure OVA (1999)

[imsofreakingtired]

dont talk to me Jinx calls Sevika "unnie" (older sister) in the korean dubbing 😭😭😭😭

when she says "sheesh lady" it could have been more accurately translated to "ahjumma," meant to casually address an older woman. "unnie" is the more intimate way to address someone from a younger woman to an older woman if the relationship isn't familial. it's also the word Jinx addresses Vi with. this one translation choice alone signals a huge shift in Jinx and Sevika's relationship, bc even as early as the first season Jinx was just calling Sevika by her name. idk i just think it's neat that the Koreans were just like "nope they're a found family" before it's even physically shown

[strawlessandbraless]

There will never be peace because we will never be done

[cartoonsbyandie]

April Fool When the moon parts the two beneath the name of the Black Star, I will make my appearance as the waves will beckon me. Signed, Phantom Thief KID

Happy First Meeting Day

[onlyymirknows]

The reason I think I like reibert so much is because Bertholdt is there for Reiner unconditionally.

Even when Bertholdt risks killing Reiner in Shiganshina

Bertholdt does so knowing that, if Reiner does die, it’s because he resolved to end their suffering

Reiner and Bert were suffering together. While Reiner suffered more extreme symptoms, Bertholdt suffered to the same degree. I think his famous speech in season 2 showcases this well. (Picked the dub because I love the phrasing.)

Bertholdt could “live a thousand years and never again know peace.” I don��t think this gets talked about much, at least not since I joined the fandom last year. Bert isn’t some impassive person who doesn’t care or feel things. He’s just reserved.

The only reason we don’t see the same level of remorse from Bertholdt that we do from Reiner is because he didn’t get the chance to reckon with the futility of all of his efforts and atrocities over the course of several years.

Let alone the chance to watch 12 year olds risk their lives in trench warfare.

Or have to listen to his family call the ordinary people of Paradis, the people he slaughtered unjustly, devils.

If Bertholdt lived instead, I think we would see him grapple with the same problems as Reiner and feel the same level of guilt. It would manifest in a different way for certain but he would be hurting. Especially in a world without Reiner by his side to share the burden.

In other words, nobody understood Reiner the way Bertholdt did and vice versa. They get each other. It’s clear to me that Reiner is heavily impacted by the loss when he wakes from his nightmare reaching out towards the vision of Bert’s defeat.

This is one of the many things from the Marley arc that got omitted from the anime 😔 another is Reiner thinking about his last words to Bertholdt amongst other things as he prepares to kill himself. It’s not just that memory with Eren.

Thanks for reading! Have this cute pic from (I believe) one of the visual novels as a palate cleanser 💖

[salvadorbonaparte]

The way people post about subtitles and dubs and other forms of translation on here makes it clear they think translators are inherently untrustworthy and unprofessional. I have rarely seen so much distrust and skepticism towards a profession as "invisible" as this

[rubberduckyrye]

I apparently need a transcript of V3's Japanese dub in English because--

These say almost the same thing, but--

LIKE THIS CHANGES THE WHOLE FUCKING TONE OF THE LINE.

WHAT THE FUCK.

[dolinathirok]

~Плюшкі~✨

~Stitch AU~

Автор коміксу : @stitchau

[notcryingtoday]

in another episode of "we got destieled"

after the "it was affection that held us together"

what did you guys had there:

because in french he says

"Je pensais que tu ne voulais plus de l'hextech. Ni de moi."

basically, "i thought you didn't want the hextech anymore. nor me."

(like "you also didn't want me anymore")

yeah "want", french jayce is apparently very aware of the YEARS OF YEARNING

[medu-nefer]

everyone was doing this with their native languages so i thought i'd give it a try too 💀

OG → translated

Apologies, but I'm busy. You'll have to come back later. → Apologies, but I'm busy. Please come back later.

[but it's a form you'd use when speaking to a colleague at least, definitely not a stranger - i work at a pharmacy and i would never address a patient this way. If you want to be polite, you'll say "proszę wrócić później"]

I think I've waited long enough. → I think I waited too long.

Hello, my beloved phantom.

Have you come again to haunt me? → Have you come again to scare me?

[💀💀]

Haunt you? → Scare?

[What did you do to him, polish runaan's phantom 😭]

I see you everywhere.

Hear your voice when you aren't there. But I am begging you, Runaan, leave me be. → I hear your voice when you aren't there, but I'm begging you, Runaan, leave me.

[not leave him be, as in peace. just leave him. like you could leave a sandwich on your desk]

Let me let you go. → Let me let you out.

[go runaan, be wild 😌😌]

But I made you a promise. → I made you a promise.

And I long to make peace with its breaking.

It's not broken, Ethari. My promise, I've kept it. → I didn't break it, Ethari. I kept my promise.

[he says it more like "i kept my...... promise"]

It's me. I'm home. → It's me, I came back.

My heart.

My heart.

[we did get an exclamation point though 👀]

[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?

[darlenicy]

It took me 20 years to understand that the vacuum krystals are called vacuum because they absorb magic....like a magical vacuum cleaner 😂🤦🏼‍♀️

[beebfreeb]

I got curious about the difference between the English dub and original Japanese voice acting...