#in addition to working on Illustrations I've also been doing a lot of word choice revisions

[mewgatori]

I finally bit the bullet and am starting copying Purple Pond's draft from the OG doc to an actual book formatting program

[hornyhermitry]

Professional translations & public witch hunts

For starters: If you think "TL;DR, who cares, I ain't reading all that" and are incapable of processing words for a prolonged amount of time beyond 240 character clickbait, you are not entitled to an opinion on translation to begin with.

I will take sufficient time for this one.

General:

In recent weeks I've repeatedly had the misfortune of coming across public harassment and incited hate mobs towards Jujutsu Kaisen's manga translator.

There's hordes of anti-social harassers pushing for someone to get fired from a professional job - in which he works because he is equipped with the necessary qualifications - purely due to disliking occasional translation choices in a comic.

This behavior has reached levels of exaggeration and reality disconnect, it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad due to a real person's livelihood being attacked.

This is not normal and tolerable behavior. It is equal to drumming up a hate mob in front of a café and threatening some employee inside, throwing rocks at the window and demanding for a barista to get fired because you didn't like the coffee beans they chose, or sure, maybe because they put actual sugar instead of sweetener into your coffee.

This is not a normal and acceptable way to behave.

If you think it is, there is something deeply wrong with your perception of society and what's respectful conduct towards another human being. When you encounter another person, you act respectfully at the very least. Kind, ideally.

Feel free to imagine yourself at work, making a mistake and thousands of people starting to call, email, shitpost online and harass you over it, dragging you publicly, shouting on the parking lot for you to be fired. Please reflect on yourself.

Now:

This dude does comic translations.

He did not authorize biochemical weapons in a war. He did not pass a law to deport all migrants and close the borders. He did not accidentally kill someone during a surgery. He did not hack & rob the annual employee bonus' account.

He wrote a word you don't like in a comic.

Planet Earth to Werry hater: Please come back down to reality and dial it back a few notches. This is a non-issue. Whether he makes mistakes or not, this level of hate and harassment is ENTIRELY out of pocket.

Moving on to translations.

Translations/criticizing translations:

Opinions on translations are like assholes - everyone got one. But that doesn't mean you need to pull them out in public. And especially not that you have to shit into random people's lives with them.

I've been reading manga and playing games in private for 27 years. I speak 4 Western languages and A2.2 Japanese. I've been working in the international entertainment industry with a focus on Asian to Western markets for over a decade, including Chinese, Japanese & Korean.

A lot of my time at work is filled with liaising between East and West, internally as well as externally. In my career, I've spent a lot of years supporting and later on consulting on localization.

I know what it is like to be a fan, and I am fully aware of the work reality behind translation.

I'm also intricately aware of the difficulties one faces when interpreting (!) from a source language as abstract and contextual as Japanese to a spelled out language such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.

You cannot do a 1:1 translation. The nature of these languages is so different, you have to decide on one of many ways to translate something. And oftentimes, the content is so vague with so few indicators, the only thing you can do is guess and hope for the best - unless you happen to hit a rare jackpot of a person who has a guide with additional info and is able to provide this within the short deadline you are left with.

Even the most basic words already illustrate this difference.

Look at the example of

元気ですか / げんきですか = Genki desu ka

Genki is an adjective, "desu ka" is a question particle similar to "is it".

Genki already has many similar variants in meaning: "lively; full of spirit; energetic; vigorous; vital; spirited"

It is commonly translated as "How are you?" but that is not what it literally means.

Since "Genki desu ka?" is commonly used after the initial greeting when meeting someone, "How are you" is the closest equivalent to it in EN, due to it's function and usual placement within a dialogue.

The literal translation would be "Energetic is it?", or "Lively is it?"

That is obviously is no proper English.

Adjusting for grammar, it could be changed to "Are you lively?" - but the "you" is already a "fictional addition" to the sentence, as the original JP has no adress like this.

And asking someone if they are "lively" is also out of place. So more changes are needed.

Further adjusted for "natural sounding" would be "Are you doing good?" which now has 2 additional made up words, to transfer the question from JP to EN - "you" and "good".

This sentence does not necessarily have to mean "Are you good/How are you?". If I tell you my aunt Emma sends her regards, and you reply "Ah. Genki desu ka?" the translation would be "Oh. How is (Emma) doing?/Is Emma doing good?" JP's grammar works without these precise indicators who is talking about whom and is highly contextual whereas - Western languages need those.

Concluding, depending on who is talking to one another, who was mentioned on a page before, etc. a simple "Genki desu ka?" can be anything from "How are you?" to "Is (Panda) doing good?".

There is no literal 1:1 translation possible. The languages are too different.

The reality of translation is unclear source material open to multiple interpretations, once you settle on an interpretation having another dozen options to decide on for the specific wording, then having to adjust that to character and spacing limitations and doing all that with little turnover time.

On top of that, official translations work with styleguides and glossaries.

There could e.g. be a kind of character bible with notes about all characters and their peculiar ways of talking and what character traits those convey and an instruction to use approach XYZ to convey that.

"Speaks in a very poetic way, very roundabout and meandering" which could e.g. lead to overhauling the literal translation to add "personality" based on that.

Going by "(O) genki desu ka?" suddenly "How are you?"for the "poetic trait" becomes "How has life been treating you?"

Again - at the end overhauled again to make room for character limits and such, so maybe it becomes "How fare you?"

This change could have been added not because this particular line offers the exact context, but it is rooted in a style instruction to work with a certain speech pattern/type for a character - since the JP indicators at another spot might not offer satisfactory EN translations, so you have to add the "personality" elsewhere.

Translations of ongoing works utilize glossaries and you cannot use new terms if there is already a term established and submitted. Else it would be a mess of e.g. Cursed Energy in Chapter 2, Jinxed Force in Chapter 25, Hex Flow in Chapter 112, Curse Power in Chapter 156, Hex Energy in Chapter 287, etc.

Even if some months or years in you think another translation would be better suited, you are obliged to keep consistency with previous mentions and cannot just change these.

This also means if you take over translation work started by someone else, you have to work with their groundwork and established rules and terms and cannot change them.

Official translations commonly aim to make a foreign work accessible to local readers. If there is a bunch of teenage characters going to school, they should be relatable to local teenagers. As a result, regional and current slang might be added to make it sound more natural whereas the JP might just have "informal" indicators but less variance in vocabulary. The goal of a translation is to make a work accessible to a whole new language audience, hence the focus lies on making it readable without a prior 8 year degree in cultural studies. Things get simplified or changed for that reason.

Usually translators for a work consult with each other what the difficulties translating are, what possible options are, and what each language will run with. These considerations take a lot of time.

Having fans work out occurences deviating from the OG and explaining the specifics behind is it AMAZING community content and something for the people passionate about a story and about learning more about a culture. But it's not needed for the average joe buying a comic at a gas station.

This kind of deep dive is fandom! Enjoy and share and get excited! Enrich each others lives and understanding of a story! It's one of the best things there is.

Finally, a translation has to be timely & approved. There are multiple people involved in this.

It is not on poor John alone to make all decisions as he fancies and send it straight to print after going rogue, but he works within the guidelines & constraints this jobs brings with it. It's his name on the page but there are a lot more people involved in the final result.

Publicly claiming things like a translator "brutally butchers" a story or "is incapable of doing a job" because in a sea of solid translations of a very vague source language, every few chapters there's a specific word deep fandom who spends all their free-time on this particular story would have translated differently, is wildly inappropriate.

Interpreting differently is not doing a wrong job.

People on social media love attention and shitstorms. You get one narcissist with a following pointing out a debatable translation in a snarky smartass way and everyone wants a piece of the smartass cake.

What I struggle with is how people who don't speak a second language & often barely speak their own language with literacy above elementary school, feel entitled to an opinion here. What makes you an expert on cross-cultural art interpretation? What makes you think your opinion holds any weight here? Oh you read a Tweet by s/o else? *clap*

What makes you think you have the right to go after another person's job for no reason other than spite and some internet gotcha over a comic?

If you really value the creation of near perfect translations that much, be the change you want to see in the world.

Learn another language. Get that degree. Get that job in animanga and do your best.

Or for a start, send a polite mail about your concerns to VIZ instead of starting a personal witch hunt for some guy doing his job.

[taylortruther]

How do you interpret The Archer’s first verse?

Combat I’m ready for combat

I say I don’t want that but what if I do?

Cause cruelty wins in the movies

I’ve got a hundred thrown out speeches I almost said to you

imo she is admitting that - despite wanting a loving relationship that is tender and trusting - her actions and instincts don't support that. she is describing how her instinct is to be on the defensive all the time: lash out to protect herself, even start conflict, because it's how she feels safe. and conflict in relationships might be romantic or move the plot along in a film, and drama in general can feel like passion, but she is realizing that irl conflict and drama can destroy you and your relationships.

some additional thoughts that add context to my understanding of this verse (archer lyrics in bold):

"i jump from the train, i ride off alone" and "this is how the world works, you gotta leave before you get left" -> "help me hold onto you!" - her defense mechanism is to cut and run out of fear she'll be hurt by the other person, and she's begging for help to avoid this.

imo this means literally leaving and cutting people out ("i packed my bags, left cornelia street before you even knew i was gone" or "there's a justice system inside your head, for names you'll never speak again, and you make your ruthless rulings") but could also mean figuratively isolating or treating someone poorly to push them away ("my words shoot to kill when i'm mad, i have a lot of regrets about that" and "i lived like an island, punished you with silence")

"i search for your dark side" - her inner voice is telling her that everyone will betray her (which we see illustrated in the anti-hero mv, where her inner destructive self literally teachers her "EVERYONE WILL BETRAY YOU.") she laments that she makes bad choices, trusting people who don't have her best interests in mind ("all of my enemies started out friends") but she also loathes herself for trusting them in the first place ("and i know i make the same mistakes every time, bridges burn, i never learn") - and maybe this is a form of self-sabotage. she loves to "give people what they want" but it becomes a form of self-sacrifice ("who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?")

"i've been the archer, i've been the prey" - she's been hurt by cruelty, but she's also been cruel to others. and this is why so much of her pasts haunts her ("i pace like a ghost, the room is on fire, invisible smoke" and "when my depression works the graveyard shift, all of the people i've ghosted stand there in the room.") she has so much regret over the mistakes she's made, her own flaws, the people she's hurt. she wants love, but it's a cycle: who could ever hurt her when she's so great, but who could stay when she's so cruel? she's so tired, "i never grow up, it's getting so old"... she wants to escape it.