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brookstolemybrand · 6 days ago

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An overly elaborate comparison of Harley translations: The First World

[2nd World] [3rd World]

Note: Japanese is a very ambiguous and context dependent language, and this is written in very poetic Japanese which is EVEN MORE ambiguous. Two translations of the same line can be very different and still both equally valid.

Note 2: Literary translators have to consider style and effect, not just accuracy. Their work can sometimes be less accurate but that's in no way a criticism of their work from my part. I'm only evaluating these translations from the perspective of analysing the lore.

Note 3: I don't claim to be a fluent Japanese speaker, I'm just someone who's studied Japanese and engaged in Japanese media for a decently long time. I could make mistakes! Please correct me if you notice any!

The translations I compared are:

The official English translation by Stephen Paul (available on MangaPlus and the Shonen Jump app) [OFFICIAL]

LunaPienArt (a professional Japanese translator and native speaker who makes One Piece videos in English on YouTube on the channels LunaPienArt and Dawn & Dusk) [LUNA]

YUDE-RON (popular Japanese One Piece theorist, I don't actually know if the English subs are their own work but I assume so since there's no mention otherwise) [YUDE]

Library of Ohara (popular One Piece analyst) [OHARA]

TCB Scans (popular scanlation) [TCB]

OP Scans (the first scanlation that came out) [OPS]

Text summary [TS]

For reference, I also used:

The One Piece Podcast episode 854 (Harley analysis by Stephen Paul, the aforementioned official One Piece translator)

LunaPienArt's analysis video

Library of Ohara's "giga analysis" post

Formatting:

No formatting = no specific notes

Red [!] = incorrect or seriously misleading

Bold (?) = confusing or questionable

again, this is only for accuracy/preciseness, not overall translation quality which is subjective and allows for artistic licence

The First World:

地に炎あり

[OFFICIAL] Within the earth there was fire.

[LUNA] Fire razed across the land (?)

[YUDE] There was fire on the land.

[OHARA] Upon the Earth, there is flame.

[TCB] The earth is engulfed in flame, (?)

[OPS] There was fire upon the earth.

[TS] On Earth, there is flame.

This is a very simple sentence and it's structurally identical with the other opening lines for each chapter of the poem. They all start with "there was/is [X] in/on/within/upon [Y]". The preposition used in the original is に for all three opening lines. This can be translated differently depending on the situation.

The official is kind of the odd one out here, because it interprets it as "within" the earth, which if I understood it correctly, Stephen decided to do to match with the other opening lines. Despite being somewhat strange, this is a plausible translation! Especially if you consider the mural which could be interpreted as showing people bringing some form of metaphorical "fire" up from under the ground. The other translations went with the more intuitive option of assuming that the fire is on the surface. Neither are wrong! It could be either! Unfortunately it's hard to retain that ambiguity in English

The verb is in an ambiguous form which could mean "is" or "was", both would be correct; in this case "was" makes more sense.

Luna and TCB chose more poetic phrasing for the verb which evokes a much more specific vision of a great raging fire on the land. These aren't necessarily incorrect, but they do seem to make an assumption which is not in the original text. There's no indication that the flames are out of control.

The word for earth is 地, which is probably the most ambiguous possible word Oda could have chosen. It can mean earth, soil, ground, land, the Earth (the planet), a whole bunch of things. It's also the element of Earth in Godai (the Japanese five element system of Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Void) — as opposed to the element of Earth in Wuxing (the Chinese five element system of Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, Earth) which is 土

The other noun is 炎 which means "flame". It can be "flame" or "flames" because Japanese doesn't always distinguish plural and singular. Some translations chose to go with "fire" which is probably fine, but the specific word translates more literally as "flame". It's the same flame kanji as in "Flame Emperor". I think it's worth noting considering a particular word choice few lines later.

Conclusion: There [was/were] [a flame/flames] [upon/within] the [earth/land].

人は欲望に負け禁断の太陽に触れた

[OFFICIAL] Mankind succumbed to greed and touched the forbidden sun.

[LUNA] People gave in to their desires / And reached for the forbidden sun

[YUDE] People succumbed to their greed and touched the forbidden sun.

[OHARA] People succumbed to desire. / As they seized the forbidden sun.

[TCB] and the hearts of men burn with desire. / They reach for the forbidden star. (?)

[OPS] Humanity succumbed to desire and touched the forbidden sun.

[TS] Mankind, overtaken by desire, touched upon the forbidden Sun.

The first word here is 人 which is another very ambiguous one. All of these different translations are correct. It could be one person or it could be multiple people or it could be the entire humankind. "Mankind" and "man" are fair translations because this is supposed to be an ancient text and those often use "man" as default (I could go on a tangent about how the word used to be more genderneutral before it came to mean male person specifically but let's not do that now...)

Every translation went with the assumption that this meant multiple people, which is fair. But it could also just be one person.

欲望 means "desire" but can also be translated "greed" or "lust".

TCB went with fancier wording, connecting this line to the previous one with the fire imagery. That's fine, but I do question their choice to replace "sun" with "star". The word is 禁断の太陽 which literally translates as "forbidden sun". There's nothing really ambiguous about this one. Yes, the sun is technically a star in terms of astronomy, but in a mythological text the distinction is important IMO.

触れた means "touched" or "came into contact with" or "to experience", or even "to touch on" (as in talk about) but I think that last one is probably not the case here. Some of these translations make it seem more purposeful than the Japanese wording, but I think that's justified considering the context of "desire".

Conclusion: [person/people/humankind] were overcome by [desire/greed] and touched the forbidden sun.

隷人は願い "太陽の神"は現れた

[OFFICIAL] The enslaved prayed, and the sun god appeared.

[LUNA] Slaves made a wish / And the sun god appeared

[YUDE] The enslaved prayed, and the Sun God appeared.

[OHARA] The slaves wished and prayed. / The Sun God appeared.

[TCB] From whispered prayers, the sun god rose, beckoned by the enslaved. (?)

[OPS] The slaves made a wish, and the "God of the Sun" appeared.

[TS] The Enslaved prayed. / "The Sun God" appeared.

願う can mean "to wish" or "to pray", either of them works. Ohara went with both lmao. TCB added the "whispered" for flair, I assume.

I think "the enslaved" is a good translation because it's the rare opportunity for English to be equally ambiguous as Japanese about the number of people. It could be one enslaved person or multiple. Probably multiple in this case though. "Slaves" is a perfectly fine translation too, but the word used in the original is not the typical Japanese word for slave but a more poetic expression.

現れる is "to appear".

The specific wording for the sun god is "太陽の神", including the western quotation marks. Some of the translations just kept the quotation marks but I think using something like italics would be more accurate because the point is emphasis. In English the quotation marks make it sound more dubious, but that isn't the implication in Japanese. Capitalising the phrase also works well. It actually literally translates as "God of the Sun" but it's the same term as has been used consistently for Nika, so translating it as Sun God makes sense.

(Sidenote: there could also be multiple sun gods. I think it's a fair assumption that there's only one, but in Japanese it's technically ambiguous.)

There is no "and" here in Japanese but it's implied (I can't be bothered to explain the grammar)

Conclusion: The enslaved [wished/prayed], and the Sun God(s) appeared.

地の神は怒り業炎の蛇と共に世界を死と闇で包んだ

[OFFICIAL] The earth god raged, and with its serpent of hellfire, shrouded the world in death and darkness. (?)

[LUNA] The god of the land grew furious / And alongside a serpent of raging fire / Wrapped the world in death and darkness

[YUDE] The Earth God became enraged, and with a serpent of blazing flames… / The world was engulfed in death and darkness.

[OHARA] The Earth God grew furious. / Along with the Hellflame Serpent, / it enveloped the world in death and darkness.

[TCB] The god of the land was enraged. / With a serpent of fire, / they cast the world into ruin. (?)

[OPS] But the god of the earth became enraged. / And, alongside the serpent of hell, enveloped the world in death and darkness.

[TS] The deity of Earth is enraged. /Together with the Serpent of Hell Flame, they engulfed the world with death and darkness.

The "earth" in "earth god" is the same word as in the first line of the poem, see above.

(For contrast: this is not the exact same wording as the other god of the earth (大地の神) mentioned in the Noland and Kalgara flashback by the Shandians. 大地 would be a bit more specific, I think? In Japanese dictionaries the definition seems to be "earth as opposed to the sky/heaven". My guess is that the distinction is that this word can't be used to just mean earth as in the material but as a larger entity. The earth god of the Shandians could still be the same divine figure as the earth god of the Harley, regardless of the slightly different name, but that's up to you to interpret.)

The format of the name for all these gods is the same as for the sun god, by the way.

業炎 is very interesting. 業火 means "hellfire" or basically any kind of literal or metaphorical fire that burns the sinners or whatever, something along those lines. It very much has religious connotations but not necessarily in the Christian sense (although that works too). It can also just mean a literal raging fire that's particularly fierce, just like you might call a particularly bad fire an inferno or hellfire in English too.

But here it's not written 業火 with the kanji for "fire" but 業炎 with the kanji for "flame". And this is why I figured I should specify that the first line also mentions flames. I don't know if this means anything? But I think it's worth pointing out just in case it does. 業炎 does seem to be a word but I couldn't find it in any dictionaries that I checked. Most of the results seem to be from some sorts of games, especially some mobile game called Puzzle & Dragons. I mean I think it just means the same thing as 業火, but the choice to use "flame" seems deliberate to me.

I don't know why the official translation chose to use "its" to imply that the serpent belongs to the earth god? I mean it might be the case, but the Japanese doesn't say so.

Oh, also technically there could be multiple serpents because once again the Japanese text doesn't specify number, but I think we all assumed that it's only one because we only see one in the mural. (Also technically there could be multiple earth gods too)

と共に means together with

包む means something like "to wrap up" or "to cover" or "to envelop" or "to engulf".

死と闇 means "death and darkness", very straightforward. TCB is the only exception to this with "ruin".

Conclusion: The earth god(s) raged, and together with the serpent(s) of hellflame, enveloped the world in death and darkness.

彼らはもう会えないのだ

[OFFICIAL] And they will never meet. (?)

[LUNA] They will never meet again.

[YUDE] They would never meet again.

[OHARA] Those men would be unable to meet again. [!]

[TCB] They would not meet again.

[OPS] They could never meet again.

[TS] They can't be met again.

For such a simple phrase, this sure gives us a headache, doesn't it. The thing is, most of these translations are fine in my opinion, it's just a matter of interpretation... except for one:

Ohara is just wrong in my opinion. Yes, 彼 ("he") is generally used for men and by extension so is the plural 彼ら ("they"), but Japanese is not that particular about the gender thing. What's more, this is a poem and using a more neutral expression like あの人達 would be clunky in this context. Usually 彼ら refers to men, but it really doesn't have to, and even less so in this context.

From what I understand, 彼 being specifically masculine is also a relatively new concept, due to influence from European languages. Some of the Japanese dictionaries I checked didn't even mention the gender association at all, because it's more of a connotation than an explicit meaning. Also in older forms of Japanese there was no gender distinction for this word, and this poem is written in (somewhat) old-fashioned Japanese.

I don't know why the official didn't include the "again" or any indication of it. It seems like the most likely interpretation. Technically I think it's possible to interpret this as "now it's too late for them to meet" which could potentially imply that they never met in the first place? So maybe the better phrasing would be "They can no longer meet"? Which could possibly be read both ways? idk

English is very particular about the would/could/will/etc. but I don't think Japanese cares about it all that much

Also the text summary version does sound strange but technically it's a possible reading.

The のだ is an emphatic expression that could maybe indicate unexpected information or a clarification or a revelation of some sort. I don't know if this is all that important to convey in English, though, since it's just a matter of tone. Also I'm not sure what it's supposed to express here exactly. Maybe just regret or sadness.

Conclusion: They [can/will/would/could] no longer meet*

(* or something like that idk

To be continued

#one piece 1138 #one piece translations #one piece analysis #one piece meta #one piece harley

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slugtranslation-hypmic · 1 month ago

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Literally No One Asked: Examining Merits and Limitations of Three Translation Styles via Various Scripts of Chrono Trigger

As the last vestiges of winter vacation slip through our collective fingers (save the proverbial hands of those lucky ducks with another week left), I wanted to take the time to expound on a topic near and dear to my heart: the merits and limitations of three fundamentally different translation approaches, illustrated with three different approaches to a single work.

Under a cut for no doubt grievous length.

Also, a general reminder that this eassay is only about Japanese to English pop culture translations. It assumes certain basic value judgements we make about pop culture. "But this Spanish to Czech literary translation--" Is Jake Gyllenhaal gay? Sir, this is a Narnia blog.

Introduction

It seems like we always come back to the same question: do we as readers want literal or liberal translation in our Japanese to English media? Terrible question! It's too reductive; furthermore, both terms are too vague to be of any practical use. Let's throw it out and talk about something interesting for a change.

It is, perhaps, more telling to examine why we favor certain degrees of "literal" or "liberal" translation work and the relative merits and drawbacks of particular approaches. Certain readers will naturally favor different writing styles for different reasons, and it's likely a futile--to say nothing of boorish--exercise to insist someone change their preferences. However, there are some less subjective qualities we can examine which open the door to more fascinating discussions: In what areas are different approaches most effective? What are the limitations or common pitfalls of such approaches? What does favoring one approach over the other suggest about reader values? And so on.

While there are certain degrees of refinement and transformation in every approach to translation, the majority of styles fall into one of three broad categories:

Structurally untransformative. A text that "hugs" the Japanese and lives within the Japanese media cultural consciousness.

Inefficiently transformative. A text that lives within the English media cultural consciousness but achieves this result with strenuous, often sloppy, transformations. I may be a little harsher on this category because it's the one the majority of my work falls into.

Efficiently transformative. A text that lives within the English media cultural consciousness and is largely a clean, coherent work on its own. Typically (but not always) closely mirrors the source in style. Virtually always closely mirrors the source in spirit.

Due to licensing restrictions--to say nothing of the intense time commitment of translating a full work--we are very rarely blessed with alternate translations of games or books in the pop culture space. This limits our ability to effectively compare approaches, as a "liberally" translated apple bears a non-helpful resemblance "literally" translated orange. Are the visible differences a product of the translators' style, or is it a matter of the different species?

Fortunately, we are extraordinarily lucky to have three fundamentally unique translations of the game of Chrono Trigger with full scripts available at our fingertips. While it feels a tad gauche to put a magnifying glass on what are (mostly) the works of single individuals--particularly when one is a hobby project--all translations have been visible to the public for at least fifteen years. It is sufficient to say they are probably not reflective of any of the translators' current skillsets.

For those of us who haven't played the game twenty times in a probably autism-fueled stupor, let's discuss briefly the history of these translations.

Chrono Trigger was first released in English in 1995 with a translation by Ted Woolsey. I haven't deepdived any of Woolsey's work to a meaningful degree in recent years. My general impression is that his works tend to be "okay" translations with moments of brilliance (the names in Eng!CT are a shining example of this) and occasional complete misTLs. Some of his writing is pretty sloppy or ill-planned but generally acceptable within the game translation space of the 90s. He is reported to have completed the translation of this roughly 200,000 character script within a month. This is not impossible for a professional--we'll touch on this again later--but it is not pleasant. Given this severe time restriction, Woolsey's text is impressive but is a shining example of an inefficiently transformative translation (approach 2).

Fans, while largely appreciative of Woolsey's work, noted multiple minor mistranslations and examples of overzealous--and ineffective--transformation. A full retranslation project was launched in the early 2000s and spearheaded by an individual with the penname KWhazit. This project culminated in 2007 with a full patch of the game. KWhazit's work, in an effort to capture lost or obfuscated meaning in Woolsey's text, is reluctant to depart from the structure and makeup of the Japanese text. The text is largely free of errors, although I disagree with readings in minor instances. It serves as our example of structurally untransformative work (approach 1).

In 2009, with the release of Chrono Trigger on the DS, Square Enix assigned then in-house translator Tom Slattery to update the 1995 Woolsey translation and retranslate significant portions of the text. While some of Woolsey's core translation decisions are maintained--we'll talk more about this later--Slattery's work is generally a unique product. By my estimates, Slattery most likely had two months in which to complete the work and had less familiarity with the game than Woolsey in 1995. The unique challenges of this second official translation will be discussed later.

It would be remiss not to mention that Slattery's script was the first version of Chrono Trigger I ever played, and most of Slattery's other Square Enix translations (FF Tactics Advance, FFVI Advance, FFIV DS) are other childhood or adolescent favorites. Slattery was one of my translation idols when my interest in translation first began budding about a decade ago, so I'm well aware that I harbor some nostalgia for his writing. However, I hadn't looked at the Chrono Trigger DS script in any serious way for a good four or five years until just a few days ago. (Again...the caffeine and probably autism-fueled stupor. That was my idea of a vacation. In my defense, I had a grand old time holing up in a hotel room, reading scripts for hours, and grinning like a fool.) I was pleasantly surprised to find that the script holds up--to the best of my professional ability--even without the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.

Slattery's script is my favorite of the three, because I consider it the most effective and skilled conveyance of the Chrono Trigger spirit. It encapsulates the efficiently transformative approach (#3).

We'll examine why this elegant work is effective in its transformations, what transformations exist in Slattery's translation, and what drawbacks are associated with this approach via several case studies.

Prior to that, it would be helpful to discuss why each approach is fundamentally different.

What is Structural Transformation and Media Cultural Consciousness?

It is helpful at this point to remind the reader that I have no formal education in translation theory and am willfully making terms up as I go. Their significance does not extend past the boundaries of this essay.

That is, I do not use the phrase "structural transformation" purely to mean adjusting grammatical structures (the formal definition); at its heart, virtually all Japanese to English translation requires some degree of adjusting sentence structures for basic readability. "I topic dinner subject eat negative past feminine." is nonsense. At the same time, it's foolish to pretend that "I didn't eat dinner." is just as transformative as "Oh! Pish-posh. Who even eats dinner these days, darling?" (Important note: We are not attaching value judgements to degrees of transformation! I am not suggesting one line versus the other could ever possibly be more appropriate when completely devoid of context.)

To be able to differentiate works that might contain Ms. Didn't Eat vs Ms. Pish-Posh, we must consider what other works these translations are in conversation with. This is what I'm terming the language media cultural consciousness.

Works in the English media cultural consciousness mimic the style of works written originally in English--usually by native or strongly fluent writers--in order to utilize helpful shortcuts. We know, by virtue of reading lots of English works, that "Once upon a time" opens a fairytale. We understand that "Would you make me the happiest man on Earth?" is a marriage or dating proposal with no further context provided. We read "Captain! The flux capacitator is going into overdrive!" and immediately understand the speaker is in an emergency situation on a spaceship in a sci-fi story, even though we do not know what a flux capacitator is or what happens when one enters a state of overdrive. These shortcuts prevent the writer from having to reinvent the wheel with every story. It is an inescapable fact that a work exists in a language media cultural consciousness, and virtually all stories can be lifted (to some degree) from one into another without changing the core components or themes of the story.

By way of comparison, translated works in the Japanese media cultural consciousness mimic the style of other translated works that--for any number of reasons--closely adhere to dictionary definitions of the Japanese text. By being written in English, these works are largely in conversation with each other. (Again, we are not attaching a value judgement!) Savvy readers within this cultural consciousness automatically understand that "I want to be by his side..." is a statement of romantic intent even if they cannot read 彼のそばにいたい… A character saying another's name followed by an ellipsis is an expression of poignant emotion ("Amemura-kun..."); "That is..." is said by someone taken aback.

The media cultural consciousness is determined at the prose level (how the story is told), although some works can transform aspects at the content level (what the story is) without negatively impacting the underlying themes and tone. All choices the translator makes are transformations. Every work is inherently transformative. While, realistically, all works fall on a sliding scale between the two cultural consciousness poles, we can generally consider works that attempt to operate in the Japanese media cultural consciousness structurally untransformative and classify (in)efficiently transformative works as ones that attempt to operate in the English media cultural consciousness.

There. We've gotten all the impartiality out of our systems. Now we can begin assigning value judgements! Whee!

For many native English speakers (a younger me among them), it is tempting to assume that English media cultural consciousness = good and stop there. I am incredibly grateful and humbled by the many people who've spoken on the subject with differing opinions, both indirectly and directly to me. If you wouldn't mind me holding my opinion until the end, it is perhaps more enlightening to examine a couple of key questions first:

Why Do Most Professional Works Favor the English Media Cultural Consciousness?

There are certain subsets of the industry where this is not as much the case (usually anything involving dubbing or other timing-sensitive audio), but to avoid getting into the weeds of why visual/audio mismatch is undesirable, let's focus the discussion on the majority of the industry.

At the most basic level...money talks! The overwhelming majority of the wealthy English readership is based in the US, UK, and Australia/NZ. This is not to say that there are not other major pockets of readers; insider data (you'll forgive me that I can't cite my sources here...) reveals especially high consumership in India and the Philippines. However, consumers in countries with average lower expendable income are less likely to legally purchase translations, and as a result, the market tends to cater to the whims of its highest-paying customers. This isn't especially satisfying on an ideological level, but it is to some degree understandable--at the end of the day, translators, editors, and all the many other industry professionals need to eat too.

However, why is US English the industry standard as compared to British English, say? Even non-American-English-speaking translators are expected to write in American English on the vast majority of their projects, and in the rare instances a work is released in Europe/Oceania but not the US, it is highly likely that the work will be written in American English anyway. What gives?

American English occupies the intriguing niche of being English's lingua (dialetto?) franca by virtue of the US's cultural global hegemony. For better or for worse--and quite arguably the latter--common conventions of American English culture and storytelling are understood across the globe. Most English readers outside the US understand "She's the cheerleader" describes a peppy, outgoing girl who the speaker probably feels negative about--perhaps she's dumb (and blonde, by any chance?) or more sexually active than the speaker feels appropriate. "You look like your mom found you in a Walmart parking lot" is understand as an insult even for those who've never set foot in a Walmart or whose local Walmart has a vastly different image from American Walmarts. By tapping into this cultural consciousness, translators can use shortcuts to tell stories to a large audience.

This latter argument is, to my mind, the more compelling of the two reasons to set works within an (American) English cultural consciousness. This argument also applies to hobby works, albeit to a lesser degree. Indeed, here a myriad of counterarguments begin to take hold.

Why Do Some Translators and Readers Prefer the Japanese Media Cultural Consciousness? And Counterarguments

Apart from matters of personal taste--again, I no longer find it appropriate to comment on individual preferences--some readers prefer the Japanese media cultural consciousness out of a dislike for American cultural hegemony, a conflation of sloppy writing (approach 2, inefficiently transformative works) with all English media cultural consciousness translations, or a desire to feel a sense of distance from the work. I'm fascinated by this last, which I've heard from multiple individuals and still can't claim to understand fully at an emotional level. Historically, I've (unfairly) chalked a lot of that up to exoticism from mainly US-based individuals, but I most often see this argument from those outside the US. It appears that some individuals feel most comfortable when translated English--already a foreign incursion in their lives--rebels against AmEng cultural frameworks embedded in the storytelling. (Personally, I think this concept has fantastic literary merit and would love to hear more from individuals in this camp. Please tell me if you think I'm completely off base, too!)

On the flip side, we also find many individuals who are more fluent or at home in the Japanese media cultural consciousness. Many of these individuals are non-native speakers, although some native speakers who generally don't seek out original English media may feel the same way. The constant prioritization of native English speakers in such discussions can make non-native speakers feel ignored and marginalized, particularly as many individuals are already marginalized in other ways within the AmEng cultural sphere.

It isn't fair to say an individual shouldn't feel at home in their given cultural consciousness; nor is it appropriate the needs of all such individuals. Many structurally untransformative translations speak to this need and provide a space for a unique and fascinating form of English storytelling to flourish.

Additionally, semi-fluent readers sometimes struggle with the figurative language or irregular vocabulary associated with (in)efficiently transformative translations. (Structurally untransformative translations tend to use a strictly limited vocabulary and collection of sentence structures, making them potentially more friendly to semi-fluent readers.) Semi-fluent readers are also more likely to be tripped up by annoyingly flowery or disjointed writing, both common problems of inefficiently transformative translation. It must be noted that this is partially a matter of taste; opinions on what is annoying varies widely even among industry professionals of various degrees of English fluency.

Apart from the law of averages--more readers, native or non-native alike, are likely to be fully fluent than semi-fluent--the common counterargument to this is that semi-fluent readers should read more works in the English media cultural consciousness to broaden their horizons. I agree with this to a limited degree only. While expanding one's knowledge is a powerful thing, I find it insulting to imply some readers do not like certain works due to willful ignorance. It is ultimately the reader's right as to which works they choose to engage with.

Subjectivity abounds! As a result, I generally don't care whether a work is placed in the Japanese or English media cultural consciousness as long as it is done skillfully. However, most structurally untransformative works fall flat due to their inability to retain core emotive information from Japanese. Much of Japanese's emotional tone is carried in grammatical particles which are typically neglected or overemphasized to an awkward degree in structurally transformative works. In the sample sentence at the very top of this section, the grammatical particle わ (rendered as "feminine" in the agrammatical translation) implies the speaker is female, and likely a relatively posh or middle-aged one at that. This is impossible to see in "I didn't eat dinner yesterday."

Other emotive information is lost in conversion due to differences in English vs Japanese stress and line length. This can be made up to some degree by a strong knowledge of the Japanese cultural consciousness, but in most cases, a skilled translator is needed to bridge the gap for the vast majority of readers. For example, tsukkomi (riposting) humor rendered into English usually needs to be short and punchy to be funny, an example of the English cultural consciousness bleeding over into the Japanese space. If Japanese words serving pronounal functions are rendered as English filler words (ie, こんな to "this kind of"), the lines become bloated and lose their humor to all but the most savvy of readers. See "You're the only person who thinks that kind of thing..." vs "Nah, that's just you..."

In most cases, critique on structurally untransformative works ends at whether mistranslations are present in the work. It is rare that more than little attention is paid to how effectively the work conveys style and tone. This is not to say that all translators with structurally untransformative styles are poor translators. Far from it! Off the top of my head, I immediately think of two senior translators with relatively untransformative styles whose works I know very well and admire. However, in order for these works to effectively convey the stories' emotional beats and tone even within the Japanese media cultural consciousness, the translators (or the editors who work with them) must at times be more transformative than is their norm. Even then, I sometimes think they do a poor job in certain key areas. One translator struggles to convey the presence of humor; the other has difficulty writing strong emotions.

On a subjective note, I prefer writing my works within the English media cultural consciousness because I find it more rewarding to more individuals when done properly and, as a side bar, more difficult. This isn't to say that I think generally structurally untransformative translators are lazy--I fully acknowledge I lack the ability to produce such well-composed and untransformative pieces as the colleagues mentioned above--but rather that attempting to write in the Japanese media cultural consciousness can often go hand-in-hand with bad habits. It is tempting to cut corners when overworked and write an easier, but perhaps less effectively communicative, translation. Were I to focus all of my energies in this media cultural consciousness, it would be worthwhile to pursue these translations more often! However, as of now, I do not and thus lack an interest in dipping my toes into this pool--unless, of course, my client stipulates it. Cha-ching. I enjoy being paid for services rendered.

At this stage of my career, I consider myself relatively fluent in the Japanese media cultural consciousness and do have the ability to track story beats and feel emotional tones that do not follow native English conventions. However, I do still have a preference for works written in the English media cultural consciousness, as I find these more emotionally fulfilling when executed well via efficiently transformative translations.

That "when" is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting. What can happen when a translation is inefficiently transformative? Let's dive in.

What is Efficient Transformation? Or: How to Avoid Annoying White Guy Syndrome

Anyone who spends any length of time in the translated Japanese media space knows an annoying white guy. "You're not like other white guys who talk about Japan," a friend once told me after I'd ranted for five minutes about racist undertones in dead literary translators whose work I detest. My friend was very sweet, but a rotten liar.

Annoying white guys are everywhere. They may not be white or male; anyone can be an annoying white guy if they try hard enough. We all have STEM degrees and an inability to shut up. Hi, it's me. Hey. How're you doing?

The bulk of translations complained about as so-called "too liberal" translations are products of annoying white guy syndrome, which is to say poor writing. The executed transformations fail to create the correct tone; in most cases, being obnoxious is not the author's intention!

The reader is annoyed, and rightfully so, because the work does register as part of the English media cultural consciousness--but it falls into the subset of poor writing. Usually, the work registers as such because it is wildly tonally inconsistent. Works often appear a little too hyper (a huge issue for me--I sound like I'm hopped on caffeine, usually because I am. Let's put a pin in that) with inconsistent characterization and tone. In many cases, the translator understands what needs to happen to execute the story successfully but simply lacks the skills--or is otherwise limited--to create tasteful and appropriate transformations.

This is not to say that being overly liberal is the only problem. Rather, it's often the case that the inefficiently transformative translator is overly literal in the wrong places. The inefficiently transformative translator often overstresses emotive particles or is overreliant on dictionary-literal sentence structures, particularly if they have a background in hobby translation.

In other situations, the inefficiently transformative translator may override the author's wishes and insert their ego to an inappropriate and distracting degree. This may present in surprising ways. A translator who performs a bad faith reading and writes a line in a purposefully inflammatory way for the English media cultural consciousness may be just as inappropriate as a translator who scrubs out problematic elements to the point of censorship.

Other common pitfalls include obfuscating story beats or placing the stress of the story beats in the wrong place via transformative processes or adding information that is contradictory on either a story or tonal level. In some cases, this may appear as the translator poking fun at the work, a concept I generally think very poorly of. Mistranslations are also not uncommon in inefficiently transformative works due to the limitations mentioned below.

In most cases, the inefficently transformative translator wants to execute efficient transformations but is stymied by said limitations. Some translators with this approach eventually improve or remove said limitations to the point that they produce efficiently transformative works, and the whole world is all the better for it.

How, then, is an efficiently transformative work produced? Such a translation requires coherence on the story beat, character, thematic, and narrative voice levels. The translator must almost always have a comprehensive knowledge of the work and effectively retell the work from scratch with good writing practices. Inefficiently transformative works are often produced line-by-line and miss the forest for the trees; efficient transformations require a much higher-level focus.

Some efficiently transformative works are extraordinarily transformative, perhaps to the point where they're arguable more entertaining than the source material. The Brian Gray-led translation of The World Ends With You boasts a lively script with a playfulness that sets it apart from most other translated games with a teenage cast; the Japanese script is more in line with its peers. I personally don't think English TWEWY's zest outstays its welcome, but again, this is a matter of taste. More importantly, the additions to the text serve to support one possible reading of the source game's theme and message.

(Sidebar: The internet being the internet, some people are likely going "Additions to the text? :eyes: :eyes: Hot gossip? One possible reading?" It's nothing that exciting. The additions I can think of off the top of my head are all very granular. For instance, an English line in a secret report "But darkness has always been husband to light" personifies "light" and "darkness" when the Japanese doesn't. Darkness and light are already visual motifs of the characters this line alludes to, so the personification only serves to strengthen the intended message.)

However, not all efficient transformations need to be as radical as English TWEWY. Often, less is more! Clear, coherent writing that conveys the source's message while standing on its own two legs as an independent work is the operative idea, and Slattery's Chrono Trigger script is an excellent example of a more understated text that does just that.

Well, How Hard That Can Be? What Could Possibly Get in the Way?

Apart from a general lack of skill, the biggest obstacles toward producing an efficiently transformative work are lack of time, lack of incentive, or a lack of familiarity in the work. Other work-specific limitations may apply, and we'll examine three such limitations in Woolsey's and Slattery's works.

As mentioned above, Woolsey has gone on record to say he was given about a month to translate the roughly 200,000 character script. Slattery has said he found his pace uncomfortably fast and cited completing an average of 5,000 characters per day. This would put him at approximately 40 work days, so I am assuming he had roughly double Woolsey's time to translate the same script. (Please note that this estimate is mine and may be entirely incorrect.)

Years ago, these numbers horrified me. Now, I don't find the prospect (especially Slattery's) atypically daunting, assuming this full-time project was the only source of income in that time period. You'll forgive me if I'm shy about the details, but I don't translate for my day job. (I'm in a related industry role.) Outside of that, I translate for maybe 2-3 hours per day in less busy periods and complete ~7,000 characters per day. In busy periods, I can churn out between 280,000 to 320,000 characters over the course of two months--and again, I'm not being paid to sit and translate 8 hours a day. Slattery's timeline strikes me as industry typical (if not fun); Woolsey's is even less desirable but not totally unheard of. Of course, it was entirely possible they were also juggling side projects while working full-time for Square Enix. The truth is, translators often work many jobs at once because industry pay is quite poor! As unfortunate as it is, sometimes translators simply can't afford to expend the time and effort necessary to do a stellar job. This rush may have been the cause of some mistranslations or bumpy spots in Woolsey's script.

This, however, assumes the translator is familiar with the source material and is not bogged down by time-consuming thorny patches of research, puns, misleading text, or other work-specific oddities. (Rap battles, anyone?) Chrono Trigger strikes me as a fairly forgiving text; however, I would imagine Woolsey lost a decent amount of time renaming a fair number of major and minor characters.

(Sidebar: "Renaming characters?!" I hear some people cry. Yes! Most renaming schemes were executed very well, and while I don't know for certain that these names can be attributed purely to Woolsey, the new names are largely thematically appropriate and strengthen the English text. Some characters whose names are fanciful in Japanese but plain in English, like the mysterious Princess Sara, are renamed with English fantasy-appropriate names like Princess Schala. Other names that would appear inappropriately odd (Marledia?) become commonplace (Nadia). The only naming choice I do find a bit dubious--if nostalgically charming--are three semi-joke characters (Vinegar, Mayonnaise, and Soy Sauce) renamed to rock figures Ozzie, Slash, and Flea. I do agree that changing the condiments is a smart idea, as that particular combination feels odd in an Am Eng cultural context, but bringing in real life figures is perhaps inappropriately incongruous with the fantasy atmosphere.)

Woolsey seems to have been somewhat familiar with the game prior to translating it; I assume he was able to play a copy at some point in the process or at least had extensive footage of it. Slattery has gone on record to say that he wasn't very familiar with Chrono Trigger prior to translating it, at least compared to Final Fantasy IV (another beautifully executed script). He claims to have struggled with knowing what text went where even with extensive video footage.

Wait, huh? How does a translator not know where a piece of text goes in a game? Surely it should be visible right on the screen!

The problem is, game translation has little to do with looking at the actual game. Most of the work is conducted in Excel or a similarly designed translation tool. As a test, I put the script in Excel and pulled a few lines at random to see what might come up:

私を助けに来てくれたのですね。しかし、それにはおよびませんよ。

(Did you come to save me? That's very kind, but you needn't have bothered.)

This is a character pretending to be the queen, who is not supposed to be present in this scene. I can definitely see some confusion if the translator doesn't know about the imposter.

もう1回やり直し！　ドアの所からさくにそって時計まわりに3回まわる！

(No, no, no. Do it right! Start from the door and work your way around the walls. Three times, counterclockwise. On the double!)

This is a character's response if you mess up a mini game. In the script, it looks like this line comes right before the text for the mini game being completed successfully. Without context, it wouldn't be immediately clear why the character switches from barking orders to cheering.

ぬけがらを押せば…… ぬけがらをのぼれば……

(Push the shell... Climb the shell...)

An NPC telling the main characters how to navigate a puzzle. There's zero textual indication what the "shell" is, and this term could be translated in lots of different ways--husk, skin, etc. One would need to navigate to the video and see the shell itself to choose the correct term.

I was able to identify all the lines at a glance, but that is a product of having played this game over twenty times. Someone less familiar with the game could easily have wasted time on all three lines digging up footage to find out what was going on!

Additionally, all games have tricky bits of non-dialogue that can be nearly impossible to track down. Say an Excel cell contains nothing but the word "bar." Is this a crowbar? A level bar? A pub? Short of querying the development team, another time-consuming task, it may be very difficult to tell.

As if that weren't enough, each translator has expressed encountering a handful of other difficulties during their condensed rush through the script.

Woolsey has stated (presumably this is hyperbole) that 50% of his original translation draft had to be cut for the NES's limited space. Most games have strict space limits which can hamper storytelling for all but the most concise translators. Furthermore, Woolsey's translation was subject to external censors, resulting in some rather silly looking assertions, such as characters visibly drunk on "soda pop." While such censors are relatively uncommon in the current translation space, client or parent company demands can--and do!-throw annoying wrenches into translations. Unless the translation team can cleverly smooth over these unhelpful stipulations, the translator will usually receive the blame for a less-than-ideal reader experience.

Outside of the general feelings of being rushed and unprepared, Slattery has (diplomatically) commented on the difficulty of inheriting a legacy translation, especially one as well-loved as the 1995 Woolsey Chrono Trigger script. Working with a team of translators or taking over for a translator on a solo project requires a much different skillset than translating from scratch. In continuous projects, adopting the other translator's writing and translation style is necessary, a task that can be very difficult--not to mention frustrating!--if the other translator(s) have very different skills or approaches than you. Even in cases where your skillset is more adapted to the particular project, it is inappropriate to flex those chops and create an incongruent product.

Slattery was not beholden to matching Woolsey's style; however, by retranslating a beloved game, his work would naturally appear as in dialogue with Woolsey's. Changing fan favorite lines could arouse fan ire, but at the same time, nostalgia-laden lines written in Woolsey's style might not mesh well with the bulk of Slattery's work. Similarly, correcting mistakes (especially well-known ones!) or modifying characterization are always tricky maneuvers. While it is crucial to not perpetuate errors, performing large changes or having to go on record to discuss such modifications can veer into finger-pointing territory unless handled with care. Interestingly, Chrono Trigger was not Slattery's first retranslation of a Woolsey text (see FFVI Advance and FFIV DS), and that wealth of experience may explain why this retranslation is so deftly done.

All this is to say, it is a miracle most commercial translations turn out as well as they do! While it is certainly the professional's responsibility to complete quality work under industry-standard conditions, one cannot help but wonder if better pay and better timelines would go hand-in-hand with more elegant and error-free translations.

Case Studies

We've now discussed extensively different approaches to translating, how these approaches may come about, and their relative merits and drawbacks. I've selected three examples to illustrate these points and add a final few notes. These examples are largely illustrative of each translations' full text and haven't been cherry picked so much as selected lovingly from a smorgasbord of delightful lines rich with potential commentary.

Glen's Flashback: Emotional Tone and Consistency in Voice

(This is not really a spoiler, and this game is nearly thirty years old... But I suppose if you haven't played it and wish to spare yourself any plot details, please skip to the next case study.)

In this scene, a character named Glenn reflects on a pivotal moment of his childhood when his older friend, Cyrus, scared off a group of children bullying Glenn. Both characters are present in the medieval period but speak modern Japanese. In other scenes, their tone is appropriately knightly.

Source (English text courtesy of the archivist):

[Frog's Flashback, Unknown Forest, ? A.D.] [Glenn] 「うわーん！[END] [Cyrus] 「お前らーッ！[END] [Kids] 「やべえ、サイラスだ、逃げろーッ！[END] [Glenn] 「ヒック……、ありがと…… 　サイラス……、ヒック。[END] サイラス「グレン、男はな、立ち向かって　　　行かなきゃいけない時もあるんだぞ。[END] グレン「でも……、ぶたれたらイタイよ。　　　アイツらだって……[END] サイラス「優しすぎるよ、グレンは……。[END]

Let's take a look at this scene through the lens of approach one:

[Glenn] Uwaan! [Cyrus] You guuuys! [Kids] Look out, it's Cyrus, run awaaay! [Glenn] hic...... thanks...... Cyrus...... hic. Cyrus: Look, Glenn, a man's got times when he has to fight back, too. Glenn: But...... getting hit hurts. Even for them...... Cyrus: You're too gentle, Glenn......

This translation is free of errors (dubious lack of capitalization on "thanks" aside) but has room for improvement in a few areas.

Let's take a look at all those long vowels. "Uwaan!" is largely understood as crying or distressed screaming within the Japanese media cultural consciousness, but I worry about the emotional ambiguity of "You guuuys!" "お前らーッ!" is unambiguously angry. Were the game to provide an image of Cyrus looking angry to support this vague text, this would be acceptable. Alas, Cyrus's sprite looks like this:

Not the most imposing, I fear.

"Getting hit hurts. Even for them..." is also more unnatural than is my preference. In a professional work, I would find this distracting and be taken out of the moment. The tone is supposed to be somber, but I have difficulty seeing it here.

Now, via approach two:

[Glenn] Aaahhhh! [Cyrus] Hey you-! [Kids] It's Cyrus! Run for your lives! [Glenn] Sniffle...thanks, Cyrus...Hic...! CYRUS: Glenn, there're times when people simply have to grit their teeth! GLENN: But...it hurts when I get hit. They... CYRUS: You're a marshmallow, Glenn...

Glenn's scream has become more recognizably grounded in the English media cultural consciousness, and the sniffle is a smart touch--too much hiccuping could make Glenn sound drunk within the parameters of the Eng MCC. The "Hey" in "Hey you-!" largely clears up the emotional ambiguity of approach one, although there are surely even clearer solutions.

However, some other choices are a bit odd or simply not desirable. "Run for your lives!" is at odds with a character readers are supposed to sympathize with. I wouldn't stress this point were I editing it, but we're nitpicking! We're having fun!

Cyrus's tone is in "Glenn...teeth!" is more assertive than I'm reading it (to me, it's more of a gentle reminder like "Y'know, Glenn...there are times when you have to stand up for yourself") but I see an argument for Woolsey's take on it. I don't have an issue with that, nor do I particularly mind changing "men have to blah blah" to "people have to blah blah." It is generally a smart choice to work around overly gendered language when it would appear distracting, but given the medieval setting of these two would-be knights, I wouldn't find it inappropriate to lean into the machismo. "Grit their teeth" is the true problem in this line. It is good to use figurative language, particularly when the source does (as it does here; when Cyrus says literally "stand and face" he doesn't mean Glenn should simply stand up and stare holes into the bullies), but "grit their teeth" is too vague to the point that it fails to convey Cyrus's intent.

The two biggest concerns, however, are in the last two lines. Woolsey, perhaps going too fast in a slightly ambiguous section, misunderstands the dropped subject in "It hurts to be hit." Glenn is not scared to fight back because he's afraid of being hit harder. Glenn refuses to fight out of compassion for the enemy--a core aspect of his character! Misrepresenting one of the most crucial pieces of this main character's backstory is a disappointing feature of this text.

Finally, while "marshmallow" is a fun and childish choice, this is incongruous with the medieval setting and overly Ye Olde style of Cyrus and Glenn's speech later. In fact, Glenn's over the top (even distracting!) speech pattern appears to have been dropped entirely here. It isn't inappropriate to dial back hammy characters in serious moments to avoid shattering the tone (although it may be better to never let them reach a distracting level of ham in the first place!) but it simply seems incongruous in this scene.

Each line seems to have been considered one-by-one and thus fits poorly within the larger work.

And the same scene in approach three:

Glenn: Aaahhh! Cyrus: Stop that! Kids: Oh, no, it's Cyrus! Run! Glenn: *sniffle* Thank you, Cyrus... *sniffle* Cyrus: Glenn, there are times a man must stand and face the things that trouble him. Glenn: But...it hurts to be hit. I cannot hurt another. Not...not even them. Cyrus: You're too soft, Glenn.

While I'd argue that the usage of ellipses on line 6 is more in line with Japanese than English, this passage does a great job of standing on its own as a well-written piece of English text.

The screaming and crying is unambiguous to fluent English readers. More pressingly, Cyrus's second line has become a crystal-clear "Stop that!"

The rather distracting elements of the second translation have vanished, and Glenn's character--the key point of the scene!--is accurately represented. By adding "I cannot hurt another." Slattery conveys a strong understanding of the source's intent and successfully ties the concepts of "being hit" and "hitting back" together without awkward phrasing.

The character's voices are simple but present. With the use of "cannot," we see a slight formality in Glenn's voice that will carry throughout the rest of the game. It isn't fancy, but it doesn't need to be! The lack of bells and whistles helps sell the simple concept and is easier to implement throughout the script.

Dance Bobonga: Lyricism and "Dangling" Text

In this scene, a group of prehistoric cave people invite the main characters to "Dance bobonga!" Bobonga is, we assume, a nonsensical cave-person sounding word.

Source:

[Dancers] ボボンガ　コインガ[note] ノインガ　ホインガ[note] 歌えや踊れ　風達と[note][note][END] ボボンガ　コインガ[note] ノインガ　ホインガ[note] 歌えや踊れ　山達と[note][note][END] ボボンガ　コインガ[note] ノインガ　ホインガ[note] 歌えや踊れ　この一夜[note][note][END]

Let's have the song in approach one:

[Dancers] Bobonga, koinga[note] Noinga, hoinga[note] Sing, dance, with winds[note][note] Bobonga, koinga[note] Noinga, hoinga[note] Sing, dance, with mountains[note][note] Bobonga, koinga[note] Noinga, hoinga[note] Sing, dance, all this night[note][note]

I am unnaturally fond of "noinga, hoinga"--what a stellar bit of nonsense.

In terms of accuracy, this translation fails to capture the personification applied to "winds" and "mountains." Does this matter in the grand scheme of the game? No; I'm nitpicking.

What is more disappointing is a general lack of anything that makes it sound like a song, apart from the music notes. I can't complain too much because this is standard for works in the Japanese media cultural consciousness, but I hope we'll see it in the more English-focused texts.

Now, for approach two:

[Dancers] Oohga, bunga [musicsymbol] Munga, meeple [musicsymbol] Dance with wind people [note][note] Oohga, bunga [musicsymbol] Munga, meeple [musicsymbol] Dance with mountain people [musicsymbol] Oohga, bunga [musicsymbol] Munga, might [musicsymbol] Sing and dance all night [musicsymbol]

The song has changed quite a bit! Swapping the caveman noises for "Oohga, bunga" is excellent, as these sounds are more instantly recognizable as "English" caveman grunts. Additionally, the rhymes lend an added sense of lyricism we lacked in approach one. Woolsey also solves the problem of the personified winds and mountains by naming them "wind people" and "mountain people." It helps that 2/3 of the song is nonsense, but Woolsey does a good job of creating musical-sounding lyrics without deviating from the source. It's much easier said than done!

The one drawback is that, by dropping the "bobonga," Woolsey has now created a problem of dangling text. The invitation to "dance bobonga" now connects to nothing at all, giving the line an awkward randomness. Transformative translators must be careful of dropping concepts for this exact reason.

Approach three is quite similar:

[Dancer] Ooga, booga [note] Munga, meeple [note] Dance with wind people [note] Ooga, booga [note] Munga, meeple [note] Dance with mountain people [note] Ooga, booga [note] Munga, might [note] Sing, sing, dance all night [note]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Slattery cleans up the spelling and rhythm slightly but otherwise leaves this unchanged. I consider this smart--Woolsey did a good job on it, this song is an iconic legacy translation, and the adjustments give the song an extra level of polish. Slattery does a similar clean-up treatment on a handful of other songs or chants in the game but generally leaves the bulk of Woolsey's work there intact.

Unfortunately, Slattery's translation has the same dangling "dance bobonga" line. This is a problem he inherited as opposed to one he introduced himself, but there are a small handful of other dangling lines or concepts sprinkled throughout the script. Even very well-executed translations can have slip-ups.

Welcome to Enhasa: Ambiguous Meaning and Tonal Inconsistency

Now, for some NPC text! Unlike scripted scenes, NPC text does not need to flow like a conversation. Instead, these miniature monologues establish setting through tiny snippets of text--microstories. We only get a few sentences with these characters, so it's crucial to use the space effectively and convey the necessary information with a strict eye on tone.

These NPCs are some of the first the player encounters upon entering a magical kingdom floating in the sky. They are designed to give the player a sense of mystery and whimsy.

Source:

[Young Man] ようこそ、エンハーサに。エンハーサは、魔法王国ジールの夢みる町です。ねむりのよろこびの中でしんりを探しているのです。おや……？しかし、あなた方は……。[END] [Doreen] ここは永遠なる魔法王国ジール。すべての望みのかなう場所……。だけど、そのだいしょうがどのくらい高くつくかは知らないけれどね……。[END] あなたの目に見えてる世界とアタシの目に見えてる世界とはまったくちがうものなのかもね。いい？　宇宙は生命の数だけ存在するわ。見えるもの、さわれるものだけが本当と思っちゃダメよ。[END] アタシはドリーン。閉ざされた道をもとめなさい。じゅんじょよ��、ちしきの扉を開けてね。[END]

Let's take a look at how approach one handles these two characters:

[Young Man] Welcome to Enharsa. Enharsa is the Magic Kingdom Zeal's dreaming city. We are searching for truth within the joy of sleep. Hmm......? But, you people are...... [Doreen] This is the eternal Magic Kingdom Zeal. The place where all desires come true...... However, there's no telling how high the price for that will reach...... The world that you see with your eyes and the world that I see with my eyes may be completely different things. Listening? All that exists in the universe are the destinies of lives. Don't think that only what you can see and touch are reality. I'm Doreen. Seek the way that was shut. Get the order correct and open the door of knowledge.

First--and this does not matter much in the grand scheme of things--I find the choice to render エンハーサ as "Enharsa" a little off-putting. The older 1995 translation uses "Enhasa," meaning the change here was deliberate. Yes, there is a long vowel on the "a" sound which can represent an "ar" but...was it necessary? Native English speakers naturally elongate the the first "a" due to the perceived syllable break on the Romantic language looking en-hasa. I don't know. The "hars" quite literally produces a harsh sound inappropriate for a dreamy magical kingdom. In a game with such thoughtful naming decisions, this seems like an odd one.

That aside, this text is riddled with unnecessary ambiguities. What does "Magic Kingdom Zeal's dreaming city" mean? Why does the young man trail off? Why does Doreen say "Listening?" (Was there not enough space for "Are you listening?" But then, why not "Hear me?" or "Listen."?)

We also have two mistranslations; unfortunately, it appears that this translator struggles more in non-concrete text. "All that exists in the universe are the destinies of lives." is a very odd way to render "宇宙は生命の数だけ存在するわ" (There are as many universes as living beings--from the full context of her speech, we can tell she means that every person has their own personal universe of whatever they observance.) I'm not sure where "destinies of lives" came from--perhaps the word 生命 was split in half and treated as two agrammatical words? "the way that was shut" is also incorrect and a much more basic error. While it's true that "shut" is past tense, this is due to a grammatical function that is largely identical to the corresponding English rule. Because the action of "shutting" happened in the past, the path is now currently "shut" or blocked off. This is especially odd, as this translator--who seems to know the game quite well--should recognize the currently sealed path this character is talking about.

Finally, we simply have a variety of clunky wordings to contend with. Ending "there's no telling..." on "reach" is a tad awkward, and the repetitive sentence structure of "The world you see with your eyes and the world I see with my eyes" is clunky. "Get the order correct" doesn't match the rest of Doreen's speech style. A stronger verb would have been more appropriate.

Altogether, rather disappointing! We come away with the impression that everyone in Enharsa/Enhasa talks confusing nonsense.

Let's see how approach two handles it:

[Young Man] Welcome to Enhasa, in the magical kingdom of Zeal. We find truth in the bliss of sleep. Dear me! And who might you be? [Doreen] This is the eternal kingdom of Zeal, where dreams can come true. But at what price? Am I a butterfly dreaming I'm a man... Or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi? Never assume that what you see and feel is real! I'm Doreen. Seek the hidden path, and open the doors of knowledge, each in turn.

Ohh, so much better. This is understandable! Now, let's pick it apart.

It appears that "searching for truth" has become "find truth." I am almost certain this is due to space, because "the city of dreams" has also vanished. However, this isn't a bad thing! This small passage immediately ties Enhasa to dreaming/sleep and establishes that this is a city (or other small geographical unit) in a larger kingdom. The phrase "bliss of sleep" is elegant and establishes the fantasy tone well. This is an example of great NPC dialogue! Finally, Woolsey correctly recognizes that the young man is surprised to see the main characters (who are very visibly not residents of Enhasa) and renders this in an unambiguous fashion. Bravo!

The majority of Doreen's text is stellar. The correct tone is established throughout, and perhaps as a byproduct of the spacing limits, we receive some lovely pithy lines. "But at what price?" is so elegant; compare that to "However, there's no telling how high the price will reach..."

However, I have a major problem with this infamous line "Am I a butterfly dreaming I'm a man... Or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi?" I honestly wonder if Woolsey didn't understand what was being said and wrote this to hide his confusion. Is it the だけ tripping everyone up? Guys, this is not that difficult!

The allusion to the Zhuangzi butterfly story is not inappropriate to Enhasa's motifs and setting, but mentioning a "bowling ball" and a "plate of sashimi" is an inappropriately anachronistic and tongue-in-cheek joke. Outside of the medieval-period characters named after condiments, the Japanese text of Chrono Trigger rarely breaks its own setting for humor. This is particularly jarring as this location is bookended between two serious scenes. From this point on, much of the game retains this serious tone. Adding humor can be excellent if the client allows it, but it's crucial to know when and where to place the jokes.

Finally, the juxtaposition of a fairly banal object with a specifically Asian food dish--especially to the target audience of 90s America--casts the rest of Doreen's monologue in the light of psuedo-mysticism wrapped in ostensibly Asian trappings. It's an unfortunate addition to an otherwise lovely bit of setting work.

This is cleaned up a bit in approach three:

[Young Man] Welcome to Enhasa, Zeal's City of Dreams. We seek enlightenment within the bliss of sleep. Hmm... You are...not one of us, are you? [Doreen] This is the Magic Kingdom of Zeal, where dreams can be made reality. But nothing in this world comes free. There is always a price to be paid. The world you see with your eyes may well differ completely from the one I see with mine. There are as many different worlds as there are observers. Never assume that only those things which you can see or touch are real. I am Doreen. Seek the hidden path, and open the doors of knowledge, each in turn.

Slattery's version borrows segments of the text from Woolsey with a few noticeable changes--not all of which I agree with.

Most pressingly, the "There as many..." line has finally been translated accurately and tonally appropriately. Slattery has also toned down some of the enthusiasm in Woolsey's (at times overly) hyper script; this is a recurring theme in the Slattery script and a common problem among approach 2 translators who are being too literal with their punctuation. Lest anyone accuse me of being unfair, I'm aware that I have a horrible case of this problem.

With that said, while these complaints are minor, I am not altogether fond of other tweaks Slattery made. Slattery removed the "eternal" kingdom and gave the phrase "Magic Kingdom of Zeal" to Doreen. I don't mind dropping "eternal," which means very little in the long run, but it's unfortunate that the young man now introduces "Zeal" without any explanation of what that is. NPC dialogue doesn't need to proceed in a fixed order, but because this young man is standing closer to the door, it's likely the player will talk to him first. Being bombarded immediately with two unknown names decreases the player's chance of remembering both and their relation to each other, the key information of that NPC's speech.

I also like Woolsey's tidy collocation "where dreams can come true," perhaps only because I'm sensitive to the phrase "made reality." A dictionary-level corresponding phrase (現実になる) appears with much greater frequency in Japanese than Eng's "made reality" so I'm used to trimming it out of my own and others' work. This is something that would probably only bug a fellow translator; still, I think the lack of spacing constrictions did not help this passage.

Conclusion

Apart from a fresh understanding of my ability to belabor a point, I hope you come away from this meandering essay with a mind ready to ask questions. What sorts of translations do you like to see, and why? What translated stories have you fallen in love with, and how has the storytelling method of the translation shaped that?

I don't think there's a single right answer, but I love discovering new ways to tell stories and translations whose skillful handling of the text lets me appreciate tales I might not have enjoyed otherwise. If others can experience even a fraction of that excitement, I will be very happy.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! Keep it real.

#not a translation #translation essay

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israaverse · 10 months ago

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Anat's journey of vengeance to confront Mot.

Really tried to nail the "it's so hot it feels like all of my skin is going to peel off in one go" feeling of the Dead Sea basin. Please click on the image for best quality!

PLEASE NOTE: it's not really known where Mot's 'throne' is, and various translations allude to it being vaguely at the 'edge' of the underworld. I thought it over and realized that the lowest place on earth is quite literally right there and made the creative decision to make Mot's throne/palace a salt pillar at the Dead Sea. this is a purely creative decision and not really anything supported by literary evidence (as most of my stuff on Canaanite myth is).

#my art #canaan #canaanite myth #anat #baal cycle #doodl #israaverse

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dearorpheus · 2 years ago

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Are there any non-fiction you can recommend for people who are fascinated by your blog (especially the elements of dark eroticism, morbidity and horror)?

🖤 love that you are loving!

i will try to stick to non-fic (also refraining as best i can from re-recommending texts from previous asks but there is of course bound to be some overlap): - The Severed Head: Capital Visions, Julia Kristeva -> read about Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Salomé (x, x)

and supplement w Baudelaire's Une Martyre "in which the narrator lovingly contemplates the beauty of a woman's severed head at rest upon a nightstand"

- Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs, Deleuze - The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography, Angela Carter - Aesthetic Sexuality: A Literary History of Sadomasochism, Romana Byrne - Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon, Allen S. Weiss - "Must We Burn Sade?", Simone de Beauvoir -> read also about Erzsébet Báthory, the Bloody Countess. supplement your readings with Borowcyzk's Immoral Tales (1973), Julie Delpy's The Countess (2009), Alejandra Pizarnik's La Condesa Sangrienta and/or, if you have the stomach for it:

Lorna's death in Hostel Pt II (2007), inspired by the Countess^

- Anaïs Nin's diaries + Henry and June - Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art, Yvonne Owens

Hans Baldung Grien "gave powerful visual expression to late medieval tropes and stereotypes, such as the poison maiden, venomous virgin, the Fall of Man, 'death and the maiden' and other motifs and eschatological themes, which mingled abject and erotic qualities in the female body"

- Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Per Faxneld - The Library of Esoterica's Witchcraft - the biographical Taschen on H.R. Giger's oeuvre—biomechanical, Lovecraftian-tentacular fused limbs, bodies, systems, overtly phallic/yonic symbology, darkly psychedelic... very much fantastically erotic; I have my eye on the 40th Anniversary Edition

Giger, as we know, having designed the xenomorph from the Alien (1979) series to have an intensely sexual evolution:

- DEFINITELY read about+explore ero guro (see also: Bataille's L'histoire de l'œil / Story of the Eye! though it is fiction)

brief introductory articles here and here but it's truly so rich and decadent... delve into it!! film, lit, manga, history, so on... -> watch Nagisa Ōshima's In The Realm Of The Senses (1976) too

- if you can read French by any chance, Le Corps Souillé (The Soiled Body) by Eric Falardeau looks incredible; if not, this excerpt alone is delightfully provocative even in isolation - similarly, L'espirit de plaisir: Une histoire de la sexualité et de l’érotisme au Japon (The Spirit of Pleasure: A History of Sexuality and Eroticism in Japan) by Philippe Pons and Pierre-François Souyri is something I'm hoping might see an English translation

^an excerpt from an interview with the authors

- The Art of Cruelty + The Red Parts, Maggie Nelson - Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles & Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, Richard Barnett - The Butchering Art, Lindsey Fitzharris - Death, Disease and Dissection, Suzie Grogan - The Theatre and Its Double, Antonin Artaud - Men, Women, and Chainsaws, Carol J. Clover - House of Psychotic Women, Kier-La Janisse - The Monstrous-Feminine, Barbara Creed - Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, Sady Doyle - The Lady From The Black Lagoon, Mallory O'Meara

#that's all that comes to mind for now! loveu anon #asks #eroticism #horror

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veliseraptor · 8 months ago

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May Reading Recap

A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. Rereading A Memory Called Empire was a treat - an expected treat, but it was good to find out that it lived up to memory. I liked A Desolation Called Peace a little bit less, but only a little bit - it very much followed up directly on the themes from A Memory Called Empire that I appreciated.

The Last Graduate and The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik. I devoured these books. I'm very surprised by this fact, since I'm not generally a "magic school" person, but there we are; Naomi Novik apparently managed to make me one temporarily. The last book was a particularly strong one and did some very interesting things with its worldbuilding that'd been set up in previous books and delivered in the last one.

Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End by Bart Ehrman. I've read and enjoyed some Bart Ehrman previously, but I feel like the quality of his books has diminished from his earlier work, and this book confirmed that for me. I'm a bit of an eschatology enthusiast (the main reason I picked this up, as well as the fact that (a) it was available at the library one time and I grabbed it on a whim and (b) author recognition), but I learned very little from this book that I didn't already know.

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge. One of the things that made me happiest about reading this book was, unfortunately, the fact that I thought I recognized the ways in which it was referring back to Classic of Mountains and Seas, which I felt (again, unfortunately) sort of smug about. Checking the Wikipedia page for the book, apparently "Additionally, each chapter begins with a brief description of the beast which, in the original writing, was written in Classical Chinese, while the rest of the book was written in standard Chinese," which is so cool and I wish had been conveyed in the translation.

In general though, this was a good one, though I feel like the descriptive copy was a little misleading. It's less a mystery than a series of interconnected stories following a central character investigating the titular strange beasts, and learning how they connect to her life and history.

Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat. I liked this one significantly more than Dark Rise - which I guess makes sense, since a lot of Dark Rise was setting up the concept that most compels me about the series (the main character being the reincarnation of a notorious villain from the past). It still feels YA in the way that YA usually does, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if stylistically less my preference (and something I feel worth mentioning in the context of a possible recommendation). The ending was a gut-punch of a fun kind. I will be looking forward to reading the third one.

"There Would Always Be a Fairy-Tale": Essays on Tolkien's Middle Earth by Verlyn Flieger. I loved Splintered Light and was disappointingly underwhelmed by most of the essays in this collection. There were a couple that were more interesting to me, but on the whole a lukewarm response.

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Adrian Tchaikovsky wins again!!! I don't love this one quite as much as I've enjoyed the Children of Time series, but I actually think that I liked it more than The Final Architecture series. Fascinating concept, as usual fascinating worldbuilding for societies wildly different from our own, and dedicated to themes of cooperation and unity-across-difference without it feeling preachy or didactic.

Aphrodite and the Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism as We Know It by Burton Visotzky. This was a good one! I already was familiar with some of the information here, but not all of it, and the work around art and architecture was new to me. I felt in some ways like Visotzky overstated his case a little, but on the whole a very interesting read.

Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives by Phyllis Trible. This one is kind of a classic of feminist Bible scholarship - a short book that does a close reading of the text of the stories of four biblical women who suffer in some way (Hagar, Tamar, the unnamed woman from Judges 19, and Jephthah's daughter). It's a powerful work, though it felt a little basic to me on the whole - probably due to the fact that it's relatively early scholarship on the subject working from a literary angle.

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff. Books with footnotes are very hit-or-miss for me - not meaning books with contextual footnotes, but books with footnotes that are part of the conceit of the text itself. Some authors can pull it off; others really shouldn't try. In this case, the author felt a bit too taken with his own cleverness to pull it off; in general I felt like this book was trying a little too hard to be edgy and voice-y and ended up just feeling kind of shallow. It was a fun read, in some ways, but not a good one, and I'm torn on if I'm going to continue reading the series. If I do, it probably won't be in a hurry.

Tolkien and Alterity ed. by Christopher Vaccaro. I was excited about this particular collection of essays (you can probably guess why) and found them mostly uninspiring in the reading. The exception was a bibliographic essay on the treatment of race in Tolkien scholarship, which proposed more use of reader response theory, a suggestion which seems fruitful to me and more interesting than debates about whether or not Tolkien/his works are or aren't racist.

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson. I feel like this is going to sound more critical than I really mean it to, but this was a perfectly adequate horror novel. I wouldn't call it exceptional, and it didn't freak me out, but I read it pretty much straight through and enjoyed the experience on the whole.

Thousand Autumns: vol. 4 by Meng Xi Shi. I liked this volume more than I've liked some of the others, and am enjoying the development of the central relationship, though I feel a little like I've been bait-and-switched about the level of fucked up that it's involved. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying this one a little less than I feel like I should: I was expecting more fucked-up between the two main characters based on the initial conceit and don't feel like the novel has really delivered on that. But I am enjoying Yan Wushi getting a little more...outwardly affectionate toward Shen Qiao, and Shen Qiao's concomitant confusion about it.

This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer. More than an adequate horror novel but less than an excellent one, I felt like this book relied more on gross-out horror than I typically prefer. Still, was definitely spooky, and confirmed for me that wilderness horror gets to me in a very specific way.

I'm presently reading Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, which I have mixed feelings about (not negative! just mixed). I'm not sure what I'm going to read after that, save that I'm now trying to alternate genres and might try to read some nonfiction, which I've been sort of off for a while. Otherwise I'll probably just end up reading Translation State by Ann Leckie, and possibly A Fire in the Deep by Vernor Vinge. But I'm really going to try for some more nonfiction next month.

#reading recaps #sometimes i read things

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metanarrates · 9 months ago

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do you think orv is well written? i’m like 80% into the book and i enjoy it a lot in terms of the plot & themes and there’s a handful of quotes that i highlighted but in general i think the writing is quite atrocious. i get that some of it is probably because it’s a translation but i wonder how much better the prose quality in the original is. what are your thoughts on that?

we're reading what seems to be an amateur translation, which means that the prose is not going to scan well regardless of its quality in the original korean. there's no real way for me to form an opinion on that aspect of its writing. i will say that it seems to be written in a very plain prose style, but that's not inherently a bad thing. I find a lot of its on-the-noseness rather charming.

in other aspects, though, I do think it is pretty well-written! there are parts of it that are flawed, but its character writing, plotting, and pacing all tend to be enjoyable. there is a lot of thematic and emotional depth contained in it, and I'm finding a shocking amount of subtlety in certain elements of it in my reread. it's difficult for a serialized story of its length to consistently deliver on things like character development and tension, so I do find it genuinely impressive how well it's able to manage its length. there is a bit of awkwardness, imo, that comes at times from trying to combine a more "literary" style of character writing with the demands of fast-paced action fantasy, but that's not a big deal to me.

so I guess my answer is that i do think it's fine! I will admit to being biased because I've found my reading to be so enjoyable though

#narrates #orv

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nodutra19 · 4 months ago

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Recommendations Based Off RGU

I already cobbled together Polyphony Garden (I saw someone else do an RGU pastiche based off Othello by Shakespeare, so I hope it's a valid work), but I wanna make a whole post recommending things I think fans of the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime would like based off themes and style. It's mostly books though. And of course, I'll provide trigger warnings.

Absolute Recommendations

The Pike: Gabriele d'Annunzio: Poet, Seducer, and Preacher of War by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

This is a biography on a man named Gabriele d'Annunzio, a progenitor of fascism who codified not just fascist ideals, but also aesthetics, including the Roman salute which would become the Nazi salute. He was one of the first major propagandists, a spearhead in aviation and the decadent literary movement, and much more. He was initially famous as an author and poet obsessed with beauty, but he emerged from the same strains as other Europeans. He directly inspired Mussolini, and Mussolini inspired Hitler. The biography is beautifully written, if somewhat poorly paced, a great examination of masculinity, fascism, the relation between reality and art, the strength of propaganda.

I do give an SA warning for it though.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

I get the feeling most American fans of RGU have read this but I figured I should list it anyhow and for anyone not familiar with American literature, or for people who aren't readers. This is a historical fiction novel about a woman named Sethe who is haunted both by her time as a slave on a plantation and the death of her baby. It's one of the saddest but greatest books I've ever read. I would love to teach this to a class one day.

I do give several warnings for SA, racism, and bestiality.

xxxHolic by CLAMP (as translated and adapted by William Flanagan)

It's not as deconstructive, parodic, dark, or abstract as RGU, but I think most people would like this. It's about 17-year-old Kimihiro Watanuki who possesses the ability to perceive and interact with spirits. Having grown tired of this over his short life, he one day meets Yûko Ichihara, the space-time witch who runs a wish-granting shop. In exchange for the shedding of this ability, she asks for something of equal value: to work for her. And so begins his service at her shop.

I should also mention that the sequel series xxxHolic Rei has been hiatus for nearly a decade. The series also has a sister work called Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle but it's honestly not worth reading if you ask me.

We Shall Now Begin Ethics by Shiori Amase

This is an episodic series about Mr. Takayanagi, a high school ethics teacher. It's a great crash course on philosophy, although I say that as someone whose only experience with philosophy has been Camus (and now Tolstoy).

I do give TWs for SA (especially the first three chapters, and one or two later on), self-harm, and general out-of-pocketness.

Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson by Akira Hiramoto

Robert Johnson was a bluesman rumored to have made a deal with the devil. This is a fictionalized biography on him. Sadly, the series has been on hiatus for damn well a decade at this point and official copies are hard to get your hands on. But hey, the art is superb. I'm not Black, but it's refreshing to see manga portray Black characters that don't look like cartoons that Dr. Seuss grew up with.

Although seeing as how I'm not Black, I can't really judge the quality of either the official or fan translation (the image above comes from the fanscans.

I never did finish it so I can't give any TWs beyond "It takes place in the antebellum south."

And yes, it's that Akira Hiramoto.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

I want everyone U.S-born or U.S-residing, and everyone who hates car dependency to read this book, especially New Yorkers (especially especially the NY transplants). This is a biography on a man named Robert Moses who was New York's park commissioner for 39 years. Over his near-half-century tenure, he shaped much of New York. Many of the bridges, parks, and highways began with him. But over the years he cemented class and racial lines by prioritizing drivers and gutting public transit. He had "urban renewal" which displaced poor people from the few affordable neighborhoods around into "temporary housing," which he crowded with those people as he rebuilt their previous neighborhoods. By the end of the "renewal," the new housing was far out of the reach of the original tenants, and so they stayed in their new slums. This was a man who knew to maneuver the preexisting power structures and the court of public opinion. This is a book that examines not just a powerful person but the people on whom that person exercised his power. Robert A. Caro is a biographer I think Tolstoy would admire.

The only TWs I can give are for racism and general inhumanity. There's also one mention of SA iirc. Also, this book was published 1974. I guess at the time society hadn't made the complete transition to referring to African-Americans (and by extension other African diasporas and Black Africans) as "Black," so it uses the old word for them.

#revolutionary girl utena #utena tenjou #anthy himemiya #nanami kiryuu #touga kiryuu #kyouichi saionji #juri arisugawa #akio ohtori #souji mikage #mitsuru tsuwabuki #kunihiko ikuhara #miki kaoru #kozue kaoru

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 1 month ago

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Group boosts Arabic translations in Brazil

Coordinated by Safa Jubran, a group of professionals translating between Arabic and Brazilian Portuguese has become a platform for collectively addressing the challenges of the profession and has been contributing to the expansion of Arabic literature’s presence in Brazil.

Eleven years ago, a group of undergraduate, graduate, master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral students came together to discuss and jointly tackle the challenges of Arabic literary translation in Brazil. This marked the birth of Tarjama, which is Arabic for “translation”, a collective coordinated by Safa Jubran, a Lebanese native of Marjeyoun. She arrived in Brazil in 1982, stayed, became a professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), a researcher, and the most respected translator of Arabic literature in the country.

The research group is affiliated with the same institution where Jubran teaches and has been approved by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). “It’s like a school for modern Arabic literature translators, where people join, study, learn, and either move on or stay. It’s not a group of professionals but of learners,” she emphasizes. According to Jubran, 90% of its members are Brazilians with no Arab ancestry. “And some have already published translations,” she adds.

Jubran recalls that when she arrived in Brazil, there was little availability of literary translations, as publishers were not interested in Arabic literature. “The only exception was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.” However, this has changed over the years, and she highlights a few reasons. “The interest of Brazilian publishers and readers in directly translated Arabic literature, with no mediation of another foreign language, began to grow when Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, and later with the events of September 11.”

But Jubran believes the most significant moment in this discovery has been unfolding since the creation of a publishing house focused on Arabic literature. “Tabla has been providing a large number of high-quality direct translations,” she says.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #books #good news #arts #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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transcriptioncity · 9 months ago

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Back Translation Services and Using a Back Translation Company

The Art and Science of Back Translation Services Translation is the process of converting text from one language to another. This practice ensures that information is accessible and comprehensible to people who speak different languages. Among the various methods of translation, back translation stands out as a particularly rigorous and insightful technique. The Importance of…

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iphigeniacomplex · 1 year ago

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লিখি লোৱা, মই এজন মিঞা ("Write Down 'I am a Miyah'", 2016) by Hafiz Ahmed, translated from Assamese to English by Shalim M. Hussain, began a movement of resistance poetry among Assamese Muslims of Bengali descent, referred to as Miya Poetry after a slur used to describe this community. From Abdul Kalam Azad, for Indian Express ("Write...I am a Miya", 2019):

This poem went viral and other young poets started responding to him through poems. The young poets also started reclaiming “Miya”, a slur used against us, as our identity with pride. This chain of Facebook posts continued for days, reiterating the violence, suffering and humiliation expressed by our community. As time passed, more poets wrote in various languages and dialects, including many Miya dialects. The nomenclature ‘Miya Poetry’ got generated organically but the poets and their associates have been inspired by the Negritude and Black Arts movements, and queer, feminist and Dalit literary movements, where the oppressed have reclaimed the identity which was used to dehumanise them. The trend transcended our community. Poets from the mainstream Assamese community also wrote several poems in solidarity with the Miya poets while some regretted not being poets. Gradually, this became a full-fledged poetry movement and got recognised by other poets, critics and commentators. The quality and soul of these poems are so universal that they started finding prominence on reputed platforms. For the first time in the history of our community, we had started telling our own stories and reclaiming the Miya identity to fight against our harassers who were dehumanising us with the same word. They accused us of portraying the whole Assamese society as xenophobic. The fact is we have just analysed our conditions. Forget generalising the Assamese society as ‘xenophobic’, no Miya poet has ever used the term ‘xenophobic’ nor any of its variants. The guilt complex of our accusers is so profound that they don’t have the patience to examine why we wrote the poems.

Amrita Singh, writing for The Caravan ("Assam Against Itself", 2019), detailed the political backlash against Miya Poetry, in particular the above poem.

On 10 July this year, Pranabjit Doloi, an Assam-based journalist, filed a complaint at Guwahati’s Panbazar police station accusing ten people of indulging in criminal activities “to defame the Assamese people as Xenophobic in the world.” Doloi claimed that the ten people were trying to hinder the ongoing updation of the National Register of Citizens, a list of Assam’s Indian citizens that is due to be published on 31 August. The premise of Doloi’s complaint was a widely-circulated poem called, “Write down I am Miya,” by Hafiz Ahmed, a school teacher and social activist. “Write. Write down I am a Miya/ A citizen of democratic secular republic without any rights,” Ahmed wrote. The police registered a first information report against Doloi’s complaint, booking all ten persons for promoting enmity between groups, among other offences. [...] At the press conference, Mander emphasised that people in Assam are in distress because of the NRC’s arbitrary and rigid procedures. “One spelling mistake when you are writing a Bengali name in English … that is enough for you to be in a detention center, declared a foreigner,” Mander said. “If you are not allowing this lament to come out in the form of poetry, then where is this republic of India going?”

Ahmed's poem is influenced in structure by "Identity Card", a 1964 poem by by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish which uses the symbolic figure of the Palestinian working man to confront Israeli occupiers. Darwish's identity card, a symbol of Israeli subjugation transformed into a cry of Palestinian national identity, is reshaped by Ahmed into the National Register of Citizens for Assam and the accompanying fear of statelessness and disenfranchisement for the Miya people.

This solidarity between writers from oppressed groups is, of course, not one that ends with Darwish and Ahmed, nor with the Black, queer, feminist, and Dalit influences of Miya Poetry. As long as there is oppression, there will be companionship and recognition reflected in art and activism. On December 13, 2023, Black Agenda Report reprinted Refaat Alareer's "If I Must Die", acknowledging the connection between Alareer's poem and "If We Must Die" by Claude McKay, written in 1919 in response to the Red Summer white supremacist riots. In 2000, Haitian community activist Dahoud Andre translated "If We Must Die" into Kreyòl, and the Black Agenda Report editorial honors Alareer in a similar way, reprinting "If I Must Die" with an accompanying Kreyòl translation. (POEM: If I Must Die, Refaat Alareer, 2023.)

Transcripts under the cut.

[Hafiz Ahmed Transcripts (Assamese and English):

লিখি লোৱা, মই এজন মিঞা

লিখা, লিখি লোৱা মই এজন মিঞা এন. আৰ. চিৰ ক্রমিক নং ২০০৫৪৩ দুজন সন্তানৰ বাপেক মই, অহাবাৰ গ্ৰীষ্মত জন্ম ল’ব আৰু এজনে তাকো তুমি ঘিণ কৰিবা নেকি যিদৰে ঘিণ কৰা মোক?

লিখি লোৱা, মই এজন মিঞা পতিত ভূমি, পিতনিক মই ৰূপান্তৰিত কৰিছোঁ শস্য-শ্যামলা সেউজী পথাৰলৈ তোমাক খুৱাবলৈ মই ইটা কঢ়িয়াইছোঁ তোমাৰ অট্টালিকা সাজিবলৈ, তোমাৰ গাড়ী চলাইছোঁ তোমাক আৰাম দিবলৈ, তোমাৰ নৰ্দমা ছাফা কৰিছোঁ তোমাক নিৰোগী কৰি ৰাখিবলৈ, তোমাৰে সেৱাতে মগন মই অনবৰত তাৰ পিছতো কিয় তুমি খৰ্গহস্ত? লিখা, লিখি লোৱা মই এজন মিঞা গণতান্ত্ৰিক, গণৰাজ্য এখনৰ নাগৰিক এজন যাৰ কোনো অধিকাৰ নাইকিয়া মাতৃক মোৰ সজোৱা হৈছে সন্দেহযুক্ত ভোটাৰ যদিও পিতৃ-মাতৃ তাইৰ নিঃসন্দেহে ভাৰতীয়

ইচ্ছা কৰিলেই তুমি মোক হত্যা কৰিব পাৰা, জ্বলাই দিব পৰা মোৰ খেৰৰ পঁজা, খেদি দিব পাৰা মোক মোৰেই গাঁৱৰ পৰা, কাঢ়ি নিব পাৰা মোৰ সেউজী পথাৰ মোৰ বুকুৰ ওপৰেৰে চলাব পাৰা তোমাৰ বুলড্‌জাৰ তোমাৰ বুলেটে বুকুখন মোৰ কৰিব পাৰে থকাসৰকা (তোমাৰ এই কাৰ্যৰ বাবে তুমি কোনো স্তিও নোপোৱা) যুগ-যুগান্তৰ তোমাৰ অত্যাচাৰ সহ্য কৰি ব্ৰহ্মপুত্ৰৰ চৰত বাস কৰা মই এজন মিঞা মোৰ দেহা হৈ পৰিছে নিগ্ৰো কলা মোৰ চকুযুৰি অঙঠাৰ দৰে ৰঙা সাৱধান! মোৰ দুচকুত জমা হৈ আছে যুগ যুগান্তৰৰ বঞ্চনাৰ বাৰুদ আঁতৰি যোৱা, নতুবা অচিৰেই পৰিণত হ’বা মূল্যহীন ছাইত!

Write Down ‘I am a Miyah’ Hafiz Ahmed, 2016 trans. Shalim M. Hussain

Write Write Down I am a Miya My serial number in the NRC is 200543 I have two children Another is coming Next summer. Will you hate him As you hate me?

write I am a Miya I turn waste, marshy lands To green paddy fields To feed you. I carry bricks To build your buildings Drive your car For your comfort Clean your drain To keep you healthy. I have always been In your service And yet you are dissatisfied! Write down I am a Miya, A citizen of a democratic, secular, Republic Without any rights My mother a D voter, Though her parents are Indian.

If you wish kill me, drive me from my village, Snatch my green fields hire bulldozers To roll over me. Your bullets Can shatter my breast for no crime.

Write I am a Miya Of the Brahamaputra Your torture Has burnt my body black Reddened my eyes with fire. Beware! I have nothing but anger in stock. Keep away! Or Turn to Ashes.

]

[Mahmoud Darwish Transcripts (Arabic and English):

سجِّل أنا عربي ورقمُ بطاقتي خمسونَ ألفْ وأطفالي ثمانيةٌ وتاسعهُم.. سيأتي بعدَ صيفْ! فهلْ تغضبْ؟ سجِّلْ أنا عربي وأعملُ مع رفاقِ الكدحِ في محجرْ وأطفالي ثمانيةٌ أسلُّ لهمْ رغيفَ الخبزِ، والأثوابَ والدفترْ من الصخرِ ولا أتوسَّلُ الصدقاتِ من بابِكْ ولا أصغرْ أمامَ بلاطِ أعتابكْ فهل تغضب؟ سجل أنا عربي أنا اسم بلا لقبِ صَبورٌ في بلادٍ كلُّ ما فيها يعيشُ بفَوْرةِ الغضبِ جذوري قبلَ ميلادِ الزمانِ رستْ وقبلَ تفتّحِ الحقبِ وقبلَ السّروِ والزيتونِ .. وقبلَ ترعرعِ العشبِ أبي.. من أسرةِ المحراثِ لا من سادةٍ نُجُبِ وجدّي كانَ فلاحاً بلا حسبٍ.. ولا نسبِ! يُعَلّمني شموخَ الشمسِ قبلَ قراءةِ الكتبِ وبيتي’ كوخُ ناطورٍ منَ الأعوادِ والقصبِ فهل تُرضيكَ منزلتي؟ أنا اسم بلا لقبِ! سجلْ أنا عربي ولونُ الشعرِ.. فحميٌّ ولونُ العينِ.. بنيٌّ وميزاتي: على رأسي عقالٌ فوقَ كوفيّه وكفّي صلبةٌ كالصخرِ... تخمشُ من يلامسَها وعنواني: أنا من قريةٍ عزلاءَ منسيّهْ شوارعُها بلا أسماء وكلُّ رجالها في الحقلِ والمحجرْ فهل تغضبْ؟ سجِّل! أنا عربي سلبتُ كرومَ أجدادي وأرضاً كنتُ أفلحُها أنا وجميعُ أولادي ولم تتركْ لنا.. ولكلِّ أحفادي سوى هذي الصخورِ... فهل ستأخذُها حكومتكمْ.. كما قيلا!؟ إذنْ سجِّل.. برأسِ الصفحةِ الأولى أنا لا أكرهُ الناسَ ولا أسطو على أحدٍ ولكنّي.. إذا ما جعتُ آكلُ لحمَ مغتصبي حذارِ.. حذارِ.. من جوعي ومن غضبي!!

Identity Card Mahmoud Darwish, 1964 trans. Denys Johnson-Davies

Put it on record. I am an Arab

And the number of my card is fifty thousand I have eight children And the ninth is due after summer. What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record. I am an Arab

Working with comrades of toil in a quarry. I have eight children For them I wrest the loaf of bread, The clothes and exercise books From the rocks And beg for no alms at your door, Lower not myself at your doorstep. What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record. I am an Arab.

I am a name without a title, Patient in a country where everything Lives in a whirlpool of anger. My roots Took hold before the birth of time Before the burgeoning of the ages, Before cypress and olive trees, Before the proliferation of weeds.

My father is from the family of the plough Not from highborn nobles.

And my grandfather was a peasant Without line or genealogy.

My house is a watchman's hut Made of sticks and reeds.

Does my status satisfy you? I am a name without a surname.

Put it on record. I am an Arab.

Color of hair: jet black. Color of eyes: brown. My distinguishing features: On my head the `iqal cords over a keffiyeh Scratching him who touches it.

My address: I'm from a village, remote, forgotten, Its streets without name And all its men in the fields and quarry. What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record. I am an Arab.

You stole my forefathers' vineyards And land I used to till, I and all my children, And you left us and all my grandchildren Nothing but these rocks. Will your government be taking them too As is being said?

So! Put it on record at the top of page one: I don't hate people, I trespass on no one's property.

And yet, if I were to become hungry I shall eat the flesh of my usurper. Beware, beware of my hunger And of my anger!

]

#it speaks!#re: the tag on my last reblogged post. decided to make that point its own post!#this is long obviously and im employing proper capitalization for ease of reading #obligatory im monolingual disclaimer & cant vouch for translation quality; i chose the johnson-davies translation because ->#<- it is the one i see most commonly spread. i take responsibility for any deficiencies.#going to use some tags because im personally interested in this poetic movement & connection & maybe other people will be too!#palestine #palestinian poetry #assam #miya poetry #political poetry #poetry

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