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A question about translation 2007/11/18 23:07
Hello,
I have a question for native English speakers.
You know there are many international magazines in Japan. And you may read some articles or interviews that were translated from Japanese to English or some that were written by a Japanese person in English.
How good are their English for you?? Have you found any funny or bad translation in magazines? Do you see ''too complicated'' expressions that show were translated from Japanese language?

I got a chance to translate some Japanese text to English for a free magazine ( A native speaker will check it before published but my name will be there as a translator:P) , and I would not like to screw up this chance. So I translated it and showed it to my friend but then she says it is understandable but it shows it was translated. I think I translated it sort of word by word too much as I was afraid of loosing the touch of the original text.

So to fix my translation and to learn how other people translate Japanese into English I read through other people's translations in the magazine and I thought that some of their translations could have been simpler too just like mine. So there are some translators who donft know their translation sound funny or translated, am I right about this?
by nya  

Translations 2007/11/19 11:49
I am a little unsure of your concern. If you are Japanese you write better than most of my friends. Translation is more of an art than a science. See how the computer translates Japanese to english if you want a laugh. The gift is to interperate the words to meaning and not just literal. Look at the whole phrase or meaning overall and put your best "flow" of the meaning into it . Example
Kami Kazi God wind.. no Devine wind has more flow and poetry. The trick I guess is to find the appropiate words that flow without losing the core meaning of the intent of the individual words themselves. Personally English is too complicated. Perhaps Japanese is a "better" language but I can"t know as my Japanese is pretty bad. SEE what I just said .. pretty bad.. not a good english phrase. pretty is good looking and bad is not good. How can translators make sence of this.? oximorans. Hope this helps. Not that you need it your english seems perfect. Congratulations !
by peter rate this post as useful

. 2007/11/19 19:47
Well, translators can make sense of this because they're usually fluent in both languages, source language and target language. And since oxymorons are not unique to English it's really not that much of a problem to translate them in many cases.

Translating too literally is a mistake that many translators make in the beginning. Of course it's good to stick to the text but you should stick to the meaning rather than to the actual words. If you try to stick too close to words your result will be a probably very strange text that's hard to understand. Translating too literally is also a way to mistranslate a text and lose touch of the original. It's all about balance.

Btw my professor in university told us that Japanese have a different approach to translation in general. While in America and Europe for example the ideal translator is supposed to be invisible it doesn't seem to be like that in Japan. In Japan the general opinion seems (or seemed) to be that a text that was translated from another language to Japanese doesn't have to read like a genuine Japanese text. It's not necessary to "hide" the fact that it was translated. So one could say that texts that were translated from English to Japanese are written in some kind of "inter-language" and sound more like translated English than Japanese.
I heard there are even Japanese authors who play with this phenomenon. Murakami Haruki for example who used to translate many famous American authors to Japanese was often accused by Japanese critics that his own books sounded too western and that his style read like a Japanese translation of English and not like real Japanese.

I don't know though whether it's still like that or if the Japanese concept of translation was westernized later on.
by tay rate this post as useful

Translation 2007/11/20 02:37
I agree with Tay [whos spelling is better than mine]. There is perhaps another aspect to this. The subject to be translated may need to be taken into account. If it is a simple narative or story then a more flowing style could be used. If the text is technical then this presents another challenge. Science is more precice than literature and more care should be taken to insure that the technical facts are not lost in translation. I would love to hear some thoughts on what may be considered fluency in Japanese by non native speakers.
by peter rate this post as useful

. 2007/11/20 08:05
I also agree with Tay. Translation is deffinately more of an art or science. Word for word translating, especially when playing with figures of speech and whatnot, is a no-no. Fluency is a must, really. Otherwise it's easy to incorrectly convey the true meanings behind the text. Figures of speech aren't necessarily meant to be taken literally, and translating word for word would most likely make it seem opposite of what was originally intended.
by panda rate this post as useful

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