Self-proclaimed veteran translator: modern fansubbing a mess

From the “almost two years old but news to me” department:

Via the comments section at Neojaponisme, we have this series of videos decrying modern anime fansubbers as cliquey, Japanese language-worshiping elitists who offer “Japanese lessons” instead of actual translations. Their refusal to create plain, easily digested subtitles and refusal to translate culturally specific Japanese (instead offering copious on-screen liner notes) scares away potential new fans and is generally useless, he argues.

Watch here:

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

On a basic level, he is absolutely right that for a general audience, translations should be very clear and nearly invisible. It’s what I strive for in my job and on this blog, for sure. But from my (admittedly limited) experience with fansubbed anime, it’s clear enough that fansubbers are not in it for the benefit of a general audience. In the era of Wikipedia, BitTorrent, and Youtube where esoteric cultural knowledge is rapidly becoming obsolete, being an elite fansubber is one of the few sure-fire ways left to secure King Geek status. Maybe having an insular subculture makes it harder for good anime titles to break through into the mainstream (as has been fansubbing’s most often-cited benefit), but isn’t that kind of the whole point?

70 thoughts on “Self-proclaimed veteran translator: modern fansubbing a mess”

  1. Wait, what exactly in the Wikipedia article supports your conspiracy theory there at the end? The only related argument I see is “rights holders don’t like fansubs sometimes because they cut into profits,” but I don’t see any pro-fansub arguments citing this as a “benefit”. I also see some examples given of cases where fansubs have driven mainstream popularity, which seems to be the opposite of what you claim.

  2. Maybe I was not clear but it seems like this guy is arguing that having such insular and imacceasible subtitles prevents that process of creating breakthrough hits.

  3. It sort of fudges his whole argument that he uses the word “Anime” without hesitation when we’ve got a perfectly fine word like “cartoons”. Dick.

  4. On a more considered note: I think Ota King (who also uses an language insider joke for his username) sees the healthy side of why it’s happening (more interest in Japanese culture among viewers, changing target audience), but opts to bemoan the bad side instead. Like a Adorno droning on about Pop music.

    To make a comparison to something totally unrelated, watching mixed martial arts in English, I’ve had to learn a few dozen words worth of new vocabulary (omo plata, Kimura, rubber guard, etc). The same is surely true for any other sport. So why criticize Kaizoku Fansubs (who do a fantastic job, as a rule), when they encourage us to learn just a few words.

    Long live the long tail.

  5. What is the “professional” way of handling Japanese written on objects like a funeral headstone or classroom signs? OtaKing decried putting English text on them, but he never offered a more appropriate alternative. Is there one?

  6. “OtaKing” is less of an language insider joke than an anime insider joke (it’s a reference to Otaku no Video). He has a deviantArt page (where he’s attempting a fan anime version of Doctor Who, of all things). http://mightyotaking.deviantart.com/

    To to MMA analogy and fansubs: Imagine having Joe Rogan explain what a Kimura is (reverse keylock; which itself is new vocabulary for most) at the start of every UFC, or having it plastered all over the screen as you’re watching someone trying to escape one. I believe most people interested in the sport (or any sport, really) find those meanings outside the actual broadcast, in DVD extras if they exist, or through osmosis. This doesn’t seem to be the case with modern fansubs, which seem to add them contextually, to the possible distraction of the viewer.

    From what I’ve seen in US officially translated manga, they occupy a middle ground. They leave a lot of endings, references, original text etc. in, but then add endnotes or very small text to explain it all. The convenience of static content, I guess.

  7. One of the main points made in that video is Ota King’s belief that some fansubbers appear to treat Japanese as if it is often untranslatable.

    I recall one teacher of translation speaking about asking his class of Japanese students to render the opening sentences of “Snow Country” into English. Many didn’t use the word “train” in English because Kawabata didn’t use it in Japanese and their results were, at best, prose poems or, at worst, incomprehensible to an English reader.

    The students argued that you couldn’t use word “train” precisely because it wasn’t in the Japanese text. The teacher replied that they were forgetting the job they were asked to do. English readers demand subjects and objects more than Japanese readers so a translator frequently has to select ones which are appropriate.

    When Ota King’s video first appeared on YouTube, the response from some fansubbers seemed to support that part of his argument. They contended that English words couldn’t capture all the nuances of the Japanese words they encountered so it was better to leave some in Japanese with copious notes. They seemed unwilling to make any choices.

    Of course, foreign words do make their way into a target language and one translator has to be the first to decide to leave a word as it stands because it will be understood. The argument from some fansubbers went beyond that and they did indeed seem to treat Japanese as a sacred language where no compromise was acceptable.

  8. it seems like this guy is arguing that having such insular and inaccessible subtitles prevents that process of creating breakthrough hits.

    Oh, right, yeah. I think that he believes that, and it might be true (though only compared to a hypothetical alternate universe in which fansubbers translate professionally — obviously no fansub at all will give your series even less exposure than a cliquey one). I’m not convinced that fansubbers will cheerfully own this as a “benefit” as such, though it’s certainly possible along the same lines as indie rock.

    I recall one teacher of translation speaking about asking his class of Japanese students to render the opening sentences of “Snow Country” into English. Many didn’t use the word “train” in English because Kawabata didn’t use it in Japanese and their results were, at best, prose poems or, at worst, incomprehensible to an English reader.

    The students argued that you couldn’t use word “train” precisely because it wasn’t in the Japanese text. The teacher replied that they were forgetting the job they were asked to do. English readers demand subjects and objects more than Japanese readers so a translator frequently has to select ones which are appropriate.

    Ironically one of my favorite translations of that opening line was in the notes to an old-school fansub (it was referenced in an Urusei Yatsura episode), and didn’t use “train”: “At the end of the tunnel was snow country”.

  9. “being an elite fansubber is one of the few sure-fire ways left to secure King Geek status.”

    Remember that jobs in Japan thing that we did a year or so back? You can also do this for the anime fan world view. It goes something like this –

    animator/manga artist in Japan > singing an anime OP > having been to Japan > being married to a Japanese girl/bishonen > being an elite fansubber >speaking Japanese > first rate cosplayer

    There is a large part of the anime fan community that thinks that simply being in Japan is like being a magic man who lives in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane. Fansubbers are more like the guys who give out free cocaine at parties but still end up universally reviled.

    “What is the “professional” way of handling Japanese written on objects like a funeral headstone or classroom signs?”

    The pros do pretty much what he is decrying here.

  10. “Ironically one of my favorite translations of that opening line was in the notes to an old-school fansub (it was referenced in an Urusei Yatsura episode), and didn’t use “train”: “At the end of the tunnel was snow country”.”

    That’s off the hook. I remember that one as well! Do you remember if that was from “Arctic Animation”?

  11. “There is a large part of the anime fan community that thinks that simply being in Japan is like being a magic man who lives in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane.”

    This is an inspired analogy.

    After 12 years interest in Japan and some eight as a translator, I am still yet to understand what is so great about anime. I’ve tried to read some of the “classics”,
    but soon end up reading a “book”. I’ve tried watching anime but turn off in a matter of minutes. Horses for courses indeed but am I missing something esoteric and awesome that other people “get” ?

    As for Japanese being untranslatable, I’d almost like to agree but seeing that I make my living out of doing this I don’t want to tempt fate. However the language is so insular and fiddly I think it is little wonder that the number of people studying it in English-speaking countries is stagnant.

  12. That’s off the hook. I remember that one as well! Do you remember if that was from “Arctic Animation”?

    I believe it was from the next-week-on-Urusei-Yatsura preview of the episode where Oyuki made her first animated appearance. Lum had a line translated something like “At the end of Darling’s closet was snow country!” (because Ataru’s closet had somehow become a portal to Neptune). OH GOD SO NERDY

    However the language is so insular and fiddly

    I guess “fiddly” is in the eye of the beholder — I think that Japanese is a lot less fiddly than most of the continental Indo-European languages, for example, because it doesn’t do gender or number, does case absolutely regularly, and has hardly any verb conjugations and virtually no irregular verbs — but insular? With a huge Sino-Japanese vocabulary dating back a thousand years, and a more recent influx of words from Europe?

  13. “OH GOD SO NERDY”

    Represent. I’d love to have the chance to go to my childhood home and dig through my closet of old fansub tapes for a few weeks….

    “With a huge Sino-Japanese vocabulary dating back a thousand years, and a more recent influx of words from Europe?”

    Not to mention a recent string of prize winners and nominees by non-native speaker writers (!?) and several bestselling authors from the Zainichi community (Miri Yu, Sogil Yan, Kaneshiro Kazuki) and the massive amount of literature being translated into Japanese from other languages (I’ve heard largest number of translated novels per capita of any major market).

    BTW, Jon – do you mean that you’ve been trying to read manga?

  14. However the language is so insular and fiddly

    Let me explain better. Japanese combines Kanji with multiple readings with Hiragana, Katakana and now “waseigo” which have different meanings to the
    original english. And that isn’t even mentioning the ambiguity problem – as a translator I often have to confer with Japanese colleagues who admit that they
    don’t understand the context of the Japanese. I gues that’s proof enough that it is “fiddly” and awkward. I much prefer translating French or Latin into English, give me that over Japanese any day of the week.

    The fact that novels are translated into Japanese has nothing to do with the language being insular. This is attributable solely to the high number of publishing firms with budgets and the established distribution mechanism for books.

    M-Bone – I’ve been trying to appreciate Manga / anime for years both visual and in written form – but I just don’t get it. I suppose I’m not a geek when all is said and done.

  15. @Matt: “because it doesn’t do gender or number”

    Japanese doesn’t have complicated numbering ?
    Are you sure ?

  16. “The fact that novels are translated into Japanese has nothing to do with the language being insular.”

    But are you talking about words? Or patterns of literary expression, which translated novels and the like have put in complex conversation with “native” forms?

    “I suppose I’m not a geek when all is said and done.”

    That’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, manga (and anime to a lesser extent) are very diverse media and it couldn’t help to keep trying. Is there some non-Japanese genre that you are really into? I or someone else here can probably recommend an anime/manga like it.

  17. I tried to read “Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari” but stopped about halfway after waiting for a “wave of clarity” to hit. I’ve read Akira of course, a long time ago though.

    I think I get visually affronted by the style of the illustrations which don’t resound in my brain or strike any kind of chord, and worst of all, provoke a reaction of
    抵抗感 within me. It could be a kind of latent prejudice against geeks. .
    I find the anime medium, like Japanese TV, to be somewhat puerile and over the top.

    → But are you talking about words? Or patterns of literary expression, which translated novels and the like have put in complex conversation with “native” forms? → 

    I’m talking about words and language specifically, not patterns of literay expression. Let me go back to my point. I was translating Latin and French into English when I was 11 years old. This was followed by Spanish and then Japanese.
    I have translated hundreds of thousands of Japanese words into English, but I still find the construction of the Japanese language to be irrational. For example,
    why use katakana for so many words ? Is there not a concept for “financial exposure” in Japanese ? Why resort to using Katakana ? As a language that now relies on Chinese letters and English words, I see it as lacking a fundamental core which translates into being difficult to render well into other languages. I don’t find translation difficult per se, just I have a sort of lack of respect for the language.

    Interestingly enough, I had no trouble mastering cases and conjugations in Latin, Spanish and French. Actually it all seemed very easy to me.

  18. “What is the “professional” way of handling Japanese written on objects like a funeral headstone or classroom signs?”

    The pros do pretty much what he is decrying here.

    From what I’ve seen, professional subtitles tend to be horizontal and pretty much obvious, as opposed to blended into the scenery like the examples OtaKing gave. This is probably because of the technical limits of subtitling in the old days (film, then VHS, then DVD). They try to put them near the original text in question, though. I think they tend not to translate every single piece of text, rather picking the ones that are absolutely necessary for the work.

  19. The pros do pretty much what he is decrying here.

    That was M-Bone, not me (not really used to WordPress comments…)

  20. why use katakana for so many words ?

    The same reason pretentious American lawyers like to pepper their speech with unnecessary Latin and French. It sounds cool ipso facto, dawg.

    As a language that now relies on Chinese letters and English words, I see it as lacking a fundamental core which translates into being difficult to render well into other languages.

    The thing is that Japanese has multiple cores (Chinese, English, Yamato) and this gives it a lot of nuance, which is usually paralleled by some other structure in your target language. You simply have to relax a bit and be creative. My experience is that Romance languages are taught in a way that emphasizes word-for-word translation to English (which isn’t hard since all these languages are not too distantly related to English), but if one tries this with natural Japanese sentences they will usually end up sounding like a doofus.

    Ever read Making Sense of Japanese? It is my favorite book on the Japanese language by a long shot, in large part because it emphasizes getting over the apparent awkwardness of the structures.

  21. There is such a wide variety of manga I am surprised you never found anything at all to like. The most popular titles tend to be a little too lowest-common-denominator for me (and too often just don’t make sense), but there are some very good reads out there. My favorites tend to be titles that play out like the Sopranos or The Wire – adult-themed novels with well-developed characters and thought-provoking storylines. Among them:

    アドルフに告ぐ – WW2 tale centered on Kobe’s Jewish community by Tezuka Osamu
    石の花 Another WW2 story, this one about the left-wing resistance movement in Yugoslavia
    国民クイズ a sci-fi title about a near-future Japan that dominates the world for the sole purpose of fulfilling the wishes of people who win a game show.

    I also like the Doraemon manga a lot (for the masses, yes, but also really smart and funny) and the horror manga stylings of Ito Junji, especially Uzumaki
    http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%86%E3%81%9A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%8D_(%E6%BC%AB%E7%94%BB)

    Also recently randomly came across a series which is simply manga dramatization of real-life court cases as witnessed by the author. Really interesting if a bit tawdry. Title translates to something like “Your honor, we request a four year sentence”.

    http://zenryokuhp.com/blog/archives/2009/11/4.php

    Of course, if you can’t live with the format then there’s no helping you. But I thought I hated manga too until I got some good recommendations.

  22. Jon, I posted a bunch of recommendations to try and convince you manga are not a lower art form, but the spam filter ate my links. Keep your eyes open for when one of us approves that comment.

    I posted this video because it goes back to one of my most fundamental reasons for blogging here – Japan is interesting enough without mystifying or embellishing it. The fansubbers are a weird yet typical case – they’re uniquely positioned to offer a picture of Japan to the English-speaking world, but they’d actually rather compete with each other to see who can be the leetest. It’s got to be the most egregious example of “rampant dick-swinging” out there (I hate that term but it seems to be what we’ve settled on).

  23. Adamu – uh huh, sort of like a Japanese pissing contest ?
    self-appointed manga cultural ambassadors ?
    It sounds believable. – thanks for posting the recommendations
    and if they surface I will check them.

    Joe – thanks for the reccomendation – I have heard of it.
    Suprisingly I have a degree in Japanese lingustics
    and translate macro-economic reports. Let me stress that I don’t have a problem
    understanding the language – but am certainly not at all in awe of it
    as a way of conveying information and opinion – I find it
    not fit for purpose in that sense.

  24. “The same reason pretentious American lawyers like to pepper their speech with unnecessary Latin and French. It sounds cool ipso facto, dawg.”

    but Japanese uses Katakana ad infinitum. This could well become the causus belli
    in future, not over land but over lexical entities. What would England do, for example, if Japan occupied the subjunctive voice ?

  25. One compromise OtaKing neglects between watchability and informativeness is to add a slide show of liner notes at the beginning or end of the video. For example, the fansub of ‘Sayonara Zetubou Sensei’ that I watched (not the one seen in these videos) did this to explain the character’s names.

  26. I agree that compromises can be found. But one has to wonder how much demand is actually out there for all that supplemental trivia. Do all anime fans watch in order to learn Japanese? Or is all that info included mainly to showcase the translator’s research/knowledge?

    I have to admit that on many occasions I have included info in blog posts that I wanted to include mainly as a note to myself or just to show I had looked it up.

  27. “but Japanese uses Katakana ad infinitum.”

    Do other languages not do this? Especially languages that are not the current lingua franca? Here’s a nice headline and article excerpt from today’s Suddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s more conservative newspapers, I think:

    “Bloß kein Bullshit nach der Katastrophe

    http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,tt5m1/kultur/538/500801/text/

    “In Ost-Sri Lanka haben wir uns nach dem Tsunami mit Vertretern von neun weiteren Hilfsorganisationen regelmäßig zu sogenannten No Bullshit Sessions getroffen… Wenn wir nur Erfolgsrezepte und “Best Practice”-Methoden austauschen, werden wir nie dazulernen. ”

    I’m pretty sure all the words in bold would be in katakana if German had a similar style of writing to Japanese (well, maybe not “Katastrophe”). Does the fact that Japanese uses katakana just make loanwords stand out?

    I think before we start to speculate about the applicability of fuzzy terms like “core,” we should really define what we are talking about. German has borrowed voraciously from French and English too. So does it not have a core either? Does English have a core? What does that mean?

  28. By the way, I never got into manga in a big way, and I have only ever enjoyed a few anime. I’m not really used to the pacing in story manga, perhaps because when I was a kid I read American and British comic books with much more text per page.

    I read Chinmoku no kantei about a year ago. I thought that was okay, but again, I think that conforms to western expectations about what “comic books” should be. I like some of the education manga. And I find Kobayashi Yoshinori (yes M-bone, I AM a tourist) conforms to the style of manga I like, even if the content is often infuriating. Though I’m not sure if his stuff counts as “manga.” The book store owners don’t seem to see it that way.

    Oddly, one of the anime I enjoyed was the first few episodes of GTO, even though I didn’t like the manga at all.

  29. I have to agree with someone from neomarxisme’s comment that this OtaKing is way too stuck in the past. Look at his references: almost all the lit is from the 60’s or 70’s when Japanese was a mystery language that no one knew a word of; and all the “professional anime translation” is straightforward sci-fi action stuff from the “laser disc” era.

    This isn’t 1990. I doubt we could name more than a couple things about anime, its consumer or its consumption that remain unchanged. He has good points when he appeals to common sense, but his base of authority is worthless.

    @ToastR: The MMA remark was specifically in reference to OtaKing’s slagging on Kaizoku-Fansubs for their totally reasonable policies. K-F doesn’t constantly explain “nakama” or other words. Except for the unnecessarily flashy intro sequences, they were one of the most “professional” groups going. K-F’s fansubs were a good part of my moving from no-Japanese to JLPT 1 to translator, so I take that stuff personal.

  30. “One compromise OtaKing neglects between watchability and informativeness is to add a slide show of liner notes at the beginning or end of the video. For example, the fansub of ‘Sayonara Zetubou Sensei’ that I watched (not the one seen in these videos) did this to explain the character’s names.”
    I’ve seen this used in the past as well, especially for anime like Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei or Ebichu that rely on a lot of puns and in-jokes. The worst example I ever saw was an episode of Ebichu that has a SINGLE mahjong joke, and the fansubber decided to include like 3 or 4 screens of text, that took a full minute or two, just to explain about 15 seconds or whatever of the show itself.

  31. @Bryce: I always see Kobayashi Yoshinori in the manga section. And like you said, even if his content is infuriating, he is very, very skilled at the actual craft of creating manga.

    BTW, OtaKing’s views on fansubbing may be annoying, but the Doctor Who anime fanfilm is amazing, and I would LOVE to see an animated doctor who film using his character designs for the Daleks, Cyberman, and Jon Pertwee era Doctor. But for god sakes, lose the stupid fucking catgirl.

  32. Bryce, I get what you are saying and I agree that this open a can of worms really but European languages are full of similarities accross the board. Japanese can’t cope with delineating reality on its own so it stole all of China’s letters and is now poaching English words and giving them different meanings.

    You are very persuasive with the evidence that you have provided, but don’t forget that English is almost a lingua franca in Germany and it is not particularly surprising that there should be a lot of overlaps. And besides, this is not “Katakana” it is English as it is, meaning what it means in English.

    By the way I think we have something in common in terms of lack of appreciation for anime and manga.

  33. Jon wrote: “Is there not a concept for “financial exposure” in Japanese ? Why resort to using Katakana ?”

    I’ve often thought, probably wrongly, that there are clues to how a concept is received in Japan by how it is popularly expressed. When I first saw 援助交際 in print, the fact it was written with kanji indicated to me it was being taken seriously as a social problem in a way that セクハラ, at the time, wasn’t.

    I also thought the usual English translation of “compensated dating” sounded more like an EU subsidy programme than the schoolgirl prostitution it actually described. The translators were more in thrall to rendering the term in English rather than the concept.

    In finance, insider trading was often described in the early days as インサイダートレーディングwhich indicated to me that it was not only seen as a victimless crime but hardly a crime at all. インサイダー取引gave the concept more weight while 内部者取引was a sign that laws were being drafted.

    Obviously, it doesn’t always work that way because language is too slippery. ドメスティック・バイオレンス seems to be acknowledged as an issue but the media still prefer to use “DV” rather than something like 夫婦間暴力.

  34. ( or “どめ夫” )

    With finance a lot of these new concepts probably were brand new and unprecedented and thus had to be appropriated as they were.

    I’m not going to insist on calling a camera a “写真機” but
    I find these days that katakana (that doesn’t mean what it does in English)
    to be omnipresent and annoying !

  35. I’d be careful in passing value judgments on Japanese (it isn’t fit for “conveying information and opinion,” or it “stole” and “is now poaching” vocabulary from other tongues). It is what it is. As a translator, you need to wrap your brain around it and get to work presenting the same *information* in your target language. That doesn’t mean the words, necessarily.

    Katakana that doesn’t mean what it does in English? Who cares? It’s a faux ami; learn what the Japanese term means to Japanese people and move on to the next paragraph.

    Anyway. I’ve never been an avid consumer of anime or manga, and what little I’ve looked at has all been in Japanese, so I can’t really comment on the state of fansubbing. It is fun to peek into the communities that do this task to see what they’re quibbling about, though. I expect the people who actually get paid to do this sort of work can focus more on crafting text for the sake of those who will actually consume it and ignore tiresome debate on the need for -chan and -kun and so on.

  36. Katakana is ok when used properly, what ticks my nerves are Murakami Haruki style using weird katakana like ペニス just to try to look cool. Annoys me to hell.

    I don’t blame fansubbers refusing to translate words like ‘sakura’ or ‘katana’.they feel special, the guys are doing the job for free, the least you can give them is to let them feel superior. They are pretty lame fellas though.

  37. What on earth do you mean by katakana that’s “used properly”? A Japanese writer using a tool in the Japanese language to write stuff in Japanese isn’t the sort of thing to be derided as “improper” unless you’ve spotted a 誤字 in there.

    You make an excellent point when you stress that they’re doing this for free, though. If these people had a paying client to answer to thy wouldn’t be dictating the correct approach to subtitling to the extent that they get to as free (in every sense) lances in the translation field.

  38. I reckon the guys doing it are loving it.

    Adulation from anime fans, Japanese practice . .

  39. As an example, had to read a paper on class that talked about アメリカ文化の教勢による、戦後のネーションの弱体化、 or something like that.
    Translation nation as ネーション, instead of 国家 or 民族 is an non standard, hence not proper use of katakana. The whole paper was full of katakana words who nobody uses, but the guy wanted to show off his english skills or whatever.
    All students of that class (all japanese but me) damned the teacher who made us read such an annoying paper.

    As has been said before, japanese has 3 layers of vocabulary, namely native, chinese and foreign(basically english), and you have to use them properly.
    Of course there’s some overlap, i.e. ニーズ vs 需要 but in general there are established patterns of use.

  40. Based on the examples you cite, you have an issue with the style choice, not the correctness of the language. I see stuff like that as more of an attempt to be creative, and it’s all too common. Face it, the English language has an enormous influence over Japanese to the extent that you can cite an English phrase to indicate that it’s a well-known concept in the West. Here you might have an academic example of an annoying otaku who wants to show off. But just as you wouldn’t call what the fansubbers are doing “incorrect” I don’t think that term would apply here either. Whether the reader finds it awkward or inaccurate is a different question.

  41. This is a bit of a tangent from the discussion so far, but did anyone else find the video’s portrayal of translation studies a tad bit misleading?

    OtaKing: “The top people in translation theory and translation studies agree: a translation should be as invisible as possible…”

    This is just *not true*, there is not universal agreement on this point and the problem is much more subtle than he’s making it out to be. I have a copy of “the Translator’s Invisibility” by Lawrence Venuti on my shelf here, several hundred pages arguing exactly the opposite! And he’s sure not the only one in TS to say this.

    Which is not to say that I disagree with the specific examples cited by OtaKing. But the argument is completely oversimplified and even feels somewhat condescending.

  42. As someone not well-versed in academic translation, I had no idea either way. But since I generally agree with his points I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s clear this was very much an Internet Rant with much of it seemingly intended to spark a reaction.

  43. @Adamu

    If he had said “Leading professional translators agree…” or something to that effect I would have no qualms. It’s not that I think people should use TS as a reference for what they do in their professional translation work. But if you’re going to cite something like that so explicitly, not once but several times, to defend your main point….. but as you say he was aiming to spark a reaction, which he obviously succeeded in doing. So who cares.

  44. Translation nation as ネーション, instead of 国家 or 民族 is an non standard, hence not proper use of katakana.

    I beg to differ. “Nation” is a complicated word and you can’t replace it with “state” or “people” that easily because you will lose half of its nuance. Better to just use the English word as long as everyone knows what it means. It’s a lot like how people occasionally escape the political nuances of the words 朝鮮 and 韓国 by using the word コリア.

    One of the fun things about Japanese is that it even manages to nativize foreign words sometimes — this is how we get great expressive phrases like “chu-hai” or “obamu.”

    I love the overlap of writing systems in Japanese. It’s a whole dimension of expressions that Western languages basically lack.

    Japanese can’t cope with delineating reality on its own so it stole all of China’s letters and is now poaching English words and giving them different meanings.

    Sorry to break this to you, but English did the same thing with Latin about a thousand years ago, and that process was pretty cruel to the original Latin too. This is simply how languages evolve over time.

  45. ” “Nation” is a complicated word and you can’t replace it with “state” or “people” that easily because you will lose half of its nuance”
    Yeah but its just not used that way. Languages are in a big part about habit, not precision. The paper was just some bullshit about fast-food corrupting japanese culture on the 60s, I guess on that time the uses of some words wasn’t established yet.

    The overlap is shit, saying ネーション assumes that the reader understands the nuance of the english word, which is a big assumption. Using obscure kanjis on novels also is just showing off, does nothing to add to the meaning for 95% of the readers.

    Japanese used a big chance of deciding on one syllabary and standardizing kanji usage on the Meiji era, but of course the government couldn’t get much done on that time besides using money on the armed forces.

  46. @ToastR: The MMA remark was specifically in reference to OtaKing’s slagging on Kaizoku-Fansubs for their totally reasonable policies. K-F doesn’t constantly explain “nakama” or other words. Except for the unnecessarily flashy intro sequences, they were one of the most “professional” groups going. K-F’s fansubs were a good part of my moving from no-Japanese to JLPT 1 to translator, so I take that stuff personal.

    Fair enough; I was more talking about his overall points. Admittedly I saw his specific criticism of Kaizoku afterwards (50 minutes of blurry youtube video rant is not my thing). Whether or not one thinks Kaizoku Fansubs’ policies were good, at least they seem consistent (I somewhat agree with his criticism about selectivity with honorifics, etc.)

  47. As an example, had to read a paper on class that talked about アメリカ文化の教勢による、戦後のネーションの弱体化、 or something like that.

    As Joe says, your kanji-based alternatives may not be good choices here because of their different and/or limited ranges of meaning. Honestly the ネーション in your sentence looks like it might be best replaced by something like 国体, which the writer may have avoided for its war-era nuances. Hard to say without asking the writer why that choice was made.

    When I’m translating some opaque Japanese text the ideal situation is one where I have access to the writer so I can clarify things just like this. Next best is being able to turn around and ask my Japanese colleagues what’s going on in the text. The options get worse and worse from then on, but at no point do I have the choice to throw up my hands and write the guy off as a producer of “improper language.” The job is always to understand what he wants to get across and then present that in my target language,

    At times, in fact, the writer *wants* to use vague terms that sound fashionable but don’t mean concrete things to many Japanese readers, and in those cases my job is to try to re-create that situation for readers of my English. I’ve been translating lots of Hatoyama’s stuff lately for the Kantei and lord knows they don’t want him making well-defined promises to the global readership when he’s mouthing empty phrases to the locals. This sort of translation is a difficult task and to succeed at all requires moving beyond the “this Japanese sucks” mindset that would be appropriate for someone grading the source text as a Japanese essay and just getting the message accurately into my mind so I can get it into my translation faithfully.

    That’s politics. At other times I’m working for a corporate client who’s better served by me when I jump in and point out problems in their presentation of information: English readers want straightforward facts here, not vague promises of “green CSR in the twenty-first century,” and so on. The translator’s job is closer to copywriting when it’s done for these purposes. Pays better than the Hatoyama speeches, too.

    So where do anime translations fall in this spectrum? Does the translator need to be totally faithful to the artistic vision of the author, even if the author says ネーション instead of 国体? Or is there more leeway involved to make things easier on the readers’ eyes? Should a macaroon become an 飴玉?

  48. Concerning ネーション – this (and “nationalism”) are used almost exclusively by Japanese academics now. Two major reasons – it links the discussion clearly to international academic debates and there is no Japanese term that is adequate for the reasons that Joe and Durf cite above.

    This is done a lot in English as well – doxa, praxis, jouissance, etc. I try to avoid this kind of jargon in my writing, but if I end up referring to a clear and long-standing debate – it is of professional importance to use these terms. The author that Spandrell refers to seems to be linking (cleverly or not, I don’t know) the article’s major points with the current nation/nationalism debate in Japanese academia (which has important links to an international debate). Since the author is writing for an academic audience or at least one assumed to be involved in this debate, these sorts of terms are not only fair game, but necessary.

    Adamu writes above “modern fansubbing a mess”. That is great in colloquial English. But when you say “pre-modern warfare” in an academic discussion, you now have professional jargon on your hands and that must be exact to link points to broader discussions (ie. pre-modern warfare isn’t referring to 1998). ネーション has a great deal of nuance when I see it in Japanese, and I think that breaking away from 国体 was an excellent move (kokutai shugi” and “nationalism” being very different).

    “as opposed to blended into the scenery like the examples OtaKing gave.”

    Some companies like ADV have, in the past, slapped ugly graphics with English over the art. Vertical text is rare, but there are contemporary releases that alter the art in various ways.

  49. @Roy re: Kobayashi

    No doubt he is a manga artist, and certainly refers to himself as such, but I’ve visited at least three book stores on my last couple of short trips to Japan that insisted on keeping his stuff in non-manga sections. And his main vehicle is a “news” magazines, not the manga digests where most of the artists peddle their wares. His work is more like an illustrated essay to me than most manga, which I guess, is why I prefer his style, if not his substance. I’d be interested in looking at some of his earlier non-political stuff.

  50. Kobayashi is usually stocked with non-fiction. In addition, his work does not appear on Oricon’s manga list, but gets filed under “books”. Bigger bookstores can wind up stocking a few copies in both sections, however.

    In any case, his earlier “gag” stuff works in a similar style – the main character virtually “jumps” out at the readers and makes dick and fart jokes.

    Since this is a translation discussion, how would you guys translate ともだちんこ into English?

  51. Durf thanks for your informed opinions.
    Your credentials as a translator sound rock solid so while
    I’m tempted to defer to your expertise . . .

    In France in the 1980s there was a movement from the government
    to stop the influx of foreign words into the lexicon including
    “cheeseburger”. It was made clear to me by my teacher that
    French was a language that could function fine without
    foreign words in the lexicon.

    If only Japan was as strict towards loan words as it was towards immigrants.
    It would certainly make my working life a lot easier.

    Over the last few years I have noticed a steady trickle of loan words
    into corporate literature, and often I am asked by clients to
    translate sentences that contain beauties like 整合性のあるコンプライアンス
    and then am met with the furrowed brow when I tell them this is not going to be possible.

    Clients wack waseigo words (examples: エキスポージャー、オンーエアー、タイムリー)
    willy nilly into the middle of sentences and completely skew the linguistic computational dynamics of the sentence. They expect the waseigo word to be in the same position in the English as the Japanese.

    @ Joe Jones : I don’t think you can call a language “evolved” when it uses Chinese letters that a lot of its speakers cannot read nor write, that relies on foreign words to express concepts that it should be able to handle on its own, pebble-dashed with awkward sounding Katakana words for good measure.

    Of course translators strive to replicate the information in the Japanese into their native language. Who on earth would argue with that. Yet I’d like to see a movement similar to the one in France where Japanese is used to express words, ideas, and concepts and not mangled foreign words.

  52. “Buddick.”

    Also, I just want to throw in some support for Chris’s point here. Otaking’s rant makes him sound like one of those condescending know-it-alls who think that the particular training they enjoyed at Translation School (or their first translation job) taught them the one true way, and anyone who disagrees must be either incompetent or hopelessly amateur. The truth is far more complex.

  53. “Buddick”

    Awesome. I was thinking “pud bud”, but I like “buddick” better. In any case, there is indeed no one true way.

  54. Reductio ad absurdum can work both ways; should we be translating sashimi to ‘raw fish cut into very thin slices,’ since there are people unfamiliar with the term? He uses daimyo in another example, but that’s a word you can find in the pocket OED. You have to draw the line somewhere, and I think it’s fair to assume that anyone watching fan-subbed anime in the first place is going to have an above average level of familiarity with Japanese culture. Not that he doesn’t have a lot of valid complaints, but it seems pretty clear that his main aim is to stir up a reaction rather than to offer any sort of constructive critique.

  55. I just noticed “daimyo” translated as “feudal lord” in something that I was looking at this morning. This is certainly a contradiction.

  56. I remember one “list of English words of Japanese origin” which claimed Tenno had made it. English speakers do use mikado, tsar and maharaja but I think that was something of a push.

    There’s a good case that sensei has made a lot of ground in English. Firstly through martial arts, then through language learning and latterly through anime & manga. But it now carries connotations in English which mean that you can’t always leave it as it stands in a translation without missing the various ways it might actually be used in Japanese.

  57. “Kokutai” is one word that, at least in academia, is never translated into English but always simply transliterated. Since the definition of kokutai was always a bit fuzzy, while also changing over the course of the period in which it was commonly used, I think it should be avoided in any and all modern uses in Japanese unless one is specifically trying to convey a sense of nationalistic reminiscent of Imperial Japan.

    “Some companies like ADV have, in the past, slapped ugly graphics with English over the art. Vertical text is rare, but there are contemporary releases that alter the art in various ways.”
    I think that text within the scene should only be translated if it is somehow relevant to understanding of the story.

    “Kobayashi is usually stocked with non-fiction. In addition, his work does not appear on Oricon’s manga list, but gets filed under “books”.”
    I had no idea his work was officially not classified as manga. While I’ve definitely seen it files with political non-picture books, I do feel like I’ve seen it more often in the manga section somewhere, particularly in used book stores.

    “I remember one “list of English words of Japanese origin” which claimed Tenno had made it. English speakers do use mikado, tsar and maharaja but I think that was something of a push.”
    That is just ridiculous. NOBODY knows the word “tenno” unless they actually study Japan to a relatively serious degree. Mikado is a word that many people may know from Gilbert and Sullivan or whatever as referring to the Japanese Emperor, but I think it’s also generally known to be rather out of fashion and – if not exactly offensive – at least reflecting a certain lack of understanding of the modern situation. Sort of like how Harry Reid had been mocked for using the word “negro” the other day.

    “I don’t think you can call a language “evolved” when it uses Chinese letters that a lot of its speakers cannot read nor write, that relies on foreign words to express concepts that it should be able to handle on its own, pebble-dashed with awkward sounding Katakana words for good measure.”
    I really don’t understand your point there. “Evolved” does not mean “perfectly efficient,” as any biologist will tell you. And for that matter, until very recently almost every language in the world got along perfectly well with few to none of its speakers being able to read or write it at all, and even for most of the history of Japanese as a written language, most of the population was illiterate. How many native English speakers can follow a documents full of Greek or Latin derived medical or philosophical terminology? I don’t see any difference between that and the place of obscure specialized kanji in Japanese.

  58. “I think that text within the scene should only be translated if it is somehow relevant to understanding of the story.”

    I think so as well. However, I think that should be done as a regular subtitle in the regular place if there is no speech at the time or on the top of the screen in a different color if there is. What ADV and other have done on occasion is actually block out the Japanese text and write English over it. Don’t like that.

    “particularly in used book stores.”

    Oddly, “Gomanizmu” usually gets placed in the manga section at Bookoff and “Sensoron” in with the non-fiction books. No evidence, but I have been keeping a a deliberate eye on this for 10 years and I go to a LOT of bookstores.

    Re: Tenno

    I always get in trouble trying to pull %#^@ like that in Scrabble.

  59. “Re: Tenno

    I always get in trouble trying to pull %#^@ like that in Scrabble.”

    Properly speaking, when playing a game of Scrabble one has to specify a particular dictionary before the game starts, and word challenges must be tested against that dictionary. Personal vocabulary and other sources are irrelevant to the game itself.

  60. I usually end up playing with a one minute time limit on plays (Speed Scrabble, otherwise you had just as well play Monopoly) and if you wrongly challenge a word more than 3 times, there is a penalty so bluffing the opponent with foreign vocabulary is a viable strategy.

    Sometimes you just never know – Daimyo and Kami are in the official Scrabble dictionary! (Mikado, yes, Tenno, no; Daikon, yes, Katana, no; Bushido, yes, Bushi, no)

  61. “No katana???”

    I tried a few more and CHANOYU is in there! Makimono (in there as a “Japanese ornamental scroll”). Gagaku is in there! Ramen, udon, wasabi, sukiyaki, yakitori are in there but potential game winner okonomiyaki is not. See what I mean about just having to risk it sometimes?

  62. 掛物 (kakemono, hanging wall scroll) is in the Official Scrabble Dictionary. I give up trying to find any consistency….

  63. Jon:
    “In France in the 1980s there was a movement from the government
    to stop the influx of foreign words into the lexicon including
    “cheeseburger”. It was made clear to me by my teacher that
    French was a language that could function fine without
    foreign words in the lexicon.”
    As I am sure you are aware, that movement failed miserably, the minister of culture advocating it, Jacques Toubon, was derided as Mr. Allgood, and “cheeseburger” is now in le Robert Electronique with the definition “hamburger au fromage”.

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