Over-localization
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@hiroto Oh, I know about the different sizes such as Kyoto, Nagoya, Tokyo, and even found a company that makes mats in custom sizes. That's why I said "most common size". Honestly, would prefer the translator just keep the tatami mat convention in place to add a bit of local flavor. But then again, this entire thread is dealing with the issues of under or over localization, so doubt than any one preference is superior to another.
Also will say that this entire thread is extremely interesting. Learned about the green/blue aoi issue here today and wonder if it's at the root of a few recent posts in the P2V2 Ascendance of a Bookworm forum.
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Back when I was reading Lazy Dungeon Master, I believe there was also some confusion because the translator decided that "anpan" was better recognized as "jam bread".
So my opinion is that food and cuisine should be left as is. If there's an obvious translation, then certainly use that (eg "omelette rice" or "rice in an omelette" for "omurice"), but switching references should never happen.
Because so far from what I've seen in JNC translations, every attempt to make something more "familiar" to English readers assumes an American cultural base. Which means now I have to figure out what this weird new foodstuff or reference is, thus the point of making it "more familiar" is lost.
@farmerdad said in Over-localization:
Well put. Having unfamiliar foods don't trip me up as much as having something that sounds out of place like having someone in Hokkaido making home-cooked tacos because us gaijin don't know what Nikujaga is.
And then there's Okinawan cuisine, where "taco rice" is actually the usual taco fillings over (white) rice. Pronounced the same as "tako" (octopus) too, for extra confusion when I visited.
@hiroto said in Over-localization:
Unless we are talking about actual Japanese house and the room size is important subject matter in the plot, quite often author using 4.5 tatami mat, 6 tatami mat, and 8 tatami mat as coarse estimating of the room size. They are really really rough number to begin with.
Also, there are different tatami mat size, and 6 tatami mat can be anywhere between 8.67 sq meter and 10.94 sq meter, adding even more fuzziness.
So translator has great amount of flexibility in deciding how to covert these numbers.
Of course, we have an actual series where the six tatami mat room is part of the title, much less an important subject matter in the plot.
From what I can tell, the term "six-tatami" when used in Japanese media is generally not so much about the exact dimensions, but more about how small the place is. Not so tiny that it's unusual, but more that it's the sort of flat someone looking to save money on living space would rent/buy, especially if they're living alone. Small living space, basic amenities, and certainly not the sort of place you'd expect to be invaded by a number of supernatural factions.
So I think it's fine to avoid measurements entirely, and instead use the cultural equivalent. Searching Wikipedia, apparently this is called "studio apartment" or "micro apartment" or "bachelor pad".
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@unsynchedcheese said in Over-localization:
every attempt to make something more "familiar" to English readers assumes an American cultural base.
Well, we are an American company, after all...
To reiterate, there is never going to be a happy middle ground. Leaving it untranslated can alienate anyone unfamiliar with Japanese food/culture. Trying to translate it will alienate Japanese language "purists" who don't want it translated. Trying to localize it will alienate the locales not chosen.
Even the people who complain are only the couple dozen vocal minority who care enough to make a forum account or find the right Twitter tags. Most people just read it and move on.
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@farmerdad said in Over-localization:
Well put. Having unfamiliar foods don't trip me up as much as having something that sounds out of place like having someone in Hokkaido making home-cooked tacos because us gaijin don't know what Nikujaga is.
Me too. I'd be happiest with a loose translation like "meat and potato stew" for Nikujaga since I'd never heard of it until now, but given the choice between using the unfamiliar term or replacing it with something obviously wrong like mac 'n' cheese or haggis please go with the original dish.
In a Japanese light novel I also expect currency references to be in yen not dollars until they inevitably are transported to their new world, at which point they pay with coppers, silvers, gold, etc.
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Can't you just do both with an example like the food thing?
'"Let's eat some Tamagoyaki"
We started digging into the Tamagoyaki, a rolled, square shaped Omlete.' -
@terrence said in Over-localization:
Can't you just do both with an example like the food thing?
'"Let's eat some Tamagoyaki"
We started digging into the Tamagoyaki, a rolled, square shaped Omlete.'That could be considered, if not over-localization, taking liberties with the original manuscript. The original author didn't put the phrase "a rolled, square-shaped omelet" in his book. Now, I know that such liberties are taken with speech tags as it is often obvious who is speaking in Japanese by word choices in a way that doesn't translate into English, which I appreciate. So, it's a tricky line to walk.
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@terrence said in Over-localization:
Can't you just do both with an example like the food thing?
'"Let's eat some Tamagoyaki"
We started digging into the Tamagoyaki, a rolled, square shaped Omlete.'That would be the worst case to happen. Some sort of that, and that demands that English novels, for example, needs to put the same kind of text-disturbing explanations for stuff like shepherd's pie or sloppy joes.
Better to such customs as original as names and have instead extra notes to help out - as seen with the Final Fantasy Lost Stranger manga or the foot/side notes with other. Plus: when it comes to digital content, there is still the benefit of device included Wikipedia access.
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@farmerdad There ARE books that insert translation notes in the back... The style used by My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong as I Expected doesn't just explain what the original meant to convey, but also what memes are being used. A food example:
P. 199 Okonomiyaki is something like a savory pancake ...
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@someoldguy said in Over-localization:
@farmerdad There ARE books that insert translation notes in the back... The style used by My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong as I Expected doesn't just explain what the original meant to convey, but also what memes are being used. A food example:
P. 199 Okonomiyaki is something like a savory pancake ...
Yes, I've seen that and I love that! But the explanation isn't added inline with the story. I have learned so much about Japanese things that way, because yes, I read those foot notes when the story is over.
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yup - I'd like glossaries or footnotes - I know it adds work for TL and could be a challenge to tag what has notes in a way that doesn't upset the flow of reading (I suggest putting words or phrases that would have a note in the glossary in a different font, and we'd all figure it out soon enough)
example:
we went to a specialty restaurant and shared a Okonomiyaki. It was quite good, good times were had by all..
then in the glossary:
Okonomiyaki: something like a savory pancake, traditional dish in Hiroshima region, often prepared table-side by the diners themselves and shared... -
I prefer food and drink dishes to have the original names wherever possible, unless it’s going to cause confusion, like kombucha which is a Japanese word, but it refers to a different drink in Japan.
I mean, you wouldn’t call arancini “rice balls”, so why call onigiri that? But then you can get onigiri fairly easily in the UK (London at least) - one of the main takeaway Japanese restaurant chainsWasabi has them and calls them onigiri.
Actually I just Googled “rice balls” and found recipes for both onigiri and arancini with one of the recipes for the latter being called “Italian rice balls”, so maybe people do call them that?
As for okonomiyaki, there’s a restaurant in London that does that, and there’s been at least one street food stand that did it as well, though it’s obviously not as well-known.
I just think for food, foreign names eventually become more familiar as food spreads, which it seem to do faster than in the past. It also depends on where you live even within the same country - big cities or areas with immigration from certain countries get “foreign” cuisines faster than smaller towns.
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Would you expect French Fries in an American based story to be called Chips in the localized version for Britain? And call American chips crisps in the localized version?
I think most localizations make the change?
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@lilitu93 said in Over-localization:
I mean, you wouldn’t call arancini “rice balls”, so why call onigiri that? But then you can get onigiri fairly easily in the UK (London at least) - one of the main takeaway Japanese restaurant chainsWasabi has them and calls them onigiri.
That reminds me how weird onigiri were translated with the localised Pokémon anime...
I am convinced, trying to substitute cuisine terms is definitely some over-localised. And it will not stop there in worst case. Imagine a mosque is suddenly called church just for matching regional cultures. You lose far too much when trying to substitute regional customs.
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I think that part of what I enjoy about LN is that that are *Japanese *, food names, place names, cultural references, something about manners, relationships etc.
In the best case, localization pushes the comfort zone so that I *don’t * get all the references, I still learn something new. I need to look something up or *struggle * to figure it out from context. And I enjoy the struggle
I read banned books
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@terrence said in Over-localization:
Would you expect French Fries in an American based story to be called Chips in the localized version for Britain? And call American chips crisps in the localized version?
I think most localizations make the change?
Harry Potter has separate UK edition and US edition.
How often does opposite happen? US English publication localized for UK?
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@jon-mitchell said in Over-localization:
I think that part of what I enjoy about LN is that that are *Japanese *, food names, place names, cultural references, something about manners, relationships etc.
In the best case, localization pushes the comfort zone so that I *don’t * get all the references, I still learn something new. I need to look something up or *struggle * to figure it out from context. And I enjoy the struggle
I agree. A lot of relationship-based stories would not make any sense, if you are not aware of the usage of names and honorifics e.g.
I consider it always as incredibly cute, when two people start shyly calling by their given names, rather than their surnames.
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@zchronos Perhaps, but the fan translation are also... not legal.
On a more serious note, though, fan translations tend to be aimed a a narrower audience: a group of people so eager to read new material that they can't/won't wait for official licensing and releases. Whereas official releases, besides being stories, are also products that need to SELL. And in this day and age, that means appealing to as wide an audience as possible, in many cases. So the reason we translators, until recently, and still, not always, drop Japanese suffixes and things is because we don't want to alienate readers who might be new to Japanese literature/Japanese culture/translated literature. We love these stories, so we want to share them with as many people as possible, and those people need to understand and relate to what they're seeing on the page.
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@mahirsh said in Over-localization:
@zchronos Perhaps, but the fan translation are also... not legal.
On a more serious note, though, fan translations tend to be aimed a a narrower audience: a group of people so eager to read new material that they can't/won't wait for official licensing and releases. Whereas official releases, besides being stories, are also products that need to SELL. And in this day and age, that means appealing to as wide an audience as possible, in many cases. So the reason we translators, until recently, and still, not always, drop Japanese suffixes and things is because we don't want to alienate readers who might be new to Japanese literature/Japanese culture/translated literature. We love these stories, so we want to share them with as many people as possible, and those people need to understand and relate to what they're seeing on the page.
It is very true that people who don't know what honorifics are or mean would find the use of them alienating, but at the same time there are times when they simply cannot be dropped. I think all of us here have encountered manga or LNs where all of a sudden there is a two page scene based entirely on two characters arguing or bonding over the other person choosing to switch to a less formal honorific or to start calling the other person by their first name and it makes absolutely no sense at all because the translator wasn't using any honorifics or had them using first names since the start of the story. I have seen relatively important plot pots and character beats completely wrecked or lost simply because translators hadn't read ahead and planned for the fact that a change in familiarity and honorific usage was itself going to become a topic of contention between characters.
I think terms like tsundere are fine to translate since there are usually western equivalents even if they are a bit wonky, but the problem with completely dropping honorifics is there often is no way to coherently translate the context carried by them without it sounding absolutely ridiculous.
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I also find that when they translate the honorifics (like san to mr/ms and chan/kun to dear/little) it just doesn't sound right. It reads so awkwardly because that isn't how people speak in English.
I find that when ever I read these in Magicmaster (Loki Dear) and Shield Hero (Little Naofumi/Raphtalia) for example, I lose the flow of the reading and it takes me out of the immersion because it is so obvious that something isn't right with the sentence. You just know that something has been forced with the translation and it doesn't flow well.
While there are plenty that do it well enough (for example, Smartphone), that I don't lose the flow of reading. However most of the time I would prefer they get left in because they also help identify who is talking as all the characters have different ways of addressing each other, rather than everyone just calling the MC Touya.
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@mahirsh said in Over-localization:
So the reason we translators, until recently, and still, not always, drop Japanese suffixes and things is because we don't want to alienate readers who might be new to Japanese literature/Japanese culture/translated literature.
I think that a lot of translators, because of the ostensible nature of the job, are absolutely terrified of "not making sense," which can become a major source of "over-localization." And while often times this can simply be chalked up to a certain kind of stylistics, I think it always runs the risk of accidentally eliminating ambiguity, uncertainty, or non-standard usage that is often a highlight of "literary language" (hello Russian Formalism!)
Authors who write stories in English with Japanese characters or settings can often get away with using honorifics freely without needing to explain them, without worrying whether the readers will understand. Not only that, they're often praised for pushing boundaries, for taking readers outside of their comfort zones, and cetera...
But some people will pick over a translation in ways that they won't "original" writing because of what they perceive the task of translation to actually be. If you leave a word untranslated, or if the translated text is awkward or hard to understand, people will accuse you of being a bad translator based solely on the output, without looking at (or even being able to look at) the original and what might have prompted that decision.
