Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Do you mind elaborating? I'm not familiar with Sailor Moon or 4 Kids.
Sorry it was DiC not 4Kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailor_Moon#WesternizationBasically, don't read/watch non-<insert your culture here> stuff if you don't want to know/watch/read things related to not your culture.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I appreciate the elaboration, but it doesn't look like we're going to see eye-to-eye on this.
To be clear, Sailor Moon is a story about a 12-year old girl dressed in a magical sailor uniform fighting monsters after school. But changing the names was a bridge too far...?
It's funny to me that you just drop the example without explanation as if it should be obvious. Did it affect the story in some way? This appears to just be your personal aesthetic preference. And not one that I share. I see nothing wrong with Serena or Darien Shields.
Basically, don't read/watch non-<insert your culture here> stuff if you don't want to know/watch/read things related to not your culture.
I couldn't disagree more. The snobbishness inherent in this statement is the kind of gate-keeping that I dislike most in geek sub-cultures.
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I don't mind some localization such as changing honorifics to Lord or Lady, but it annoys me when a translation over-localizes and we get Steve spending dollars to eat cheeseburgers instead of Touya, yen, and ramen.
So Johnny Sung instead of Sung Jinwoo would bother me even if all the JinX are hard to follow. It might make sense for dubbed anime where the viewer wants something closer to their own culture.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I couldn't disagree more. The snobbishness inherent in this statement is the kind of gate-keeping that I dislike most in geek sub-cultures.
It is a fact that you are complaining about the native culture you are reading. If you are going to complain about it, why are you reading it?
@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
But changing the names was a bridge too far...?
The names exist for a reason. This is a specific example, as not all authors make names with meanings like this, but yes, changing names is a step to far 100% of the time. Tsukino Usagi does not have the same meaning as Serena, but at least that change is sort of close/adjacent to what the author wrote. Mizuno Ami does not have the meaning that Amy Anderson has, this one is not even close to anything actually related to the authors choice of character name.
Are you telling me that my wife should change her name to Mary now that she moved to the United States from Japan?
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Are you telling me that my wife should change her name to Mary now that she moved to the United States from Japan?
Only if you're writing a non-JNC novel about her.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
It is a fact that you are complaining about the native culture you are reading. If you are going to complain about it, why are you reading it?
There are plenty of reasons to read LNs besides cultural immersion. I should note that we are explicitly in a thread titled "Hate on what you love". It's completely reasonable to enjoy some aspects of LN culture while disliking others.
I'm not complaining about Korean or Japanese culture. I'm complaining about an incidental artifact of the translation - in this case, that the names are far too similar when romanized. If readers of the original work in its native language also found the names hard to distinguish, then I would agree that the translator was completely correct to carry that aspect over to the English version. Otherwise, there's a case to be made for localization.
The names exist for a reason.
Maybe. A lot of times the names are just names. In the case that the author carefully chose the names because of their meaning or whatever, then I would tend to agree that the translator should be a bit more careful.
That said, neither Tsukino Usagi nor Mizuno Ami would be meaningful to an English audience. If they are meaningful to a Japanese audience, then that's even more a case for careful a localization vs. a direct romanization.
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@HarmlessDave said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I don't mind some localization such as changing honorifics to Lord or Lady, but it annoys me when a translation over-localizes and we get Steve spending dollars to eat cheeseburgers instead of Touya, yen, and ramen.
Yeah, I think this is a tightrope that all translators have to walk. I think there are as many preferences as there are LN readers.
For me, it depends on the work. With Solo Leveling or Sailor Moon, we're not talking Shakespeare or Hitchcock. I would tend to prefer a translation that is more culturally transparent and easily digestible by a casual audience. But if it's Seven Samurai, then by all means translate it literally and include a glossary so that I can lookup cultural words that I don't know.
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Personally, I'm only really concerned about preserving the original names when either a) they're appropriate to the culture portrayed in the work, or b) they're plot relevant.
For example, Bookworm - set in a fantasy setting with mostly German-derived invented names - having names westernised by the translator doesn't bother me at all; Nor does the stripping of Japanese honorifics from the same work. But if VTuber Legend - one of the few series I read actually set in Japan - had a main character going by Amanda instead of Awayuki, I'd probably object.
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@unknownmat I sort of agree with you, but personally, I think this is more of an issue with the author than the translation. I mean, imagine for a minute that the names were western, but they were Jay, Jack, and Jan. Would that actually be any better? I personally think it's just an issue that the names are so similar, not so much a cultural thing.
(Caveat, I am not really familiar with Korean culture and names, so no idea if these names are actually comparable or not, but I think my point comes across)
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I read webtoons, and when I found a series with names localized in English I tend to avoid it.... it's too immersion breaking reasing those Korean people doing Korean things but being called Steve, Jack, Elizabeth. So while I do agree than dealing with foreign names isn't always easy, to me the solution would be worse.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
names that are too similar!
I don't have a problem with it. It's the same level of difficulty as having two or more people with the same name in your class, workplace etc. In fact, in fiction it's usually easier because the people with similar names may not have the same position/ relationship to the viewpoint character so the way they address the MC will change.
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@saidahgilbert said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
I don't have a problem with it. It's the same level of difficulty as having two or more people with the same name in your class, workplace etc. In fact, in fiction it's usually easier because the people with similar names may not have the same position/ relationship to the viewpoint character so the way they address the MC will change.
Hmm. It's fine if it doesn't bother you. But I feel like you're downplaying the problem. This is not the same level as having two kids name "Steve" in your class.
Have you read Solo Leveling? We're not talking one or two characters. I think it's a combination of the names looking similar in English and also originating from a Korean culture that I am unfamiliar with. I have an easier time with Japanese names, for example. But I find English names the easiest. Essentially, to remember an English name requires one piece of information. Whereas to remember a Korean name requires that I remember the shape of an unfamiliar word. And this is made much more challenging when several of the names are similar in appearance, particularly the way they begin and end. Now I have to pay attention to the actual spelling as I'm reading. This feels like an unnecessary amount of trouble for a story that is merely a fun fast read.
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@Lex said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
it's too immersion breaking reasing those Korean people doing Korean things but being called Steve, Jack, Elizabeth
I think the thing I struggle with most is that other forum participants seem to apply their naming preference uniformly without regard to the intent of the source material. Sailor Moon is not great cinema. I found it barely watchable even when I was teenager. An overly localized name like "Elizabeth" would hardly be the most egregious immersion breaker. By contrast, I took an "East Asian Literature" course during my undergrad where we studied several classic short-stories from a number of cultures. If the translator had localized the names as "Jeff" or "John" you better believe it would have raised some eyebrows.
In any case, maybe my suggestion of "Johnny Sung" was too much for most readers. But the translator could have chosen Korean-sounding names that are more visually/phonetically distinct.
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@unknownmat to me, the genre or target doesn't matter too much, I still prefer keeping the original names.
Using foreign names that sound more distinct can help in remembering and telling apart the characters but then introduces other forms of confusion when you talk or look for informations about the series because you can have multiple different localizations for each name, so I still don't see this solution as a net positive. -
@Lex said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
to me, the genre or target doesn't matter too much, I still prefer keeping the original names
Me to! Well.. except the really stupid names like, "Jiffy" Does Jiffy pop? I do like Jiffy pop. I like the way the aluminum swells up, gets hot and gets into your circulatory system and turns carcinogenic. 🫤
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@staylo67 said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
except the really stupid names like, "Jiffy"
Good point. A lot of names sound differently to a native audience. Translating a name literally can introduce unintended artifacts. So which is the "purest" choice? It's far from obvious.
I'm reminded of Princess Pina Colada from Gate. Or the knight Girlshout in Bookworm (thankfully quof went with Garlshaut for that one).
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@Lex said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Using foreign names that sound more distinct can help in remembering and telling apart the characters but then introduces other forms of confusion when you talk or look for informations about the series
Agree. There are certainly reasons to prefer a more standardized rendering.
Note, though, that it can be ambiguous - two translators might reasonably disagree about the most accurate Romanizations for a particular name. Meaning there wouldn't be an obvious 1:1 correlation. To my thinking, this weakens the "ease of lookup" argument.
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
But the translator could have chosen Korean-sounding names that are more visually/phonetically distinct.
But that is not allowed. The translator can only write what's there. They can use a romanisation system that makes it better to read in English but they can't change the name unless the author does so themselves. The translator doesn't own the work, only the author (and/or the publisher) does. In fact, nowadays, languages that don't use the Latin alphabet can now insist on their own specific romanisation system so books from those languages can only be translated using that certain system.
In the case of Solo Leveling, it's the author that chose similar sounding names for their characters. A translator unfortunately can't do anything about that. It's no longer the case where names are translated into other languages- c.f. Christopher Columbus. Changing names would require extra steps in the translation process and that might be cost-prohibitive and/or time-consuming.
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@staylo67 said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Me to! Well.. except the really stupid names like, "Jiffy" Does Jiffy pop? I do like Jiffy pop.
Sadly, we did not get to meet Jiify's Pop!
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@saidahgilbert Maybe some of those authors were trying to emulate Stan Lee, like his Peter Parker, Bruce Baner, Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Stephen Strange, Tony Stark, uh-oh, oh well, never mind misfired again! 😱🤪🤪😏
