Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.
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@saidahgilbert said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
But that is not allowed... 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.
Sorry, not allowed by whom? Is there some international body of linguists who police translation practices?
Regarding Solo Leveling, I may be pointing my finger at the wrong place. Obviously the translator is bound by the contract. As a reader, all I can say is that I disagree with the decision not to localize the names more. The resulting text is more annoying than I would have preferred.
EDIT: Actually, I misread your statement. You're not saying that the author chose the romanization. You're just saying that the author chose the orignal Korean name, correct? But the important point is whether a Korean reader of the original work would also find the names hard to distinguish. If so, then my beef is with the author. But if not, then this is an artifact of the translation that isn't present in the original work at all. I'm not sure how much leeway the translator might have per the contract, but there must be some. For example, I often see the anime and the LN translated differently. And there must be a clause in the contract for handling special cases such as when a word is accidentally an obscenity in the target language.
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@sorvani said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
Sadly, we did not get to meet Jiify's Pop!
I wonder why that is. I certainly hope it wasn't because Jiffy's pop, popped. 😱 🍿🍿🍿
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@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
not allowed by whom? Is there some international body of linguists who police translation practices?
Translation rights are typically restricted once granted. Publishers and authors retain this authority and can enforce it through contractual rights.
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@staylo67 said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@unknownmat said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
not allowed by whom? Is there some international body of linguists who police translation practices?
Translation rights are typically restricted once granted. Publishers and authors retain this authority and can enforce it through contractual rights.
For example, different publishers require the same author be listed in different ways, causing search failures - https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/8178/website-mistake-two-series-have-the-same-author-but-different-names/7
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@Lily-Garden said in Hate on what you Love. Let's air our grievances.:
@unknownmat this why I have stayed away from Chinese light novels; I tried reading one once and I had trouble keeping everyone straight since the names were too similar!
The one I tried reading gave each character multiple names, which made them even harder to remember.
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The author of Wortenia is such literatury windbag. I’m starting to wander which is worse being forced to read redundant content over and over, or someone like Im Del Yung who just cuts off.
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I've got a weird one that comes up surprisingly often in LNs: The lack of good gender neutral pronouns in English! Especially when translating from a language where the phrasing might genuinely be ambiguous.
Alternatively titled: The overuse of gender reveals in LNs!
This comes up whenever the narration suddenly becomes coy about a particular character's gender. Everything is suddenly "they", "them", "their". And you just know that it's meant to be a big surprise when it finally gets revealed. The gender will just obviously be the opposite of whatever you might naturally assume. Unfortunately, what might have been a dramatic reveal in the source language hardly merits an eye roll in the English translation as it was spoiled from the beginning by the language itself.
I'm currently reading The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows and there's this villain who is only ever seen covered by a grey cloak. Thanks to the sudden jarring use of gender neutral pronouns, I am confident that the villain is actually a villainess. And she will probably join his harem. Sigh. I've only finished volume one so far and have no fore-knowledge. If I turn out to be wrong I'll report back here, but I doubt that will happen.
