Translation Wars

• forum #32054
• forum #39382

Those threads are hardly the only examples of translation wars on the board. Makes me wonder why you guys need to be so aggressive about it.

For yin and yang's sake, I would understand if this was the 1960s and it was very hard technically to get any translation published with a notable circulation. But we are living the hypertext era, which, in principle, gives us unlimited possibilities to release competing versions side by side; complete with (hidable) explanatory notes and links to texts discussing the ideals according to which the translations were prepared.

I could thoroughly enjoy comparing such different translations and trying to decide which one has reached its own goals best. Even if I believed that one of them was fundamentally more authentic or successful than the rest.

I am not saying this should be included in Danbooru 2, but I wish to declare my vision of a pluralist future: How every time you read Soljashy's or 0xCCBA696's translations, their manifestos are one click away. And how more and more highest-quality manga pages will have separate translations for those who prefer "localized flow", for those who are familiar with the most important features of the Japanese culture, for those whose main interest is learning the language by reading comics... you name it.

In the meantime: I am honestly interested in reading views on how to prepare a good translation, but reading outbursts of anger and hate ruins the mood of browsing the wonderful database that is Danbooru.

Just trying to lighten the mood at the end: Those who do not like preserving Japanese honorifics in English text need a logo. I can provide the slogan: Localize it! The image should not be confusable with a hemp leaf.

Ahahahahahahahahaha

Why would you make this thread?

I'm trying to extract the meaning here from the 60's metaphor woven through it. It sounds like you are asking for parallel translation to be allowed. I would counter that very few people are going to waste their effort by re-translating what is already translated.

• I fail to see the point of this thread, but it amuses me nonetheless.
• I am surprised that you somehow see hatred in the forums linked.
• If it's my views on translation you want, you could always ask me about them personally.

Katajanmarja said:
Makes me wonder why you guys need to be so aggressive about it.

What fun is a quiet argument? Pretending that you're talking about a matter of the utmost importance gives you license to put effort into your rhetoric which would just seem silly if you were having a perfectly calm, objective discussion.

Also, this.

Katajanmarja said:
I am not saying this should be included in Danbooru 2, but I wish to declare my vision of a pluralist future: How every time you read Soljashy's or 0xCCBA696's translations, their manifestos are one click away.

Figuring out who translated a post is already one click away, since the note history has names attached to it. A "translation manifesto" is an interesting idea, but it seems like it's elevating the matter to seem more important than it actually is; for all the words I've spent arguing about the philosophy of translation, the fact of the matter is that these deep questions very rarely come into play in your average 4koma script.

Katajanmarja said:
In the meantime: I am honestly interested in reading views on how to prepare a good translation, but reading outbursts of anger and hate ruins the mood of browsing the wonderful database that is Danbooru.

Anger and hate? More like intense annoyance and sarcasm. "Anger and hate" would be vicious ad hominem, threatened bans, aggression spilling out into post comments threads, stuff like that. What's in the threads you linked is written in the same tone that a particularly spirited real-time, face-to-face argument would have.

Yeah, not sure what the thread accomplishes.

Katajanmarja said: Those threads are hardly the only examples of translation wars on the board. Makes me wonder why you guys need to be so aggressive about it.

Translation is serious fucking business.

...But, it's still only translation. I actually like every user in that thread who I was arguing with and against while I was participating in it, and still do now that it's over. If it were truly "anger and hate" that wouldn't be the case anymore. I'm perfectly capable of hating people if I actually feel like it but nothing of the sort came from that.

Oh there is one thing that *might* make sense from this thread's OP, though it's sort of a thread hijack. Parallel translations actually *would* make sense if they were able to be done for multiple languages.

I know we have a number of members who's native tongue is not English. The number of members who have native tongues other than English, know Japanese, and are willing to translate into their native tongues, though, that I'm not sure.

That's a good point. I'm sure there are people who would appreciate that feature.

Heck, even my own native tongue isn't English. I doubt there's any demand for Afrikaans translations, though, but I can easily imagine that being the case for other languages.

That would be pretty cool. Users could specify a locale for their account, and translations would be delivered in a native language when available or English otherwise. I'm a little worried, though, that we'd get lots of people who don't know Japanese trying to translate the English translation into their native language, and translations of translations are never a good thing.

Another thing about multi-language translation. If we had something along those lines, it would be trivial to also have people transcribe the Japanese into it's own language/translation layer (sort of like human OCR).

That would save people working in other languages a bit of time discerning sketchy writing, and would leave the source language digitized so that they could use an online dictionary or or the like more easily. It would also provide a way for people comfortable transcribing Japanese, but not translating, a way to help out other translators.

Additionally (and getting off onto one of my pie-in-the-sky tangents again) that coupled with a DB dump would produce a nice parallel corpus some industrious person could use to build a searchable anime-centric translation aide, NLP resource, or JEDICT supplement.

Shinjidude said:
Another thing about multi-language translation. If we had something along those lines, it would be trivial to also have people transcribe the Japanese into it's own language/translation layer (sort of like human OCR).

This + a way to leave notes for other translators without cluttering the translation for general users is definitely something I've wished for to make the site more translator-friendly.

Shinjidude said:

t's sort of a thread hijack.

Yes, but a very constructive one, no offense taken. Your "human OCR" proposal is brilliant.

Soljashy said:

I am surprised that you somehow see hatred in the forums linked.

The explanation could be that

a) it is a cultural difference; in the communities I have been active before, first going far off topic in an annoyed tone and then saying stuff like, "Next time read my posts before you reply to them," would typically mean that someone is soon either going to get banned or leave on his own initiative (equals losing good translators); or

b) I am a wuss; see below.

glasnost said:

What fun is a quiet argument? Pretending that you're talking about a matter of the utmost importance (...).

I maintain that calm and objective discussions lead to higher numbers of concrete positive results (e.g. translations), which in turn I find more enjoyable than any arguments whatsoever. If you feel otherwise, hey, I would not like to argue about it.

glasnost said:

Also, this.

That exact comic used to be a part of my user profile on another board. Been there, done that, felt depressed. :p

Shinjidude said:

It sounds like you are asking for parallel translation to be allowed.

And encouraged. That was my main point, because...

Shinjidude said:

I would counter that very few people are going to waste their effort by re-translating what is already translated.

...it is totally beyond me why anyone would prefer exhausting online arguments to spending that same time on good parallel translations. But at least Glasnost's and Jxh's comments make me feel this is just me not understanding people's different attitudes.

Soljashy said:

[Y]ou could always ask me about them personally.

glasnost said:

A "translation manifesto" is an interesting idea (...).

"Manifesto" may be a bombastic word. Basically I meant declaring such things as what the translator's idea about localizing or not localizing honorifics is, and why and how he wishes to accomplish that task. This would help the reader to choose between parallel translations according to his needs and tastes, and also give critics some useful context info.

Katajanmarja said:
[F]irst going far off topic in an annoyed tone and then saying stuff like, "Next time read my posts before you reply to them," would typically mean that someone is soon either going to get banned or leave on his own initiative (equals losing good translators);

About that response... I was honestly annoyed at having someone ask me for information I have already given in the very same thread as opposed to contributing to constructive debate. That line was a somewhat brusque plead for them to stop doing that, and not meant to offend.

Katajanmarja said:
I maintain that calm and objective discussions lead to higher numbers of concrete positive results (e.g. translations), which in turn I find more enjoyable than any arguments whatsoever.

Which is what I believe we had, for the most part.

Katajanmarja said:
...it is totally beyond me why anyone would prefer exhausting online arguments to spending that same time on good parallel translations.

Well, firstly, my interests are not limited to translating; I also enjoy a bit of debate from time to time. It helps put things in perspective sometimes. Secondly, for whatever reason, I find it difficult to motivate myself to translate something if I know that a translation is already available. I'd rather translate something "new".

Katajanmarja said:
...it is totally beyond me why anyone would prefer exhausting online arguments to spending that same time on good parallel translations.

It's a good kind of exhausting, like jogging or lifting weights. That said, speaking as someone whose preferred exercise is the donut to mouth arm curl, I can understand how that sort of thing might not be your bag.

Katajanmarja said:
I maintain that calm and objective discussions lead to higher numbers of concrete positive results (e.g. translations), which in turn I find more enjoyable than any arguments whatsoever.

Calm, objective discussions are shockingly bad at changing opinions, even the opinions of intelligent, rational people. Being blunt during debate is like digging with a backhoe instead of a shovel; yeah, you run the risk of hitting a gas pipe and having the whole operation explode on you, but you also get the job done a lot faster.

Of course, I'm just playing devil's advocate now (it would seem I have a habit of that), as even I can't find a cogent position from which to argue against the proposition "people should be polite", but hey, food for thought.

Katajanmarja said:
parallel translations

I have my doubts about the idea of multiple English translations for a given post. In addition to making things more complicated for the end user, to whom it may not be apparent why multiple translations are useful, it seems like it codifies the divide between "pure translation" and "pure localization", which, as I said in the other thread, just leads to unhelpful extremes.

Shinjidude said:
a nice parallel corpus some industrious person could use to build a searchable anime-centric translation aide, NLP resource, or JEDICT supplement.

Somebody, please, make it so. Anime-centric, nothing; just its usefulness as a corpus for informal speech would make it worth the effort. I still remember, back when I first started trying to translate, the hours of searching it took me to figure that んち was short for の家 and not, say, ウンチ. (And now I see that んち was added to EDICT sometime between then and now. Hooray, progress.)

glasnost said:
...んち was short for の家...

Wow, that one's bitchy. Learn something new every day.

Katajanmarja said:
[...] translation manifesto [...]

So basically a userpage?

I wouldn't have any problem with giving users the ability to have like a short wiki article about themselves (such as a summary of their viewpoints on various site issues currently not decisively settled one way or another) on their /user/show page. Of course, it should be restricted to privileged or contributor and higher levels, to avoid retarded shenanigans. Perhaps particularly useful to Janitors, who could then put up a manifesto about what they tend to approve (which might help quiet down the submitters to the queue, possibly).

0xCCBA696 said:

So basically a userpage?

I imagined the "manifesto" specifically as some kind of introduction to the translator's note history, and visible to all potential readers. Your idea sets different goals.

glasnost said:

like jogging or lifting weights

Ha ha, dammit, you should put some effort into finding sports I hate more than those two! Thanks for spending your time on me, anyway.

I do not quite agree on the changing of opinions bit.

I might have had more encounters with people who just stop communicating if they feel they are under attack (could really be a cultural feature, for ours has been called consensus-oriented). That is why I read the most annoyed parts of the mentioned debates as, "F*** you, let me do my thing the way I believe in or I'll go do it elsewhere."

Certainly I have had more to do with people whose heads are best turned by presenting bare facts (more likely a thing of my personal history).

Oh, perhaps I should provide a recent example of the type of discussion that convinces me: forum #41145 (especially Shinjidude and Sgcdonmai; more concise with lots of relevant source references would be the ideal).

Heh, thanks for the vote of confidence for what it's worth. I do often have issues with being concise though, don't I?

Like I am the one to blame you for that...

Being concise and unambiguous at the same time is the highest art.

Katajanmarja said:
I might have had more encounters with people who just stop communicating if they feel they are under attack (could really be a cultural feature, for ours has been called consensus-oriented).

Unfortunately, sometimes people feel they are under attack just by being presented with bare facts. :\

Katajanmarja said:
That is why I read the most annoyed parts of the mentioned debates as, "F*** you, let me do my thing the way I believe in or I'll go do it elsewhere."

I'd be interested to know which specific parts gave you that impression. As I said before, I actually thought we were being quite civil.