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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/11/15 in Blog Comments

  1. There isn't a magical ‘one-word’ solution that can be applied to all situations. Context would have to be taken into account in each instance, and one of the myriad tools available in the English language applied. Everything from ‘sir’ to full use of name, to use of only a surname, to a more respectful/formal/polite wording of the sentence, to nothing at all. You will on occasion find words which don’t translate into another language, this is due to languages being different from one another. That being said, different techniques in each language produce similar effects, in this instance the job of a translator would be to find the effect most fitting in the language they're translating into and applying that. But this takes good knowledge of both the languages in question, not just one. To be honest, if you understand Japanese then the translation isn’t meant to be pleasing on your ears. Japanese and English are incredibly different languages, so of course there’s going to be jarring moments in most translations. The idea of a translation is to get the audience to understand the relationship of those characters, not to keep ‘senpai’ solely for notions of cultural or linguistic purity. Bloody cliches.
    1 point
  2. Sometimes not using honorifics can screw up a dialog much later on in the story, for example there was a vn that almost by the end the characters were having a discussion on why the MC wasn't adding honorific to the heroine when he was addressing her, there is no way to fix that other than changing that entire dialog and making something up. Also honorifics are part of the culture in Japan so if you want to keep that intact and stay true to the meaning of what you are reading and translating then you should keep them. Yes you are translating a vn for a western public that they might or might not understand or know everything about the Japan culture but if they are reading a vn (which is a Japanese creation) then they probably know about it and if they don't they should, why else would they be reading it?
    1 point
  3. I believe a few fan patches have a readme with a short gothrough of the various honorifics, so that's a possibility. Whether anyone except me actually reads them is anyone's guess. Personally? I don't really care - but if I had to make a polarized choice either way I'd go the no-honorific way (naturally I chose the Fallout 4 option, though personally I'll be watching Psycho-Pass and reading Amairo instead.) I also think that your poll doesn't quite capture a potential "prefer it in only if it's somewhat plot relevant" position, which is more where I'd end up at. Keeping it is also less important in voiced dialogue, because I can probably pick it up from the Japanese anyway. For an opinion less based on personal preference, I think it's best to leave them out so we can open up the medium to non-weebs. Leaving them in is generally the lazy choice, but given how lazy I am, I can't blame any translator for being the same.
    1 point
  4. I'd say honorifics should be always dropped, when they bare no significance to the context of the story. It's a japanese thing and it should be left for japanese; there's literally no valid reason to keep them, aside from translator's whim, when all they add is nothing more than another layer of flavor to your moe.
    1 point
  5. Haven't read everything but I'll partialy agree with Rooke's and Okami's first posts. Keep the honorifics but add translation notes, thousands of them if needed. However, games without voice acting don't really need them unless they're relevant somehow. OELVNs with honorifics are usually made by bad/unexperienced writers, a -san or a -senpai here and there are likely the last thing you'll cringe about when reading such work. Seriously, translation notes are your friends, you can keep part of the moon runes while also presenting newcomers with what they'll face should they choose to look for more stuff in japanese. I like having the honorifics but unless they're needed somehow or the game has voice acting, I'd probably take them out. As an example of a game where the honorifics are kinda needed, let's take F/SN. If you already read it, chances are the word "Senpai" will remind you of Sakura and Shirou, mostly for the repetition I'll admit, but if you consider the cultural aspect of such thing (her calling him "Senpai" all the time), then maybe it's good that they didn't changed it to just "Shirou". In this case, we can feel that Sakura is a polite girl, it also tells us that Shirou is someone who's "more experienced" than her at something or simply that he's an year or more above her at school. Talking about that, the school setting is so frequent that leaving the honorifics is simply more practical. >.>
    1 point
  6. As I am a huge weeb, I will always keep my honorifics, Darbury-san. In fact, you could make a list of 1000 valid reasons on why I shouldn't use them, and I would still use them, because moon runes master race.
    1 point
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