Fred the Barber

The VN reading community likes to argue over the relative merits of so-called "literal" and "liberal" translation, with most people tending to perceive everyone else as being a hardline supporter of one or the other. While I'm sure everybody who knows my views would classify me as a proponent of liberal translation, I tend to think I'm more a proponent of being accurate to the intent of the original text. This blog post is going to outline a couple of specific uses of language which I believe show some of the weaknesses of attempting "literal translation." This isn't going to be anything like an attempt to provide an exhaustive argument against literal translation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least trying to be a little bit convincing. Still, regardless of your position on that particular argument, you might at least find the examples enlightening. Broadly, I'm going to be talking about figurative language. That's a fancy phrase encompassing a lot of common expressions and classes of expression which exist in every natural human language, as far as I know, and certainly in both Japanese and English. Idioms, similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, symbolism: all of these are classes of figurative language. For starters, let's talk about idioms. The relevant definition of "idiom", per wiktionary, is, "An expression peculiar to or characteristic of a particular language, especially when the meaning is illogical or separate from the meanings of its component words." The argument pretty much writes itself, right? By definition, if you try to literally translate the words in an idiom, you're going to end up with something at best inaccurate, and at worst completely illogical. Just googling "Japanese idioms" and reading what you see is going to find you dozens of examples of cases where you have to either avoid literal translation or end up with a translation that doesn't make sense. For instance, translating 十人十色 as "ten men, ten colors" isn't going to be comprehensible to an English reader, but the venerable English idiom "different strokes for different folks," which is equivalent in meaning if not exactly in tone, is probably going to fit the bill. Idioms offer pretty much a slam dunk argument in favor of liberal translation*. That said, idioms are not that common an occurrence. However, there are also lesser examples: cases where literal translation yields something meaningful and accurate, but still less accurate than a liberal translation could manage. My personal favorite example of a Japanese expression which is not an idiom, but which still benefits massively from a "liberal" translation, is the combination of the noun 背中 (back) and the adjective 大きい (large, big). These two words are often put together in Japanese when praising men, as a way to say a man has a certain, protoypically masculine, attractive physical characteristic. The phrase also carries a subtextual metaphor of reliability: a big back can bear a lot of weight, presumably. Once you start looking for "big backs", you'll see them popping up in literal JP->EN translations all over the place, from Little Busters! to HoshiMemo. The problem is, there's a common English expression which means exactly the same thing as that Japanese expression: "broad shoulders." Now, no dictionary is going to tell you that you can correctly translate 背中, in isolation, as "shoulders." But what's amazing about this pair of Japanese and English expressions is that they not only have the same denotation, but also the same connotation. Both expressions describe the same physical trait, and they both also imply the same personality trait of reliability: a broad pair of shoulders, also, can be trusted to carry your burden. The expression "broad shoulders", like its Japanese cousin, sits somewhere between simple non-figurative use of language and an idiom: just knowing the definition of the individual words gets you to the correct meaning of the expression, and even the connotation of implied reliability, when present, is usually obvious. So, by definition, they aren't idioms. But even so, if translated literally in either direction, the original phrase will end up as a pale shadow of what it should be. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be described as broad-shouldered than as big-backed. *Unless you believe the purpose of a translation is to teach you Japanese idioms, in which case there isn't enough common ground to even have an argument. I personally like to read translated fiction for the same reason I like to read fiction originally written in English: to enjoy a well-crafted story.

Glad to see one person enjoying Gahkthun and another person considering playing it. It's a lovely game with a lot to recommend it. I think Inganock is ultimately a better story, but it's not that big a gap, and I found Gahkthun to be a very enjoyable read.

I feel like we've had this conversation before, but if you read it on Kindle, you can have it right nao.

More than 100, less than 200 pages, IIRC. The first 1/5 of it is just Lift's chapter from Words of Radiance, too.

Oops. Well, suffice to say, you're going to be confused by Nin if you don't read Edgedancer first.

Yay Sorcery Jokers! I was hoping for (but certainly not expecting) this one before the announcement, and I've been looking forward to it since the announcement. They got it done pretty fast, all things considered. Definitely going to be playing this one as soon as it lands. Also, apparently @Asonn trolling now passes for "liberal translation"... What a world.

Hahah. If you think that's impressive, consider that, after I got it, I re-read books 1 and 2, and read 2.5 for the first time (because I didn't know Edgedancer existed until the prologue to Oathbringer told me to go read it), before starting book 3. Reading 2.5 first was a very good decision: I love Lift.

Finished reading the latest Stormlight Archive book, Oathbringer. Brandon Sanderson once again proved he deserves his place atop my (figurative, not literal) list of favorite authors, side by side with Brent Weeks and Scott Lynch. Here's to hoping he actually lives to write the whole series he has planned, and that I actually live to read it all. At the rate he's going, I think it'll be another 20 years before it's done, but hey, journey before destination, right?

I don't know about those specific scenes, but the LB! translation is terrible; it makes that Newton and the Apple Tree youtube video I was ranting about yesterday look like Shakespeare. I was thinking about reviewing Little Busters! for FuwaReviews a while back when it came out, but after a few hours with it, I was so caught up in being annoyed at the translation that I wasn't having any fun with it. It's a shame Key started letting people butcher their games in localization lately (I'm looking at you, Harmonia. Clannad was fine, from what I recall, and I haven't played Planetarian), since I rather like them. Oh well. At least you can always watch the anime, I guess?

Well said, my man. Well said.

Confession: Even if a recipe calls for chicken breasts, or "assorted chicken parts" (yes, that's a thing that recipes call for), I always make it with chicken thighs. Dat delicious dark meat action.

You'll have to forgive me for being skeptical. Product talks and bullshit walks, and the product you've demonstrated so far in that video isn't up to my standards. I'll give the demo a spin when it's out, but I don't have high hopes, so for the time being I've dropped my Kickstarter pledge down to $1.

I skipped to a random point early on in the (impressively long) youtube link, and I have to admit I'm a little disappointed, though unsurprised. The script reads fairly poorly, both in terms of line editing and copy editing. The latter is mostly an issue of punctuation: seriously, who actually thinks it's okay to leave three exclamation points on a single sentence, let alone an ellipsis followed by three exclamation points, or to end a line with "!?!"? Moreover, those aren't one-offs for particularly emotional moments; standard, somewhat angry lines seem to merit a steaming pile of punctuation. I shudder to think of how many exclamation points they're going to toss on actually emotionally impactful lines. This script badly needs to be depunctuated (except for the lines where they just plain forgot the punctuation, like "It happened there, when I walked towards the ticket gate of an almost deserted station square"). Aside from that, just looking at a hundred lines or so showed off multiple errors, like "for goodness's [sic] sake", or "Am [sic] unexpectedly cool and intellectual voice came from behind the Groucho glasses.", or the lovely comma splice plus incorrectly-hyphenated compound noun, "There wasn't the slightest smile on Groucho-glasses girl's face, it wasn't even a straight face." That said, the clunky line editing is a much bigger problem for me than the missed copy editing issues, and is sadly an even less surprising problem. I guess quality writing will continue to be the province of MangaGamer, and occasionally (but definitely not predictably) JAST and Sekai Project. I have this gut feeling it ought to be a lot easier and cheaper to find people who actually know how to write solid English prose than people who can accurately (if stiltedly) translate Japanese, but the level of work I see everywhere in VN translations is starting to convince me otherwise, and unfortunately, from what I see in the youtube demo for this game, this is looking to be a cut below what I've come to expect even from JAST or SP on their bad days. Line to line flow is nearly nonexistent, and awkward phrasing is the rule, not the exception. Bottom line: dropping my pledge, since I can't see myself actually sticking with reading it if this is the level of quality I can expect from the script. Shame, since I heard good things about the game.

Confession: I arrived on a tropical island about three hours ago. I got to my room and promptly started unpacking. At some point that involved getting out my computer so I could charge my kindle, because it's almost out of battery. And then before I knew it I was posting on Fuwa. I-It's not like I wanted to talk to you guys or anything.

Maybe. I watched a couple episodes of Mushishi once, but didn't get pulled in and never went back for more. Admittedly the topic is obviously similar, but I think the approach is very different, and my gut feel is that Mushishi is probably a much better show, even though I watched a lot less of it.

I watch dubs about half the time, maybe? If I'm watching something on Crunchyroll, which is often the case, there's not really much of a choice, but I buy a lot of discs and I have a tendency to watch dubs when available on those. As an example, I just finished rewatching the dub of Nagi no Asukara, which I've watched dubbed both times I've seen it, and I expect I'd find it very weird to watch it subbed and have all the voices be "wrong" vs. how I think of the characters. Other good dubs I can think of off the top of my head would include the Kokoro Connect dub, another of my favorite shows. A quick glance at my shelves also reminds me of Steins;Gate and Spice and Wolf, which IIRC both had excellent dubs. The anime adaptations of Key VNs are mix-and-match, though mostly good. Clannad is great except for Tomoyo, and Kanon is great except for Sayuri. Unfortunately, that one "except" can kind of ruin the whole experience, which obviously does make dubs more of a dicey proposition...

+1 vote for "bored stupid" on Natsume's Book of Friends. I watched two whole seasons of it, always waiting for the show to "start". It never started, so I ended it. The problem for me was just that it was 100% episodic. I never felt like anything was achieved, or characters grew, or relationships evolved. It was just nonstop monster-of-the-week (for a really weird definition of "monster-of-the-week", admittedly, but still). I actually enjoyed a lot of individual episodes, but I never found myself wanting to watch another one because there was no overarching plot to hook me in.

Thanks! It's always nice to hear that people appreciate the reviews. Also, WagaHigh is totally worth your time, even though it looks ridiculous on the face of it.

Anybody who expects me to have good taste should know better by now.

I'm actually not worried about Sol Press from a translation side anymore, since they announced the translators for Sakura Sakura on Monday in an update to Kickstarter backers. The two translators, TBAC and Ningen, are both well-respected VN translators (and I personally think they're both very good). The QCers they announced are also mainstays of the typical VN localization companies. The editor on Sakura Sakura is the only unknown, plus anything that might be left from the original translators' work, I suppose, but they probably can't screw it up that bad if TBAC and Ningen are in charge of the translation now. We'll see how it pans out, but I'm not expecting to be disappointed by this one. That said, they haven't said who would be working on Newton and the Apple Tree yet.

https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2017/11/15/karakara-2/ I actually really like this series. It's not deep or anything, but it reliably delivers the goods. Also, what's not to like about a kemonomimi harem?

I guess I'm the new record holder. I've been stalling it as long as Kenshin, apparently for the same reasons as him (and likewise, in spite of picking it up again on the 3DS). I kind of doubt I'll ever get back to it... I just don't have the patience for something that's that hard on my brain.

I finally finished Tales of Zestiria, after starting it probably six months ago. One brief spoilerish thought on the story overall: That complaining aside, I enjoyed it well enough. As I've once seen a Tales game rated before, I would rate this one: a Tales game out of ten. They're pretty much never my favorite, but they are pleasant. Also, the translation was bananas good, so that was nice. After I finished (that was a few days ago), the very next day I picked up Berseria, though I've hardly gotten anywhere with it (at least my main character got her proper "clothes", I guess, but I still don't have a party, for instance). I'm pretty stoked for Berseria, overall: badass female leads are my jam, and by all accounts, it's the best Tales game in a long time. Who knows, maybe this will be the Tales game that finally blows me away the way Vesperia did, a long time ago.