Saku Saku Weird Translation?

[kyrt]

I am in the vast minority of people that liked the Chrono Clock change and thought it fit well...not really necessary but at the same time didn't really hurt. There is actually a message if you put all the foreign words she says together...it's really neat.

I have yet to try saku saku but now this is definitely going to stand out...thanks.

[Nandemonai]

1 hour ago, Kenshin_sama said:

What would you have translated it to?

It's not so much that I'm opposed to translating the word baka when used on its own, just when used in conjunction with a name. And I agree, it's not impossible to translate, but it's probably impossible to translate it effectively. Asa-baka works because it flows well, makes logical sense, and has some appeal to it. Asa-idiot makes sense, but doesn't flow with the name very well. Asa-bat, while making sense logically and having good flow, just doesn't have much appeal. In this particular instance, leaving baka as is would be the ideal choice.

Having not gotten that far in the game myself, I'm just going to speak generally.

First, while in general it's good for similar terminology to be translated similarly, it's not a requirement.  This is one spot where I'd ditch it.  Having it consistently translated might be nice, but having it consistently translated battily is not.  And second, I'd ditch the whole bit where it mimics an honorific. It's technically extraordinarily difficult to make that work in English (as you go over pretty well).

But it's a mistake to think that means it can't be done.  No, this is when you get creative.  And you can get close.  She's making a point of not just calling the person stupid, but being very disrespectful at the same time (by not using a real honorific, and instead using an insult in its place).  Making fun of the person's name seems good enough.

So I'd probably go with something like Aso Stupid, or Asa Doofus.  Maybe Asuck, or Asand-for-brains.

Failing that, I'd break another part of the Pirate Code of Translation (Arr: it's more of a set of loose guidelines).  Generally, it just seems weird for someone to in Japanese use someone's name in a spoken line, and the translation not reflect that.  But people use names when talking to each other differently in Japanese than English.  So I've had to reword sentences to find good spots where an English speaker might actually insert the name of whoever they're talking to.

I don't like to break this not-a-rule, because it's one thing people can actually notice and it will feel weird.  But it can be done.  And then you have a whole wealth of ways to insult someone's intelligence.  Knucklehead.  Dumbass.  Dingbat.  Fool.  Dim bulb.  Special.  Thinks "gullible" really isn't in the dictionary.   Out to lunch.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Nandemonai

[Nandemonai]

6 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

 Overall, it's not the best translation I've ever seen, but it works well.  I have found some spots where the translation seemed rough, but it had nothing to do with adding words or not.  (Embarrassingly, I can't remember any off the top of my head.)

Yeah, I know. Talking to yourself is said to be a sign of impending mental collapse.  And double posting is frowned on.  But it'd be even more disruptive to edit my previous post with an example.

This line here:

I honestly didn't expect anything else, but it looks like the miracle that she got up by herself remains as an event that occurs once in a hundred years or so.

The translator clearly tried to make this flow in English, and it's not too bad.  But it's not quite there.  It's kind of stiff.  I'd have tweaked it a bit like this:

I wasn't really expecting anything else, honestly, but I guess Konami getting herself up is destined to be a rare miracle, seen perhaps once a century.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Nandemonai

[Tamaki Sakura]

Asshead.

3 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

So I'd probably go with something like Aso Stupid, or Asa Doofus.  Maybe Asuck, or Asand-for-brains.

Asshead.

[Nandemonai]

Eh, that depends on how profane the character is the rest of the time.  For someone who swears like a sailor that would be pretty mild, for someone who hardly ever curses it's probably too harsh.  But yeah, same idea.

[Akshay]

assbutt

[Beichuuka]

As-nine?

[Akimoto Masato]

6 hours ago, Akshay said:

assbutt

Buttbutt?

[novurdim]

11 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

So I'd probably go with something like Aso Stupid, or Asa Doofus.  Maybe Asuck, or Asand-for-brains

A decent idea is there and I know these are just basic examples from the top of your head, but good god, I'd honestly rather see an odd and unintuitive but still harmless asa-bat than spectate this festival of cringe the whole game. Argh. No offense. 

[ChaosRaven]

I think the fundamental mistake of trying to translate something like Asa-baka is to keep the name + title suffix structure and just try to replace the suffix with something else. This structure is a unique Japanese construct because it spoofs their typical -kun, -chan, -san title suffixes. This doesn't exist in English, so it simply can't work here.

If an English person tries to do a similar thing, he'll usually try to replace part of the name with something else. For example, if you want to provoke good old Hercules, you might call him Dorkules. Or if you think that Nicolas Sarkozy was a greedy guy you can turn his name to Nicolas Sharkozy. Or if you don't like Tony Blair, you might transform his name to Tony Bland.

So Asa-baka shouldn't be translated to something like Asa-Something, instead the full name Asaba should be twisted to something else. Maybe Asatard for retard or Asoron for moron. Or use the full name Asaba Yuuma to get a funny combination. There are most likely better variants, but I guess just asking an 8 - 12 year old kiddo what he'd do with this name if that would be his most hated classmate will lead to the best and most creative results. 

Edited October 17, 2017 by ChaosRaven

[Beichuuka]

While what you say is good, I feel like your examples for Asaba still ends up following the Asa+something structure.

[Erogamer]

16 hours ago, ittaku said:

Adding words is perfectly reasonable on going from a more implicitly terse language such as Japanese to a more explicitly verbose language such as English. Sometimes a whole sentence is required to convey the nuance of just one word in Japanese. The converse may also happen but is extremely rare by comparison.

In some cases perhaps, but there are parts where it was clearly unnecessary. SP is known to have shoddy translations tho. It is almost like the Japanese companies don't even check their translation, and I know how picky and professional Japanese companies normally are as I worked for one.

[Beichuuka]

I don't think they do.
When I interned in Japan, the company had something translated by a "professional" service.
They gave it to me for a last check and boy was it bad. But they wouldn't have had a problem using it had I not been there.

[ChaosRaven]

1 hour ago, Beichuuka said:

While what you say is good, I feel like your examples for Asaba still ends up following the Asa+something structure.

Yes, because despite my words I made the same mistake like everyone else and tried to stick too close to the original - I was uncreative. 

Good wordplays usually have almost lyric qualities - a good linguistic flow and a clever twist. After some careful reconsideration, I think the name Asaba would be much better 'abused' to modify the second name. Like Asaba Dorkula, Asaba Fartula or Asaba Glooma to stay closer to the original. Though I still think a native speaker with years of battle hardend bullying experience in an English school could come up with even better stuff. 

[Fred the Barber]

So, I know what I would suggest doing with this conceptually, but I'm having trouble putting it into practice for this precise scenario. A good way to insulting nickname people is, like @ChaosRaven said, to use the full name and a brief insulting descriptor with a strong rhyme: "Asaba no-bra" or "Weak-jaw Asaba" or "all-flaws Asaba" or "no-chutzpa Asaba". Some of those came from my head, more of them from futzing around on rhyming sites for a couple minutes, but certainly none of them would actually fit in context: I think ending "ah" might just be a hard sound to rhyme in English. Agreed with the prevailing opinion that "Asa-bat" sounds terrible, though, not just because the meaning is non-obvious, but especially because it doesn't even freaking rhyme: the vowel in the English word "bat" sounds completely different from the Japanese syllable "ba". Rhyming is about sound, not about spelling. So, they definitely dropped the ball on this joke in a lot of ways.

All that said, I'd jump at the chance to make fun of this guy for talking by calling him "Asablah, blah, blah".

[Nandemonai]

8 hours ago, novurdim said:

A decent idea is there and I know these are just basic examples from the top of your head, but good god, I'd honestly rather see an odd and unintuitive but still harmless asa-bat than spectate this festival of cringe the whole game. Argh. No offense. 

Wait, that runs for large parts of the game?  Then if I were working on the game I'd definitely spend more time on it than 10 or 15 minutes at 2 in the morning

I still think my original point holds water - it's definitely possible to translate Asa-baka into English, you just have to get creative.

[Beichuuka]

Out of curiosity, how did Conjueror translate Bakasumi in Dies Irae?

Edited October 18, 2017 by Beichuuka

[Akshay]

Again one of the main problems is that they didn't just modify the suffix, i.e. asa-bat, but they actually used it in place of "baka", affecting clarity.

As shown in the picture,

"he is not a bat" or "game designers should use you as a reference for designing bat's" is almost incomprehensible.

 

[Dergonu]

On 17.10.2017 at 2:07 PM, Kenshin_sama said:

What would you have translated it to?

You didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyways.

If I was TLing a game with "name-baka" as a nickname, I'd probably go with something like "birdbrain", (not quite the same, but sounds a bit flashier,) or simply moron. Or perhaps, "this moron over here," etc.

A lot of people fixate on the fact that, "oh, but in the original it wasn't just 'moron', it was 'name-moron!', which is completely different." In reality, it's pretty much exactly the same. It just so happens that "mark-moron" isn't really a thing in English, so simply leaving it as moron, (or something along those lines,) pretty much conveys the same thing.

If leaving in "baka" in official TLs became a thing, I'd get an aneurysm.

 

EDIT: just now realized there was another page of replies, and people have already made better suggestions than me, so... Yeah, go Derg!

Still, my point remains the same, the difference between just insult and "name-insult!" honestly shouldn't be that big at all. I like Fred's suggestion a lot though. That would be a fun way of handling it.

[ShinRaikdou]

Just to reference.

"-bat" used 29 times in all game.

" bat " 3 times. Though it is "right off the bat"

"bats" 1 time.

 

If you want, you can simply auto-replace it on anything. Or if you can't I can make simple patch (already did with -baka for myself )

Btw, first translation patch was with -baka, before Sekai lay a hand on it.

Edited October 18, 2017 by ShinRaikdou

[Decay]

On 10/17/2017 at 2:52 PM, Erogamer said:

In some cases perhaps, but there are parts where it was clearly unnecessary. SP is known to have shoddy translations tho. It is almost like the Japanese companies don't even check their translation, and I know how picky and professional Japanese companies normally are as I worked for one.

In which cases is it unnecessary? It's just a little hard to take your criticisms seriously when all you say is "they added words." "Adding words" is an integral part of the translation process. Sometimes removing them, too! I'd be interested to see a more nuanced criticism of the translation.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Decay

[Chuee]

On 10/17/2017 at 1:52 PM, Erogamer said:

In some cases perhaps, but there are parts where it was clearly unnecessary. SP is known to have shoddy translations tho. It is almost like the Japanese companies don't even check their translation, and I know how picky and professional Japanese companies normally are as I worked for one.

What the hell do you want these people to do?? It should be obvious that these people do not speak fluent English, so why in god's name do you expect them to somehow know what's better for a translation than the actual people working on it?

And to answer your question, yes the companies do actually look over the translations, and I know for a fact that Palette made suggestions on it.  

 

16 hours ago, Beichuuka said:

Out of curiosity, how did Conjueror translate Bakasumi in Dies Irae?

Twitsumi

 

12 hours ago, ShinRaikdou said:

Just to reference.

"-bat" used 29 times in all game.

" bat " 3 times. Though it is "right off the bat"

"bats" 1 time.

 

If you want, you can simply auto-replace it on anything. Or if you can't I can make simple patch (already did with -baka for myself )

Btw, first translation patch was with -baka, before Sekai lay a hand on it.

Nobody from Sekai touched the translation. Have you considered that maybe, the translator himself just realized how terrible of a choice that is? 

[Erogamer]

On 10/18/2017 at 5:03 PM, Decay said:

In which cases is it unnecessary? It's just a little hard to take your criticisms seriously when all you say is "they added words." "Adding words" is an integral part of the translation process. Sometimes removing them, too! I'd be interested to see a more nuanced criticism of the translation.

Yes, go head and talk down too me. Many of us know you are good at that as you seem to know it all. I know what I saw and heard and don't need to sit here and take the time to show you. An example would be when just NO was said and the translator adds an entire sentence when that is not needed.

 

23 hours ago, Chuee said:

What the hell do you want these people to do?? It should be obvious that these people do not speak fluent English, so why in god's name do you expect them to somehow know what's better for a translation than the actual people working on it?

And to answer your question, yes the companies do actually look over the translations, and I know for a fact that Palette made suggestions on it.  

 

Twitsumi

 

Nobody from Sekai touched the translation. Have you considered that maybe, the translator himself just realized how terrible of a choice that is? 

I understand that, but I have seen way better TL jobs from mangagamer.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Erogamer

[Beichuuka]

27 minutes ago, Erogamer said:

Yes, go head and talk down too me. Many of us know you are good at that as you seem to know it all. I know what I saw and heard and don't need to sit here and take the time to show you. An example would be when just NO was said and the translator adds an entire sentence when that is not needed.

Well, I mean, a single word in Japanese can warrant an entire sentence in the target language, depending on context.

If you can give an example, it would be of a lot more value to the discussion.
If nothing else, for the benefit of those of us who aren't likely to read the translation.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Beichuuka

[Nandemonai]

3 hours ago, Erogamer said:

I understand that, but I have seen way better TL jobs from mangagamer.

And I've also seen a better job from Sekai Project - Chrono Clock.  Being that I am still in the beginning, I'd probably give this game a B in translation so far.  The translator has clearly tried to do this the right way, but also clearly isn't quite there.