Darbury

So what have we learned today?
 
(1) The term "pearl necklace" is more unfamiliar to people than I might have imagined. Clearly, I've been reading too many of the right wrong sites.
 
(2) If your girlfriend asks you for a pearl necklace for her birthday, think long and hard before you answer.

As for the joke itself, that slang being esoteric might actually work in its favor. A few lines later, Soutarou marvels to himself that Riho knows the term. All of which is nice foreshadowing for her route.

Ah the good old "japanese only context/subtext jokes that do not work for any other country/in any other language" Indeed it's one of the things lost in translation that will either fly over our heads or come off as a very lame joke. 
I know the feeling as my favourite anime "Nichijou" is rife with japanese jokes and puns. I had a hard time
figuring what the context of the jokes was and even when I got the meaning behind them, they weren't very
good for a gaijin like me.

I hear what you're saying, Deep Blue, but I think if you're going to translate/edit a work into English, you need to do so primarily with native English speakers in mind. Otherwise, you end up cutting yourself off from a huge swath of idiom and poetics just because the non-native speaker might not have been exposed to them. The resulting prose would be functional yet totally flavorless.
 
Anyway, I don't think I'd call the entirely of the native English-speaking world "a very narrow audience." This particular slang usage of "pearl necklace" can be found in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. I don't know about New Zealand, but I'd have to imagine that if the Aussies are on board, then so are the Kiwis.
 
All that said, I honestly feel bad that non-native speakers like yourself might be (literally) left out on the joke. So you have my apologies for that. If you ever find yourself in New York, I'll buy you a beer as a make-good. ​

As a non-native english speaker I didn't understand the first joke either, I had to look and see what "pearl necklaces" meant, is it ok to re-work a joke just for a very narrow audience, in this case USA? I know you are translating it into english so it make sense but you have to be american to understand it so it ends up being the same thing.
 
When I looked for 知恵袋 and たまふくろ the joke made sense like you said and it was funny even if I don't know many phrases in japanese.
But then again like you said if you translate it literally it just doesnt work.
 
There is a lot of work into this type of translations like the one you are doing and that's something that anyone should appreciate and be thanks for even if you don't agree with the method of doing it like myself

No no, that's not a bad thing at all. You just have to make sure to keep consistent.

I prefer footnotes rather than having the whole dialog changed just because it doesn't "translate" to another language, when you change something you are loosing the original meaning and that's a big no for me.
Also I prefer repetition than having something really elaborated that changes the meaning of some dialog, in the Japanese language (maybe in all asian languages I don't know about this) you can repeat the same thing over and over again without any problem, but in English, Spanish, Portuguese etc etc (most of the western languages) if you repeat something you are labeled as a kid or that you have poor writing skills, why is it that for a culture repetition is something normal but for another is a bad thing to do.

I think it depends whether the goal is to give a similar experience, or give the reader all the information to understand the work. The elegant solution is elegant in that you can appreciate the editor/TL coming up with it, but it might not be inherently better than the footnote. It's just that more often than not you are trying for seamlessness.

/me smiles
 
Nice article again. For the most part I usually translate onomatopoeia to their equivalents or explain them out, exactly as you've said... apart from H scenes. While your "translated" sounds are great for the H scene in that example, the problem I encounter is simply running out of equivalents. So I translate the obvious ones (slurp, suck, etc) and transliterate the rest. Good thing there are great editors out there like yourself to "fix" this problem

You know, there's nothing wrong with literal translations provided they are accompanied by a shitload of translator notes. If no translation notes (or explanations) are forthcoming, then leaving Japanese words in the script is poor translation philosophy. In fact I'll go one step further, leaving unexplained Japanese words in the script is an incomplete translation. It's why literally translated literature come with 400 odd translator notes in the back, and it's part of the reason why official anime is localised (because it's not a medium that can support such TL notes well.) 

~Darbury, 2015

Yeah... I'm going to need some help when I get to this stuff.

H-Scenes are tons of fun. Especially when the word penis is never used, and genitals are always referred to with non-decent sounding words. Then add on all the terribly strange sounding lines that make you cringe. Something like "The joy of being born a woman" or something? That one was nice. 

Never have I read such a serious article seriously and laughed so hard. You sir, are a poet and a scholar.

This is a great article. It is missing one vital discussion though IMO - having translated lots of H scenes now - and that is a discussion about what to do about onomatopoeia. H scenes contain obscene amounts of onomatopoeia. Japanese love their sound effects and they read and sound perfectly normal in their language, but in English they are, for the most part, downright childish and stupid. I tried to translate them to meaningful sound equivalents in English for a while and then gave up in disgust after running out of sounds we actually use in English. After that I just transliterated the sound effects and these days I'm wondering if all of them should just be dropped entirely and only the dialogue and text translated, leaving only ellipsis for the sound effect only lines.

I just thought I'd add on with a tip of my own. This isn't about reading untranslated Japanese per se, but learning the Japanese required to get to that point:
 
People who are learning new challenging skills generally have the habit of spending most of their time asking experts for 'secrets' or 'tips' to getting good instead of actually practicing - this includes questions such as "how did you get good at Japanese?" and "what's the fastest way to learn?" This may be because they are unconfident, unsure of themselves, don't know where to start, or just hoping that an easier method will just magically appear (I'm also guilty of this).
 
First off, there is no 'secret' to learning a language, solely due to the fact that everyone learns differently. Some people learn better with mnemonics, and some people learn better with pure grinding. It's entirely up to you to find what clicks for you. If you're unsure of which route may be optimal for you, then maybe try a bit of everything. Alternatively, you can stick with one thing and switch if you decide that it's not working for you. Learning a skill takes time, and perfecting it takes a lot of trial and error. If you're someone like me and you're always uncertain of where to start, then just do it (cue Shia Labeouf voice). There is no 'bad' starting point as long as you start.
 
I know that many of you don't have access to Japanese lessons or tutors. While it's true that it's faster to learn something if you have someone to teach you, there is nothing in this world that's impossible to learn on your own if you really put your mind to it - especially with the internet at your fingertips.
 
With regards to motivation, I know all too well how fast it can drain, even if deep down you're really eager to learn. It's easier at first because you see a lot of progress when you're first starting out, but there will be a time where results will not be as apparent. For me, this was when I first got around to learning kanji. The grammar just flew by and sort of clicked, but I'm the type of person who hates really grindy things (this is also why I hate most RPGs), so it went by really slowly for me. That is when I adapted from grinding to simply reading visual novels (easy ones at first), though admittedly I only grinded for about a week before quitting lol.
 
Anyway, I suppose that there are some people who are just better at learning languages, but a lot of it is just getting into the right mindset.

Firecat, I think the image you're referring to was actually an example of what *not* to do — i.e., cloning from a non-opaque source won't actually cover the original type. So when you say you can still see the word "no" with the brush used, you're absolutely right.
 
The rest of the post discussed the easiest way to non-destructively remove a baked-in transparency from an image so that it could be more effectively be retouched. Imagine there was an intricate illustration of a dragon on the paper behind the type. That's something you'd need to spend some time repairing, and it's definitely not something you'd want to do with a non-opaque source.
 
And while there are hundreds of image editing programs out there in the world, I'm but one man; I don't have it in me to write hundreds of sets of instructions. (Not while sober, anyway.) This is my personal blog, so I thought I'd focus on my personal workflow. #adobe4eva

That's the same phrasing that gets used sometimes in fantasy novels, explaining items in the world, and the flow is great.

I'd comment on the helpfulness or how interesting this blog post is, but I'm more interested in finding a bowl of ojiya myself.
I might have to scour the country for it, and it's still easier than scouring an American state.

There is no greater truth than the Oxford comma.

Sorry you had to take one for the team, Tiag. But hey, better you than me.
 
And trust me, Rooke, I plan to be much more ruthless with ellipses in future efforts. They shall know fear.

Sweet job on KoiRizo
 
I should point out, overuse of ellipses is one of those things translated Visual Novels are constantly ridiculed over. You'll note that fan-translations mostly keep them in, whereas professional localisations (JAST, Sekai, and MG all use fan-TLs so they're not included) strongly limit ellipses use, and here localisations are doing the better job. Take NISA's translations, for example. An excess of ellipses makes me want to kill the first person I see... *looks at Tiag*
 
Japanese Language don't really have rules for ellipses use, so feel free to eliminate them where appropriate in the English. English don't use them anywhere near as freely as the Japanese - we have stricter rules, and a culture which frowns on abusing certain forms of punctuation. Take a look at how often ellipses are used in Western novels and compare that to how often Japanese Light Novels and other Japanese media use them. It's not because Western people don't pause, in case anybody was wondering xD

I see no reason not to use this as advice for any potential instances I feel inclined to... eh... pretend I'm an editor?
 
Nevertheless, I can wallow in others' misery and learn simultaneously. How can this not be a wonderful blog post!
 
"But if you don’t use the Oxford comma, you deserve to die alone."
I redirect you to this wonderful translation team with which, I'm sure, you have a great deal in common:
http://theoxfordcommaissuperiorsubs.com/
 
It is highly recommended you read the acutely enlightening blog posts you will find within, relative to the Oxford Comma's Superiority.
You will finish an erudite man.

Be like Bill Murray is just excellent life advice in general.

Don't mind him

I couldn't agree more.
 
Wait, wut?