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(8/1 update) Results of the honorifics survey


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Quite an interesting result there, with the majority still favoring honoriffic to certain extent. While I understand some people opinion here, I'm more or less just shrug this off which mean that I'm more or less okay with whatever approach that the VNs have. It's not like the approach to localized honoriffic would have big impact in understanding the story anyway, although admittedly sometimes it was necessary that we have honoriffic here for relation development. In the end, I'm mostly neutral about this albeit with some opinion that the usage of honoriffic here would be depend on the setting.

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Well, I'm glad the salty tears have gone away. I'm not to let a mistake or two or honorifics get in the way of a decent VN, so I never understood what people were trying to prove.

It's an interesting surgery and despite the shit storm that came after, I really hope you continue to do more surveys. I enjoy hearing from others in the community about their opinions and values.

@HonorificsSurvey

Anyways, gonna jerk off to badly tled hentai in a VN. Peace out.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for running the survey and summarizing the results. It's pretty neat to the predominant arguments, in particular.

Quote

I also made groups based on number of completed titles, as the length of reading VNs and number of completed titles don't seem to be connected at all. For example, a large number of people who have been reading VNs for over 5 years have only read 25 or less (translated) VNs.

People who start reading untranslated novels are going to stop reading translated novels, which is probably the reason. Also, 25 visual novels played is quite a lot. If you just consider full-length VN's, that 500+ hours.

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Ok, I'm gonna contradict myself so hard here...Ā 

Honorifics are not weird extralinguistical features nor something exclusive to the japanese language. They carry contextual information (about personal and social relations and hierarchy) just like evidentials and epistemic affixes carry information about the source of information and how certain is the speaker about what he's saying in languages like Quechua or Aimara. Since we don't usually codify that particular contextual information in our language, it's usually lost in translation, as simple as that. Actually, forcefully including it would make the translation clunky and unnatural at best, and ungrammatical at worst. Keeping japanese honorifics unfortunately falls into this latter category. In a professional translation I don't think it's ever justifiable.Ā 

Now it's time to kinda contradict myself for a twist. I actually like honorifics. I can understand them and I am so used to them that I don't feel like they sound weird anymore. In fact, for me it sounds far more weird to have the VAs speaking with them and the text translating them as names, as that's what usually happens. And from what I can see, I'm not the only one. A good amount of people here would rather keep their honorifics. I don't think that's weird at all.

You see, there's no grammatical feature that MUST be present in any cultural context, but that's not to say that the cultural setting can't have an impact in the language. It surely can and do happen. Japanese honorifics are so well suited to japanese culture that it doesn't come as a surprise that for people familiar with it they feel like a vital part and as if they couldn't do without them.Ā 

That said, I still defend what I said earlier: they are inappropiate to keep in a professional translation. So I'll stick to fan translationsĀ :leecher:

Ā 

Edited by Thyndd
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1 hour ago, Thyndd said:

That said, I still defend what I said earlier: they are inappropiate to keep in a professional translation.

Hmm... you said that they make english text ungrammatical. I don't think that's true. At least not with suffixes added to names. We can just treat the whole thing as a different variations of the name - kind of nickname or whatever - that tells us something about the relationship between characters. So, let's just treat "Kouhei-san", "Kouhei-kun" or "Kouhei-chan" as a whole name, and I don't see the problem at all.

If what you said was true, that would mean that certain scenes are just impossible to translate "properly" and so some games cannot get professional translation. Like - all scenes where characters explicitly discuss honorifics. I just stumbled upon another example while reading "One" - first encounter with Misaki is like that, where they discuss if she should call MC the aforementioned "Kouhei-san", "Kouhei-kun" or "Kouhei-chan".

With English names there are other ways to tell about relationship - like using diminutions, "Ann -> Annie" etc - but that won't work with Japanese names, as english transformations won't work on them. So, I think it's safe to just treat, say, "Yumiko-chan" as an euqivalent of diminuted name, so it would be to "Yumiko" what "Annie" is to "Ann".

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32 minutes ago, adamstan said:

Hmm... you said that they make english text ungrammatical. I don't think that's true. At least not with suffixes added to names. We can just treat the whole thing as a different variations of the name - kind of nickname or whatever - that tells us something about the relationship between characters. So, let's just treat "Kouhei-san", "Kouhei-kun" or "Kouhei-chan" as a whole name, and I don't see the problem at all.

Try to get into the shoes of someone who does not know anything about the japanese language. Honorifics are not part of the English language, they are not a priori recognizable by any native speaker and therefore keeping them just because is ungrammatical.Ā 

EDIT: Treating honorifics as part of the whole name does not work. Name rootsĀ are invariant (let's not talk about infixes or ablaut/umlaut here, which is a different topic), while grammatical inflections vary. Since honorifics do vary, they must be classified as grammar.

32 minutes ago, adamstan said:

If what you said was true, that would mean that certain scenes are just impossible to translate "properly" and so some games cannot get professional translation. Like - all scenes where characters explicitly discuss honorifics. I just stumbled upon another example while reading "One" - first encounter with Misaki is like that, where they discuss if she should call MC the aforementioned "Kouhei-san", "Kouhei-kun" or "Kouhei-chan".

Obviously if the language itself is being discussed in the dialogue then it's impossible to translate so that anyone without previous knowledge of the language can understand. You can change the content of the conversation (which is unfortunately how this is usually dealt with), but I can't say I agree with that either. To make an analogy, imagine two native English speakers discussing about whether you should use or nor a certain verb tense, or in Spanish whether you can address someone as "tĆŗ" instead of "usted" (tutear). What is appropiate in these cases, I think, it's up to the translator. I for one would just keep the language discussion, and if the reader can't understand it they have their work cut out for them.Ā 

The same happens when some cultural issue is the point of the discussion. I would never change the subject to make it more accesible for foreign readers. It's the reader's homework to look up the cultural information they lack (or you know, just make some totally warranted translator notes if it's absolutely necessary).

The bottom line is, in my opinion, always translate the code, not the content. If the content itself is about the code,Ā shikatanai.

Edited by Thyndd
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23 hours ago, adamstan said:

If what you said was true, that would mean that certain scenes are just impossible to translate "properly" and so some games cannot get professional translation. Like - all scenes where characters explicitly discuss honorifics. I just stumbled upon another example while reading "One" - first encounter with Misaki is like that, where they discuss if she should call MC the aforementioned "Kouhei-san", "Kouhei-kun" or "Kouhei-chan".

Can you please tell me what is the difference between all these names if it is important

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Okay, I think I start to get your point. Indeed, if the reader knows absolutely nothing about Japanese, (and is going to stay that way forever) these are completely meaningless, so if that's the target audience, there is no point in having them. But then, you'll have to cut out the whole scene.

It seems that "proffesional translation" means "translation that is completely clear without any knowledge about source" - and in such approach there is no place for honorifics, I have to agree. However I'm not sure, if this is the best approach for all VNs.

I think there's no harm for the player in learning what those funny thingies stuck to the names in japanese conversations mean - and that can be accomplished with TL-notes (either in-game, somewhere in the beginning, or in separate readme file). Of course then that means that some knowledge is required to enjoy the game, so then it no longer is "professional translation" by above definition, but I think for some VNs it works better.

Ā 

Funny thing - I'm writing here in defence of honorifics in TLs, but actually sometimes they indeed start to bother me - they look jarring especially when used during MCs internal monologues or narration. Damn...

Edited by adamstan
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4 minutes ago, adamstan said:

Okay, I think I start to get your point. Indeed, if the reader knows absolutely nothing about Japanese, (and is going to stay that way forever) these are completely meaningless, so if that's the target audience, there is no point in having them. But then, you'll have to cut out the whole scene.

It seems that "proffesional translation" means "translation that is completely clear without any knowledge about source" - and in such approach there is no place for honorifics, I have to agree. However I'm not sure, if this is the best approach for all VNs.

I think there's no harm for the player in learning what those funny thingies stuck to the names in japanese conversations mean - and that can be accomplished with TL-notes (either in-game, somewhere in the beginning, or in separate readme file). Of course then that means that some knowledge is required to enjoy the game, so then it no longer is "professional translation" by above definition, but I think for some VNs it works better.

Not sure if you are dodging my question on purpose.

Can you tell me the difference between those names or not?
If learning them is possible for the normal reader

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14 minutes ago, adamstan said:

It seems that "proffesional translation" means "translation that is completely clear without any knowledge about source" - and in such approach there is no place for honorifics, I have to agree. However I'm not sure, if this is the best approach for all VNs.

Well, I would rather say "translation that is completely clear without any knowledge of the source language". But actually even that's beside the point. You shouldn't be allowed to modify the grammar of the language you are translating into for your own convenience. For better or worse, English doesn't have honorifics nor any similar means which can carry that same information in any context.Ā 

As I said, I actually like honorifics, but it's a fact that they have no place unless we're talking of some new weird English/Japanese creole. If the time comes whenĀ animu conquers the world and native English speakers start using honorifics, then sure, literature should reflect that popular language in informal contexts.

Edited by Thyndd
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Just now, Thyndd said:

As I said, I actually like honorifics, but it's a fact that they have no place unless we're talking of some new weird English/Japanese creole. If the time comes where animu conquers the world and native English speakers start using honorifics, then sure, literature should reflect that popular language.

Can you please not quote me on this shit I have no said :pyaa:Ā 

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9 minutes ago, Thyndd said:

"translation that is completely clear without any knowledge of the source language"

Yeah, this.

9 minutes ago, Thyndd said:

You shouldn't be allowed to modify the grammar of the language you are translating into for your own convenience.

I actually still cannot comprehend how adding some suffix to the name - and especially to the foreign name - would be changing grammar - it still is a name, just different sounding ;) A mutation of the name, or whatever. And - as have been mentioned - French or German "honorifics" like Herr or Monsieur are being used in Engilsh texts, and nobody bats an eye. But write "name-san" or "senpai" and everybody goes crazy ;)

But then, I'm not native English speaker, nor linguist, so I think I'll give up here. It's not like I'm going to drop VN if it doesn't have honorifics :P

And the longer I think and discuss about it, the less sure I become, and it starts to look more and more complicated. That's why I dodged @Kiriririri's question - sorry about that.

Maybe one day I'll be able to read untranslated, and then these problems will vanish ;)

Edited by adamstan
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8 minutes ago, adamstan said:

I actually still cannot comprehend how adding some suffix to the name - and especially to the foreign name - would be changing grammar - it still is a name, just different sounding ;) A mutation of the name, or whatever. And - as have been mentioned - French or German "honorifics" like Herr or Monsieur are being used in Engilsh texts, and nobody bats an eye. But write "name-san" or "senpai" and everybody goes crazy

I'm not really a fan of quoting wikipedia, but for linguistics the info is often pretty accurate:

Quote

InĀ linguistics, anĀ honorificĀ (abbreviatedĀ hon) is aĀ grammaticalĀ orĀ morphosyntacticĀ form that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation. Distinct fromĀ honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formalityĀ form, social distance, politenessĀ pol, humilityĀ hbl, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as anĀ affix,Ā clitic,Ā grammatical case, change in person or number, or an entirely differentĀ lexical item. A key feature of an honorific system is that one can convey the same message in both honorific and familiar formsā€”i.e., it is possible to say something like (as in an oft-cited example from Brown and Levinson) "The soup is hot" in a way that confers honor or deference on one of the participants of the conversation.

[/quote]

And yeah, French or German "honorifics" (which have not the same distributional and functional properties than the japanese ones, but whatever)Ā  are used in certain contexts, e.g, when the one speaking is French or German and is speaking in a second language, or when someone is addressing a foreigner out of their country. They are not used just because in any context, but with a very specific purpose, similar to when a foreign accent is represented in writing.Ā 

Edited by Thyndd
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After thinking some more about it, I have to admit defeat.

Probably I'm "pro-honorifics" because English isn't my native language, so I don't have enough sensivity for what's "natural" and what's not. But then I started to think how would I go about translating a VN dialogue into my native language - and indeed, with honorifics it would sound awful...

So after doing that thought experiment I fully get the point of the "anti-honorifics" crowd.

We're doomed...

Ā 

Edited by adamstan
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3 minutes ago, adamstan said:

After thinking some more about it, I have to admit defeat.

Probably I'm "pro-honorifics" because English isn't my native language, so I don't have enough sensivity for what's "natural" and what's not. But then I started to think how would I go about translating a VN dialogue into my native language - and indeed, with honorifics it would sound awful...

We're doomed...

Ā 

You can always be like me :mare:. My inner weeb really likes his honorifics and wants to keep them, but then I acknowledge the fact that for every other normal people out there it's nonsenseĀ :leecher:

That said, just like the french and german honorifics we were dicussing, I have no problem if japanese honorifics are used in the same way: if we got a japanese character out of japan, speaking in another language who from time to time throws in some honorifics, it'd make perfect sense. Again, the meaning that is intended to convey is about the code itself that is being employed. Quoting myself:

On 20/8/2018 at 8:20 PM, Thyndd said:

The bottom line is, in my opinion, always translate the code, not the content. If the content itself is about the code,Ā shikatanai.

Ā 

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4 hours ago, adamstan said:

So after doing that thought experiment I fully get the point of the "anti-honorifics" crowd.

waves hand Those are not the anti-honorific arguments you are looking for.

The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded.

4 hours ago, adamstan said:

We're doomed...

Speak for yourself. I stick to honorifics :sacchan:

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