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Translating: Is it ok to cut H scenes?


Okami

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A translator is a medium between the author and the translated work, not a replacement.  A replacement shouldn't change an original text to suit his or her opinions, but instead reflect the original intent in a new language.  A Translator isn't an author, but a mirror mixed with a far, far, far superior google translate.

 

Congratulations, you a the winner of the "I say stupid stuff" award.

 

A translator isn't a tool.

A translator doesn't just turn a language into another, for so many reasons.

 

Why do you think there are several versions of translation ?

 

Because of the quality, because of the interpretation, because of the words used.

A translator is a human being, he has an opinion and a point of view on things and it reflects itself in his work.

A translator is almost as much involved as the author in a translated work.

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Congratulations, you a the winner of the "I say stupid stuff" award.

 

 

Lol. I thought you were a troll because of your beginning sentence. 

 

Don't be such a jerk we're all here because we all have at least one thing in common and what he said definitely didn't sound dumb :P 

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Congratulations, you a the winner of the "I say stupid stuff" award.

 

A translator isn't a tool.

A translator doesn't just turn a language into another, for so many reasons.

 

Why do you think there are several versions of translation ?

 

Because of the quality, because of the interpretation, because of the words used.

A translator is a human being, he has an opinion and a point of view on things and it reflects itself in his work.

A translator is almost as much involved as the author in a translated work.

 

Obviously it's an oversimplification for the point of the argument, I'm not saying that a translator is a soulless machine.  Obviously quality can be different and interpretations can occur, otherwise there wouldn't be the whole Moogy/Ixrec issue with Dra Koi, or AIR having two different patches from two different teams.

 

But you can't look at a Russian copy of Game of Thrones, and the English copy of it, and say that the Russian translator has the same knowledge of it as George R. R. Martin.  You can't say that they can change the events of the series, because he isn't the writer.  His job is to take an epic story over a war for the throne in both the loud and subtle areas of the land, and display that in a manner the Russian population can understand.  Obviously there is care and affection for the story otherwise they wouldn't do it.  I've said that multiple times, these translators obviously care, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

 

But does that give the Russian translator the right or knowledge to remove or change things from the story because they just plain don't like it?  No.

 

So why should it be any different here?

 

For the record, I liked your post because we agree mostly on the second half.  There's a point of view and an appreciation for the work, absolutely.  God knows that I love Fate/Stay Night's Gilgamesh beause of the complexity he has across the various stories Type Moon writes.  Hell, I'll even admit to roleplaying him, and doing extensive research into his character to do it to the best of my abilities.  But never in a million years, no matter how strong my grasp of the language, would I change the flaws in him.  The fact that he can be pretty rapey in F/SN can be uncomfortable, but that's how it is intended.  If I was to translate it (or anyone else in my mind), they should not 'fix' that issue with him because it is his character, written by Nasu.  No matter how much I love the character, I'm not Nasu, and will never understand him as well as he does, so I can't willingly change that character flaw because it makes him 'better', because then it stops being Gilgamesh and Nasu's story involving him, and starts instead to become "translator Karakkan's fanfiction on why Gilgamesh is way better than Nasu could have ever made".

 

So again, a translator isn't the writer dictating the flow and plot of a story.  They are a mirror with an extremely good Google Translate that helps convey that story as best they can while staying true to the source in another language.  Don't have to be soulless to do that.

Edited by Karakkan
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And welcome to a debate, where both sides are arguing different opinions.  Guess what?  I think your opinion is wrong.  You can sit there and tell me all about how you 'previously explained it' and that 'i already told you that they're authors'.  I defended my argument against yours, and brought up counterpoints against it.  Hell I'll bring up another one: by that logic, Ayakashibito was written by the Ate the Moon team since they're the 'authors' of the translation, not the people at Propeller.  Or to go back to GoT, that the hypothetical french 'author' is the person who wrote it, not GRRM.  They aren't the author, what gives them the right to pretend to be it?  They don't and will never know or understand the characters like the author, why should they change the story in their place?

 

A translator is a medium between the author and the translated work, not a replacement.  A replacement shouldn't change an original text to suit his or her opinions, but instead reflect the original intent in a new language.  A Translator isn't an author, but a mirror mixed with a far, far, far superior google translate.

 

You know for dabate you actyely need to say your opinion all that you are doing is talking about difrences between Autor and translator, Nobady even talked about that. You say that my opinion is wrong then say what with it is wrong? You talked about respect for autors but when Rooke give you his argument on the matter of recpect you said you don't want to participate as you don't have enough background knowledge, you also ignored maefdomn post above yours.

 

By this point I can't tell if you are troling or if you are on dugs as you arguments don't have any sense.

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Lol. I thought you were a troll because of your beginning sentence. 

 

Don't be such a jerk we're all here because we all have at least one thing in common and what he said definitely didn't sound dumb :P

 

His words just show how little has has for people dedicating most of their free time so he can read something without making the effort of learning the language.

I don't feel like being nice when things like that are said.

 

And sounding clever doesn't mean saying something clever.

 

Edit :

As for the russian thing. Translations is like info. 

You have to check the source.

 

When we study philosophy in classes, there are always 30 pages at the beginning of the book about the translator and his interpretation of the book.

 

I guess this russian translator had his own vision of the thing. It's up to the reader to trust it or not.

I don't think the guy had any mischeivous intents when he did it.

Edited by Guest
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His words just show how little has has for people dedicating most of their free time so he can read something without making the effort of learning the language.

I don't feel like being nice when things like that are said.

 

And sounding clever doesn't mean saying something clever.

 

I don't think he meant any disrespect to translators at all :P Haha i'm just saying we should all play nice and stay on topic rather than insulting each other.

 

OT: I think what he's trying to say is that his belief is that translators are meant to relay what the author said rather than taking on the role of an editor. 

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I don't think he meant any disrespect to translators at all :P Haha i'm just saying we should all play nice and stay on topic rather than insulting each other.

 

OT: I think what he's trying to say is that his belief is that translators are meant to relay what the author said rather than taking on the role of an editor. 

 

Bingo, it's 2:30 so that might not have come across as well as intended.  I have the utmost respect for people who translate, they do something I never could.  That doesn't mean I respect the translators who cherrypick and edit the work as though it is their own in order to have it align with their own personal beliefs.  They don't and never will know the characters or story as well as the people in the desk writing up the drafts, so they shouldn't toy with it, but focus on bringing that original vision to light as closely and accurately as possible.

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so they shouldn't toy with it, but focus on bringing that original vision to light as closely and accurately as possible.

 

Two schools of thought on that, mainly because the most accurate translations are incredibly disjointed and hard to read. But the idea that translators shouldn't censor is a reasonable one.

 

EDIT: I'm still of the opinion that if a fan-translator doesn't wish to translate them, then that is perfectly acceptable.

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Thing is, you keep portraying translation as some kind of sacred act.

 

Would you be happy if they stopped calling themselves translators and went with the rather less graceful "fanfic writer"? I mean, rather more stringently insistent on canon text than most, but still.

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Bingo, it's 2:30 so that might not have come across as well as intended.  I have the utmost respect for people who translate, they do something I never could.  That doesn't mean I respect the translators who cherrypick and edit the work as though it is their own in order to have it align with their own personal beliefs.  They don't and never will know the characters or story as well as the people in the desk writing up the drafts, so they shouldn't toy with it, but focus on bringing that original vision to light as closely and accurately as possible.

 

But we are not talking about changing story here just cuting out H and like maefdomn allredy pointed out H most of the times is forcefully added and alot of times there are version that commpanies latter release themself that have H cuten out of the story.

 

Ok I am out of this thread going to sleep I allredy spend whole night in it.

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Two schools of thought on that, mainly because the most accurate translations are incredibly disjointed and hard to read. But the idea that translators shouldn't censor is a reasonable one.

 

I kind of ride between the two of them, with more of a slant towards the flow side (although with an extreme stance against outright removals/changes, as you can tell from here).  Obviously a translation won't be completely perfect; editors wouldn't exist if that was the case.  But you can modify a line or scene in a way that still conveys the true meaning of it without condemning that vision.  Case in point, you have good translations where they make the flow better, and bad translations where they remove that meaning, a la Konosora.

 

 

Would you be happy if they stopped calling themselves translators and went with the rather less graceful "fanfic writer"? I mean, rather more stringently insistent on canon text than most, but still.

 

Again, I feel I've portrayed myself a little poorly here.  Konosora is a bit of a bitter ember for me as a symbol of 'bad translation' and doing exactly what I have issues with.  I love Sekien no Inganock, but I'm not going to rake Ixrec over the coals because he couldn't keep it in iambic pantameter.  I would however be upset if he changed the relationship between Ati and Gii, or changed the scene with Petrevkova (or however you spell her name, the mer-lady in the third-last chapter) because he thought a scene with her boobs out was gross and didn't want others to see it.  My main issue is that H-scenes can sometimes be important for certain plot-related objects, and to just dismiss them and write something different for them because a translator doesn't like them sets a bad precedence.

 

I'm probably just getting worked up and arguing too strongly :/.  I'm against extremes and cutting things out completely.

 

 

But we are not talking about changing story here just cuting out H and like maefdomn allredy pointed out H most of the times is forcefully added and alot of times there are version that commpanies latter release themself that have H cuten out of the story.

 

And if a company releases an all-ages version, that's awesome.  It means a wider audience can reach it, great.  I don't have an issue with that because it's the writers/company/people far more involved with the VN than we could ever hope to be are making the decision to do so.  The translator isn't part of that decision, so I don't think the translator should make that decision on their own.

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All you had to do is just hold the damn ctrl button,frickin japanese illiterrate -_-

Think about other people who like to have h scene,just like the case in konosora removing h scene from ageha route makes the story incomprehensible.thats one example h scene is there for a reason.

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All you had to do is just hold the damn ctrl button,frickin japanese illiterrate -_-

Think about other people who like to have h scene,just like the case in konosora removing h scene from ageha route makes the story incomprehensible.thats one example h scene is there for a reason.

 

"frickin japanese illiterrate"

 

Whatever,

I haven't even read the story, but you are correct Mr genius sir.

I'm 100% sure having a h-scene was the only way to explain the story. I mean sometimes you just need the D ! right ?

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"frickin japanese illiterrate"

 

Whatever,

I haven't even read the story, but you are correct Mr genius sir.

I'm 100% sure having a h-scene was the only way to explain the story. I mean sometimes you just need the D ! right ?

If you haven't read the story i dont think you have the right to use sarcastic comment againts my post.
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Konosora is a bit of a bitter ember for me as a symbol of 'bad translation' and doing exactly what I have issues with. 

 

Moenovel and Pulltop both belong to the same parent company Will. You could say, in a roundabout way, that the translation decisions would have had the backing of the people who control the intellectual property of Konosora. I think you can't really complain about the translators reaching above their station regards editing when talking about this VN.

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Moenovel and Pulltop both belong to the same parent company Will. You could say, in a roundabout way, that the translation decisions would have had the backing of the people who control the intellectual property of Konosora. I think you can't really complain about the translators reaching above their station regards editing when talking about this VN.

 

In that though, there's a definite disconnect between what was written and what was translated.  A route's contents entirely changed, any and all remotely sexual humor cut out (let's be real here, the change of jokes involving breasts to things involving 'eyes' was so bad that even I picked up on that they actually were talking about breasts), hell they even edited cgs that had direct contact with their kisses.  I can't imagine that this was a good translation in-line with the views the authors had with the original (or even their own personal re-write of all-ages), even if they share a parent company.  There was some disconnect on some level, I have difficulty believing that the decisions MoeNovel made are the same ones Pulltop would have with the result given to us and the utter lack of a proper response to the criticisms levelled at them.  Or at least I hope that's the case, I really hope it's not wistful thinking on my part and that there wasn't good communication.

 

What will really put the above to the test is in September when it's being ported to PS3 (according to VNDB), meaning that the Japanese VN will finally have their own all-ages version straight from the horse's mouth.  Hopefully someone will be kind enough to go through it then for a comparison and we will be able to get a proper answer on if Moenovel screwed up, or we collectively had our chain yanked rather cruelly by Pulltop.

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Well,  as much as what I'm going to say seems of topic, it still needs to be said.

 

Many people here are questioning what is the true role of a translator, and how much power does he have over the work of art he is translating? Before anything, I must exclaim that i have been translating different stuff (ie: movies, books, conversations) for almost a decade(8 years now) . From English to Arabic, witch i'm fluent in, and from Arabic to English. so , even if i don't know any Japanese, i can still say a thing or two about translating. (not bragging here, just making things clear)

 

   First and foremost; a translators job is not simply to change the language; its to change the entire work. The usual goal is for the targeted audience to receive the same meaning and feeling the original work possessed.

 

            And usually, to achieve this goal, many things have to be changed in the original, including removing stuff the new audience might find annoying, unnecessary, or out right insulting. And of course not all the targeted audience will agree on one thing; but if, per say, most people in the west find something like h-scenes to be offensive; then the only reasonable thing the translator should do is remove them; so they may reach a larger audience.

 

          But if the translator does not care if it reaches a larger audience or not, and just want's the translation to be as close to the original as possible, then that's his choice. At the end of the day a translator is a changer, whose mission is to make his translation:-

1. As close to the original as possible

2. As acceptable to the new audience as possible.

 

And sometimes these two goals clash, and the translator is forced to choose one to prioritize over the other. Witch is why its better to have more than one translation; each one with a different  priority.

 

And while i also prefer my VN's without h-scenes,( i probably hate them more than anyone around here does), i think that any VN, that has h-scenes, should have at least two translated versions: one made with the purpose of reaching a large audience, and one with the purpose of staying as close to the original as possible.

 

And just a last note: you can never have a translation that's equal to the original. if you want the original that badly, your best choice is to learn the original language, which is in this case, Japanese.

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It's a bit late, considering the tremendous growth speed of this thread, but

Why is it that groups that leave a partial patch translating parts of some routes are totally ok but people who leave H-scenes out aren't? I mean, think of it- H scenes are generally just a small part of those VNs (since I'm yet to see a group translate a nukige and leave H scenes out. Unless you're like moenovel, but I'm not going into that now). That means the group successfully delivered you over 90% of the visual novel. Yet you still can't be satisfyed at all? Hell, with that much made, the probability of someone picking up what that group already did and adding the H scenes back raises a lot.

as someone who's learning Japanese and planning to read everything they ever wanted, I'd pick an uncut partial over a better game's full patch with cut H any day of the week.

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In the case of Killer Queen the original game had H-scenes so I can accept that people are mad about them cutting those out. The second two games in the series however are based on console VN's that got h-scenes added in the pc release. Those scenes are apparently pretty bad and out of place and were pretty obviously just thrown in because pc VN's need to have h-scenes to sell so cutting those out should be okay.

 

Some translators also don't want to translate h-scenes because of legal reasons and I think that is perfectly okay. This is what Lemnisca has stated IIRC and they have also said that if anyone wants to translate the h-scenes they can do so and make their own patch based on Lemnisca's translation. Some countries have much stricter laws than the U.S. and translating some VN's could potentially get you charged with child porn distribution. I don't think it's right to expect fan translators to risk that just for some porn.

 

I'm less accepting of official releases cutting content out though.

 

I also want to add that there are quite a lot of writers who don't want to have h-scenes at all but are forced to do so to sell.

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i don't really understand what is the op trying to achieve,do you want to convince every fantl skip h scene/or making extra effort to makes a patch that exclude h-scene so people like you doesn't need to hold ctrl button for few second?

is holding the ctrl button kill you or something?if you dislike it you can just skip it right?what did i miss here? :o

have you considered about all of the people perverts that would be dissappointed if the h-scene is removed especially in charage?

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i don't really understand what is the op trying to achieve,do you want to convince every fantl skip h scene/or making extra effort to makes a patch that exclude h-scene so people like you doesn't need to hold ctrl button for few second?

is holding the ctrl button kill you or something?if you dislike it you can just skip it right?what did i miss here? :o

have you considered about all of the people perverts that would be dissappointed if the h-scene is removed especially in charage?

 

You missed that OP that is me, never opened this thread and that this topic was separated from disscusion in another thread by mods. In that thread I was defending translations that cut out H from people perverts calling them half-assed translations. But yea I would love if every fantl would skip h scenes as even if I can ctrl true them they still leave a bad taste when I see them and get me iriteted, but that will never happen so my only goal in disscusing in this thread was to deffend translations that do cut out H and to support them.

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I don't see why people would cut out H-scenes. If you're going to translate the game, translate the whole thing instead of doing something utterly irresponsible like taking out the parts of someone else's game, simply because you don't like them. This may sound sarcastic - I can assure you that it's not - but the voice actors, artists, and scenario writers (okay, maybe not them) put a whole lot of work into the H-scenes to make them look and sound right. I don't mind if you refuse to translate the H-scenes, but completely taking them out is a different story. It's rude and disrespectful, and you are pretty much denying other people's efforts because of your own laziness and close-minded attitude.

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I don't see why people would cut out H-scenes. If you're going to translate the game, translate the whole thing instead of doing something utterly irresponsible like taking out the parts of someone else's game, simply because you don't like them. This may sound sarcastic - I can assure you that it's not - but the voice actors, artists, and scenario writers (okay, maybe not them) put a whole lot of work into the H-scenes to make them look and sound right. I don't mind if you refuse to translate the H-scenes, but completely taking them out is a different story. It's rude and disrespectful, and you are pretty much denying other people's efforts because of your own laziness and close-minded attitude.

 

Everything that you said was already been said so if you search true posts in this topic you will find answers to all of your arguments. If you have any new argument to add I will answer to it but if not, just search true posts here and you will find my answer or answer of people who share my opinion on the matter. I relly hate to repeat my self over and over again and I have been doing that all night long allredy. In your case about respect/disrespect crap for autors there have been like dosen arguments agenst it allredy.

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I don't really see any negative impact for them not to translate the H-scenes. They are people who live normal lives and are going out of their way to translate VN's. If they don't want to read them for whatever reason then they don't have to and there are some people who prefer not to read H-scenes anyway. If not having a H-scene translated is really that bad, I guess you could just use your imagination?

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Everything that you said was already been said so if you search true posts in this topic you will find answers to all of your arguments. If you have any new argument to add I will answer to it but if not, just search true posts here and you will find my answer or answer of people who share my opinion on the matter. I relly hate to repeat my self over and over again and I have been doing that all night long allredy. In your case about respect/disrespect crap for autors there have been like dosen arguments agenst it allredy.

Yep, you've had one busy night ^_^.

 

I don't see why people would cut out H-scenes. If you're going to translate the game, translate the whole thing instead of doing something utterly irresponsible like taking out the parts of someone else's game, simply because you don't like them. This may sound sarcastic - I can assure you that it's not - but the voice actors, artists, and scenario writers (okay, maybe not them) put a whole lot of work into the H-scenes to make them look and sound right. I don't mind if you refuse to translate the H-scenes, but completely taking them out is a different story. It's rude and disrespectful, and you are pretty much denying other people's efforts because of your own laziness and close-minded attitude.

 

as i have already said in my long lecture about translating, its in no way wrong to do this. translations are made for two purposes: reaching a wider audience, and\or staying as loyal as possible to the original source. you can refer back to my post, as i also don't want to repeat myself.

 

I'm honestly surprised no one replied to my post, though i suppose i said so much i left most people who had the energy to read the hole thing speechless :D . or whas it something else?

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