The Perils of Translation: Part 2

This is a series I started to discuss the difficulties translators run into when bringing Japanese titles to English. Last time I talked about some non-translatable hints as to who was speaking, changing perspectives and sibling terminology as some pot holes to honest but smooth translations. Today, in part two of this ongoing series I have a few more points translators, would-be translators, or serious readers of translated works might find interesting.

4) Tense and Fakeys.

One of the first things I noticed when I started my first novel

 translation, The Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair, was how the tense of every sentence was almost random for an English speaker. The editor and I discussed this and agreed that a first-person passive past tense matched best with English readers. If we would have kept the switches between the obscure present/future tense and past tense it would have thrown the readers off like crazy. I have found that this style is not uncommon in Japanese novels, but simply doesn't work in English. Here's an example of how it might go in Blood+ (another series with the same issue).

Saya swung her katana at the burly beast.

She slices its head open exposing its brains.

But, no, the Chiropteran will block her sword with its muscular right arm.

Saya bounded backwards to prepare for her next attack.

This is wonky in English and this "no" isn't uncommon. The reader thinks something happens, but then is told "no" the first person perspective was incorrect, and a different thing happened. This isn't strange in the original Japanese, but it is strange in English.

5) Singular or Plural?

One of the first hurdles for new Japanese learners is grasping the concept there is no plural in Japanese. I won't try and explain counters and plurality for the non-initiated here, but just know that any noun in any sentence could be singular or could be plural. For normal conversation, context will answer that question, and when knowing the number of things being talked about is needed (as it is often) there is a clear way to do it, though the "counter system" in Japanese goes against English logic. 

What gets tricky in translation is that sometimes authors use this ambiguity to disguise something temporarily from the reader. Unfortunately, English doesn't have this plurality ambiguity, so sometimes it must be revealed there are several attackers before the Japanese original wants that to be clear. It's interesting to note that a term like "the enemy" is helpful in these cases, as "the enemy" could be one, or several opponents. 

6) Afterwords.

This will be interesting to almost no one, but since I just finished the Afterword and Commentary for the Blood+ novelizations, it is fresh in my head.  I will talk about run-on sentences in more detail in Part 3, but for some reason authors and directors throw the rules of grammar out the window when the shoot from the hip in afterwords and commentaries. I do not yet know if the ones I did for Blood+ will make it to print. (The ones I did for Dirty Pair didn't, and for good reason. They weren't directed at an English-speaking audience, and would have been more confusing than not.) That's for my editor and Japanese licensor to decide, and I will let you know what happens. 

The frustrating part of translating afterwords is 1) you don't know if they will be published and 2) it's the hardest part of the entire translation and 3) it can make a sweet end of a translation bittersweet. There was one sentence in six pages by the original writer in the afterwords in Blood+ Volume 4 that was four lines long. At about 45 characters a line in Japanese, this is as long as a flight to Japan. I ended up breaking it up into four individual sentences. It seems this is forgivable in Japan, but hard to sell in English.

This commentary reveals some fascinating secrets, but is also written like a mental train of conscience, so we will see if it makes it into the English release. Personally I am on the fence.

I am just getting started, and have more "Perils of Translation" to come. Please stay tuned as I will get to dealing with subtle racism and sexism, repetition of terms, and self-identification.