The Perils of Translation: Part 3

First I want to thank you for the positive feedback I have received from fellow translators, people in the industry, as well as manga fans who have enjoyed these "Perils of Translation" posts. The reason I started was partially because it is therapeutic to write out and identify one's frustrations, but also to help show non-Japanese speaking readers that the path to the perfect translation is full of potholes, covered by fallen trees, and often disappears completely. 

You can see Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Without further ado, the continuing report of foibles and foul-ups that translators run into when translating from Japanese to English.

7) Run-on Sentences 

Apparently this isn't an issue in Japanese, though I have heard other Japanese native speakers complain about run-on sentences when translating to English. When I started in translation doing manuals and boring stuff, sometimes our clients in Japan would check sentence counts. 

I guess since they couldn't read the English we were translating they could check our work by making sure there were the same number of sentences. A meaningless way to proof, to be sure, but it instilled the belief that the original Japanese and new English should have the same number of sentences. It wasn't long into my first novel translation that I found this habit must be broken. Here's an example (taken from The Dirty Pair Strike Again):

Nothing about the figure I examined sitting on the table reminded me of an angel, but it did seem to be modeled after some unknown creature, and it was possible the model of this figure and the creature with the invisible fangs were connected.

That's a monster to read in English, but it's even more time consuming to translate so it's understandable. It then has to be broken down into the bite-size chunks English readers are more accustomed to. This one was broken into three sentences, and if I hadn't done it, I am sure the editor would have. He also would have reconsidered hiring me again. Again, the above sentence is grammatically correct, and is accurate to the original Japanese, and is absolutely terrible. This leads us to our next peril.

8) Come in Threes

I never really noticed that in English things seem to come in twos until I noticed in Japanese they seem to come in threes. You can see in the example I highlighted above that three ideas are introduced in a single sentence. Just the first two (ending at "creature") would have been an acceptable sentence in an English reader's eyes, but three is just too much. This is also true of adjectives and actions. 

In the Blood+ stories often Saya's sword would be described as "shiny, silvery and wet with blood". The monsters she fought might be "hairy, burly and smell of death". The night might be "dark, quiet and cold". When it came to adjectives or words describing a noun, I usually either combine words ("silvery" and "shiny" are close enough in meaning that dropping one didn't take away the meaning) or I would drop one and add it into the next sentence. 

For example:

"Saya raised her shiny, silvery sword, wet with blood. She swung the blade down at the monster."

could become

"Saya raised her silvery sword, wet with blood. She swung the shiny blade down at the monster."

Here all the concepts are preserved, and the goal of achieving a smooth translation is met. That may not be the way the author originally intended, but the author also didn't write the book with the rules of English in mind. 

This "come in threes" also happens with actions. 

"Saya ran down the stone corridor and stopped at the locked door and put the key she held in the lock. Saya turned the key until she felt the latch unhinge and she opened the door before carefully walking into the pitch black room."

In a situation like this I would make two sentence of three actions each into three sentences of two actions each.

"Saya ran down the stone corridor and stopped at the locked door. She put the key she held into the lock and turned until she felt the latch unhinge. Saya opened the door before carefully walking into the pitch black room."

Thankfully actions didn't always come in threes or I'd be in the mental ward right now. However in the series I have worked on this were especially common in action or fight scenes. Someone recently asked me which was easier, translating dialog between characters or translating fight sequences. He might have well asked me whether I prefer eating ice cream or having it shoved up my nose. A page of dialog can sometimes be translated in 10 or 15 minutes. A page from an action sequence can take an hour or more. 

For some reason, today if feels more appropriate to stop at two perils, rather then go onto a third. I wonder why...