A thread about translations! I always find them fascinating: how things differ, how things get changed so that they sound more natural, how people make things work when it's hard to get across an idea in another language. I'm especially interested in game translations from the NES/SNES era, because of the additional memory/space issues that people had to work around, and how that changed the end results. One of my favorite sites about this kind of thing is Legends of Localization, because there are some really in-depth comparisons of the original Japanese text with the English translations for a number of games, as well as some interesting articles about fan reactions/newer translated games! I'm reading the FFIV comparison right now, and it's fascinating. On a different note, a couple of years ago I stumbled across a series of images showing ideas of how to render some of the HS trolls' typing quirks in Japanese, which was pretty fascinating in its own right. I have no idea where I saw them, though.... Homestuck is a pretty interesting case and I'd love to see more examples of how people have dealt with all of those fucking quirks, especially in non-Roman-alphabet languages. Anyway, talk about anything translation-related in here! From/to whatever language, whatever media; anything goes!
The Thomas Kinsella translation of the Táin is the only thing that matters in life and if you bitch about how he didn't attempt imitative verse of the Old Irish poetry you are a bad and horrible wrong person who should feel bad. Also Ghost Stories has a legendary dub because they burned the script and improved most of it turning an otherwise generic shonen series into just. This.
@Aondeug omg I am so happy you shared that, I have been wanting to read The Tain for a few years now but I gave up bc I was just completely overwhelmed by options Allen Mandelbaum's translation of the Divine Comedy is superlative, the author does a fantastic job translating a lot of the rhythm, rhyme, and imagery to English. I wish I could read Italian but from what I've read Mandelbaum is the closest approximation.
THIS IS MY THREAD THIS THREAD WAS MADE FOR ME no seriously I literally have a master's degree in translation and cannot shut up about it, hi @Saro I just discovered the Legends of Localization site recently, so I haven't had time to go through a lot of it yet, but it looks super interesting and well done! And I kind of want to be the author when I grow up... I am curious about the Zelda translations in particular, since I'm not very familiar with them in Japanese.
There was a wonderful thing I read a while back by the people who translated Asterix and Obelix into English about how they went about translating puns and finding equivalents for puns and references that didn't translate, but I don't remember their names or where it was or anything :(
@littlepinkbeast So I know nothing about this comic, but I was curious and went googling. The English translations of Asterix wikipedia page has some basic info, and also tells you the names of the translators. One of them, Anthea Bell, seems to be a pretty prolific and well-known French translator, and her wiki page links to some articles she's written about translation, particularly on Asterix. A lot of the links are old and don't actually work, but there's an interview called Making Asterix Funny in English that talks a bit more about the translation process. You could probably google her name to find more articles she's written if you're interested. Bonus: Apparently she also does German translation and is the one who translated Cornelia Funke's novels (Inkheart, etc) into English! There's another interview where she talks about that, and it looks like it talks a lot more about the translation process and her experience as a translator. *bookmarks this to read later*
