Recently, we have had two Chinese to English translators join our Cove, and let me tell you, there are hundreds of dojins that have been translated into Chinese, but not English - so there is plenty of material for them to work on. For anybody who wants to bitch about "secondary translation being not as good as first hand", let me say this: %#%$^%$# Or, more seriously: "go, keep staring at the moonrunes, and see if they magically translate themselves".
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I realize that I already made my farewell post this past summer. However, recent events have dragged me back into solitary action.
A brief rundown for those unfamiliar with the situation: some few weeks ago, a few individuals appeared on the E-Hentai translator discussion forums, offering to translate from Chinese translations. While several of the more established residents of the forum encouraged them, even offering bounty rewards for their work, I attempted, in the least confrontational manner I could manage, to suggest that progressing with this course of action was unwise without, at the very least, quality checks from people familiar with Japanese. That suggestion was immediately shot down. When the translators revealed the projects they picked up, I noticed that one of my incomplete projects was among them, and I let them know. Apparently, the Chinese to English translation was already in progress at that point, because the script was released soon after.
I've received word from a few of the people involved with that particular project. I'd like to say that, considering it was already in progress, I don't blame them for finishing it after I brought up my own plans. But really, this should never have started in the first place.
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Considering the pitfalls of translating J->C->E (namely, translation decay due to both unreliability of source and inherent language differences), I highly, highly suggest you get a J->E translator to check your work before you release. So long as you can get that down, I wish you the best of luck with your work - glad to see new contributors with (presumably) good intentions.
Unfortunately, I won't be getting that down. My responsibility stops at writing up the scripts. I'll translate to my best abilities from the source material provided, but it will be up to the requester to edit and proofread, or find someone who can.
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A large part of the rationale behind starting this secondary translation effort is the idea that a bad translation is better than no translation, and that this can be corrected with a good translation later.
I disagree.
The problem I have with that mindset is based on two ideas. First of all, the vast majority of readers is unqualified to judge the quality of a translations. Without knowledge of Japanese, there is no way for you to discern what is correct from what is not. All you'd have to go on is how well the scanlation is polished, looking at things like grammatical correctness, but even that can be deceptive. Good grammar may mask an inferior translation. I've seen at least one case (in the bounty system, no less) where a scanlation with horrendous grammar was considered inferior to one that had better grammar (and was by a translator with a good reputation) but actually had more translation errors. (That was also a doujin I had my eye on, but thankfully, a good translator released his own version shortly afterwards, so at least I was saved from the obligation to redo it myself.) The closest thing there is to go on is the word of a translator who has proven his worth, but even that is not completely reliable. If you ever learn a little bit of Japanese and look carefully at certain prolific scanlators, you'll see what I mean: not all translators with good reputations are actually good at what they do, and you'll never notice until you dig a little deeper.
The second idea is that first impressions are powerful. Once someone who isn't specifically looking for mistakes reads a translation, that version has a way of working itself into the head of the reader to the point where it becomes the "true" version in his mind. Even if a superior release appears later and the reason it's superior is clearly explained, once a bad translation is released, irreversible damage has been done. The wrong idea has found its way into the reader's head and taken root, and that reader may disregard or even look down on the superior version because the original has already become the "truth" to him, in spite of the fact that the reader has no way of knowing that. In every translation group I have worked with, I have had editors (all of my fansub editors, and some scanlation editors) reject parts of my translation checking for no apparent reason, and it wasn't until LWB that I figured out this reason, when an editor put it into a nice analogy:
"I'm familiar with [the translator's] script, so some of the improvements felt like reading a New International bible. Like, I know the King James version is a flawed product of its time period, but anything else sounds bloody strange."
What people don't seem to realize is that not sounding bloody strange does not mean it's right, and it is often very hard to convince them otherwise. In doing a secondary translation (or machine translation, or rewrite, or whatever monstrosity the community will come up with next), you are decimating the chance that a legitimate translation will be taken seriously. If you're doing this as a way to get the "general idea" (which you probably won't get) until a legitimate translation comes, congratulations, you've just ensured that it probably never will, and if it does, you've ruined it for a whole lot of people.
Well, maybe the reason I care about this and you don't seem to is just a difference in values. If you're primarily translating for yourself and not for the community, sure, I suppose you could just not care about that and keep doing what you do. However, even if you don't care for the community, the least you can do is care for the author. It is undeniable that anything you release has some effect on others' perception of the author's words and intentions, and ignoring that, I think, is irresponsible. Use secondary translation all you want to understand the work yourself, but know that the moment you put the product of that out into the world, you become the author's voice. We are here to speak for others, not just for ourselves. Words cannot be used lightly, especially if they are not completely our own.
So, is it worth having no translation at all if this can be avoided? I think it is. It is substantially more possible to fix uncertainty than it is to fix mistaken conviction.
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004
[J] ゆずかちゃん。お友達。
[J->C] 柚佳
[J->C->E] Yuka-san
[J->E] Yuzuka-chan. My friends.
The Chinese translation left out "My friends." As a result, the C->E translation doesn't have that. Also, the Chinese translation wrote a possible rendering of Yuzuka in the kanji, but naturally, it sounds different in Chinese, hence the mistake (not sure where -san came from, aside from the translator assuming that that's what would've been there). Sad, since all you would've needed was a hiragana table to make sure it was right.
[J] やさしい。大好き。村のみんな。
[J->C] 善良的、我最愛的村裏的大家……
[J->C->E] The kind-hearted me, loved everyone in the village.
[J->E] Everyone in the village. They were kind. I loved them.
The structure of the original Japanese would've been something like, "They were kind. I loved them. Everyone in the village." I moved the last part to the beginning because it sounded more natural to me, considering Himegami's style of speaking with short sentences. The Chinese translator, on the other hand, turned it into one sentence while retaining the original order of descriptions (Literally "The kind-hearted, much-loved-by-me everyone-of-the-village..."). Unfortunately, this leads to the confusion that happens with multiple descriptive/possessive phrases in many languages (sometimes but not often in English, but very common in Japanese, interestingly enough). The correct way to read the Chinese, sans punctuation was "[善良的][我最愛的][村裏的大家]". I presume this is why the Chinese translator put in the comma. But unfortunately, this structure can often lead to confusion, evident in the way the C->E translator read it: "[善良的我][最愛的][村裏的大家]." This would never have happened if the Chinese translator hadn't chosen to translate the line the way he did. But he did (and I wouldn't say it was a wrong decision, given the space he had to work with), and that led to a mistake in C->E.
005
[J] わたしがころした。
[J->C] 都被我殺掉了
[J->C->E] was killed by me
[J->E] I killed them.
Now, I have nothing against passive voice itself. I think it works better in some contexts than active voice. This is not one of them. Active voice is pretty important here - it emphasizes Himegami's feelings. "I killed them. I did it. It was my fault." The original Japanese uses active voice. I used active voice. Guess why the C->E translation uses passive voice.
006
Too much Chinese text on this page, so I'm not going to type it out.
The following ideas were present in the J->C but not the J->C->E when they should have been:
-Line 1, "definitely/surely", "more/other people"
-Line 2, "needing" Academy City
-Line 5, Academy City "among other places" can save her
This page would be an example of the J->C->E translator either making all new mistakes or not getting things that were subtle in the J->C translation but pretty important to the original Japanese. Probably the former for lines 1 and 2 and the latter for line 5.
008
[J] 先生、本当にいいんですか？こんなもん見せられちゃ止まれないですよ？
[J->C] 老師、這様子沒問題嗎？都做到這種地步了、可是無法挽回了！
[J->C->E] Teacher, is this all right? Once we do this, we won't be forgiven.
[J->E] Sensei, is this really okay? If you show us this, we won't be able to stop, you know.
Here, the Chinese translation does a minor reword from "won't be able to stop" to "won't be able to go back." Now, my Chinese is a little rusty, so I'm not that familiar with the use of the phrase 挽回, but the dictionary says that it holds the meaning "to redeem" in addition to "to return". I imagine this is where "won't be forgiven" came from. Also, minor thing: the Chinese translation used "go this far / do this much" instead of "show us this".
[J] これはいわば儀式です。選ばれた君たち生徒がより高みに上るための
[J->C] 這可以説是一種儀式、為了你這些被選中的学生能上昇到新的境界的儀式！
[J->C->E] This is a type of ritual for you all chosen students, to upgrade yourselves to new levels.
[J->E] This is all a part of the ceremony, so that you chosen students may ascend to greater heights.
I'm not sure if this is a case of translation decay or if the translator just wasn't familiar with Index (this would signify that the translator doesn't know the source material, which is a problem about commissions, but I won't go into that), but level is a word you need to be very, very careful around in works derived from Index and Railgun. The original Japanese uses the word 高み, which most accurately means "height." In some contexts, "level" is appropriate, but "Level" has a very strong connotation in the Index series, as some of you may know, and using the word "level" here would be very, very wrong. In fact, even if you don't know Japanese, if you've read or watched Index, recall that the Cult of Science actually doesn't concern itself with studied concepts like Level or Personal Reality; it is a group concerned more with the idea of science than dealing with science itself. The Cult actually wants its students to transcend the idea of level and thus science itself, not to become higher in level. Thus, the ambiguity of the word "height" is ideal. In Japanese, it is very apparent that we're not dealing with level in the Index sense of the word (if we were, it would be written or at least furigana'd as レベル), but if you're not looking at the Japanese, that means nothing.
Now, my computer doesn't actually have Chinese input installed - I've been using a combination of Japanese input and copy/pasting from Google translate - and it's getting very tiring, so I won't critique the entire script as I'd planned. But take note, this is just the first five pages. We're not even at the most wordy and important pages of the doujin, and it took me a thousand words to explain the issues there, most of which are direct results of the J->C->E nature of the translation. Forgive me, but I think I'll leave it to my own translation to do the rest of the talking for me.
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I have explained why I believe it is important for the first scanlation of a work (and preferably all subsequent ones, as well) should be good. I have explained how this scanlation is not good. And I have explained how this scanlation’s mistakes are results of secondary translation's inherent inability to be good. So I hope you'll all excuse me for not buying into the mindset of, "Look, it's a pile of shit! That must mean it's perfectly fine to make it bigger, and that's exactly what we want to do!"
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Now, at this point, some might say, "Hey, it's not like all J->E translators don't do this stuff," or, "Not all J->E translators are perfect." The thing is, most of the translators in the community who do their work for the love of it aim for perfection, and translating through another language immediately makes it clear that you're not doing the same. In fact, you all seem proud that your releases are far from perfect. And if you're not, if you're only doing this because there's "no other option," have you not noticed that the main opponents of these practices are always translators? The reason they're even talking to you probably means you've personally stepped on their toes already.
As for conscious practices, if a J->E translator removed the presence of lines without reason, stripped the dialogue of details crucial to the soul of the story, made countless errors, and generally sacrificed all sense of quality in the name of productivity, that person would be a bad translator. And if a secondary translator continues to do what he does with full knowledge that he can only repeat and amplify those problems, that person is at best terribly misguided, and at worst a greedy douchebag. (I wish I could assume this case is closer to the former, but the involvement of the bounty system isn't helping.)
I'd like to reiterate that on the whole, my problem is not that the translation isn't perfect - obviously, that irritates me, but that's something that comes up case-by-case. My problem is that the approach of translating through an intermediate language makes perfection basically impossible.
Furthermore, any decent J->E translator would take note of the issues I pointed out above and improve, but constructive criticism can't help a J->C->E translator's skills in the long term. All it can do is fix specific mistakes; to consistently attain an acceptable level of quality, it would be necessary with every release. The only way I can see this happening is with the help of a dedicated, very thorough translation checker - basically a retranslator - and it seems these guys have no interest in making it that way, or at least don't want to spend even the least bit of effort to actively look for one if no one volunteers. I, personally, would have been glad to proofread this particular doujin if I had discovered that it was still happening before it actually did (the doujin was completed in the space between two subsequent visits to the forums), if only for the opportunity to decrease the number of shit translations out there by one.
But then again, even if I was offered the chance, I'd only be able to do it for this one, just because I care so much about it. Just take a look at what you'd have to work with, and how much of it, and you'd throw your hands up in the air in frustration, too.
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To summarize, my philosophy is this:
If you are translating for the love of it, you should be doing all that you can to ensure quality, because you have a responsibility to faithfully present the complete essence of what you're translating, and you must be careful not destroy the audience's capacity to appreciate it. If you know that there are intrinsic flaws to your approach that you cannot overcome, then you should either abandon that approach or actively seek out the assistance of someone who can do what you cannot.
And if you're just translating for the money, you'd better be good enough to deserve it.
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I realize this reeks of drama, and I apologize for that. I've become very emotionally invested in the art of fan translation practically to the point of fanaticism, so I find it difficult to hold back. I just really had to get this off my chest.
I've realized: this is not where I belong. I enjoyed doing my work here. I really did. But I can't go on like this.
I can deal with audiences that are determined to remain ignorant or unappreciative, though it takes some effort to do so. I never expected much from them, really. And that's why we're here, isn't it? To try and fix that? And honestly, I could completely ignore their existence if I had to in order to go on. When I have to deal with shit like this from others on the production side, though... Legitimate translators who are simply lacking in skill are nothing new, and they're hard enough to deal with as it is, but they at least have the potential to take criticism seriously and learn from mistakes, and I've been actively encouraging this as much as I can. Individuals who try to translate without knowing Japanese are harder to deal with, but at least it's not impossibly hard to convince them that what they're doing is the wrong thing to do.
But now we have commissioners producing bad translations. This particular group of commissioners works in a system that has no quality controls, is very easy to fund, and gives the "translator" no reason to maintain a good reputation. Why is the system like this? Because the commissioners are actively trying to make it that way. Seeing people who hold significant influence in bringing "translators" into action actively encouraging translation methods that show shameful disregard for the source ideas, and the people who actually care about the quality of those ideas' transmission, without the possibility of improvement - that's what wounds me.
I've actually dealt with a very similar situation before - that is, having one of my personal projects sniped by a "translator" who doesn't know Japanese - when another of my long-standing projects received a machine translation. (In fact, many of the points I've made above apply to machine translation, as well.) The result was similarly shoddy, and the rationale behind starting it was similarly flawed, but in that case, the uploader realized that the path he was walking was not the right way to go, and he willingly stopped. I won't be finishing that project (see below), but at least I was able to pick myself back up and continue for a little longer when that happened. The fact that the flow of bad translations stopped is the only reason I didn't quit then.
I doubt that will be the case here - there are who knows how many more of these travesties they call translations either out or in the pipeline - I've lost count - and now even more secondary translators are crawling out of the woodwork. Probably not stopping anytime soon, considering the whole "fuck you and your quality, not my problem" mindset that seems to be ingrained in the minds of the people who participate in the bounty system. (Well, maybe it's a bit harsh to label everyone there with that, but even the people who do have something close to the right mindset seem to think it's good enough to just have a disclaimer that says translation quality is not their concern. While it's a good gesture, it ultimately does nothing to mitigate the harm bad translations can inflict, because people will read them anyway.)
I just need to get out.
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Final house cleaning. Crazy9's "Gomen ne, Papa" and Shoot the Moon's "Gokiburi" were both almost done, but I'm going to leave them now; can't bring myself to finish. I might pass them over to the LWB forums later, but I'm mostly inclined to bury them at this point - not like they're needed, anyway. Dropping Remonsan's "Cheerio" completely, too, because the only place translation matters is the afterword, and I've already accepted that no one cares about those by now, not even other translators. Carn's "Otomedori" is dropped completely because I don't have the energy for it. People at LWB want it done, though, so you might see it - just not from me. In a bit of good news, a new recruit to LWB has picked up Kaiyuu Kikaku's "First Lesson." Unfortunately, all of my existing work on that is shit, from when I just started scanlating, so I won't be able to help with that. Suzuya's "Hanasaku Tsubomi" finally got picked up for editing, and first pass QC is done. I'll leave the second pass to the rest of Team Vanilla once it's ready; to be completely honest, I don't think I'll be satisfied with the end result, but the only way I can be is if I take over the project completely, which would lead me to give the editor more trouble than I should, so I relinquish control. Everything else I've started doesn't have enough work to warrant specific mention, so I'm done with those.
There. I've washed my hands clean. Selfish as it may be, I believe the best thing for me to do now is to cut my sense of responsibility loose and force myself to not care about this anymore. I can see that any further action on my part is doomed to failure, so I may as well quit now if it'll save me the aggravation of seeing it happen. I'm done.
Goodbye.
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tl;dr FUCK EVERYTHING, I'M OUT.
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(C75) [Jingai-Makyou (Inue Shinsuke)] Himetaru Yume ni Kotauru Kami wa. (To Aru Majutsu no Index) [English][Hitsuyou].rar
[depositfiles][mediafire]
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