I'm from the Chinese <i>game</i> fandom

Translations that have to alter details in a work by Tawaki on 2021-03-27 14:51:34 UTC Reply

In the French translation of "Casey at the Bat", the score for each team is bumped up a run for the sake of the rhyme: «Ça n’aillait pas fort pour les joueurs de Mudville ce jour là/Juste une dernière manche à jouer, sur un compte de cinq à trois...» ("It was not going strongly for Mudville's players that day/Just one last inning to play, on a score of five to three..."). This is a change demanded by the poetry style.

Also, some translations of Aristophanes, Menander†, Plautus, and Terence alter jokes so that puns (sometimes including the double entendres) work in the local language and/or so that gags regarded in the local culture as dude-not-funny become less offensive; and the translators sometimes replace dated references with references (often anachronistic) that a contemporary audience could get. Here the changes are to ensure that the jokes still elicit laughter.

How does the PPC regard such alterations? Fan works to be judged on quality of adaptation?

† Over the last century, substantial finds of his work were discovered in Egypt, including his Δύσκολος ("Peevish Man" or "Grouch") virtually complete, a majority of his Σαμία ("Girl from Samos"), and substantial fragments of other plays.

Coming from Chinese Novels fandoms... by Lily Winterwood on 2021-04-02 02:27:17 UTC Reply

Where the only canon English-speaking fans have to go off of are fan translations, I'd agree that the PPC has no jurisdiction with canon details changed due to translation localisations. Honestly in CNovel fandom I feel like fan translations could be canon-by-proxy until official translations come out (which would likely be never when it comes to English, versus Korean or Japanese haha)

But even official translations have their flaws. For example, I actually disagree with the translation choices made for the official subtitles of The Untamed, such as calling Lan Wangji's "Childe Lan" rather than "Second Young Master Lan", or saying "Lord Hanguang" instead of just "Hanguang-jun". But if a fic insists on using what they got out of the subtitles, then that's their prerogative.

I'm from the Chinese game fandom by Ki no Shirayuki on 2021-04-05 04:01:59 UTC Reply

but I don't speak Chinese, so I only play Japanese localizations/dubs. _{Onmyōji might be a special case, since it's about Japan and originally voiced in Japanese.} The Japanese dub of Tale of Food _{you can say it's Chinese Touken Ranbu; pretty boy personifications of Chinese dishes} translates "young master" (player character) from original 少主 into the term 若, among other changes to modes of address (Yángzhōu Fried Rice uses the rare first-person pronoun 晩生 whereas in the original it's just the mundane 我) and speech.

What I'n curious about is the treatment of the mythical figures Hēibái Wúcháng (Black-White Impermanence, a pair of Chinese death gods) in two of the games I play. The Japanese localizations straight-up use the term, whereas the original Chinese texts avoid them – the ones in Onmyōji are called 鬼使 and the ones in Identity V are called 宿傘之魂. Is this because of a cultural reason or otherwise?

Honestly, I can't say. by Lily Winterwood on 2021-04-05 07:50:30 UTC Reply

It's possible they were just inspired by the figures but didn't want to call it that outright? But I have also heard the Chinese government has gotten a bit more stringent in depictions of ghosts and zombies. Honestly I couldn't tell you if it's one way or the other, since I don't really play video games haha

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. by Huinesoron on 2021-03-29 14:24:40 UTC Reply

(An idiom not to be translated literally... ^_~)

As you say, a literal translation is often not the best way to go. I've recently had to translate a line from Russian which uses an idiom about "the bitterness of bread" - wait, what? That simply doesn't work in English. I always remember that J.R.R. Tolkien offered specific notes on how to translate the Names in Lord of the Rings - he valued the connections and connotations between them as more important than the actual words he'd written.

From a PPC perspective, though, a fanfic which uses the wrong translation of things - or worse, mixes between translations - would probably be considered bad. I would say that for a translated work, a fanfic can always reference the original language, or it can reference the same language as it is written in. Invoking a third language would be out.

Given how much of fanfic is written in English, this does introduce bias: a French speaker writing in English about Frodon Sacquet of Hobbitebourg would be considered 'bad', whereas it's hard to imagine many English-first-language fans of almost anything non-English writing competent fanfic in the original language.

... honestly, actually, I'd find a fanfic which consistently used a translation's names quite charming. The issue would come, as you suggest, when stuff other than names began to be translated. If a character wound up using a back-translated version of their catchphrase, that would be bad writing.

hS
There's no official stance, of course by Thoth on 2021-03-27 17:02:17 UTC Reply

But altering a translation to make it work and capture the spirit of the original in a new language is essential to creating a translation that functions as an adaptation of what made the original work. Some translations that I will highlight as Outstanding (in particular the work done translating and localizing Ace Attorney...) have numerous alterations to the original in them.

I wrote a whole board post about this a few months back...
OT: By the way, did you see this request? by Neshomeh on 2021-03-27 16:04:23 UTC Reply

Kittyauthor's, here. It's still on the front page, but I dunno if you're in the habit of scrolling down. {= )

~Neshomeh

What about OrangeFox's? by Kittyauthor on 2021-03-30 01:43:56 UTC Edited Reply

Here

I kinda think me adopting a Time Lord kinda buried OrangeFox's request, and I'm very sorry.

Edit: Not trying to be pushy or sound mean. I'm sorry if it comes off as that way.

Yeah, I dunno that "the PPC" has a stance on this. by Neshomeh on 2021-03-27 15:36:55 UTC Reply

The question of how much localization is desirable/acceptable in a translated work is one of those eternal debates that has no one satisfying answer for all situations. It has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. In my opinion, when it comes to entertainment media, preserving the spirit of the original is usually more important than preserving every little detail, so I have no problem with the examples you gave. In the case of the play, it might be good to have an accurate translation for historical reference somewhere, but if someone actually wants to produce the play for entertainment, it had better do the job of entertaining.

As for fan works based on translated works, whatever is canon in the translation is the canon a fan work should generally follow, but of course, it's always fine to change things for the purpose of an AU or whatever as long as the change is supported with reason and good storytelling. Heck, it's even fine to ignore or change something "just because" if it doesn't substantially damage the quality of the story. It's only a problem if it makes a reasonably (not overly) attentive reader lose immersion because they stop and go WTF.

For example, the canonicity of fanfic based on Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings can only be judged on how well it fits with Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings. Even if it makes us want to tear out our hair. {= ) If it introduces elements from the original Tolkien to make a better story, no one is likely to mind, but if it starts pulling unicorns and crud out of nowhere for no good reason, that's just as bad as doing so in a Tolkien-based fic.

... Though now I'm vaguely imagining what a crossover between the Bakshi and Rankin/Bass' The Last Unicorn would be like, and wondering if it wouldn't actually work based solely on the art style. Hmm.

~Neshomeh
Let's put it this way: How do you judge the quality of a movie adaptation of a book? by Damian Thorne on 2021-03-27 15:04:31 UTC Reply

The answer is that it doesn't matter as far as the PPC's concerned. The Harry Potter movies could be the worst trash in history to disgrace a silver screen, or heck, they could even change everything about the original and lose its appeal, but they're still valid adaptations of the original novels, and therefore, the PPC cannot mission them no matter what. That's the rule about published adaptations. The same goes for translations, I assume, especially if the changes are reasonably justified.

Always remember that the PPC's mission is to eliminate bad fanfiction, not bad writing. Otherwise, Bella Swan would have been six feet under by now.