sls250dae

[sls250dae]

Incoherent Ramblings About Translation

Having just finished reading a translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and having started one of Dream of the Red Chamber with very little knowledge of Chinese language or premodern history/culture, I have a new view on some topics related to translation, namely names. I never thought I’d say this but I can see the pros behind not being 100% faithful with the names of characters even in translations made for teens/adults. I have always (and still am in most cases) been of the opinion that you shouldn’t significantly change any proper nouns in translations targeted at teen or older audiences, but Three Kingdoms radicalized me (╥﹏╥). (The translation I read of Journey to the west, an abridgement called Monkey, also played a big part) Three kingdoms had literally hundreds of characters, many of which went by more than 1 (courtesy names) which was insane for someone inexperienced with Chinese names like myself. The translation I read of Journey to the West decided to translate the names of characters, changing Son Wukong to Monkey, Zhu Bajie to Pigsy, and Sha Wujing to Sandy, which, to be fair, were in the Chinese names of Pigsy and Sandy. I don’t think this was necessary by any means, but it did perfectly fit the whimsical tone of the story better than a footnote explaining their names on their first appearance would have. On the opposite end of the spectrum: the translation of Dream of the Red Chamber I’m reading now inexplicably decided to translate some names very directly while transliterating others and giving footnotes on implications, relevant homophones, etc. The most egregious translated name I’ve seen so far is “Pervading Spring” which sounds insane as a name in English. In stories that don’t have hundreds of characters to keep track of I still think transliteration with detailed footnotes is the way to go. As funny as the thought of reading about Rockefeller Jaden or something is, I would prefer a transliteration with a footnote explaining the implications behind the family name Jia and the fact that Baoyu reads as precious jade.

As with Monkey though, I think there is a time and a place for localized names: namely in translations targeted at kids. They already have enough trouble with their own language, and, let’s be honest, probably don’t have the patience or desire to read and remember footnotes, so localizing names for them is very reasonable. The first thing to come to mind when thinking of an example of good name translation is Pokemon. The characters and Pokemon are almost always named after things in Japanese, and translations follow an interesting route of taking those same roots to get names that sound more natural in the target language. For example: a ground themed character named チリ Chiri (a real name in Japanese) from chili the food and 地(chi), ground, is localized as Rika in English from the word papRika. A character named キハダ Kihada (not a real name afaik), named after the Japanese name for the amur cork tree is localized as Dendra, from the scientific name of the same tree (Phellodendron amurense). The most interesting one I can think of is トウコ Touko (a real name), (supposedly) named from 闘 (tou), meaning fight or war, is localized as Hilda, another real name that comes from the germanic root Hild, meaning battle. This naming scheme also easily allows readers to make the same associations (usually) between characters with similar naming schemes that they would in the original text. Something relevant that I somehow never noticed until playing Pokemon Scarlet in Japanese is that Bonsly, a pokemon that looks like a bonsai but is rock type actually has a reason to be rock type. (I was always baffled by its type). In Japanese it’s called ウソハチ usohachi from 嘘 uso (lie) and 鉢 hachi (flower pot) and a wordplay on 嘘っぱち usoppachi (straight up lie). Somehow I never made the connection between bonSLY and the word sly with all the deception related moves it has in game until I saw it in Japanese. Pictured below for reference: (it's a very convincing disguise)

[sls250dae]

On L2 Learning

I don’t really feel comfortable sharing my l2 learning techniques, as I’m nowhere near an authoritative source right now, but I am studying slightly differently from the normal path, so maybe I can add some new insight?

My formal education in Japanese really started in middle school about 10 years ago. Having grown up in a Japanese family on Oahu, I’ve been exposed to the language my whole life but am comfortable saying I didn’t really learn anything of substance until middle school. I learned the foundational level from that formal education which I am still continuing now in my 4th year of college. Early in high school I started supplementing it with independent study through flashcards for a little over 1000 common kanji and “immersion”.

Immersion in language study usually refers to physically going somewhere the language is spoken and completely disconnecting from your other languages to only experience the target one, but in my case I do a smaller version of it digitally. Once I could read enough kanji to start, I set my devices, websites, apps, etc to Japanese, read manga untranslated, and sometimes also play video games in it too (I recently started playing Pokemon Scarlet for the first time in Japanese (pretty easy because of the main target audience lol) and Monster Hunter Rise (significantly less easy, so I occasionally switch back to EN when I don’t feel like taking out a dictionary so often 😭)).

As I mentioned in the introduction, I’ve also been translating (very amateurly) for a few years. I mainly scanlate free, publicly posted fan comics and only share them with my friends. As part of the “immersion” I also watch Japanese youtube and rarely subtitle clips on request or if there’s anything good.

Image below is my folder of the scanlations I've done on my current computer

[sls250dae]

Welcome to my page!!

Hello!!!! Welcome to my blog. I’m an undergraduate student studying computer science and Japanese with an interest in translation. I’m only fluent in English but I’ve been studying Japanese for years and have been translating Japanese media to English (very amateurly) for a few. In this blog I plan to share some of my thoughts about multi/plurilingualism, translation, and creativity.