When fansubbers get cute

[prillalar]

Character A hands something to Character B.

Character B (speaking): Oh, sankyuu.

Character B (subtitle): Oh, domo.


This brings up a good question, though. If you're writing fanfic in English about characters who speak Japanese, do you try to render the occasional bits of English they use in some special way to show that it's English and not Japanese? There doesn't seem to be a straightforward way to do that and I usually just don't try.

Comments

[zauberer-sirin.livejournal.com]

Ouch, your question gave me a headache.

XD

I (IMHO) wouldn´t try; it tends to sound artificial (not that writing in english about japanese characters isn´t weird enough but...)

[prillalar]

Hee! It is quite a tortuous thing to consider. There are a lot of strange issues like that that only seem to apply to this kind of fanfic, not to original fic.

I also got weirded out the other day while watching Monster, hearing a German character say itadakimasu before eating her sandwich.

[zauberer-sirin.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of strange issues like that that only seem to apply to this kind of fanfic, not to original fic.

Not really to fic, I think. I´m writing a story about a cricket player in india and I find it strange that he talks in spanish but hey, I´m the boss.

I also got weirded out the other day while watching Monster, hearing a German character say itadakimasu before eating her sandwich.

XDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Oh, but PoT taught us that everybody in Germany speaks japanese!

Btw, speaking of Monster, have you read other manga by the same author, 20th century boys? #4 has just came out in Spain and it´s totally mind-blowing.

[ursula]

Some translations of Tolstoy have the same issue, since the characters speak French and English as well as Russian.

[franzeska]

And what do the translators decide? What would you do if you were the translator?

[ursula]

The translation I read left bits of French in French, and occasionally said, ". . . he said in English," when that mattered for characterization.

I'm re-reading Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy right now, which usually tells you whether the characters are speaking English or Hindi, when they switch, and how strong their accents are (especially whether or not they have Bengali accents). But these characters have full paragraphs of conversation in each language; they're not just inserting a foreign word here or there.

I suppose if I wanted to show a Japanese character used bits and pieces of vocabulary from other languages, I'd pick something besides English (e.g. French for someone showing off.) But I suppose straight-up "He said, in English" has its place:

--I love you.
--I love you, he said in English. He looked away.

[prillalar]

I thought Seth did a marvelous job with the language issues. (And with the book in general -- it's one of my regular re-reads.)

[franzeska]

For me, it depends on how assimilated a word is. If I want to indicate that the character is speaking a foreign language, I might render the words in something other than English. However, 'sankyuu' is a loan word rather than a random bit of foreign language, so I would render it 'thanks' or some other cute or slangy variation of "thank you". The same goes for "lucky!", "chance!" and most of the other pseudo-English Japanese people use. If the average Japanese person understands the word, I'd just translate it as I would any other Japanese word since it probably doesn't mean the same thing to them as it does to us anyway.

[prillalar]

Yeah, I think that's pretty much how I've been handling it. I find all the language issues in anime fanfic to be pretty fascinating.

[biggersandwich.livejournal.com]

I must say that putting that in the subtitles is kinda... but, about your actual point, I'd say that, unless it's supposed to be a definite language switch and they actually talk in another language as opposed to using one word/phrase, I wouldn't try to make it stand out. It looks weird, the same way it does if you try to recreate an accent by typing out every letter you hear when it's spoken.

Besides, if the person reading the fic is probably going to be a fan and they'll know what the characters sound like and will basically "hear" it the way the character would say it (or at least I do...).

[prillalar]

Besides, if the person reading the fic is probably going to be a fan and they'll know what the characters sound like and will basically "hear" it the way the character would say it (or at least I do...).

Sometimes I do, but I often find it hard to give the characters the same "voice" in English. For instance, it's really difficult to do that thing Momo does where he repeats the last part of his sentence and make it sound not too weird.

I guess that's all part of the fun, though -- the challenge. :)

[biggersandwich.livejournal.com]

Well, it doesn't always work (and especially not for long complicated dialogue) but when they say something simple like "think you" I'm likely to "hear" it as "sankyuu" or however they would literally say it.

I'm also less likely to "hear" the voice if the dialogue is OOC but that's a different issue...

(and what thing Momo does? I seem to have missed it...)