Ulf Åström
2/21/2008 8:40:00 AM
On 20 Feb, 17:22, Jeff Lait <torespondisfut...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 20, 3:31 am, "Ulf Åström" <ulf.ast...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I also dislike most translations. This is an area amateurs should
> > really stay away from; they do more harm than good. Literature isn't
> > so bad, it's done by professionals that get the *meaning* of the text
> > right, even if the end result is less vivid than the original. OTOH
> > software, webpages and "fan-subbed" movies make me cringe; they tend
> > to be translated word-by-word, resulting in a very mangled and awkward
> > language.
>
> I have found the opposite. Fan-subbed anime can be better than the
> official English dub. This may be because they are sticking closer to
> the original words so result in less dissonance with the spoken
> Japanese. This might be the exception that proves the rule, however.
> I have certainly seen a few subs which I could improve by rewriting
> the text in real time. The problem, I don't think, is the word-by-
> word translation. It is the absence of a destination-language native
> editor.
I watch fan-subbed anime, but since I don't know japanese it's hard to
tell how accurate it is. :-)
I was mostly thinking of english to swedish translations, perhaps I
should have made this clearer. The mistakes I spot are too subtle to
discuss unless you know both languages well, so I won't go into
details here. An obvious example though is a (fan-subbed) movie I saw
recently where they had translated "forfeit" to "win"...
Perhaps I should attempt a career as a translator.
-the ru