Re:Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese
by sersi on Monday November 11, 2019 @06:13AM
(#21503833)
I remember as a kid seeing an representation of Shakespeare's Twelfth's night in French as a kid and the meaning was changed so that the jokes would work in French. Likewise, it was made to rhyme in French. I do believe that even in older works, it makes more sense to translate in a creative way. After all, those works were written to convey comedy or poetry and if a translation fails to convey that, then the translation failed.
Likewise, when Baudelaire translated Edgar Poe, the translation literal as it would have been a failure to convey the poetry of the text.
Re:Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese
by shawabawa3 on Monday November 11, 2019 @11:10AM
(#21505943)
I've actually heard that french translations of shakespeare are "better" than the english originals, as they modernise it a bit, whereas the english version is left in an archaic form of english where a lot of the rhymes and puns no longer work
Re:Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese
by sersi on Monday November 11, 2019 @12:14PM
(#21506564)
That's a good point. One could argue that Shakespeare's early modern English feels like a different dialect of English and as such would be better translated during representations...
Re:Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese
by eru on Monday November 11, 2019 @07:19AM
(#21504203)
> (not to mention all the voices are just....wrong lol).
Happens to me with the Simpsons.
Re:Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese
by iainmerrick on Monday November 11, 2019 @05:36AM
(#21503640)
Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot is a great read, and discusses these issues in depth. (Hofstadter is strongly on the side of creative rather than literal translations.)
It brings up an interesting question though - do we care about the outcome(the film being funny) or about being "correct". After all, Polish translation of Shakespeare doesn't change the meaning just to be more relatable to Poles. But then again, books like Harry Potter had plenty of changes to work in Polish(like the Sphinx's riddle being completely different in Polish just so it would make any sense - I would argue that one was kind of necessary though).