[ekianjo]

In his second part of his article, he says...

> There’s a system for making people sound generally non-Japanese (using lots of katakana and dropping prepositions), but it’s tiring to read and has an air of childishness, since this is one of the first scripts kids learn to read/write in Japan

This is utterly wrong. Katakana usage in Japanese has nothing childish attached to it. If at all, Hiragana would be the one which is considered the more "childish" way of writing, but there are numerous imported words (and more and more, I'd say) using Katakana even in business context - and certainly taken very seriously.

If you don't know a language, don't make assumptions on it. By the way the french translation of "Your son is dead" as "Votre fils est mort" is very dry and tasteless, the proper way or saying it in french is "votre fils est decede". I hate it when people do a literate translation from English to French, many words are similar but they are not used at all in the same situations.

[burnte]

> By the way the french translation of "Your son is dead" as "Votre fils est mort" is very dry and tasteless

That's exactly the point. You wouldn't really say it like this in English either, but in a Soviet style totalitarian state, it's easy to see.

[ekianjo]

I still disagree. Look at how the words are used in a formal context in English and in French: in English you say "Death Certificate" for the document recording the death and events leading to the person, but in French it translates to "Certificat de Deces", and certainly not "Certificat de Mort" - people would be laughing at such a translation in that particular context, hence the reason why I think the French translation in this particular context is inappropriate.

[antimagic]

Nah, you're still wrong - it's the correct translation - the tone is every bit as detached in both the English and French versions - a softer version of "Your son is dead" is indeed "Your son is deceased", or even gentler "your son has passed away". The tone of "Your son is dead" in English is every bit as cold and impersonal as "Votre fils est mort" in French...

(speaking as a native English speaker, that has lived / worked in Paris for the last ten years)

[ekianjo]

You didn't answer my point about the certificate part. Please explain why the words are different in French and in English then.

[tripzilch]

"(is) dead" and "death" are different words in English, which both can be literally translated with "mort" in French.

that's different words in English.

similarly there's other languages that would translate the English words "(of) death" and "death (of)" to different words (because of case).

and you don't say "Certificate of the Dead", which is yet another phrase with a different meaning and nearly the same words.

it's just different!

[burnte]

Explain why they're different? Really? Why are mort and the other French word different? The why would take explaining the evolution of the language. The fact that they are different in itself is the point however. Dead is a very clinical word in describing the state of death, while deceased or "passed away" is a much softer way of communicating it. That's simply how English is. You can't look at it from the perspective of the French language any more the you can look at French via the lens of English. English is a mutt of a language, Germanic in origin, heavily influenced by Latin and Romance languages, with a significant independent evolution on its own.

The tone "dead" confers is much colder than deceased, which is exactly why the author chose to use it. To show the state couldn't care less.

[antimagic]

Uh, because sometimes direct translation isn't appropriate? That was your own point, was it not? It's just that the case you picked happened to be one where the direct translation was in fact the correct translation...

[ekianjo]

Yeah, and that's the point I am still making about the original example. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[icelancer]

> I hate it when people do a literate translation from English to French, many words are similar but they are not used at all in the same situations.

Yes, this is why most people generally hate doing translations in general - people like you who nitpick.

[PhasmaFelis]

> Yes, this is why most people generally hate doing translations in general - people like you who nitpick.

I don't know a bit of French, or Japanese. But I do know that there are a awful lot of English translations, done by well-meaning people, which vary from mediocre to Godawful. Almost every anime subtitling job I've ever seen is at the very least somewhat stilted and awkward to my ear. (Though they're still better than the dubs.) And a lot of it comes down to native English speakers who fear losing the intended nuances of the original and so do a rigidly literal translation, because they think that's the "most accurate."

So the problem isn't nitpicking; it's the wrong kind of nitpicking. If you think you can do a translation by following a rulebook and wave off dissenters as "nitpickers," you are probably going to do a shitty job, and have no idea why.

[ekianjo]

> And a lot of it comes down to native English speakers who fear losing the intended nuances of the original and so do a rigidly literal translation, because they think that's the "most accurate."

Agree with you.

One of the key issues is that, to be a good translator you need to have a good command of BOTH languages. I can tell you I see piss poor French translations (from English or other languages) every day as well, and it's not nitpicking, it's just people doing an awful job at what they are being paid for. Most people who do translations are barely even literate in their own language in the first place (you can see that in their obvious lack of vocabulary).

On the other hand, I'd say the best translations I have seen go way beyond the original work, making the translated work even better, more rich, more nuanced than what it was before. It's not just "translation", it's rather close to versioning.

[PhasmaFelis]

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Maddeningly, whenever that happens with e.g. anime you immediately get swarms of furious fans decrying the translation for "inaccuracy."

[ekianjo]

I can't say I have seen that in anime myself, but there's a couple of movies where the translation/version was actually better than the original movie in terms of language, figures of speech and so on. It was not just translation, it was beautiful writing.

[ekianjo]

> Yes, this is why most people generally hate doing translations in general - people like you who nitpick.

It's not nitpicking, if there are 50 000+ words in the common language there's a reason for it.

[thaumasiotes]

To be fair, "your son is dead" is a very tasteless way of saying it in English, too ;)

[digibo]

He also says his wife is Japanese which makes me doubt it's "utterly wrong" to be honest. Care to elaborate/provide sources?

[kalagan]

décédé = deceased

mort = dead

You don't have to hate

[PeterisP]

This is the whole point. While in isolation, A generally translates to A' and B to B', it doesn't mean that it can always be used that way.

In translations you'll often get situations where A should be translated to B' in that context (even if in the original language B wouldn't be used there), in order to transfer the concept properly. Literal translations often end up weird, and sometimes completely wrong.

[ekianjo]

Sorry, but "deceased" is way more formal in English than in French.