Chiyu Mahou no Machigatta Tsukaikata ~Senjou wo Kakeru Kaifuku Youin~ - Ch. 85

[Sakuyadorf]

naaaah this fight should have been like 2 or 3 chapters

 

[loonacrunch]

So ark's flame is something like genryuusai from bleach but weaker?

 

[BananowyJE]

It would be much better if that flame actually harmed him or something.
And I don't care about the honorifics, use whatever you want. If you feel like the english translation shouldn't include honorifics then just go for it.

 

[Mordenheim]

And I do this as a fan of the series as well, taking my understanding of the characters into account. Ark addresses Usato"-dono" as a knight. Referring to him as "sir" Usato. Not sir as in mister, but sir as in the proper knightly sir as a show of proper respect.

First, non-english speaker.

Second, don't get me wrong, but I don't buy it.
To me, 'sir' is either indicator of one's noble status or a way to politely address someone. While at the same time, as I understand it, the suffix 'dono' indicates a show of respect, not because of the social status, but because of one's accomplishments and as such is used when talking to the scholars, wisemen and/or master(s) of their trade.

So what is Arc expressing, when addressing Usato as the Usato-dono, is not the deference of the knight to his lord, ie. social status, but acknowledgement of Usato's various qualities, ie. respect for merit.

My two cents.

 

[AnotherDuck]

Some people getting things wrong isn't a good justification to support translations that get it even more wrong as a baseline.

It's not some people. It's most people. Every time see discussions about it, you have multiple interpretations. Most of them are worse than what an average translator understands. Context is already lost to all of those people. Including your own mistake, as you mentioned below.

And, most importantly, someone not knowing what an honorific means doesn't make them understand the story any LESS than if it's translated into a nonequivalent title that actively misleads people as to characters' relationships. It's more information for the people who understand them, and the people who don't understand them don't lose any information just by them being there.

You're assuming a bad translation. If you do that, I can assume someone with bad understanding.

If you don't lose any information when reading words you don't understand relative to reading something translated, it means the translation is so bad that it's functionally not there. So again, you're assuming the worst of the translation and the best of the reader.

Yeah, I have a little cousin who got into weebshit by second-hand exposure who tried to explain to people that "senpai" means "your crush who you want to notice you." I don't care. ... Obviously you can't take that logic too far because at some point you stop translating and are just asking people to learn a langauge, but for something as ubiquitous as honorifics which people engage with anyway, it's not a big ask.

I understand. You're not using logic. You want it for yourself and people with your understanding, and don't care about anyone with less understanding. If you're that selfish, translate it yourself.

If people not understanding them is the problem, why would you not just make an effort to make it more understood so translation can be simpler and more accurate?

That's literally what the translator is doing while actually translating the words.

You never see this kind of hogwash when it comes to media from any other foreign nation, where if a unique word comes up that's relevant to the culture and context of the work, they simply briefly explain it and move on. If readers are allergic to seeing french words, they wouldn't be watching french films, but for some reason japanese attracts all this nonsense about how translations must be PURE and any non-english words in this translation of non-english media RUINS the translation.

No, those are generally translated as well. Your argument is as hogwash as if I would say that if you're so allergic to translations you should just read the original Japanese.

Whatever. I've accepted over the years that there's a plague of condescension among japanese translators who think that expecting your readers to learn new things is "unprofessional."

If you look at the professional standard for translating, these words are translated. You can ridicule it as much as you want, since that's the best you can do about it, but that is the standard.

I know this is a fight that has been raging for decades and I'm only shouting into the void at this point, but the older I get the sillier the whole thing seems to me. I've seen plenty of people upset about honorifics being dropped, loads of people upset about honorifics being changed, but I've never actually seen anyone upset about honorifics being included.

No, it's just that we're so used to translators doing a half-ass job and weeabos whining about not catering to their preferences. Don't confuse tolerance with preference. I have seen tons of people complaining about it, and the vast majority of them are ignored at best, but usually get a lot of flack for daring to state their opinions. See the negative reactions to my post. You generally don't see that in the opposite direction, even if you find a lot of comments and indicators that people like actual translations. Most people don't like shouting into the void continuously and getting insulted for it, so you don't see it as much.

Forgot to mention that if the honorifics are dropped from the start, there's often very little complaints about them not being there. So your argument is a biased and cherry-picked look on it.

 

[JustNatsuki]

I say we ditch the english and japanese honorifics and use german honorifics instead. /j

 

[Vimi20]

thanks for the chapter. But cliffhanger last chapter and this chapter no scene of usato fighting...just another cliffhanger...Maybe next chapter they closed the wall of fire again and we see nothing of usato?

 

[stephen01king]

This chapter was... so cringe. The dialog was almost exactly like a parody of overdramatic chunni fights. Ugh.

I feel like that's been a thing for this manga from the start, so I don't feel like it's that out of place.

 

[chrno_12]

Thank you.

That is exactly the philosophy I am following. Honorifics are preserved when translated, then I use them when I PR as tonal indicators.

And I do this as a fan of the series as well, taking my understanding of the characters into account. Ark addresses Usato"-dono" as a knight. Referring to him as "sir" Usato. Not sir as in mister, but sir as in the proper knightly sir as a show of proper respect.

Someone using -san doesn't immediately mean they're a "mister" either. It might not be appropriate to use that, so instead I note that the character just might not be 10000% casual. Often enough, it does end up being mostly a tonal indicator.

I also recognize that a lot of the people reading the manga... Might not read tons of manga in general like I do. Someone could be reading a manga for the first time and the honorifics can be distracting and confusing to them.

I do plan to continue doing this in the future, as I try to do for every project I PR for. I hope those who prefer Japanese honorifics understand where I'm coming from, and can trust that I am doing the best I can.

I prefer that honorifics be kept in Japanese. But that is MY personal preference. The person doing the translation, especially when we are talking about fan translations, is the one who should decide what the best approach is. I am only commenting here because you yourselves asked for the readers’ opinions.

That said, I do not have, how can I put it, a prejudice against translations that remove the context of the Japanese language. I, for example, am a J-Novels subscriber, even though they remove all honorifics and Japanese context. But if there were a competitor that kept all the honorifics and Japanese context, I would definitely prefer that option. Unfortunately, it does not exist.

Because of that, I usually avoid criticizing fan translations, precisely because it is voluntary work. The only exception I make is when the translation is really absurdly bad, to the point where I would rather it not be done at all.

Finally, if I am so bothered by translations where honorifics and Japanese context are removed, I should learn Japanese. I am trying to build up the courage to take a Japanese course. But as soon as I start memorizing kanji, I already give up lol.

 

[chrno_12]

No, it's just that we're so used to translators doing a half-ass job and weeabos whining about not catering to their preferences. Don't confuse tolerance with preference. I have seen tons of people complaining about it, and the vast majority of them are ignored at best, but usually get a lot of flack for daring to state their opinions. See the negative reactions to my post. You generally don't see that in the opposite direction, even if you find a lot of comments and indicators that people like actual translations. Most people don't like shouting into the void continuously and getting insulted for it, so you don't see it as much.

Forgot to mention that if the honorifics are dropped from the start, there's often very little complaints about them not being there. So your argument is a biased and cherry-picked look on it.

It is not a matter of "half-ass job" translation. You are wrong there. The Japanese language is very different from any other language in the world. There are many things in Japanese that are tied to Japanese culture itself, to the point that there is no real translation. Either you lose context by doing a fully localized translation, or you keep the context but end up with an “awkward” translation, with English words mixed with Japanese ones.

It is up to the translator to decide which approach to take, whether to preserve the Japanese cultural context at the cost of having an “awkward” translation, or to sacrifice context in favor of something that feels more “natural” to those who are not yet familiar with Japanese culture.

 

[karmsand]

"sorry demon lady, I didn't want to use my full power because I wanted to marry you"

 

[AnotherDuck]

It is not a matter of "half-ass job" translation. You are wrong there. The Japanese language is very different from any other language in the world. There are many things in Japanese that are tied to Japanese culture itself, to the point that there is no real translation. Either you lose context by doing a fully localized translation, or you keep the context but end up with an “awkward” translation, with English words mixed with Japanese ones.

All languages are more or less unique. Japanese isn't special in that regard. There are different cultural implications that differ in all languages. Just look at how much British English differ from American English, and that's supposedly the same language.

Most of you won't understand that context anyway. You believe you understand, but you don't. That has been shown over and over and over again in discussions about what things actually mean. One of the most common mistakes is overstating the uniqueness of Japanese and how much everything means. And that's only going to be worse the less someone understands.

A decent translation, or a translation made by someone who understands the language better than the reader, retains enough context to understand the intent. Context is lost either way, as what's required is an understanding of the culture, not specific word usage.

It is up to the translator to decide which approach to take,

That I agree with.

 

[Anonyan]

It's not some people. It's most people. Every time see discussions about it, you have multiple interpretations. Most of them are worse than what an average translator understands. Context is already lost to all of those people. Including your own mistake, as you mentioned below.

Conflating someone briefly skimming the chapter, seeing a title used, and forgetting the context with someone not having a basic understanding of honorofics is the most bad faith argument I've seen in a while. No matter how much you try to bend over backwards to insist that nobody could possibly grasp them, it remains a fact that most weebs grasp honorifics even if they prefer not to read them. "Oh but I've seen discussions with multiple interpretations" yeah and I've seen discussions where one person asks what something means and ten other people give more or less exactly the same interpretation. Completely meaningless statement.

You're assuming a bad translation. If you do that, I can assume someone with bad understanding.
If you don't lose any information when reading words you don't understand relative to reading something translated, it means the translation is so bad that it's functionally not there. So again, you're assuming the worst of the translation and the best of the reader.

No, I'm not assuming a bad translation. I'm assuming the undeniable fact that every possible english approximation for honorifics inherently loses meaning. Which is true.

I understand. You're not using logic. You want it for yourself and people with your understanding, and don't care about anyone with less understanding. If you're that selfish, translate it yourself.

Did you somehow read all those words I typed and miss the entire fucking point, which is that if we normalize honorifics being included in more translated works, the few people who don't understand will quickly learn and the problem will disappear?

That's literally what the translator is doing while actually translating the words.

Wow thanks that's so clever, I didn't know that!!!!!!
What I'm saying, obviously, if you just read the shit I said in its entirety instead of cherrypicking this one line so you can feel clever about saying "uh yeah the translators make shit more understood anyway," is this: if there's something that's so ubiquitous that it's present in every single piece of media from that language and is never not relevant to the characters, and translations have to approcimate meaning at best and learning how they would only involves getting a handle on the twenty or thirty most common ones, which is easily done by every single reader already through exposure if they read for more than a few months, then just expecting people to learn them is a perfectly valid option.

No, those are generally translated as well. Your argument is as hogwash as if I would say that if you're so allergic to translations you should just read the original Japanese.

Brother this is literally just not true. Other foreign language media often leaves certain things untranslated and either informs the viewer of their meaning or expects them to figure it out themselves, because having basic expectations of intelligence from your audience is not a bad thing. "Uh no they don't exist actually" wow you really got me there. Just off the top of my head, I personally remember watching some old german film where they leave "schadenfreude" untranslated in the subtitles, because it's a commonly-known german word and they expect most viewers of media with german audio will know it or can spend two seconds to figure it out if they don't, but I guess that didn't happen because you said it doesn't!

If you look at the professional standard for translating, these words are translated. You can ridicule it as much as you want, since that's the best you can do about it, but that is the standard.

If you couldn't tell from me putting "unprofessional" in quotes, yes, ridiculing it is exactly what I'm doing. Just because people have perpetuated the impression that something is """professional""" doesn't mean it's a good thing that the impression exists and there couldn't be any other viable options. The same kind of logic of something being the "professional standard" is pulled out when you see the turbo-localizers replace entire conversations with their own jokes and references that weren't present in the original at all.
And before you try to nitpick that, no, I am not equating the honorifcs debacle to "eat your hamburgers, Apollo." This is a much more minor issue. I'm only making the comparison to show how meaningless something being seen as "professional" is when the actual paid professionals in the field are known for making the most egregious non-translations and actively stating their disdain for the original work that they're being paid to paint over.

No, it's just that we're so used to translators doing a half-ass job and weeabos whining about not catering to their preferences. Don't confuse tolerance with preference. I have seen tons of people complaining about it, and the vast majority of them are ignored at best, but usually get a lot of flack for daring to state their opinions. See the negative reactions to my post. You generally don't see that in the opposite direction, even if you find a lot of comments and indicators that people like actual translations. Most people don't like shouting into the void continuously and getting insulted for it, so you don't see it as much.

So you've just restated the thing I've said, which is that people get upset when honorifics are dropped or replaced but people don't complain simply because they're present, just with some extra twisting of the situation to paint the poor anti-honorifics crowd as being a victimized group that gets beat up in internet arguements all the time. It sounds like my statement was still correct regarding the fact that people actually get passionate enough to complain about lost meaning and people who want their "actual" translations are perfectly capable of reading honorifics (and more often than not still understand the honorifics anyway).

Forgot to mention that if the honorifics are dropped from the start, there's often very little complaints about them not being there. So your argument is a biased and cherry-picked look on it.

Insane to even make this statement as though your own argument is exactly as biased and cherry-picked. It is obvious to everyone that the discussion is unlikely to randomly come up unless a change is made midway through the translation. The fact remains people don't complain about honorifics being included from the start, even if you want to insist that it's actually because they know if they speak up they'll get cyberbullied or something. But if honorifics are dropped from the start, and then a scene comes up that revolves entirely around characters changing how they address each other and the translator has to cope with that, people usually DO speak up about it, and if honorifics are "translated" into something else then people DO complain about it from the very start, with much more frequency and frusturation about the issue than people being upset that honorifcs are there.

In fact, your entire RESPONSE was cherry-picked. Do you see how annoying this is, when someone replies to a post by picking apart every single paragraph individually and responding to each thing in isolation, instead of addressing the entire body of the post in all of its context?
All this yapping to try to get internet points winning an argument on little semantic bits, but you have not once addressed the actual core point of my posts, which is not about whether or not all people on earth currently have a inherent universal understanding of japanese honorifics, but that IF an effort is made to normalize their inclusion in more works, that understanding will come more quickly to those who don't have it and whatever problems do exist from including japanese honorifics will disppear if translators were to embrace the expectation that people can easily learn them without needing to study anything else about the language.

I've responded to you in this manner once to showcase how obnoxious it is and how quickly it degrades conversations into semantic shitflinging, but I'm not interested in doing it again. These stupid sentence-by-sentence responses are designed to completely remove all good faith from a discussion so that people can go back and forth doing gotachas and um, actuallys without ever trying to understand what the other person is actually trying to say.
I do not think some random translators should sometimes include honorifics and sometimes not.
I do not think literally everyone ever reading translations for the first time will have the knowledge magically beamed to their brain.
I don't even think that a pure english translation wouldn't be "better" for first-timers, in the context of understanding that individual work. It obviously would be, anyone encountering jp honorifics for the first time in their life isn't going to know what they mean.

My point is purely that IF the inclusion of japanese honorifics is normalized, that barrier to entry will still exist but it will be made extremely easy to cross, costing an extremely small price of some extra effort for first-time readers but giving a huge gain in universal understand and ease of translation regarding an omni-present part of japanese culture that the majority of readers already have at least some understanding of.
I am no longer interested in going back-and forth on anything unless you want to actually reply to this main point.

 

[Rutellum]

Hey, ive just got my popcorn here, continue the debate

 

[AnotherDuck]

Hey, ive just got my popcorn here, continue the debate

There's no point in arguing with someone who's just crashing out because of poor reading comprehension. I could see that at a glance, so I didn't bother reading it.

Edit: Case in point below. Complains about breaking shit down line by line after having broken shit down line by line, while still failing to understand the actual point. Off to the ignore list it goes.

 

[Anonyan]

•refuses to ever engage with the actual central point of what the other guy is saying, instead breaking shit down line by line into semantic nonsense
•"he just has poor reading comprehension that's why I'm not responding to this"

Right.

 

[letmereadmangas]

awfull lot of yapping without much happening.

 

[Freestyle]

Whole chapter just spent on side characters and its not really an interesting development either and its a monthly manga

why lol

 

[Junpaku]

•refuses to ever engage with the actual central point of what the other guy is saying, instead breaking shit down line by line into semantic nonsense
•"he just has poor reading comprehension that's why I'm not responding to this"

Right.

"If he was actually reading what I wrote he would agree with me because I'm such an obvious genius" is what those kinds of guys are thinking.

 

[Junpaku]

Every time this comes up there's always this grand insistence that there have never been professional translations using japanese honorifics.
There are. They exist. There are several on my shelf right now.