How much interest in JP to EN tutorials that will tell you things the dictionaries get entirely wrong?

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I've seen a lot of unfortunate translations lately that translate 'uso' as 'lie', which is absolutely wrong. Even if every MTL or dictionary tells you 'uso' is 'lie', that's wrong. It's pedantically correct if you're going 'Hello fellow teens!', but 'uso' almost always means 'no way!' where the speaker just can't believe it, instead of being an accusation of deliberate insincerity - they're not being maliciously lied to by a deceptive third party, they just can't believe reality. I was kind of wondering how much interest there is from actual JP -> EN translators wanting to know the subtleties of Japanese that all the oblivious translations miss.

And then where the hell would I put it? I don't see anything in the forums for translation tutorials. It should probably be under this Scanslation section, but...?
 
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As you described, the issue is about people who use MTL and learn the bare minimum to "translate" manga. Students that take language seriously enough (that use proper academical materials) don't commit such mistakes, although there's always someone trying to defy everyone's expectations... for bad. I must say though, there's a handful of students from Translation degrees that just assume there's a single translation (or two) for every word, and they'll automatically translate that word/expression as a MTL would do. So I'm not sure a tutorial would solve much... just a warning such as "read all the entries of the dictionary, there are things called examples".
PS: You find it even in official anime/manga translations, to name some but few they mess up with 違う and 間違う all the time...
 
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I've been thinking about doing this too, but there are so many and I simply do not have the time to compile everything.
We speak of people using machines, but there are plenty of real human beans that automatically go for only one specific english word without considering whether or not it makes sense, simply because that's how they learned it.
There is the obvious case of あなた which every japanese course, even the online ones like wasabi, tells you it can mean "darling" when used between spouses or lovers, yet people go straight for the "you" (the pronoun); the more subtle case of はい that is always, always, always translated as "yup" or "yes" (or even the hideous "yeeeees") when the proper translation might have been "yessir", "roger" or even "leave it to me"; the technically correct case of "western clothes" which I have talked about in the comment section of this chapter...
Writing everything in a single document is a daunting task and I think it would be so long nobody would actually read it. It's probably better to go on the comment section of each chapter and be the "akshually person" pointing out those mistakes.
 
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JMDict actually has the interjective/"no way" meaning as sense 4 under its entry for 嘘. So this isn't really an issue of the dictionary being bad so much as one of people refusing to look beyond the first proposed definition for any given headword, even in the presence of contextual clues suggesting that it doesn't make sense. I'd hardly call the idea that a word can have multiple meanings "subtle," but given the number of low-quality translations on this site, maybe you're right after all...
 
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I was kind of wondering how much interest there is from actual JP -> EN translators wanting to know the subtleties of Japanese that all the oblivious translations miss.
1) I don't think this is solely an issue of not understanding "subtleties of Japanese";
2) It is not fair to assume that all of these misses are from "oblivious translations". It is also a problem of not being familiar with the language that the translator is translating into (which is English most of the time).

For 1) you simply have to look up the word in the dictionary, using your example, "uso" as "no way!" may not be the first definition, but it's certainly in the dictionary, you don't need to speak to a native JP speaker to get this. A more suitable example would be regional dialects for which information might not be readily accessible, especially in English.

2) isn't necessarily from being oblivious (to Japanese). There can be cases where the JP>EN translator isn't a native English speaker and although they can perhaps express it correctly in their native language, they fail to do so 100% correctly in context in English.

In the interests of adding to the discussion, I will contribute this:
"ああ…" is often treated as a sigh or similar, and just put down as "Ah...", when the surrounding context is that the speaker is giving assent, in which a more correct translation would be "That's right...", "Yes.", "Correct.", and so on.
 
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Honestly not sure of the usefulness of yet another translation dictionary. Agree that "uso" can mean more than just "lie", but it can be so many different flavors of "no way!" depending on the context, the character's personality and speech patterns, whatever comes after the uso "desho/daro/yaro/etc."
 
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Disclaimer: me not scanlator; me bilingual idiot =)

TLDR; I see merit in the idea and I believe the fastest way to test it is using Wiktionary as the platform (e.g. see the definition of uso)

I like the idea of creating tutorials (or translation databases) to help people learn Japanese (or any other language) solely because I believe it is a good thing by itself. That is, I am not particularly concerned about how such tutorials would impact the quality of scanlations. I simply think that having the tutorials is better than not having them.

I assume most of those working with scanlation are young people learning the craft and that not all of them are aiming to actually translate manga as a profession. Who am I to judge the reason for young people's hearts? Whichever the reason may be, what we get in the end is not the fruit of years of polishing their skills, it is the result of their process of learning it by doing it -- something like learning a language as praxis. In that sense, I expect to see mistakes. Lots of them. But I also expect that some of them, not all, are willing to take edifying criticism (because some criticism is done just to put people down) and improve themselves.

I think it is valid to help those who are trying to improve. And if by helping those who want to learn you end up also helping those not really concerned about learning, then all the better.

You see, translating is hard. I think it is valid for an author to use "うそ" as the interjection "no way", but meaning "lie" because the theme of his text is "lies". I can't obviously think of any real-life example other than José Saramago's prohibition of translating his book "Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira" (Blindness) from Portugal's Portuguese to Brazilian Portuguese because he wanted the words as they were to not change their meaning. As you start delving into etymology, you start seeing that synonyms are only valid in casual speech. Certainly, I doubt this would be the case on scanlation, but it is just a thought on the complexity of the issue.

Anyhow, back to the matter at hand, I believe the easiest way to test your idea of creating tutorials is to use Wiktionary. They already have a system that allows users to enter the definition of words and even have discussions on how to define them. You would need to check how the system works and you can even start a discussion there on how scanlation issues could be addressed there. Although Wikitionary's purpose is not to help scanlation, it should still be interested in improving the quality of its word database. And if you give up on the tutorials, your work will be part of a larger project that will continue to use and improve on it.

So I think it's a good idea that can be quickly prototyped with existing tools. I understand that as a "business", Mangadex would benefit from having its own dictionary. But even so, I think I would stick with Wiktionary because I think that no one "owns" the language and WikiMedia has proved as a trustworthy company in the sense of making knowledge freely available.

Best of luck! =)
 
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So you're going to come up with a list of terms that MTL regularly gets wrong and give people some other examples for how it is regularly used in language? Aren't you just coming up with an aditional resource for MTLers at that point? I think it would be a much better use of your time if you joined your local political party and advocated for the jailing and quartering of all people who MTL manga.
 
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As much as I'm interested in seeing something like this, it's probably just gonna be a fun linguistic study for people who already have a decent level of proficiency with the language. Your intended audience likely won't care about this at all.
 
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Lie is still correct, and the correct tone for most scenario. i don't see how it can be wrong. it's not an english literature works in the first place, so nuances and context should always be kept in Japanese essences. "No way" also aren't the very definition of Uso, depends on situation which i think i playful manner would suited "No way" more whereas using it in more serious situation sounds cringe, but that's just my perspective.
 
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depends on situation
The whole point of this thread is exactly that people don't consider the context, pick the first result they see from Jisho or whatever, then call it a day.
Focusing on the example given (嘘) is missing the very reason of this discussion.
 
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There's this Translator Guide spreadsheet that I remember was made a while ago; it hasn't been updated in a while though. It was made with the intent to give translators alternate translations for words/phrases that are commonly mistranslated or done so awkwardly. If I remember correctly, it was spread from twitter, and it's a sheet that was made from group effort. It's a public document, so anyone can edit it. I'm not so sure about sharing it openly here, so if anyone wants the link just shoot me a DM.
 

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