Note "correcting"

Last night, Bansho went through the "Mamange" pool (pool #1368), altering the translations to include honorifics where they had been intentionally left off by the actual translators. I reverted the notes that I had done originally (but not the others', as two wrongs do not make a right) and sent him a message asking him not to fix what is not broken. He replied earlier today, citing the "howto:translate" guide's notes on honorifics and re-reverting his "corrections".

So, rather than get into a sissy-slap edit war, I'm making an appeal here. Those translations had stood without complaint for months until he came along. The honorifics had not merely been dropped, but their meaning folded into the translation as a whole through word choice and sentence structure. Or am I just being a jerk, crying because somebody came in and touched MY STUFF ;_;?

Oh, goodie. After the false start in forum #55948, I was worried we weren't going to get to have this discussion again.

• I think that some translations are improved by choosing to localize, rather than simply reproduce, honorifics, even given the moderately Japanese-savvy audience of Danbooru.
• I think that the choice of whether to localize or reproduce honorifics is, for some works, a very difficult choice, for which accurate and persuasive arguments might exist in either direction.
• I think that the "good judgement trumps these rules" clause of howto:translate should apply to this choice, just as it does for all the other rules on that page.
• I think that, so long as a translator produces grammatically correct sentences with minimal error in capturing sentence meaning, he or she should be assumed to have exercised good judgement in this decision unless an overwhelming majority of his or her peers agrees otherwise.
• For these reasons, I would like to call a moratorium on "style edits" such as the ones Tetrominon describes.

While Bansho (who has been doing quite a bit of "editing" of late) has been fairly even-handed, I don't think this is a situation where the 'rules' should be applied in a no-exceptions fashion, especially given the nature of this particular 'rule'.

• I think the internal consistency with something that could be called Danbooru manual of style, which includes preference for honorifics and other Japanese-specific elements, all other things being equal, is valuable in and of itself.
• I think it's valuable enough that edits fixing nothing but that aspect in otherwise good translations are warranted and desirable.
• As mentioned here and there in recent threads, the concept of "owning" anything on danbooru is misguided and ultimately harmful, since it leads to unnecessary feelings of hurt. If you don't want your work to be edited, don't contribute. If you choose to contribute, be prepared to see it edited mercilessly if we agree that it's a good idea. I'm aware that it's hard to give up the personal attachment, and I'm not claiming to be immune to it, but keep what I said in mind: your stuff is not the only stuff we will edit to bring it in line with other stuff we agreed is the good kind of stuff to have.
• I think it's good that Bansho goes over already translated material and edits it for consistency, since it's a lot of boring, unexciting work, but the end-result (consistent translations) is desirable.
• All of the above said, I think "Onee-chan, since I'm Tewi's Onee-chan..." is not an improvement. I'd phrase it as "Onee-chan, since I'm Tewi's big sis" (ie. "<Form of address> since I'm <meaning>"). That is, leave the honorifics alone, but translate the meaning. But the whole translation is suspect, and in need of revision. However, in its current form it highlights a particular problem very well:
• The original uses お姉ちゃん several times
• The translation drops that every time without a trace
• Then suddenly in one panel the translation suddenly refers to something that hasn't been said as far as the translated text is concerned. That panel is thus completely random, and illustrates just why we should default to keeping honorifics intact unless there's a very good reason not to. Namely:
• お姉ちゃんお夕飯どうしよっか？ → "What should I make for dinner tonight?". That's completely proper, since お姉ちゃん here refers to the speaker, and as English constructs the sentence differently, there's no way to work "onee-chan"'s way into it without making it ungrammatical and stilted. (In fact, the translation actually says "What'd you like for dinner tonight", which is unnecessarily straying from the original: it's a different question).
• お姉ちゃん大丈夫！？ → "Eirin, are you all right!?". This is where problems start. Eirin is not mentioned in the original text. And the translation imparts a meaning which isn't there, and which I'm not convinced is correct in the first place. I admit that panel doesn't really make any sense to me, but the translation doesn't look right, and it fixes a very ambiguous statement's meaning to one particular, possibly incorrect interpretation.
• Then we have "お姉ちゃん。てゐのお姉ちゃんだもん。。。 なきゃ（か）ないよ！" which suddenly references "sis". Since it's not been used anywhere previously, it comes across as random. OTOH, if the translation kept "onee-chan" where applicable, it'd be in line with other usage. As an aside, I don't think the current version is correct: from what I can gather, the intended meaning is "Onee-chan. You're Tewi's big sis, so don't cwy!".

Tl;dr: there are good reasons to default to honorifics, and good reasons to edit translations that drop them without a good reason. It's a part of the more general idea of keeping things as close to the original as possible without compromising the translation's stylistic and grammatical integrity. Thus edits that regularise already done notes are good and should be encouraged.

So, in regards to honorific "names", it's the difference between "Grandma" and "grandma", right? The first should be kept as "Grandma", but the later could also be "grandmother" (assuming the tone using either is the same).

葉月 said:

• I think the internal consistency with something that could be called Danbooru manual of style, which includes preference for honorifics and other Japanese-specific elements, all other things being equal, is valuable in and of itself.

Emphasis mine, obviously, because while I agree with this statement in general, I think there may be very different ideas of when 'all other things are equal' in play here. I'm going to trot out the same example I've used several times in the past: the honorific 様 ("-sama").

• 様 is, to the best of my knowledge, rarely used in Japanese speech, showing up primarily in formal letters and messages from companies to their customers. For a Japanese person, having grown up generally not hearing 様 used as a form of address in speech, seeing 様 appear in dialogue is a level of formality which strikes the ear/eye as unusual. (Since we're pretending to be linguists, I guess we could say that 様 is fairly highly marked speech.)
• For Anglophone readers who have learned all the Japanese they know through anime and manga (which I think accurately characterizes most Danbooru users), 様 appears to be commonplace, just another respectful form of address, due to its unusual prevalence in those media. (I remember that someone from one of the previous threads thought that one would address the President of the United States as "Obama-sama".)
• Therefore, in an otherwise unmotivated exchange, reproducing 様 as "-sama" will give Anglophone readers a rather different impression of the relationship between the addresser and the addressee than Japanese readers get. (If they even notice the honorific. As someone who has been translating amateurly [if amateurishly] for a few years, I still overlook honorifics on occasion, and it would surprise me if someone who knows "anime Japanese" didn't do the same.)
• Localizing 様 as "Master/Mistress", "Lord/Lady", or another equivalent term, gives Anglophone readers a chance at the same visceral feeling of unusualness Japanese readers feel, and increases the likelihood that they will correctly understand the relationship between the addresser and the addressee. Therefore, all other things being equal (as if such a thing is possible), the localization is preferable.

And a similar argument applies to pretty much all of my localization choices.

And to veer back towards the topic of the thread, my concern about Bansho's style edits is that, given his statements in forum #55948 and having skimmed through some of his edits, I fear that he may be taking a more mechanical approach to replacing honorifics rather than taking these sorts of things into consideration. (Of course, saying this sort of thing without having talked to Bansho directly first is kind of a dick move on my part, but this is the first chance I've had to put my thoughts to words. Bansho, if I'm misrepresenting your approach to this, please say so.)

Speaking more generally, I think that these sorts of decisions are oftentimes rather tough, and I'm not sure that it's best that they are left in the hands of one dude. God knows we have enough mega-threads, but it seems to me that if you're going to flip the style on an entire ~100-post pool, it would be better to gather multiple opinions and see whether there was reasoning behind the original choice that you might have overlooked, or whether there are alternate translation options that have not been explored.

tl;dr Having a unified Danbooru style isn't worth unduly altering reader's perceptions of the work, and if you look hard enough, you can put an awfully fine point on "altering perceptions".

glasnost said:
tl;dr Having a unified Danbooru style isn't worth unduly altering reader's perceptions of the work, and if you look hard enough, you can put an awfully fine point on "altering perceptions".

...Words alter perceptions. You aren't going to avoid that on either side, and I don't really like your perception of my perception, speaking in a general sense or not. Let the readers decide for themselves what to make of the honorifics.

RaisingK said:
I don't really like your perception of my perception, speaking in a general sense or not.

I'm... sorry? I'm going to have to take a guess at readers' perceptions of words at some point, or I won't be able to choose between "scared" and "afraid" for 怖い. I don't let readers decide for themselves on 怖い, because they aren't equipped to; I think the same is true of 様. Admittedly, I don't have any hard data to back that conclusion up, but I don't think you have any hard data that suggest the opposite, either; all we have to go on is personal experience, and mine (such as the example I gave in bullet point 2 up there) indicates that this is an area in which a great many people are confused.

Based on your tone, I get the impression you think I'm holding this opinion out of some contempt for readers, as though I think they're incapable of understanding what "-sama" means even if I explained it to them. Obviously, that's not the case; I don't think the concept's hard to grasp, and I'm sure some people figure it out just fine without my condescension. Again, it's just that personal experience leads me to believe that this might not be the case with the majority, and, given that leaving a translation note next to every usage of "-sama" explaining myself is not an option, I think localization can, in some cases, be an effective solution.

My own 2.5 bits:

Coincidentally, I just finished [strike]banging my head against a wall[/strike] translating a pun-filled Yokochou piece (post #845358), and I took great pains to localize the wordplay while maintaining the original nuances as best I could. I also provided translator notes briefly explaining the original puns. The explanations could still ruin the jokes, but I find my approach vastly preferable to simply doing a direct translation and then explaining the puns. At least the localized puns have a chance of being funny in and of themselves before the TNs spoil it.

My point in mentioning this is that it generally parallels my approach to Japanese honorifics and other translation pitfalls. To wit:

• I prefer a translation that reads smoothly and naturally in English, which generally means omitting/translating/replacing Japanese honorifics. However...
• I leave Japanese honorifics in place where they fit the character/mood. Granted, this is a very subjective judgment. If the person involved seems more likely to use the Japanese honorifics as a "real person" (say, Yuyuko or Chen), as opposed to someone more likely to speak like an Occidental (such as Marisa or Sakuya), and if the honorifics don't disrupt the flow of the dialogue, I leave them in.
• When I decide to omit/replace honorifics or forms of address like "onee-san", I try to do so consistently within the pool, at least if I'm the one doing all the translation for it. In the Mamange example cited above, I'd find the best solution would be to have Reisen call Eirin "Big Sis(ter)" at appropriate times (like she switches between "Kaguya" and "Princess" for Kaguya), so the problem line could still come out as "Eirin, you're Tewi's big sister, so don't cwy!" without seeming inconsistent with everything else.
• If someone else prefers a more literal style, that's fine by me, which is why I'll leave that aspect of others' translations alone, unless the usage is incorrect or utterly disrupts the flow of the translation. However, my choices for using/not using Japanese honorifics are carefully considered, as noted above. Thus, despite the acknowledged lack of sanctity of one's translations here, I still bristle when mine appear to be changed simply because someone feels I'm not following the style guide to the letter, when said style guide states outright that "good judgment trumps the rules", as Glasnost noted.

tl;dr version: The Danbooru translation rules say you can ignore them if you know what you're doing, and if the translation makes it evident that the translator's competent and consistent, then I feel localization should be left as-is.

For the record, I completely agree with what glasnost points out: the anime-Japanese an ordinary danbooru-goer is likely to know is heavily distorted compared to the language actually used by native speakers, cf. also how many times you've seen "kisama" being thrown around casually with what'd actually happen if you used it a conversation. OTOH, you need to consider that native speakers are subject to the same exposure and conventions when consuming anime-style language; it's no different from watching another Samuel L. Jackson flick and listening to mothafuckas flying while the baddies are shot and explosions outrun.

However:

Moonspeaker said:
Thus, despite the acknowledged lack of sanctity of one's translations here, I still bristle when mine appear to be changed simply because someone feels I'm not following the style guide to the letter

That was never what I advocated or endorsed. It's implied (and I stated it explicitly above, too) that you're supposed to make such edits carefully, without compromising the quality of English in the translation, and with due respect to whatever reasons the original translator had for choosing the particular rendition they did. Puns are the typical case in which you're not supposed to edit just for the sake of editing, because if you have to choose between quality and fidelity of the resulting text, quality should always trump. The above discussion is meant only for the typical case where you can usually have both if you try hard enough.

I'll prefer the notes that don't require changes badly are kept unchanged out of consistency's sake. Nothing like going through a pool to see honorifics swap back to back between English and Japanese.

How's keeping them unchanged making anything consistent? Keep in mind that most longer-running series pools will see many translators work on them, so only careful coordination or post-editing can make them consistent.

This is why I didn't want that rule in howto:translate... From forum #32054:

zatchii said:
And the honorifics issue is touchy... There's translators in both camps here, and I think trying to pronounce an official policy on it hopeless. I'm a bit afraid someone will get the idea to go on an edit spree to 'correct' other people's notes.

The truce we reached in that thread was the "if you're confident you know what you're doing, your own good judgement trumps these rules." clause, and editing perfectly good translations to exact conformance with a style rule that's controversial in the first place violates that.
Now I wouldn't hesitate to fix anything I think could be improved in notes myself, but adding honorifics to a well done translation really adds nothing.

Intra-pool consistency is nice; if I'm adding to a partially translated pool, I usually try to match the style of the already translated parts as closely as possible, especially in terms of address. But if the pool was completely or almost consistent in one direction, flipping it over to something else is frivolous, and I would support reverting the changes as a means of discouragement.

There are translations from hundreds of people here. There will be differing styles as a matter of course, and we should concentrate on enforcing the style points we can generally agree on.

Just to add another voice:
My experience is that it's fairly rare for honourifics to be important enough in terms of the subtle meaning they convey and changes caused by a shift in the relationship between two individuals to not be abstracted out. Making a good translation that preserves the meaning of the original while still reading easily in the target language is not easy. Because of this, it can be forgiven that these artifacts sometimes stick around (unless you're a professional; they need to stop that), but to add them into a translation that doesn't actually need it is just silly.

To be clear, I feel strongly that adding them to a proper translation after the fact is not desirable.

Just fair warning that I don't plan to get involved in settling this, so work it out amongst yourselves. Honorifics have always been my preference, very strongly, and I find heavy localization downright abhorrent, but there is absolutely no way to police every single note, so even setting a policy is a waste of time.

葉月 said:
However:
That was never what I advocated or endorsed.

Nor was it my intent to imply you did so, and I apologize if that's how it came across. As far as I know, you haven't been involved in changing any established, competent translations to insert omitted honorifics purely for the sake of following the style guide. :-)

It's implied (and I stated it explicitly above, too) that you're supposed to make such edits carefully, without compromising the quality of English in the translation, and with due respect to whatever reasons the original translator had for choosing the particular rendition they did. Puns are the typical case in which you're not supposed to edit just for the sake of editing, because if you have to choose between quality and fidelity of the resulting text, quality should always trump. The above discussion is meant only for the typical case where you can usually have both if you try hard enough.

I just brought up puns as another element, besides honorifics, that could exemplify my approach to translation, not as a complete parallel case.

I respect jhx2154's preferences, even if I do not share them. If he (or anyone who shares his translation approach) were to translate a pool and leave in all the honorifics, so long as they were utilized properly, I would leave them intact, even if I felt obliged to correct any typos or similar. In return, I would expect an equal, reciprocal respect for my own translation style. (Not to imply jhx2154 specifically wouldn't respect it; I mention his name simply because he's the strongest representative of the "include honorifics" approach in front of my eyes right now.)

Moonspeaker, is there a reason why you insist on western name order and different romanizations of names? In pool #1167, users (including myself) have changed the names (for example "Tenshi Hinanai" -> "Hinanawi Tenshi") for all posts because 1. translation guidelines, 2. consistency with the character tag. I didn't consider any of those edits a "style edit", but simply an objective correction.

On the topic, honorific yes/no are all good if they are consistent within the pool, but please DON'T use "Miss Forename" for Forname-san. Simply drop it or, if you ABSOLUTELY must, use "Ms" if the canon marital status is unknown.

葉月 said:
How's keeping them unchanged making anything consistent? Keep in mind that most longer-running series pools will see many translators work on them, so only careful coordination or post-editing can make them consistent.

Not when they're mostly translated by me and r0d3n7z back then. To make it worse, the honorifics are re-applied on only a portion of the pages. If whoever wanted the change, apply it on all pages.

S1eth said:
On the topic, honorific yes/no are all good if they are consistent within the pool, but please DON'T use "Miss Forename" for Forname-san. Simply drop it or, if you ABSOLUTELY must, use "Ms" if the canon marital status is unknown.

Now you got me confused here. Doesn't "Miss" literally mean a girl/woman who is unmarried? Are you mistaken it for "Mistress"(Mrs) here ? As far as I know, Ms is "Miss".

.

F.I.A said:
Now you got me confused here. Doesn't "Miss" literally mean a girl/woman who is unmarried?

Right. "Mrs" means married, "Miss" means not married, and "Ms" is apparently neutral. Not saying she's married, not saying she isn't. I didn't realize "Miss" and "Ms" were different until the search I did just now...

F.I.A said:
As far as I know, Ms is "Miss".

They're actually quite different. I think this applies in all Anglophone countries, but in America, we have Ms. Magazine to hammer the point home.

S1eth said:
name order and romanization

Name order, I think, is a situation where having a unified Danbooru style does provide a greater benefit than any good flipping could do, primarily because between mainstream convention, anime/manga convention among commercial translation, and fan translation convention, people's expectations are pretty well shot to hell anyway.

Name romanization, I dunno. The reason for using the romanization system we do in tags is to ensure a one-to-one mappping between Japanese and English words/names. When talking about a romanization in the context of a work that people read, though, you've got to balance that goal with the goal of making sure that a reader with no foreknowledge of the romanization scheme doesn't sound like a tool when he or she tries to pronounce the romanized word. Honestly, I have a soft spot for the 'h for every long o' convention (e.g. "Tohno" for 遠野 and "Tenoh" for 天王) because though it eliminates a clear distinction in the Japanese, you can pull Anglophones off the street and they'll instinctively say it correctly.

I imagine that Danbooru's audience generally knows how to pronounce "ou" when it appears in a Japanese name, though, which leaves "oo", "wi" and "we" as the only real potential troublemakers, and those being the rarity that they are, I've only ever encountered them in the context of some fandom or another, where I can feel fairly confident that the audience already knows how to pronounce the name. If I ran into such a name without such a context... actually, I'd still use "wi" and "we", because their connotations as deprecated characters would warrant them a translation note anyway where I could give the proper pronunciation. "oo", on the other hand, I dunno; I might render it as "oh", or I might render it as "oo" with a translation note on pronunciation, depending on what my horoscope said that day.