Artist tagging help

glasnost said: But in the context of a fantasy world, "Lord" and "Lady" are often appropriate, and in cases where they are appropriate, I think they serve to get a message across to English readers better than "-sama" does.

Yes, setting does matter, to an extent. No honorifics in Gurren Lagann? I'll live. No honorifics in Saraiya Goyou? GTFO.

But I can not think of any situation in which I'd consider leaving honorifics in as an actively negative thing. Maybe a wash at worst.

It is, in a large way, creating a new work.

This is really at the heart of what I object to. I couldn't disagree with this more. For me, the objective is never to create a new work, it is to convey the original work with as little change as possible.

Creating a new work is the line of thought that in extremes results in "Robotech" or "Mew Mew Power", or that translator you mentioned earlier. That actually got a physical shudder out of me.

Changing people to be more cognizant of other cultures would be lovely, but I think the way to accomplish that is through actual, large-scale multi-national communication, not "TL note: keikaku means plan". (Yes, that was hyperbole.)

It needs not be anything so extreme. People adapt to these things in entertainment easily, naturally, if given the chance. If it's been excised by the middle man, then they're never even given the chance. Honestly, so very little credit is given to to the end user...

And really, if they're accepting of the unusual things going on on screen (to take anime as an example) name order is an absolute piece of cake. There are far stranger things about anime than -kun or Tanabata.

Edit:

(Although the idea that not even the creator of a work can authorize changes to that work is a fascinating one that I sort of want to agree with, but can't quite bring myself to actually do it.)

::insert Star Wars/Lucas debate I guess:: The real problem is that the user is rarely given a choice. If an altered edition were just one option alongside a faithful edition, I'd take the faithful and rarely think about these things. I'd probably still dislike the idea behind the altered one but it'd be hard to care a lot if I could ignore it. I'm so utterly adamant about this because it really is all or nothing in practice.

Okay, I think we've been editing our posts around each other for long enough now, so I'll quickpost to allow that I probably need to give more credit to Joe Public's ability to parse diverse cultural concepts and appreciate foreign works more completely as a result.

Edit: Agh, I just can't let it lie.

Creating a new work is the line of thought that in extremes results in "Robotech" or "Mew Mew Power", or that translator you mentioned earlier. That actually got a physical shudder out of me.

This is like arguing that evolutionary biology is bad because Hitler believed in a twisted, mutated version of Social Darwinism. (Although bringing Jay Rubin into the discussion was admittedly my idea.) Translation involves working at crossed purposes: on the one hand, you're trying to get as close to the source work as possible, while on the other hand, you have to acknowledge that you can't just teleport the source material into the target language. Going towards either extreme is a bad thing (I guess the extreme of your viewpoint really would be "keikaku means plan"); I'm just arguing to move a little more right of center.

And now I've Godwin'd the discussion myself, so you win by T.K.O. I think we more or less understand each other by this point anyway, and like I said, precious little of this applies to Danbooru, where the demographics of the audience dictates that I stick to the source language pretty closely anyway. (Although I maintain that translating "-sama" as "Lord" actually improves some translations, due to widespread misconceptions regarding "-sama"'s cultural implications, that situation isn't exactly the norm.)

My, this thing has multiplied since I went to bed. :/

First of all, I disagree with glasnost's extreme example about "taking off shoes", at least in the context of a work based in Japan, where these cultural differences are to be expected. But I understand the idea behind it.

Secondly, I agree with his claim that translating a work is essentially creating a new work. There is no way around this. Unless you copy the work word by word in the same language (which does not qualify as "translating"), you are necessarily writing a new one. (And for the record, I cringed at Mew Mew Power too.)

Language is a medium to convey one's thoughts and ideas. So to me, translating entails (1) reading one language, (2) interpreting the thoughts, and (3) reproducing them as accurately as possible in another language. Being forced to keep things from the source language interferes with this process.

I understand your frustration with having to rely on other people's translations, jxh, because that's the way I felt before learning the language myself. But you are not looking at this issue as an English speaker, you are looking at it as an English speaker who really wishes he could read the Japanese, which is not generally the target audience for a translation. And as you've stated yourself that you hate translations, it's technically impossible for me to produce a translation that you would like anyway.

Oh, and Fencedude, I never bothered to answer your question because unless you clarify why you think it's relevant, there is no point.

Its relevant because...people think nothing of flipping Japanese names, but never flip Korean or Chinese ones.

Why? Why is Japanese the OOOONNNNLLLLYYYYY language on the entire damn planet where name order is routinely flipped in translation? What, speaking as a translator, makes it ok to flip Japanese names, but not Chinese names?

They don't, eh? I would flip a Chinese name. Or a Korean name. When translating into English. Just because it's not a common practice doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.

Really? You would seriously make a reference to, say, Jong-il Kim?

Sure, why not? :)

If someone introduced me to someone Japanese with no knowledge of western name order, I'd prefer they tell them my name <Last Name> <First Name> so they don't spend the whole conversation calling me Mr. <First name>.

And I'm not sure why you think name order switching is such a big deal. It happens all the time to us and we don't seem to mind. Seriously, would you bat an eye if you were called by Last Name first to get your diploma? What about all the times you fill out forms and it asks Last Name first?

Wow, thats such an amazing display of not getting the point that I'm in awe.

Jong-il Kim

Er, yeah, missed the point and is wrong besides. If you are obviously a foreigner, Japanese people know to expect you to introduce yourself <First Name> <Last Name>. If you reverse it on them they *will* call you Mr. <First Name> (provided they can't see through your reversal).

Oh your question is why it's okay to flip Japanese and not Chinese names. I was caught up in the "Who cares" point that most people are concerned with.

Answer: Japan opens their borders and stuff at some point in time in the past. A scholar, translating their works or letters or whatever, decides to flip their name order for a reason we may never know. Later, other scholars take note of this and understand that if they DON'T do so, people will be confused as to which order the name is in.

A seemingly random choice by some guy in the past is the reason why they are switched and Chinese and Korean are not. Deal. With. It.

Shinjidude said:

Which is why I said they have no knowledge of western name order. The west, and english people especially, are lucky because our culture has been spread (forcefully most of the time) to everywhere. So yeah, we probably won't ever have to deal with someone not knowing the conventions of our culture.

Which brings us back to the point that anime/manga fans (and as such Danbooruites) ought to know enough Japanese culture to be aware of their name order. Hence, there is no reason to swap them here.

Shinjidude said:
Which brings us back to the point that anime/manga fans (and as such Danbooruites) ought to know enough Japanese culture to be aware of their name order. Hence, there is no reason to swap them here.

Well, as far as I know, no one has been arguing to swap them here on Danbooru.

In my opinion, though, a real translation doesn't assume that the reader knows anything about the source language.

I think this is the artist's name: 俵緋龍

Chrome just says scarlet dragon bales/bags (no idea why it switches up on that).

Here's the blog:
http://sekikan-blog.sblo.jp/

Edit: here's the pixiv:
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=128685

Neither his blog, his Pixiv, or his top page indicate any reading, so whatever it is must be inherently obvious to native speakers. I'd guess either hyouhiryou or tawara_hiryou, probably the latter, but confirmation would be appreciated.

Wow. Maybe a new artist tagging help thread should be created, and this renamed and unstickied?

glasnost said:
Now, you and I know why he took off his shoes: Japanese culture dictates that one take off their shoes while inside someone's home. But seeing this line unmotivated would confuse just about every non-Japanese person who read it.

There are actually plenty of places where custom dictates not walking around with shoes inside. The only places I've heard of where they do are parts of the U.S.A and England.
I can't recall ever having seen it handled when localising American books to civilised areas, neither by rewriting nor by a footnote. I wouldn't be too surprised to see it done if you were translating something a children's book, though.

Maybe we should stop discussing that horrible tangent altogether. Sorry for contributing to it.

CaptainCappy said:
I think this is the artist's name: 俵緋龍

Chrome just says scarlet dragon bales/bags (no idea why it switches up on that).

Here's a tip: Stop using Google Translate/Chrome Auto-translate. It's bad in general and even worse when it comes to names.

glasnost said:
I'd guess either hyouhiryou or tawara_hiryou, probably the latter, but confirmation would be appreciated.

He commented his blog as 緋龍, and his friends call him 緋龍さん or 緋龍氏.

Maybe tawara_hiryuu is correct. But, hyou_hiryuu is a possibility.