That figure...

Jarlath said:

That figure...

And that face...

ALostRouter said:

And that face...

Gotta marry them both too.

But Ryuujou is smaller than her. How much of a lightweight is she?

Wow, I had to look up an idiom for a change! (Being not the most familiar with Southern American English and all.)

tapnek said:

But Ryuujou is smaller than her. How much of a lightweight is she?

Apparently Akitsu Maru's tanks are just for show.

Paracite said:

Wow, I had to look up an idiom for a change! (Being not the most familiar with Southern American English and all.)

It's not that uncommon... but it is old fashioned. Just like RJ.

Also, classically, it's "won't hunt", even past tense, IIRC. But I've heard "don't" more.

Paracite said:

Wow, I had to look up an idiom for a change! (Being not the most familiar with Southern American English and all.)

I tend to offer learning experiences. This is not always a good thing. :-)

And characters like Ryuujou (such as Yamame/Souma Mizuki as portrayed in "Hang in There, Kogasa-san") are just ripe for the usage of the colorful and creative phrasing and phonology of the American South, I find.

It's still a shame that it's not really feasable to use even more exotic accents (read: not American or RP English) very often...

Paracite said:

It's still a shame that it's not really feasable to use even more exotic accents (read: not American or RP English) very often...

Well, the series I was handling got cleansed of exotic (Australian is exotic?) lingo a few days ago in a drive-by. That happen often?

BlastingNaba said:

Well, the series I was handling got cleansed of exotic (Australian is exotic?) lingo a few days ago in a drive-by. That happen often?

Doesn't sound like fair dinkum to me.

Moonspeaker said:

Doesn't sound like fair dinkum to me.

Wasn't given a fair suck of the sav to be sure.

BlastingNaba said:

Wasn't given a fair suck of the sav to be sure.

Not kapai at all, cuz.

One could think that some people, non-native speakers especially, don't really get what some of those 'exotic' phrases mean; thus they assume others will also be confused, and take it upon themselves to 'fix' them (assuming they know enough Japanese to know what it's 'supposed' to mean). Or maybe they're just 'Stop having fun, guys' people - the ones who are vehementently against anything that isn't a 1:1 direct representation of the Japanese presented as is - with any embellishments, no matter how minor, being verboten.

The paradigm really does tend towards 'safety' in translation, even when the Japanese itself is so heavily accentented so as to be almost unintelligible even to native speakers; That, and a good amount of English accents are done through, well, accentuation, rather than lexical change - which is a good bit difficult and nigh-impossible for non-native (or even non-native to that region) speakers to get through to reproduce in text.

Or there's a third option, espeically to the non-US/UK accents - to many, the default 'English' is American, and thus anything that isn't that is just strange and offputting - to them, translated Japanese is, essentially, American English (with some allowance for accents) and maybe a little British for high-class, snooty people. If it comes up as Australian, New Zealand, Cockney or similar, it can seem insurmountingly odd - almost like it's not a real translation at all.

And while it's certainly accepted here on danbooru (and for translation in general) to default to American English for the purposes of spelling and whatnot, does that really apply when the Japanese is appreciably different from Standard Japanese (TM)? Of course, translating to 'exotic' English does require knowledge of that dialect as well, and given that some translators are also non-native speakers of English in the first place, well...

This doesn't even address the usage of well-known snippets of non-English languages for the likes of the German, French and Italian ships (such as verdammt, merci or ciao)... Or even just using British English spelling for Warspite... (Or reverse-translating where English text has been put in...)

(Oh dear, I've decended into rambling...)

Moonspeaker said:

And characters like Ryuujou (such as Yamame/Souma Mizuki as portrayed in "Hang in There, Kogasa-san") are just ripe for the usage of the colorful and creative phrasing and phonology of the American South, I find.

For some reason, I always think of the Kansai accent as more like that Bugs Bunny/Harley Quinn Brooklyn thing than Southern. Maybe it's because of the seaport connection.

zgryphon said:

For some reason, I always think of the Kansai accent as more like that Bugs Bunny/Harley Quinn Brooklyn thing than Southern. Maybe it's because of the seaport connection.

Not unusual; I've seen it translated that way as well, and it's a reasonably equivalent fit. I just got into the habit of considering it Southern after the dub of Azumanga Daioh. (The localization team of the Ace Attorney series went the Southern route for Osakan Oosawagi Natsumi/Lotta Hart, now that I think about it.)

I now find it difficult to imagine the Kansai characters I've listed as speaking with Brooklyn dialect and accents, but I still acknowledge it as a viable option.

Moonspeaker said:

Not unusual; I've seen it translated that way as well, and it's a reasonably equivalent fit. I just got into the habit of considering it Southern after the dub of Azumanga Daioh. (The localization team of the Ace Attorney series went the Southern route for Osakan Oosawagi Natsumi/Lotta Hart, now that I think about it.)

I now find it difficult to imagine the Kansai characters I've listed as speaking with Brooklyn dialect and accents, but I still acknowledge it as a viable option.

Osaka from Azumanga codified the Osaka = Southern US to many people - while it certainly wasn't the first Osaka/Kansai-ben person in a western release (Naru/Molly(?) from Sailor Moon comes to mind - who was done with a New York accent, IIRC), she was also one of the first to be explicitly identified as someone from Osaka (even in translation), with that being a fairly major plot point and character trait. I'm pretty sure there was a fairly lengthy explanation of it translation notes for the manga way back then, also.

With the large reach and popularity of Azumanga, both in anime and manga, it really made that connection incredibly concrete as the general translation archetype. It certainly doesn't help that (as I said before on some other post) there are basically 2 broad 'American Accents' - 'Standard' (i.e. midwesternish with some California because of TV and movies) and 'Southern' (usually leaning towards Texan-ish), even more so if you're not from the US (With generic New York/New Jersey, California and maybe Boston accents usually being recognised later with more exposure). And considering to people who know just a very little about Japanese accents, it's the same with Tokyo ('Standard Japanese') and Kansai (Including Osaka), which more heavily accented Tokyo-ben being often done through less formal word choice and sentence structure.

If you really wanted to use a Brooklyn accent somewhere, it maps quite nicely to Eddoko (e.g. Suzukaze), since it's a very 'not taking any shit' city accent both in English and Japanese (but you could also make a case for Cockney, being a similar sort of feel - and I've used in the past for her).

But with all things like this, you're translating for your audience - if the general opinion is that Osaka-ben should be Southern American English, then that's what you'll have to use, even if it's not what you'd really how'd you like to translate it as. (Or which I'm sure is frequently apparent with my translations, being rather not familar with - especially in idioms and the like).

Paracite said:

[stuff about essentially forced standardization for translating certain Japanese dialects into American-English equivalents]

I certainly don't object to translators making use of dialects with which they're suitably familiar; I still recall enjoying your use of "Wotcher" for Kongou. I'd never considered using it myself because I'm not familiar enough with it to judge where its use feels appropriate, but I had no problem with it being used per se.

If I'm not that familiar with someone else's chosen translation dialect, then I consider it something new to learn, so long as it isn't too much to absorb in one shot. (If it requires too much explanation, that disrupts the flow of reading and thus potentially reduces the reading enjoyment.) I actually try to let alternate spelling for the pronunciation carry most of the effect, but sometimes a solid Southernism simply feels like the best choice to me. I may not always succeed in striking the best balance, mind you.

It's emergent, rather than forced standardisation really; for better or worse, Kansai-ben is Southern American English at this point just from the sheer mass of extant translations that have gone for it. I also never object to using regional dialects, but it always feels like we're hamstrung about just how little we can really use of them (especially where the difference in pronunication isn't one what comes through in text). And I'm always at a loss of appropriate Southernisms for Kansai-ben, simply from the fact that as a non-American my vocabulary in that field is rather limited without having to do actual research (and I have to do enough of that for Japanese dialects!), and I even have to worry over if what I'm using is accurate, or just some misremembered snippet from something I read/watched years ago!

There's no 'standard' for other regional dialects in translation though - but I would hazard as much as it would be nice, there won't be many people who'd ever use (or even accept), a UK West Country Farmer for Akita-ben, as suitable as that would be - I've seen the more 'rural' Japanese accents usually just translated into some kind of generic 'country bumpkin/hick' style. It's a shame since there's such a diversity in regional dialects in Japan (even though they're dying out, but there still exists good variation at the prefectural level at least.)

For me, something like thick Kagoshima-ben - which while being in Japanese (unlike Okinawan) is famously difficult to understand even for native speakers - could aptly be translated as Singlish (or Indian English) - close enough that you can parse, but still rather different; I but I really can't see that going over well with anyone.

When it comes down to it, you're inherently limited in what you can use by the audience - and most people just aren't familiar enough, or interested enough to look up themselves, any kind of radical departure from the standard continuum of English. All that we can really do is try to get the variance of the Japanese through into English - and not have it come across too strange...

Paracite said:

We can dance on the head of a pin as well!

Paracite said:

to many, the default 'English' is American, and thus anything that isn't that is just strange and offputting

American English has a proportionally large influence thanks to all the media from the US. I'm not sure it being the default is quite right though, at least not outright where I'm from. Certainly there are words or idioms that might seem unfamiliar but mixing things up isn't necessarily going to be met by blank stares. I've even had an English teacher call what's often spoken/written as English in Europe as "International English" due to the relaxed and free mixing of different variants of English. Now to be clear English from the UK and the USA is surely the primary influences.

The only times I'd consider it off-putting myself is if I can't parse it at all. So yes, in such cases it dampens what can be used to some degree. It might be alright if it was supposed to be almost intelligible in the original, native version as well. I do know dialects in my own language which can be difficult to understand, to the point where in extreme cases certain sentences are easier to understand in foreign but related languages. An issue is that as a reader of a translation I'd have no idea if that was the intended case in the original or not. I don't remember actually encountering any translation which I couldn't understand however so the off-putting issue is rather theoretical anyway. Well, barring translations made by someone who doesn't grasp English to begin with which is an entirely separate thing.

The term "International English", at least in linguistics, is characterised by lower information density, shorter and less linked sentences and critically, a notable reduction (or even elimination) or similies, metaphors and idioms (note that this does not mandate a lower vocabulary in general) - it's said that because of this, two non-native speakers of English will be able to understand each other more easily than either of them talking to a native speaker - not in that they won't be able to be understood at all, but that a native speaker tends to use words and phrases that are idiomatic in nature, and thus cannot be understood on base meaning alone. This often comes from a non-native of a region lacking the regional background to instinctively parse and comprehend an unfamiliar phrase, and thus would need to look up what they mean when they encounter them. (To counter this, a native speaker may engage in code-shifting to ensure understanding by reducing the amount of regional-specific vocabulary used.)

This, of course, is somewhat ameliorated when it comes to US (and to a lesser extent, UK) dialects, due to the vast reach and penetration of cultural products - because of exposure to TV, movies and music, many people already have the implicit knowledge to understand a good amount of said vocabulary without having to even think about it. It's incredibly unlikely for a German speaker of English to use similies/metaphors from Australia and New Zealand, but when it comes to US/UK ones, even if they don't habitually use them in conversation, they have the capacity to do so without much extra effort - this is what I'm meaning when I say 'default' - not that people speak US English as the default, but that it's the one that is understood the most the world over.

To bring this back to translation, all it really means is that, as with "International English", you tend to have to (but not always) restrict yourself in what terms you can put out there unless it's being readily apparent from the context - which restricts regional metaphors even more harshly. And thus, US English is what you have to focus upon because it's the most broadly understood; and that you tend to only be able to have dalliances with 'rare' dialects, rather than going full-hog into it when writing for the broadest audience.

But then again, I studied Japanese linguistics more than general (or even English) linguistics, and I'm not the greatest translator in the world, so...

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