東京には訪れるべき場所がたくさんあります
“There are many places to visit in Tokyo.” Is the textbook translation, but would a more accurate translation be, “In Tokyo, visit places many exist.
Though not grammatical sounding in English, it would more accurately represent what order a Japanese person is reading/ hearing the information wouldn’t it? Tokyo comes at the start and has a は combined particle to boot so it’s strange for it to pop up at the end of the translation.
These kinds of translations had a very interesting effect when I was watching the comedy series on Netflix “Last One Standing” with my wife. I was reading the subtitles and we’d get the punchline at completely opposite timings usually so we’d rarely laugh at the same time. I was thinking it would make more sense to try and limit how much the words are rearanged and flipped around, especially when the order creates a certain effect in the audience such as laughter or shock.
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Feel free to email translations@netflix.com 😉
I understand the problem, as inaccurate subs are one of my pet peeves, but you need to keep in mind these are made for people who can’t understand Japanese, so they have to make more sense in English than be direct translations
edit : forgot to actually write the main point of my comment
The show would probably be a lot more annoying to watch as not only would we have to deal with reading broken english, we have to take that little bit more time to process the meaning behind the words, which isn’t gonna work well in fast paced dialogue, or action scenes where you focus more on what’s happening.
Try turning off the subtitles.
Not re-arranging the words is a bad translation, word order indicates meaning.
English puts prominent new information at the start of the sentence, whereas Japanese in reverse tends to put it at the end of the sentence.
“*今日は学校に行く。*” should be translated to “*I’m going to school today.*”, not “*Today, I’m going to school.*” which is used in English to emphasize “today” as in to contrast in with “yesterday”.
This can also be seen in the example sentence. “in Tokyo” in the Japanese clause is old information and “new places” is the new, relevant information, that is thus moved to the back.
A good reminder of how especially difficult it can be to translate jokes and banter with the right balance of substance, tone, and timing.
With a learning resource, I would agree. Sticking to the original word order more closely would be helpful, and not translating Japanese idioms into English idioms would be very illustrative. But English subtitles for Japanese content aren’t made for people learning Japanese, they’re made for people who want to watch a movie that’s in Japanese but they understand English. They’re also not made for couples where one person is watching the subtitles and the other is understanding the dialog.
So their goal is to make the Japanese movie as native feeling to an English viewer as possible. If all Japanese movies had really weird English that didn’t sound anything like what a native speaker would say, people wouldn’t enjoy them as much because they’d be harder to understand, harder to follow, and contain a bunch of phrases they’ve never heard and don’t know what they mean. The goal of a translator isn’t just to translate the words, but to translate the meaning and even the emotion, as closely as possible, so the English viewer has the same experience a Japanese viewer would.
For simple sentences this may work but when you get into idioms or wordplay it basically becomes impossible.
Like if you tried to translate “it’s raining cats and dogs” literally into Japanese, it would make zero sense to a Japanese person.
Or try to translate よろしくお願いします into English without changing the word choice while still being intelligible. It can’t be done.
a translation is something that expresses in the target native group the same thoughts and feelings as the original did in the pre-translated version. stunted, twisted, unnatural english sentences do not provide an equivalent experience for english natives, so, no.
The subtitles thing is just an added on anecdote, my main point was translation of text book sentences and such. Thanks for the varied responses. I still find it helpful to translate in this way when I’m learning. Passive voice stuff is giving me some trouble, it seems to be more unusual to use it in Japanese than it is in English?
Not sure it would work for subtitles. But I wouldn’t be opposed to doing this sort of things in textbooks, granted that we’re dealing with *an interlinear translation*. With the correct formatting, this would actually be quite useful.
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>I was thinking it would make more sense to try and limit how much the words are rearanged and flipped around, especially when the order creates a certain effect in the audience such as laughter or shock.
I agree, but I don’t think broken English is the answer. A skilled translator should find creative ways to convey the timing in English without going so far as to keep the Japanese word order.
I don’t think you grasp the most fundamental principles of English, i.e. It’s an SVO analytical language where word order matters because context isn’t baked into words like it is in, say, Latin.
Japanese is a synthetic language where, while it lacks the different forms (dative, accusative, etc.) to bake context into the words, the system of particles gives it a bit more freedom than English. Even so, Japanese still has something of an order of particles, which is almost 100% of the time at least SOV.
Japanese has a bit of freedom, but still generally sticks to a word order. The *entirety* of context in English is based on word order, so there is far less freedom. So to answer your question: *Yes we need to change the word order.*
When Japanese shows are translated, they’re actually localized.
What that means is, they’re given the most natural sounding sentences to convey the message. Which may require taking out, replacing, or putting in words that weren’t originally said.*
That’s also subject to restrictions, like subtitle space. Which may require the translator to reword things to fit that space.
* This may all seem counterproductive. Why would you word things differently than they were said? But as you learn the language you find that how Japanese words relate, and the meaning they imply, can be vastly different from how those same words relate in English and the meaning it implies.
A sentence in Japanese and a sentence in English, with the same wording, can give off vastly different vibes. It’s important, therefore, to change the wording to give off the same mood/vibe/message.
They could have said “In Tokyo, there are many places you should visit.” to be more close grammatically to the original. But it reads as a little clunky. Making “There are many places to visit in Tokyo” by comparison a lot smoother of a choice.
Remember, subtitles and translations are not for learning purposes, they’re for non-Japanese speaking audiences to enjoy the show with as much ease and fluidity as the Japanese audience does. For all intents and purposes, the target audience for subtitles are the people furthest away from ever understanding Japanese.
Personally, I like picking apart shows, and will occasionally turn a screenshot into a mini lesson. For education purposes I tend to provide 2 translations; A 1:1, with the words directly translated and in Japanese word order, and a localization as close to the original as I can get to better convey the message. But I try to make it clear that the translations I provide for learning purposes ARE NOT necessarily the best translation for entertainment purposes.
EX:
**漢字:** 女神の剣を手に入れた！神々しい光を帯びた神秘の剣
**かな:** めがみ の つるぎ て に いれた！ こうごうしい ひかり を おびた しんぴ の つるぎ
**Romaji:** Megami no tsurugi te ni ireta! Kougoushii hikari wo obita shinpi no tsurugi
**1:1 Eng:** Goddess ‘s sword hand in entered! Divine light (wo) tinged mystery ‘s sword
**English:** [Link] has the Godess’s Sword! A mysterious sword imbued with a divine light
beki is being ignored in your translation.
Poor Becky!
The translation you posted is fine. Subtitles are supposed to sound natural. No one wants to read an ungrammatical, garbled, broken version of their own language.
A problem occurs, however, when writers start butchering the work (e.g. adding mood-killing jokes during a serious moment, arbitrarily changing a villain’s motivation leading to plot holes later on), or burying cultural elements (can’t have kids learning stuff like foreign geography and mythology now, can we.).