Asking purely out of curiosity. I am a beginner at learning japanese so forgive me if I don’t understand some things initially, but from what I do understand there are some things that can’t be translated directly into English. I’m also a big fan of Deadwood which has this kind of “Frontier Shakespeare” dialogue which it’s famous for: mixing very proper English with NSFW words like “fucking” and “cocksucker.” What I was curious about is how this kind of tone would be translated into Japanese and what manner of speaking would match the tone. I also gave some choice quotes from the series, as well to illustrate a better idea of what I’m talking about.
“Hearst won’t take long before he honors the rigors of his putrid, fucking nature.”
“When I say, ‘fuck yourself,’ Sheriff, will you put that down as ‘drunkenness’ or a high estimate of your athleticism?”
“And we who have pursued our destiny outside law or statute will be restored to the bosom of our nation”
“Does ‘bosom’ mean tit?”
“Same thing.”
“Disperse this riotous assembly!!”
Anybody who can give me insight on how to properly get this tone across in Japanese would be greatly appreciated.
4 comments
My Japanese isn’t good enough to try an translate these sentences, but I might have a little insight… All languages have things in common, Japanese just like English has different ways of speaking that makes it sound like how someone would sound 50 years ago, 200 years ago, etc. Localization also plays a part in conveying the tone- from what I understand Japan used to really fuck with Westerns. I would also love to learn some “cowboy” sounding words in Japanese, lol
Is the vocab worth spending a ton of time focusing on learning right now as a beginner? Depends on your goals but maybe not. Personally I’m focusing on learning how to sound natural and being able to speak to people I meet on the street, etc. You might find it hard to remember all these words when you dont have a solid foundation yet, and wont have an opportunity to be using them daily. Random- I really like the anime Dr. STONE & they talk real old timey in that one sometimes 😅
Not this, but something I think you’ll both appreciate and will help you make sense of localizations in other languages is this line from The Crown.
King George is reciting a limerick in which this line occurs:
> Despite her high station, rank, and education,
> she always spelled ‘Cunt’ with a K.
Which is localized to:
> 高貴な身分であたのに、高度な教育を受けたのに、
> 女性器をワレメと言っていた
Translation:
> Despite her high station, and her high education,
> she called a “vagina” a “pussy”
The line is, verbally FAR removed from the original, but it carries across the same general feeling and message.
So those lines you’ve posted would absolutely not be localized 1:1, but a similar idea would be conveyed that more fits with the Japanese culture and language.
Translating is more an art than a science. Give two translators the same material and they’ll often give you two completely different translations. It’s not that one’s “right” and the other’s “wrong.” It’s just two different interpretations.
Most E->J subtitles I’ve read (I like to watch American reality TV with Japanese subtitles lol) tend to more or less ignore things like wordplay, puns, and speaking quirks unless they’re pivotal to plot. Since the manner of speech seems to be pretty pivotal to the whole point of the show here though, I would hope/assume it’d be addressed in the subtitles.
One possible way to handle would be to have the Japanese subtitles mix “period drama speech,” which is basically historical Japanese lite so it feels old but is still easily understandable to a modern audience, with modern very very casual speech. That would produce the same kind of discordant feeling as the English
So like having someone mix でござる in with 知らねー or even modern slang. ガチでいい天気でござる。あいつ、キモいやつでござる
Certain things don’t really translate one-to-one and need to be more carefully adapted when translating something. This could be styles of speech, historical allusion or fiction tropes.
The reverse happens fairly often when translating from Japanese to English. How do you convey the different “vibe” of different first person pronouns? How do you set apart a character who speaks primarily using the polite registers even in a casual setting? How do you translate regional dialects, “samurai drama” Japanese or “speech tropes” like old men saying じゃのぉ?
With those specific examples, it really depends on what the translator wants to go for. Another person in this thread already suggested mixing modern Japanese with period drama. However it should be noted that Japanese fiction has a “westerner” register/character trope that involves specific speech quirks applied pretty uniformly (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about if you’ve ever seen any contemporary western shows dubbed in Japanese). Westerners tend to speak like that regardless of the accent or character voice they had originally. A mixture of that style of speech with some pseudo-classical expressions (or even basic pseudo-classical grammar you’d see in period drama) could also work.
The reality of it is that probably a lot of it will just remain untranslated. The way creative works are translated isn’t exactly high art at the moment (in large part due to deadlines and translator pay), and this doesn’t just apply to things translated *to* English.