[This is a guest post by prussia of the prussianbluehedgehog scanlation group, a legally distinct entity from Prussia of prussiafan.club]

I have been scanlating for apparently, well over a year now. As the translator of such ~~mildly notable~~ globally renowned works such as Shikanokonokonokokoshitantan and ~~unbelievably obscure~~ cultural giants like Ubunchu, I feel like I have enough street cred to say there's really only one fundamental thing that separates good translations from bad ones: Whether or not the translation accurately conveys the author's intent.

Well, yeah, no shit, right? Unfortunately, this is apparently not so obvious to everyone. Some hobbyist and (even) professional translations do a disappointing job of preserving the author's meaning.

So, I will vainly (in both senses of the word) try to get all us translators on the same page.

## Localisation and Cultural Context

"Localisation" has always been a bit of a loaded and controversial topic, so I think it would be helpful to separate into two categories.

First, the intent of some localisations is to change or remove content from the source material, in order to avoid offending the non-Japanese audience's perceived sensibilities. A infamous example (though for an anime, not a manga) is the english version of Sailor Moon, which [removed violent or sexual scenes, and changed queer characters to be non-queer, accidentally making a lesbian couple into a pair of incestuous cousins instead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailor_Moon#Westernization). More recently, lines or scenes perceived as misogynstic have been removed too. This can hardly even be called localisation, since it really is just censorship.

Second, other localisations change things in order to make them foreign concepts understandable to non-Japanese people. **Good translations should do this!** The easiest way to illustrate this is by looking at how dialects are handled^\[0\]^. In "2DK, G Pen, Mezamashi Tokei" by Oosawa Yayoi, one the main characters speaks in a strong Hakata dialect. The excellent fan translation by Ropponmatsu, uses a Scottish dialect instead, and *importantly*, the translator explains that they substituted the Hakata dialect for the Scottish dialect. It's cute, and as the plot is divded between the character at work, where she speaks in standard Japanese, and at home, where she speaks in her dialect, the choice ends up working quite well. Similarily, the character ~~Ayumu Kasuga~~ Osaka in Azumanga Daioh speaks in a Osaka dialect, and is a bit of a "slow" character, which is portrayed as a American Southern dialect in both the dub of the anime and the manga translations. Now, the Osaka dialect is not a perfect analogue to a Southern dialect. When localising, you will find that these concepts rarely have perfect analogues. To avoid misleading readers, translators need to explain what decision was made, and why (which is what Ropponmatsu did). In Azumanga Daioh, they leave in that Osaka is from Osaka and speaks Osaka dialect. They do not change her into a character from the American South. Not having any localisation at all would make our translations only marginally better than machine^\[1\]^ or dictionary translations, and confuse readers.

**However, there is a difference between translating concepts and removing them entirely.** In many manga, a spoken word game called [shiritori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiritori) is played. No such equivalent exists in the western world. I have seen some translations change a game of shiritori into a different game entirely. That is wrong! This type of "localisation" doesn't help readers understand an unfamiliar concept, it just avoids doing so entirely. And in a practical sense, this will confuse the reader, especially if the omitted concept is referenced later, or there is some important information contained in it. Beyond that, it is not our place as translators to make drastic changes. We are not writing our own work, but trying to faithfully reproduce someone else's work in another language! Perhaps it is acceptable to change the words played into shiritori so that they start and end with the same letters, so readers have a vague (but not quite accurate) idea of what shiritori is. If that is done, the original words should be disclosed. And either way, there should be a TL note somewhere explaining what shiritori is.

There are other examples of this misguided practice. Some translations also change Japanese cultural references into western ones without noting they did so. Some translations do not indicate (whether by font, wording, or note) when a character is speaking in a certain level of formality. For these, the culprits at least have the thin veneer of an excuse. It can be a little difficult to explain these concepts to someone who isn't familiar, and even once explained, the reader won't truly "get it" like a native resident would.

Some translations change Japanese names into local names. The Detective Conan manga calls Kudo Shinichi "Jimmy Kudo", and Ran Mori "Rachel Moore" (to be fair, they do this to maintain consistency with the english dub, so it's really the anime's fault). Some translations change Japanese foods into western ones. The most infamous case is the Pokemon english dub called what were clearly rice balls "jelly-filled donuts". C'mon guys, I bet people can handle Japanese names or the concept of a rice ball! Some change panel and page order so manga can be read left-to-right instead of right-to-left, messing up the artwork.

Bad, bad, bad! Luckily, these practices are decreasing over time.

What these misguided localisations are trying to do is not "translation", but rather "retelling". There is a time and a place for this; yes. But it would simply be wrong to present, as an example, the West Side Story as a translation of Romeo and Juliet.

What is important to realise is that the cultural context is *part* of the story, you cannot remove it while preserving the story. Shockingly, manga written by Japanese people are often set in Japan or have Japanese characters. Good localisation familiarize unfamiliar concepts, enhancing the reader's understanding and enjoyment in the long run. Good localisation assumes the reader is curious!

## Jokes

I often see jokes literally translated, so that they don't make sense at all, or even worse, removed. Needless to say, this is bad. This kind of thing is probably just the translator not being actually knowing Japanese (or being tired and missing a joke), so there isn't much that can be done about that, I guess.

Besides that, I think most translators handle jokes reasonably well. Most people handle puns by thinking of a similar pun in English and substituting it. To me, this is perfectly reasonable. Puns are normally "throw away" jokes, so the exact pun is *usually* not important. In many cases, a good pun cannot be found, so a TL note is left explaining the pun.

Transforming puns into puns is widely accepted, but other kinds of jokes are more complicated. Jokes that are funny because they make fun of a character or thing can usually be easily translated. But for more difficult jokes, I am on the side that they should be preserved, and an explanation given. These more complex jokes are not really "throw away", and can be elaborate setups by the author, and so it isn't right to replace them with our own jokes.

## Content and Wording

This is the last section I'm writing so my lengthy tendencies have tired out a bit. I'll try to keep this short.

Some translations re-word and rephrase lines so much that it almost reads like the translator was given the cleaned page (the original text removed, only the drawings), and writes the text based on vibes. This is my criticism of the Shikanokonokonokokoshitantan manga's official translation. Well, it's not quite that bad, but you can see the wording and sentences are often quite different from the Japanese. As I am a fan translator of shikanokonokonokokoshitantan, do not take that as an objective criticism. It is probably coloured. Whether it sometimes goes too far, and loses some nuance, is probably a matter of personal opinion. Anyhow, I am against the styles of translation that treat it almost like an oral tradition that can retold a million different ways. Yes, there are many ways to translate a text, but the number of ways to translate it such that the voice of the characters (as the author wrote it) is preserved, is much fewer.

## Accuracy vs. Flow?

So is a good, accurate translation at odds with readability? Are faithful translations doomed to be long, wordy, and clunky? Nope. In fact, it is just the opposite. Truly excellent translations flow with the same smoothness (or possibly, lack of smoothness) as the original text. The flow and length of the original text is part of the context, and cannot be ignored. How is this possible without compromising accuracy? Accuracy is not looking up every word in the dictionary and copying the definition into the text. It isn't even necessarily replicating the sentence structure exactly. It is about understanding what the text is actually saying, and successfully communicating it a different language, nuances and all. Rephrasing or saying something a different way is perfectly fine *if* the same meaning and nuances are preserved. Which is difficult. When a character says a line of dialogue, we should have questions like: "Why did the character say this?", "What emotions are present in the line?", "Is this speech casual, formal, passive-aggressive, or insulting?", etc etc. Then, we can ask the same questions of our translated text and see if the answers remain the same. **Essentially, we should think: "If the character were to rephrase this, how would they do so?"**

I'll admit sometimes I am too conservative and opt to preserve certain phrases, lengthening the translation as a result. It takes a lot of skill to have accuracy and flow co-exist, instead of balance. Hopefully I'll get better at this^\[2\]^.

But there no doubt will be situations where certain concepts or nuances cannot be succinctly conveyed, no matter the skill of the translator. In that case:

## Use TL Notes, Goddammit!

At this point, you've probably noticed my preferred solution to most problems, translator notes. They really are a miracle cure, and underutilised. Please use them more. I *especially* love it when the translator adds a whole page at the end of notes to explain things that wouldn't fit under the panel.

Translator notes add nuance and clarification without making the dialogue too wordy and clunky. Translator notes educate the reader about cultural context or even plot context. Translator notes provide a window into the mind of the translator - what decisions they made, and why. Without translator notes, readers who don't know Japanese and don't have access to the source material will mistakenly believe the author/characters said something they never did, or even worse, not understand what is going on at all. If that happens, we as translators have failed.

While I assert that our job is to smoothly and correctly translate the author's intent, I do not mean we do not leave any of our own influence on the work. That is impossible, since there is no deterministic algorithm for translation. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional. We have to make decisions about every phrase and line. Hopefully, those decisions make it so non-Japanese readers can experience the manga in a very similar way as Japanese readers do. But, those readers should be made aware of those decisions.

Hence, translator notes are essential.

## Holistic Translation

All these bad translations stem for a single misunderstanding of what is *actually being translated*. What is being translated is not just the plot, not just the words, not just the feelings of the character. Rather, it is all that, plus cultural context, and many other components, all considered *together*, considered *holistically*.

Now, different works and different translators will weigh these factors differently. For some stories, it might be critically important for the plot to be extremely precise, and other aspects might need to be slightly sacrificed to ensure that. There is still much room for great, and reasonable disagreement on what the weightings should be for all the factors, or whether a certain translation correctly reflects that weighting. These are more "subjective" disagreements, matters of taste. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to take seriously translations which do not start from the basic premise that all aspects of the original work must be holistically considered, and that unweighting certain contexts requires extremely careful, serious thought.

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Footnotes:
- \[0\]: I used to be of the opinion that sfx should not be localised, but I have changed my mind. Old me was wrong. English readers do not know that "ガタガタ" is the sound of something shaking or clattering, and even if they could read it as "gata gata", it wouldn't really help. I think the best way to handle sfx is to write, in small text next to the sfx, the meaning of the sfx. Unfortuantely, in some manga, there is no space, and having a TL note underneath the panel does not always work (eg, multiple sfx), so in that case cleaning the sfx and replacing with the English equivalent is appropriate. Honestly, leaving the sfx as the original is quite common and acceptable too, but providing a localisation is better.
- \[1\]: For obvious reasons, I have been thinking a lot about AI lately, mostly against my will. It really sucks that entire classes of art and craftsmanship are being wiped out. Regular translation has already been gutted, and I'm a bit scared for when it comes for scanlation too. Some people are probably already using it to translate... augh. Interestingly enough, the world's greatest piece of literature since the Epic of Gilgamesh, Shimeji Simulation, seems to have something to say about this. I want to eventually write an exegesis (what a fancy word...) about it. Hopefully Shimeji Simulation will help me cope.
- \[2\]: Translating to Toki Pona, which has only a few sentence structures, and 120~ words, is a good way to practice how to rephrase a line without losing the essence or important nuances, in my experience. If you try to translate too literally, the sentence will be too long and confusing, so you are forced to simplify.

