Slightly off-topic, my favorite translation moment is in Oofuri (a baseball anime/manga). The team manages a pretty difficult defensive move, and two of the boys are thrilled with the fact that this got them on base. One of them pumps his fist in the air while yelling, "yes!" (in english, mind you).
The fansubbers put in the subtitles, "Yatta!"
Japanese is one of those few languages where people seem to prefer the fancy schmancy transliteration thing.
Honestly, I think this is because Japanese -- the language -- has such a peculiar allure as some kind of 'really difficult and untranslatable' status, a mystique due in no small part to the Japanese culture's self-marketing, as well. If you're determined to set yourself apart from others, then you'd most certainly want to present yourself as having terms and concepts that 'can't be understood in any language but your own' -- a sort of modern-marketing version of the notion that the Qur'an can't be translated into any other language: the insistence on this single language-base in effect argues that 'go for it!' isn't an acceptable version, because 'nothing in another language can capture what we mean in this one'.
There are some terms that are more complex in the sense of being captured in a single term where other languages would use a combination of terms to achieve that same concept, but that doesn't mean you can't translate the term, it just means you can't translate it as compactly, and that's not the same thing as 'untranslatable' at all.
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Date: 27 Aug 2010 05:57 am (UTC)The fansubbers put in the subtitles, "Yatta!"
Japanese is one of those few languages where people seem to prefer the fancy schmancy transliteration thing.
Honestly, I think this is because Japanese -- the language -- has such a peculiar allure as some kind of 'really difficult and untranslatable' status, a mystique due in no small part to the Japanese culture's self-marketing, as well. If you're determined to set yourself apart from others, then you'd most certainly want to present yourself as having terms and concepts that 'can't be understood in any language but your own' -- a sort of modern-marketing version of the notion that the Qur'an can't be translated into any other language: the insistence on this single language-base in effect argues that 'go for it!' isn't an acceptable version, because 'nothing in another language can capture what we mean in this one'.
There are some terms that are more complex in the sense of being captured in a single term where other languages would use a combination of terms to achieve that same concept, but that doesn't mean you can't translate the term, it just means you can't translate it as compactly, and that's not the same thing as 'untranslatable' at all.