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Translation Quality; Terrible Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5928 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 1 of 3 19 May 2009 at 11:14pm | IP Logged |
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Have you often come across terrible translations for your native (and foreign) language?
Although I find that the quality of English translations, though varying in beign faithful to the source material, is generally enjoyable in that, without seeing the original material, you can still understand the original message behind the movie/song/videogame/whatever. The only problem I can find is that, since the material I look at is often marketed at a younger audience, many, many things are changed because they are 'too adult', leading to situations like adults getting drunk off of espresso. It's amusing to compare these differences as they sometimes even end up as better than the original material. The quality of Spanish translation, however, to put it bluntly, sucks. I am sorry that I have to use such language, but I can't find any other word that expresses my frustration with Spanish translations. I don't know how to put it, but they are terrible. Every aspect - the voice actors, the jokes, the actual translation, everything sounds awful. For example, I was rather pleased to find the entire soundtrack of RENT in Spanish and proceeded to listen to my favorite song, but was disappointed to find that a) The song's lyrics were changed to mention the props (character sets something on fire, jumps on table, whatever) b) the original message wasn't there c) The meter was totally off (I know that Spanish has long words, but it's absolutely ridiculous to hear translators try to stuff a candid translation of an English sentence into one line when they could have evenly spaced it over two lines and the message wouldn't have been lost) d) the song didn't rhyme (this has to be my biggest pet peeve. It's absolutely ridiculous that these songs shouldn't rhyme when the original English song did. It's not like rhyming in Spanish is difficult either, because I can name groups that sing in Spanish and have songs that rhyme.) e) the voice actors are ridiculous (not a problem with the RENT soudntrack, but with children's cartoons, it's hard to find a character whose voice doesn't make me want to stuff my head in a hydraulic press.) f) the jokes are direct translations from English or not there at all (if a character has a funny or a cute accent because they come from another country, this is totally ignored and they are just given the same, bland accent everyone else has. There are also many times, though I can't think of any examples right now, when the translators directly translate a joke from English to Spanish and, even though it could work, end up mauling the joke in the process. I've told translations of English jokes to my Spanish-speaking family, and they've laughed, while I'm certain that if I used the official translations, they wouldn't understand. This isn't really a problem for me, since I know that keeping jokes is one of the most difficult parts of translations [COW-terpie]). To further demonstrate my biggest peeve, D, let's take a look at a line from "Take Me or Leave Me", which is my favorite part of the song: "Don't fight, don't lose your head because every night, who's in your bed?" I would have done my amateur translation like this: "sin pelear, no pierdas la cabeza porque tu sabes con quien te acuestas" (without fighting, don't lose your head because you know who you sleep with) It's dorky, the meter's slightly off, but it rhymes and the original message of the song is kept intact without sacrificing too much. The rhyme is loose, but it's close enough to be considered one. Take a look at the official translation: "y tu no te puedes quejar por que al final, quien duerme aqui?" (and you can't complain because in the end, who sleeps here?) Wow. I was more or less impressed with the song until then, since they had some element of rhyme and they did manage to convey the message without changing the lyrics too much, but this line seemed like a failure. First off, it seems to imply that the singer has an element of dominance over the other. It has this feeling of "Quit complaining, because I sleep here." The original lyric, on the other hand, has a totally different feel: "For all your complaining, you still sleep with me." So, they didn't get the original message across. Whatever. This would be ok if the lyric still sounded as nice as in English, but it doesn't rhyme. My lyric, though awkward (especially the first part), rhymed and managed to have the same feeling as in English while keeping a meter that wasn't too off. And, though this is my opinion, I felt that the meter was off and that the singer had to 'force' the lyric in. So, yeah. Now, I don't feel this way about all Spanish translations. For example, I'd say that the Spanish versions of songs from animated Disney films are actually very good in terms of keeping the feeling and rhyming while paying attention to the props on film. I'd say the Disney films ar an exception, though, as I am usually disappointed by the quality of Spanish translations (I can't say anything about French or Russian since I'm probably missing out on double meanings and other fun benefits native speakers have). I'm not saying that all translations are like this, either; it's possible that the same company does the low-quality translations for each movie, and TV show that I've found in Spanish. I have no doubt that there are good translations in Spanish (I've come across some awesome fan-translations, though I've lost the links), but for me, at least, they remain difficult to find. So, how do you feel about the quality of translations? Do you think that translations into your language are typically good and faithful to the source material, or that they're forced, soulless, and poor at conveying feeling? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 3 20 May 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged |
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Short answer: all the time ! Particularly problematic for instruction manuals.
So I read in English.. But I really feel for those people who do not speak good enough English to do that. ------------------ One particularly hilarious thing is FAN-SUBS. Have you come across them? I recently watched a crazy Russian film called "Booomer" (inspired the rap song "chornie boomer") There were no official subtitles but a Latvian guy had provided fansubs. I am not sure what his Russian was like, but his English was (not good) and sometimes even with my very limited Russian I noticed problems... But of course I am still grateful that he used his sparetime to do a project like that. Without it I would not have been able to understand enough of the film to enjoy it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| guesto Groupie Australia Joined 5747 days ago 76 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 3 20 May 2009 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
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If you think Spanish-English translations are bad, try some more obscure combinations. Out of curiosity I recently looked at some little known Russian science fiction translated into Spanish and was shocked at the quality. Whole paragraphs were left out, like the translator just couldn't be bothered!
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