cactuswatcher (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cactuswatcher) wrote2010-07-08 01:39 pm
cactuswatcher) wrote2010-07-08 01:39 pm
Fun with Translation
I lust bought a couple of the Harry Potter books in Spanish for comparison with my translations. It isn't just the American publishers that change titles for their own reasons. Some of the Spanish titles are accurate translations. Others are quite different.
Harry Potter y...
1) la piedra filosofal - Literal
2) la cámara secreta - The Secret Room... not absurd, but odd considering the translation used inside the book is the more literal "la Cámara de los Secretos" Chamber of (the) Secrets
3) el prisionero de Azkaban - Literal
4) el cáliz de fuego - The Chalice of Fire... Close enough to literal.
5) la Orden del Fénix - Literal
6) el misterio del principe - The Mystery of the Prince, which avoids the tangle of the English idiom "half-blood" in the title, but given the Spanish convention of not capitalizing all the important title words, ultimately isn't as clever as the original.
7) las Reliquias da la Muerte - Death's Relics. More straight forward and less obscure than the English
from the Chinese
I've been watching the DVDs of a Chinese TV series called The Seven Swordsmen. Not too surprisingly it's a Chinese version of Japanese The Seven Samurai and that movie's American western version The Magnificent Seven. Without getting into too much detail the Chinese version forgets the central theme of the original(s) that in the end, violent people, good or bad, always lose and that the peaceful always win. In the Chinese version the Seven are trying to protect a village full of people who wish to keep their weapons and keep training in martial arts against the wishes of the recently victorious Manchu (Qing) dynasty. This version not only has different personalities among the seven swordsmen, but different personalities among the swords. It's full of wildly impossible sword play. It's not nearly as polished and dreamlike as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and comes off as a kids' show with some very oddly adult themes and scenes. Perfect for teens of all cultures, I presume.
Since I don't speak either Mandarin or Cantonese, the two spoken choices on the DVD, I have to depend on English subtitles. It is interesting that while there are quite a few minor mistakes, there are no patches of gibberish as are often seen when Japanese is poorly translated into English.
Examples
The Old Man, Leader, head Swordsman asks the headman of the Village not to call him 'Master Fu' but "Senior Fu." The correct words would be 'Elder Fu'. but you can understand what he means.
When the Swordsmen have been very active, the onlookers frequently tell them to "get some rests."
The evil general tells the more evil prince that so-and-so has escaped, but that he will soon "captivate him." Which makes for some interesting slash ideas, but isn't quite what he meant.
You can't really blame the translator if the meaning of a word has changed in recent years. When I was a kid 'bitch" was a taboo word and almost always meant "an immoral woman." Since the 1970s the word has become more acceptable and now almost always means "a hateful, unpleasant woman." So when one of the passing female interests who has been sold into prostitution tries to convince one of the heroes not to let himself get too attracted to her, she calls herself a 'bitch', to which I immediately thought, "While that may be true, I think given the circumstances, you mean prostitute or perhaps whore." There are probably also multiple words for this in Chinese because she calls herself "a whore" later in the same conversation.
In this same vein of changing mores from a different era, I've just finished watching the DVDs of the first season of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents series from 1955-56. That series constantly played cat and mouse with the censors. (Censorship was so strong, in those days husbands and wives on TV did not sleep in the same beds. Evil could not triumph on TV, etc.) The very first episode is about an attack on an emotionally fragile woman. The visuals very strongly suggest she was raped, but the dialog consistently shepherds the censors, if not the audience, away from that notion.
Harry Potter y...
1) la piedra filosofal - Literal
2) la cámara secreta - The Secret Room... not absurd, but odd considering the translation used inside the book is the more literal "la Cámara de los Secretos" Chamber of (the) Secrets
3) el prisionero de Azkaban - Literal
4) el cáliz de fuego - The Chalice of Fire... Close enough to literal.
5) la Orden del Fénix - Literal
6) el misterio del principe - The Mystery of the Prince, which avoids the tangle of the English idiom "half-blood" in the title, but given the Spanish convention of not capitalizing all the important title words, ultimately isn't as clever as the original.
7) las Reliquias da la Muerte - Death's Relics. More straight forward and less obscure than the English
from the Chinese
I've been watching the DVDs of a Chinese TV series called The Seven Swordsmen. Not too surprisingly it's a Chinese version of Japanese The Seven Samurai and that movie's American western version The Magnificent Seven. Without getting into too much detail the Chinese version forgets the central theme of the original(s) that in the end, violent people, good or bad, always lose and that the peaceful always win. In the Chinese version the Seven are trying to protect a village full of people who wish to keep their weapons and keep training in martial arts against the wishes of the recently victorious Manchu (Qing) dynasty. This version not only has different personalities among the seven swordsmen, but different personalities among the swords. It's full of wildly impossible sword play. It's not nearly as polished and dreamlike as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and comes off as a kids' show with some very oddly adult themes and scenes. Perfect for teens of all cultures, I presume.
Since I don't speak either Mandarin or Cantonese, the two spoken choices on the DVD, I have to depend on English subtitles. It is interesting that while there are quite a few minor mistakes, there are no patches of gibberish as are often seen when Japanese is poorly translated into English.
Examples
The Old Man, Leader, head Swordsman asks the headman of the Village not to call him 'Master Fu' but "Senior Fu." The correct words would be 'Elder Fu'. but you can understand what he means.
When the Swordsmen have been very active, the onlookers frequently tell them to "get some rests."
The evil general tells the more evil prince that so-and-so has escaped, but that he will soon "captivate him." Which makes for some interesting slash ideas, but isn't quite what he meant.
You can't really blame the translator if the meaning of a word has changed in recent years. When I was a kid 'bitch" was a taboo word and almost always meant "an immoral woman." Since the 1970s the word has become more acceptable and now almost always means "a hateful, unpleasant woman." So when one of the passing female interests who has been sold into prostitution tries to convince one of the heroes not to let himself get too attracted to her, she calls herself a 'bitch', to which I immediately thought, "While that may be true, I think given the circumstances, you mean prostitute or perhaps whore." There are probably also multiple words for this in Chinese because she calls herself "a whore" later in the same conversation.
In this same vein of changing mores from a different era, I've just finished watching the DVDs of the first season of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents series from 1955-56. That series constantly played cat and mouse with the censors. (Censorship was so strong, in those days husbands and wives on TV did not sleep in the same beds. Evil could not triumph on TV, etc.) The very first episode is about an attack on an emotionally fragile woman. The visuals very strongly suggest she was raped, but the dialog consistently shepherds the censors, if not the audience, away from that notion.