Category Archives: rambles

10 Things I’ve Learned In A Year As A Translator

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I started my first, official translation job with the company I’m working for in mid to late November of 2018, and I got my first anime title to translate for them at the beginning of January 2019, so I’m splitting the difference and calling this my one year anniversary as a translator. Hooray!

Here are 10 things I’ve learned…

  1. Translation alone won’t pay the bills. (At least, not at first.)
  2. English skills are important. (a.k.a. the thesaurus is your friend)
  3. The hard stuff always needs to be localized.
  4. Translator doesn’t get the final call.
  5. Working in a team is hard, but it can be rewarding
  6. Everyone has a different depth of understanding.
  7. The fans are a force to be reckoned with.
  8. A written medium is easier than a spoken one. Probably.
  9. There will always be things you wish you could go back and change
  10. I love it.

Want more detail? You got it. Elucidation below.

1. Translation alone won’t pay the bills. (At least, not at first.)

This should have been obvious, but somehow it wasn’t. Translation is a job just like any other. You have to work your way up the pay scale, put in the time, earn trust, and gain experience. Also, I’m freelance, so that’s got its own set of challenges…

2. English skills are important. (a.k.a. the thesaurus is your friend)

People who want to be translators, myself included, tend to focus their linguistic studies on whichever language is their non-native language, in my case, Japanese. However, as I translate from Japanese to English, knowing more English gives me more options when I’m confronted with a scene where three characters greet each other by saying, “Yo・ro・shi・ku,” “Yoroshiku onegai itashimasu,” “Yoro~♥︎”

Also, solid English skills ensure that you’re saying what you think you’re saying. For example, “you mistook aggressiveness for rashness,” means that you thought it was “rashness,” but it was actually “aggressiveness,” whereas “you mistook rashness for aggressiveness” means you thought it was “aggressiveness,” but it was actually “rashness.”

3. The hard stuff always needs to be localized.

It was actually one of the veteran translators I’ve gotten to work with who explained this to me. I’ve got a tendency to want to leave the more untranslatable, culturally embedded words and phrases such as “itadakimasu” and “yoroshiku” untranslated because, well… they’re really untranslatable. They can mean a bajillion different things in a bajillion different situations. What was pointed out to me was that that’s exactly why they need to be translated. For the audience member who’s never heard it before and wants to know. For the audience member who’s heard it a million times, but not quite in this context. To help them understand, it needs to be localized. Because it’s really, really hard.

4. Translator doesn’t get the final call.

This is another one of those things I should have realized and didn’t. In the world of official translation, the owners of the source material have the right to make sure things are done the way they want them done. That makes sense. But so many other things can come into play. For example, other people’s official translations. If an anime is based on a light novel that has an official translation published then the novel translation can influence the anime translation. Why? Because the existing fanbase is going to be expecting consistency even if the companies producing the translated works are completely unaffiliated. So, names, attack names, place names, character names…

Also, see point 5 below…

5. Working in a team is hard, but it can be rewarding

Teams. Working in teams. Working in teams of people you’ve never met before, so they’re just names on an email list, and you’re not exactly sure what they want from you, but you don’t want to disappoint them or make their jobs harder, so you do what you can, and… yeah.

The thing about teams is that it can be rough at the beginning when you’re still getting to know everyone’s styles and schedules. Sometimes things get thorny over linguistic expression and interpretation. An editor might argue for readability over cultural accuracy. When everything’s clicking though, you can get a synergy that creates something which is greater than the sum of its parts. That makes all the rest of the grind worth it.

6. Everyone has a different depth of understanding.

This is true of people you work with, editors, bosses, people back in Japan who have to sign off on a project before it can be called “done,” but it’s also true of the people consuming the finished products. If you’re working in a team, communication is of the utmost importance because there’s no guarantee that the things you think are “obvious” are obvious to the rest of the team. When you’re creating a translation, there’s no guarantee that whoever’s consuming the end product will know that thing that “everyone knows.” Sometimes you can make it easier for that person, and sometimes you can’t, but it never hurts to try.

7. The fans are a force to be reckoned with.

I’ve watched anime since the mid-90s. Actually, technically, I’ve watched it since the 80s, but I didn’t know the cartoons I was watching were from Japan, so I don’t think it really counts. That said, I’ve never really been a part of the anime fan culture. In this past year, I’ve seen how active and responsive the fanbase is, as well as how much their thoughts and reactions can influence the people working on the projects. It makes sense. It’s a business after all. Gotta keep the customers happy! And, business aside, when you see a comment saying that someone really likes the project you worked on, well… that’s a good feeling. Gives you energy to tackle the next project!

8. A written medium is easier than a spoken one. Probably.

I’m still going back and forth on this one, but I think there are a lot of freedoms in translating manga or prose that you don’t get in translating dialogue for anime subtitles.

With anime, you have the advantage of hearing native-speakers who are also really good actors act out the lines for you. This is, however, a double edged sword, because you then have to match what they do in tone and intention with your translated text. And people can hear if you did it wrong. They can get very judge-y. I know I do it when I’m watching subbed anime. I’ll yell at the screen, “that’s not what they said!” It yanks me right out of the story.

When you’re doing manga or prose, there isn’t any original Japanese left in the final product for the consumer to compare your translation to. (Okay. There’s sound effects in manga, but that’s pretty much it.) If you want to get very loose with your interpretation because you think it reads better that way, you can, and hardly anyone’s going to call you out on it. But in an anime, if someone calls out “ekisutora janpingu dogeza” and you put up a subtitle that says “super jumping grovel,” you can bet someone’s going to be yelling at the screen. (They said “extra”! “Extra Jumping Dogeza!” Why can’t they get it right? I could do that job!)

9. There will always be things you wish you could go back and change

Some of this has to do with the speed at which translations need to be pushed out to keep to production schedules. Even if the deadlines are completely reasonable, which they may or may not be, they’re still deadlines. Cut-off dates. Points of no return. Hard lines which say “you cannot go back and change this again, ever.” And inevitably, sometime after you’ve submitted your final translation and it’s gone live or gone to print, that one phrase that you just couldn’t quite get right will suddenly unfurl in your mind leading to exactly the right words. Too late.

10. I love it.

In spite of all the challenges, the late nights, the impossible-to-translate phrases, the differences of opinion, the mental and emotional demands… I do love translating. I love it. It’s storytelling in a different form. It’s a chance to help people see the things I see and feel the things I feel. When the source text is funny or sad or profound, I get the chance to help hundreds of thousands of people understand it, to love or hate the characters, to experience a story they never would have without the help of a translator. I am proud and happy that one of those translators is me.

The New Doctor Who and Why I Hate Labels

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I have watched The Woman Who Fell to Earth!

When I heard that the Thirteenth Doctor was going to be played by a woman, I wasn’t sure what to think. People had been clamoring for it for a while, but I hadn’t ever been one of those people. I liked that the Doctor was a man. Maybe it’s because I am a hopeless romantic and a part of me still wants a knight in shining armor to come and rescue me.

Not that I can’t rescue myself, thank you very much.

And that’s the problem, I think. I am a Feminist. I believe that women are strong and smart and creative and deserve the right to choose in everything that relates to them. But “feminist” is a label, and the pesky thing about labels is that as soon as you use one people start getting ideas in their heads about who you are and what you think… also, about what you should think.

And there’s the second problem.

I’m the kind of feminist who thinks that women are strong and smart and creative and have the right to choose in everything that relates to them, but I am not the kind of feminist who thinks that men can’t understand, or can’t do things as well, because they’re men. For me, that’s just sexism all over again.

Yes, I think there are things that women have higher aptitudes for than men, but I also believe that there are things men have higher aptitudes for than women. Back when I was a dancer, I used to be jealous of the boys because they could jump higher and turn faster and had better turnouts than most of the girls. Not to say that there weren’t girls who could jump high, turn fast, and have beautiful turnouts. There were. But males have a natural advantage – their bodies are physiologically built better for that sort of thing than girls.

Similarly, there are scientific studies that suggest that male and female brains perceive and process the world differently. We just don’t handle things the same way. And, to swing all of this back around to Doctor Who, that’s why I was worried about the Doctor being played by a woman.

You see, I trust the Doctor Who team. Even though there are new people around, Chris Chibnall for a start, they’re people I believe will respect the world and the fans.

I wasn’t really worried about the fact that they’d chosen a woman for the Thirteenth Doctor, because there isn’t any in-world reason the Doctor couldn’t be a woman… I was worried about what the Doctor being played by a woman would feel like. Would she still have the quirks, the fire, the sadness, the kindness that I so love about the Doctor?

I’m not sure yet.

I think Jodie Whittaker is amazing in the role. She feels Doctor-y from the moment she steps onscreen. But I’m not sure I’ll be able to connect with her the way I’ve connected with the other Doctors.

Weird. After all, I am female. Shouldn’t it be easier to connect to a female Doctor?

And there we go with the labels again. Labels lead to preconceptions, and preconceptions are only helpful up to a point.

All I can say for now is that it feels different. The quirks don’t feel quite as endearing, the fire isn’t stoked quite as hot, the sadness has strength instead of fragility behind it, and the kindness… I think maybe the kindness is good.

Which is good.

Still, I find myself asking, do I feel this way because the person playing the Doctor is a woman? Maybe. Maybe not. There’s the natural aptitudes thing and the natural proclivities thing to think about. Plus, there are my own prejudices against women and for men to consider. It’s possible that even if the next Doctor had been a man that the Doctor would have been played in a similar way.

It’s early days yet. Just have to wait and see. I can say this for certain though… I can’t wait to see what happens in episode two!

I’ve Made a Decision

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I haven’t updated this blog in two years. Two years. Over two years.

That’s not right. As a self-published author, a quiet blog does no one any good at all.

I’ve read all kinds of articles, gone through all kinds of courses, and they all say that I need to blog regularly. The problem is that they also talked about building a brand and sticking to an image and projecting a persona, and I got so worried about how to do that that I froze.

I’m not a Facebook sort of person, much less a Twitter-y one. I’m not super comfortable with sharing about myself in general, not to speak of doing so on the internet. But I do like talking with people about things I like. So, that’s how I’m going to think about this. I’m going to write about things I like and hopefully other people who like the same things will find the posts and like them too.

So, I’m going to talk about Doctor Who and British mystery fiction and anime and Japanese culture. And I’m going to put my knitting stuff on here too and not worry about keeping Knitting-Designer-Elanor separate from Fiction-Writer-Elanor because that just starts getting too complicated too quickly.

I’m not sure if it’s the savvy thing to do, but it’s got to be better than nothing. Right?

World Book Day!

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Twitter tells me it’s World Book Day, and when Twitter tells me something, I listen!

Unless it’s something ridiculous.

Dumb ridiculous, I mean, not fun ridiculous. I like fun ridiculous.

So, on this, the World Day of Books, I’ve decided to go back and revisit a few of my favorites. Right now, I’m thinking maybe a couple of short stories from Peter S. Beagle’s Slight of Hand and Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors, and maybe I’ll dip into The Secret Garden as well.

Aside from O. Henry’s “The Last Leaf.” Neil Gaiman’s “The Price” might be my favorite short story ever. It’s rich and dark, evoking hope and terror in equal measure. Of course, my being a cat person doesn’t enter into my opinion at all.

The Secret Garden and A Little Princess have been favorites of mine since I was little, holding pride of place on my bookshelf right next to the Sherlock Holmes anthologies recommended to me by my grandfather. When I was in fourth grade, I even convinced my teacher to let me turn the closet where we stored our coats and tote trays into a “secret garden” with ivy made of construction paper and roses made of tissue. I think it’s the magic that draws me back to the stories, the magic they find in everyday things that makes their lives better. And, really, when I see a sky filled with clouds painted pink and gold by the setting sun, or a butterfly sunning itself on a freshly bloomed rose, or hear a burst of laughter spring from true friendship, it’s hard not to feel a little of that magic myself.

Books open my eyes and heart to the world around me and they give me a safe space to retreat to when I need it.

What are your favorite stories, and what do they do for you?