Having done it myself, I find several big issues with Japanese -> English translation:
Honorifics. Referring to someone with -kun or -chan or -sama or -bucho all have very different connotations. Sure, you could just include the honorifics as is but I don’t think that many people unfamiliar with the Japanese language know what -kohai means.
Culture: Even if the translation is perfect, characters may act in bizarre ways for Westerners. “He knows that guy is evil, so why doesn’t he shoot him?” “Shooting people is very serious shit in Japan.” “Well no one told me!”
Puns: The big one. To give an English -> Japanese example, how do you translate the joke, “I no that!”? Joke being, the “no” implies that the speaker doesn’t actually know what “that” is, with the “no” taking the place of “know” since they sound the same. “No” in Japan is “iie”, and “know” is “shiru”. They don’t sound alike at all, so how do you do it? Japanese is filled with puns like this, and most of them are completely lost on Westerners.
That said, I do support translators for giving Westerners a variant of the Japanese version. But there’s no mistake that a lot is lost.
Unlike places like the US, people in Japan aren’t really supposed to have guns. So if some dude kicks your door in, threatens you with a knife, and then you shoot him with a gun you’re not supposed to have, you could still go to jail for illegal possession of a gun.
Sounds like a skill issue. Bad translations are bad because they don’t find good ways to translate these kinds of things. As you say, translation isn’t just about the words, it’s about cultural context. But, bad translations aren’t inevitable just because good translations are difficult.
Have you done Japanese -> English translations yourself? For example, if a character is named “79”, how would you subtly show that the character’s name is literally “Earth”, in English? (地球 = ちきゅう = ち＊きゅう = 7＊9)
Having done it myself, I find several big issues with Japanese -> English translation:
That said, I do support translators for giving Westerners a variant of the Japanese version. But there’s no mistake that a lot is lost.
sorry but, isn’t ‘shooting people’ serious shit everywhere?
Source
Unlike places like the US, people in Japan aren’t really supposed to have guns. So if some dude kicks your door in, threatens you with a knife, and then you shoot him with a gun you’re not supposed to have, you could still go to jail for illegal possession of a gun.
Even the Yakuza are hesitant to use guns.
Sounds like a skill issue. Bad translations are bad because they don’t find good ways to translate these kinds of things. As you say, translation isn’t just about the words, it’s about cultural context. But, bad translations aren’t inevitable just because good translations are difficult.
Have you done Japanese -> English translations yourself? For example, if a character is named “79”, how would you subtly show that the character’s name is literally “Earth”, in English? (地球 = ちきゅう = ち＊きゅう = 7＊9)
Sounds like a skill issue. Good translation is hard and is rarely a literal one to one mapping of syntax and diction. It’s an interpretive art.