Manga Translation?

[Evangelion Unit 01]

I am not that big of a manga fan as I am an anime fan, however I am as of now reading Berserk and Escaflowne. Both of these mangas take place during mideval times. However, their speach seems to be way off the mark. I mean I can understand when a character just speaks normally, because if the spoke old english no one would understand it. But in a lot of the English verisons of the mangas (I have not read any of the Japanese ones yet) There are a lot of words that are not for that time period. For example Guts says Ain't a lot, and I believe that word was not invented until the 1800s, and also he talks about another dimention. That word as well was proabably not thought of until like the 1960s or something.

Also Escaflowne is riddled with this. Van is constantly saying shove it, or kiss my ass, or at one point one of the female characters says Dude. I it is pretty obvious that knights during that time didn't not go around saying stuff like that, and also I feel that this language takes away from the real feeling of the story. Yes I know that there are other fantastical things in there that did not exist during that time like demons (maybe some would arguee that point) or giant suits of armor like Escaflowne.

I don't mind it sometimes, but after a while it really makes me feel like I am on the streets of LA rather than in Midland or Gaea.

So, I guess my question then would be is this bad enligh translation or is this what the orginal Japanes author wanted? And of course how does this make you feel and why.

[SpringBoy]

Translating between languages is always hard as you not only have to understand the grammar of the language but also the culture behind it and try and translate both into a completely different language with it's own culture!

This is especially true of Japanese <-> English translations. Often when reading manga you'll find translator's notes having to explain a certain situation.

I've actually downloaded the entire Love Hina manga series that was translated by fans and have also purchased the books themselves and it's interesting to see how the different translators have worked. Whilst the overall meaning of a sentance may be the same the actual content can be quite different. Including things like tone and slang.

As for 'ye olde English' - I personally don't like reading things that have too much of the old speak. I much prefer to read things like "Dude, what the hell?" than "Verily. I sayest that thou must attack thine enemies at dawn!"

Finally, from memory, Escaflowne is set on an entirely different planet so it doesn't make sense for them to speak too much like old Earth people.

[Zalis]

I think that some of these things like "ain't" or "dude" or "kick your ass" are sometimes meant to convey how politely rudely a character is speaking. The ruder the speech, the more contractions/English slang show up in the translation. The problem is that Japanese has words and specific word forms that communicate a certain level of formality, and English doesn't have that kind of variety of forms. For instance, the word "is" in the statement "He is Mr. Yamada" could be rendered as: Ano hito wa Yamada-san [de gozaimasu/de arimasu/de aru/desu/da/--] , in descending order of formality*. (The -- means omitting the verb entirely, as in "Ano hito wa Yamada-san," which is an acceptable sentence in Japanese.) Not only that, but the -san could be changed, and there are a number of other more and less polite ways of saying "he," resulting in combinations too many to enumerate here.


*Not necessarily correct, but I think that's the general flow of things