[ SECRET POST #2875 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2875 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 063 secrets from Secret Submission Post #411.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Huh... "Survey Corps" and "3D maneuver gear" always sounded fine to me until I read this comment. I guess I've been reading bad translations so long that I don't even notice they're bad.

[ariakas]

The thing is, a military might actually have a survey corps. They'd be part of an engineering division and they would survey already occupied land for potential operating bases, or survey the intelligence gathered by the reconnaissance forces *coughcoughcoughcoughcough* for similar sites.

And the "maneuver gear" is a grappling hook. It's a gas-propelled grappling hook. Don't literally translate the Japanese term when we have an English term for what you want already: Translation 101.

[(Anonymous)]

You'd rather they called the maneuver gear a gas-propelled grappling hook? That's dumb.

[ariakas]

A grappling hook. That (or a hookshot) what similar devices are called in just about everything. "Maneuver gear" is 100% engrish.

[(Anonymous)]

Doesn't quite have the same shounen action feel to it though. Now if it was a manga about mountain climbing I might agree with you.

[ariakas]

What about 3D (or 360 degree) grappling (or grapple) system? See, the English-speaking reader can get a reasonable idea of what that might be just reading it, whereas "3D maneuver gear" is completely meaningless out of context. It might fly a plane or drive a mech - it's just something that's moving something in three-dimensional space. A grapple is a hook bound to a rope/cord/wire that attaches to a surface to allow someone to pull themselves onto a high place - which is the meaning we're actually looking for here, because that's what the "maneuver gear" is. It's a grappling hook. It's slightly more complicated than that, of course, and it's integrated into other parts, hence "system" - which is the accurate word for that in English - rather than "gear", which again, could mean anything. It's simply objects used for a specific functional purpose. It's a literal, non-specific translation.

This is where localizers come in, and this - and "survey corps" - are two things they definitely should have caught. A translator can give you was something means, but what would sound natural or best in the language in question often requires someone who doesn't speak the out of language at all (because that's usually your intended audience) for input. With a localizer you're often re-writing the script entirely; while a translator might give you "what they said in this situation and what it means (in fluent English" a localizer's job is "what an English-speaking person would actually say in this situation (to mean more or less the same thing)". This is the difference between those translations that sound like translations, and those that might well have been original English scripts.

I know some people actually prefer the former, especially if they have some knowledge of the original language, but most people don't.

[(Anonymous)]

I've seen several translation alternatives to "survey corps" and "3D maneuver gear" but I much prefer these terms. They have a unique ring to them that suits the world.

I liked that I didn't know what 3DMG did by its name, it was so non-specific, until I actually saw it in action. It was part of the tension of seeing their training. Explaining everything right away would have lost some of that gradual build.

Reconnaissance would have been okay, I guess, but survey corps is a lot easier to fit in the speech bubbles since the words are shorter, and it does the same job. I like it.

[(Anonymous)]

I think "3D maneuver gear" is alright but "survey corps" is plain and simply the wrong term for what they do. And considering that "reconnaissance" is almost always shortened to "recon", "recon corps" wouldn't have been much longer than "survey corps".

[ariakas]

Ah, you beat me to the punch.

"Recon corps" is actually shorter than "survey corps", in fact. IA about the gear, but "survey corps" was just plain dropping the ball.

[ariakas]

The problem with "survey corps" is that it's not just bad - it's wrong. The original "chousa" has two meanings which have separate words in English, because survey (unlike chousa) does not mean both. They're not "surveying" the Titans. What they're doing is reconnaissance, and there already is a shorter form of the word that would fit into the speech bubbles even better than "survey": recon. (Or recce, if you're British.) Recon corps is shorter, it's accurate, and it sounds like a military term, because it is one.

I didn't mind the term maneuver gear as much as survey corps, to be honest, because you're right - it's something unique to the world. Giving it a unique term isn't so bad, even if it is Engrish-tastic. Grapple system is something an English-speaker might actually call it, but Attack on Titan is so thoroughly Japanese that an English-speaker wouldn't be writing it in the first place, and the maneuver gear itself is so painfully anime that, well, fine. But some of my fellow translators absolutely hate it and think it symbolizes everything wrong with translation in the anime/manga industry, haha.