fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5365 ]

[ SECRET POST #5365 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5365 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #768.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

01. https://i.imgur.com/pczhQer.jpg

I actually agree that fan translators need to be way less literal and they have a certain obligation to learn more about idioms/slang/other nuance of phrase, but I do have to say that the first example title you offered makes a hell of a lot more sense to me as a phrase than the second.

Really? Because as far as I'm aware 'self saving' is not a phrase that exists in the english language. Google certainly doesn't seem to think so, because if you search for it the results are all about this terrible title. And scum villain? Seriously?

Don't get me wrong, it's certainly not good, but "Self-(Pre)Serving" is confusing. you don't pronounce "serving" the same way as you pronounce "preserving" ("s" versus "z" sound), so it legit took me a minute to figure out what it was trying to say. Self-saving isn't a phrase, no, but I get what it means without having to think about it. "Pre-serving" made me think it was something happening before being served, or something.

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(Anonymous) - 2021-09-13 23:58 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2021-09-14 02:13 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2021-09-16 13:33 (UTC) - Expand

NAYRT

It's an isekai, right, so I assumed that "save" was supposed to reference the save function in video games, and 'preserving' doesn't do that

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(Anonymous) - 2021-09-14 00:06 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2021-09-14 00:07 (UTC) - Expand

If you filter out SVSS results, there are still 150,000 results. About 30,000 of them are for specifically drownproofing/swimming - 'self-saving' techniques for getting yourself out of dangerous situations in the water. A lot of the others are either about programming techniques, self-help, or feminist literary criticism ('self-saving princesses'). Those meanings are all actually fairly relevant to the series - it's honestly a pretty clever bit of translation.

Fan translators, by and large, are doing fan translations as a way of learning all that stuff. Once they've learned it, they become pro-translators and bail for paying gigs.

Really? I just...well,after looking at a few fan translations I have a hard time imagining them getting good enough to go pro.

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(Anonymous) - 2021-09-14 19:23 (UTC) - Expand

same! I was with OP all the way up till the example and that's not what I would use as a good example at all. the second one is way too clunky, lengthy, and reads as too literal, which is...what they were saying was bad, right? being too literal? idgi

Which in turn just really undermines OPs entire secret because idk, if that's what they think would be a better translation, maybe all the fantranslations they bash aren't actually that bad. Maybe OP just knows jack shit about what "good writing/translating" is.

I don’t suppose you’ve run into CGRascal? “I’d rather have no translation than a CGRascal translation” is a popular refrain.

Most of the current fandom "translators" are running these texts through online machine translation programs or image to text converters. This is combined with a tenuous grasp of English, to boot. Most machine translation programs are horrible at Chinese, so these tend to be egregiously bad.
A lot of the fan scanlators and translators from the 2000s went on to get real jobs in the field, so this is the current state of the game. Just a lot of really shoddy work floating around, lately.

hi op are you me because this sounds like it came directly out of my brain

Those titles feel like they have different translation problems but not ones that are on a different level from each other. For instance "scum villain" sounds like it's too literal, but "irredeemable villain" sounds like it was written by someone in the 19th century. "Self-saving" is again too literal, but it's perfectly understandable. "Self-(Pre)Serving" sounds like someone was trying to be clever and missed the actual translation aspect (preserving and serving aren't anything close to the same sentiment and this title suggests both, but the literal title suggests that it's only one, the self-preserving, which is is just as awkward as Self-saving). The basic translation problem is the same, tbh; neither thinks about how audiences read.

For the record, usually, tho not all the time, people get egos because people are praising them, though the demand that other translators stop is hilariously entitled. Also, there's this gap between general readability which requires some expertise and how much readability the target audience actually needs. Sometimes bad translations are in fact readable to the main audience, and they do think they're acceptable.

Your version of the title sucks even more than the other one. "Scum Villain" is a pretty standard webnovel trope character type.
And ... Idk, I'm always a bit leery when someone bashes on all fan translations the way you do. I also have rolled my eyes at some of the translators' behaviour in the past but damn, the way you worded your secret, you sound just as (or more) arrogant as the people you criticise (especially since you offer this "superior" title translation that sounds even worse).
Like, they at least actually are translating stuff. You aren't.

Excuse you, "Scum Villain's Self-Saving System" is a thing of corny beauty.

Like, "Snakes on a Plane". It sells itself!

I'm not familiar with the particular piece of media OP is talking about, but I can't help but wonder if using the word "Scum" is actually a pun, since there is a "technique" considered cheating by many gamers called "save scumming". It's basically when a player saves a game before making a game-changing choice, then goes back and reloads that save if they don't like the original result.

That's the thing with translations. Something that is clever and will get a laugh out of one group will just confused others. Which is why back in my fan translator days, I always made copious translator's notes, especially since I was translating to English, and many other language translations get based off of English ones in fan communities.

Lmao, that second title reads even worse than the first tbqh. It sounds like someone who ran it through deepl changing the words to make it sound like it wasn’t deepl.

Not to mention, I don’t think irredeemable is a good word choice because it’s adding context that 人渣 just doesn’t carry imo. Someone can be a scummy, shit person and still be redeemable. Scum is an odd choice because it’s just not a commonly used word. But I don’t think it’s wrong and I don’t know what I would use there instead.

That said, I would agree that current fan translators are too literal, but I think that’s unfortunately what a majority of fandom wants and expects. I used to translate for ff7 and lmao. If you changed words to make the translation more palatable to an English speaking audience, the fandom would jump up your ass quick to tell you how wrong your translation is. Which is why the ff7 fandom is full of shit like “the Cloud’s heart shakes” instead of “Cloud’s heart skips a beat.”

"Irredeemable" is too harsh, but "scum villain" sounds unnatural and would be an immediate tipoff that the translator is being lazy. I'd use "no-good villain." That's something someone actually might say off the tip of their tongue (at least a fictional character might) and doesn't mean "irredeemable."

Yeah, scum villains sounds like broken English to me.

That first title is not perfect but it's catchy and sounds like a book title. Your 'improvement' lacks flow or catchiness. It's shit.

People seem to have lost the main point that a translation is to enable a non-native speaker/reader to understand the source material in THEIR language. It's not to confuse people with badly written confusing sentences that really make sense.

Just being able to understand the source material doesn't mean you're going to be a good translator, especially if you don't have the required time, understanding, motivation or language skills. It's not about word for word, it requires a lot more than that to do the original work justice.

And you're right, clumsy names and convoluted expressions are totally counterproductive to the goal of making something understood.

Gotta disagree with the title there, OP - the clunky "superior" version is pretty crap.

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System works in a way The Irredeemable Villain's Self-(pre-)Serving System doesn't.

"Scum" probably needs to be "Scumbag" though.

"The Scum Villain": it's a title, like Head of Marketing as opposed to Head of IT, a tropey role. A villain can be the scummy villain of a novel, or the big bad of a novel, etc, and all be irredeemable - which Shen Qingqui/Shen Jiu isn't. But he is the kind of person who would know tropes.

"Self-Saving" is a thing! Self-saving techniques are a thing. But also, he's 'saving' - like a computer game, connected to the "System". Like autosaving, but where saving is also rescue.

But you do have points about clunky translations and egos.

I don't know how it works in novel translations, but in manga scanlations there's an unwritten rule that you don't poach another groups project. A lot of groups announce their intention to scanlate something, but occasionally two groups happen to start working on the same manga unknowingly. Depending on how anal the groups are, they may or may not ask the other group to stop.

Sometimes a group won't release something for ages, so people assume it's been dropped and another group takes over. I've seem some groups get offended by this, but usually only if the second group didn't approach them about it first.
The manga groups I follow have English proofreaders, and most require them to be English native speakers, so maybe that's something novel translators should have too.

It's kinda the same for webnovels - unwritten rule is that poaching a novel is bad form but if it hasn't had an update for 3 months, it's free to pick up.

Which is nice and all but then you get those groups who just barely publish a chapter every two or three months which means other groups can't pick it up without criticism but with novels where the average chapter count is 100-200 chapters, a 2 month hiatus between each chapter is ... well.

And yes, there totally are those translation groups/translators who think they're the only ones good enough to translate something so they don't want other to do it (which is what happened with the MDZS novel) while not actually being all that great but you also get those translators who intentionally poach novels because they think the current translator sucks and THEY themselves can do better. Which is especially sucky if they do it picking up from where the current translation is instead of starting over from the beginning.