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  • fuckedgaijin ‹ General ‹ Gaijin Ghetto

If J-E Translation were rocket science.

Groovin' in the Gaijin Gulag
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48 posts • Page 1 of 2 • 1, 2

If J-E Translation were rocket science.

Postby GomiGirl » Mon Aug 17, 2009 1:09 pm

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Postby amdg » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:54 pm

http://old.jat.org/jtt/lost.html

From my own experience of working in the field, I've also detected a big reluctance on part of the Japanese employers to use fully the talents of non-Nihonjins.

"My agency doesn't use foreigners to translate," a Japanese translator acquaintance once told me in a boastful tone of voice.

"It takes too long. The Japanese translators can read the Japanese faster than foreigners can so the work gets done quicker," she said, adding that foreigners at the agency are only used to 'check' the English text.

"So then by the same token," I said, "you must use foreigners when you translate the other way around, from English to Japanese."

"Why would we do that?" she asked, looking utterly perplexed.

Because the native English "speakers can read their own language faster than Japanese."

"No, it doesn't work like that," she said.

"Why not?"

Why not, indeed. She had no answer.
Mr Kobayashi: First, I experienced a sort of overpowering feeling whenever I was in the room with foreigners, not to mention a powerful body odor coming from them. I don't know whether it was a sweat from the heat or a cold sweat, but I remember I was sweating whenever they were around.
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Postby Mulboyne » Mon Aug 17, 2009 10:27 pm

Do translators working in other languages find similar kinds of problems?
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Postby IkemenTommy » Mon Aug 17, 2009 11:40 pm

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Postby Taro Toporific » Mon Aug 17, 2009 11:42 pm

Mulboyne wrote:Do translators working in other languages find similar kinds of problems?


According to UN guidelines, translators working in the UN are only allowed to translate into their mother tongue (in this case, Japanese translators only do English to Japanese, E-to-J).

Over in the United Nations University in Shibuya, every time new foreign managers and academics are brought in, there is huge fight over only Japanese translators doing J-to-E translations in direct violation to UN rules. After a few weeks of the new gaijin having fits (sometime coming to blows) about Japanese translators doing all the J-to-E translation, the gaijin have to give up because there no budget (paid by the Japanese government) to pay for proper translation.
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Postby amdg » Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:06 am

Mulboyne wrote:Do translators working in other languages find similar kinds of problems?


In terms of what happens worldwide, I don't really know. However, I have heard from several Canadian French-to-English translators that they find it frustrating that when documents need to be translated from French into English, many French companies choose to simply hand the job off to one of their staff members, like 'Genevieve at reception', because, "you know, she studied English at University and also spent a year in the USA as a nanny". Whereas, when a document needs to be translated from English to French, only a professional native-speaking French translator will do.

It may be that the global pervasiveness of English language education has made English a lesser 'unknown' among all of the language 'unknowns' in the world. Perhaps so much so that skill in English translation is undervalued.


Almost all competent translators understand that the best translator of language X to language Y, will be a native speaker of language Y. For anyone in the biz, it's just common sense - all things being equal, the native speaker has access to far more ways to convey the precise idea into the target native language than an X-language speaker has. And you always have to bear in mind that the final text will be read by native Y language speakers. There is no room for error and 'funny' spelling mistakes like, in English, 'strongest' being misspelled as 'strangest', which error a computer spellchecker won't pick up on because 'strangest' is also a word.

Consider the difference between:

"This is the strangest possible response that they could have made, given the current situation"

vs.

"This is the strongest possible response that they could have made, given the current situation"

There's only one letter different between the two sentences, but the meaning is vastly different.

I see similar mistakes made by Japanese translators every day.
Mr Kobayashi: First, I experienced a sort of overpowering feeling whenever I was in the room with foreigners, not to mention a powerful body odor coming from them. I don't know whether it was a sweat from the heat or a cold sweat, but I remember I was sweating whenever they were around.
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Postby Zeth3D » Tue Aug 18, 2009 1:30 am

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Postby Behan » Tue Aug 18, 2009 9:49 am

Taro Toporific wrote:According to UN guidelines, translators working in the UN are only allowed to translate into their mother tongue (in this case, Japanese translators only do English to Japanese, E-to-J).

Over in the United Nations University in Shibuya, every time new foreign managers and academics are brought in, there is huge fight over only Japanese translators doing J-to-E translations in direct violation to UN rules. After a few weeks of the new gaijin having fits (sometime coming to blows) about Japanese translators doing all the J-to-E translation, the gaijin have to give up because there no budget (paid by the Japanese government) to pay for proper translation.


This sounds so typical of this country.
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Postby Taro Toporific » Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:49 am

Enter a phrase intro Translation Party and let it reach a "steady state."

" wrote:[color="DimGray"]Translation Party[/color]
[SIZE="4"]English, in Japan, all concerned, please provide a translation of the word transformation of the country.[/SIZE]
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Postby Greji » Tue Aug 18, 2009 2:26 pm

Every Japanese is born with a copy of that small, almost pocket sized, unabridged English to Japanese Kodansha dictionary in their hand. Any word that does not appear in that dictionary does not exist and is grounds for a major confrontation between the translating fg and the J-boss.
:cool:
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Postby Behan » Tue Aug 18, 2009 7:44 pm

Greji wrote:Every Japanese is born with a copy of that small, almost pocket sized, unabridged English to Japanese Kodansha dictionary in their hand. Any word that does not appear in that dictionary does not exist and is grounds for a major confrontation between the translating fg and the J-boss.
:cool:

I have always thought they also have a fact book telling them things like gaijin can't use chopsticks, read kanji, and that Japan's cultural is uniquely unique.
His [Brendan Behan's] last words were to several nuns standing over his bed, "God bless you, may your sons all be bishops."
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Postby Western All Stars » Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:22 pm

Taro Toporific wrote:According to UN guidelines, translators working in the UN are only allowed to translate into their mother tongue (in this case, Japanese translators only do English to Japanese, E-to-J).

Over in the United Nations University in Shibuya, every time new foreign managers and academics are brought in, there is huge fight over only Japanese translators doing J-to-E translations in direct violation to UN rules. After a few weeks of the new gaijin having fits (sometime coming to blows) about Japanese translators doing all the J-to-E translation, the gaijin have to give up because there no budget (paid by the Japanese government) to pay for proper translation.


Do you have any references to back this up? I'm working on a paper I would like to include this anecdote if it is true (which it does sound very plausable). I did a few quick searches in Google and didn't see anything immediately.
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Postby Behan » Fri Aug 21, 2009 8:27 pm

I think there was a post or thread here about a Japanese UN envoy(?) who called a press conference to defend against accuations of some kind of abuse. But he only called Japanese reporters. I'll have a look for it and see if I can find it.
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Sorry...

Postby Taro Toporific » Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:59 pm

Western All Stars wrote:Do you have any references to back this up?

The translator I trained under in the US as a patent reader had retired from the UN. He died several years ago, but his Cold War stories of translation/interpretation fiascoes were epic.
I also have a Japanese friend who works the Japan's UN mission (multi-year postings in Uganda, Iraq, and Afghanistan), who obviously is not willing to risk a cushy, tax-free, $100,000+ career to be quoted for a college paper. :?
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Postby Iraira » Wed Jul 27, 2011 9:43 pm

Takechanpoo:
"Yeah, I've been always awkward toward women and have spent pathetic life so far but I could graduate from being a cherry boy by using geisha's pussy at last! Yeah!! And off course I have an account in Fuckedgaijin.com. Yeah!!!"
;)
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Postby Samurai_Jerk » Wed Jul 27, 2011 11:45 pm

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Postby Taro Toporific » Thu Jul 28, 2011 12:39 am

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Postby matsuki » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:25 am

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Postby IparryU » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:30 am

wow... pretty shitty.

I used 2 programs when I had to translate some jap docs into English for the design projects I was doing... mind you that I was designing sectors of a microchip at that time and the translations came out much better than excite or google translate:
Wakan
some other one made by a uni with C programming... will remember sometime, but never use this shyte anymore...
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Postby Mike Oxlong » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:44 am

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Postby Iraira » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:57 am

Mike Oxlong wrote:I've been called baka in what I thought was a very affectionate way. Of course, I've also been called the same thing in very different contexts...:cool:


Did a Kansai-jin call you "baka"?
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;)
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Postby Mike Oxlong » Thu Jul 28, 2011 11:12 am

Iraira wrote:Did a Kansai-jin call you "baka"?

Nope, it was someone for whom tawake would not be strange as an insult.
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Postby American Oyaji » Fri Jul 29, 2011 9:50 am

tawake?
I will not abide ignorant intolerance just for the sake of getting along.
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Postby Iraira » Fri Jul 29, 2011 10:08 am

American Oyaji wrote:tawake?


Nice way of putting it: nonsense
Another nice way of putting it: bullshit
Takechanpoo:
"Yeah, I've been always awkward toward women and have spent pathetic life so far but I could graduate from being a cherry boy by using geisha's pussy at last! Yeah!! And off course I have an account in Fuckedgaijin.com. Yeah!!!"
;)
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Postby Mike Oxlong » Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:34 am

Nagoya folk use it in a roughly equivalent way to aho and baka.
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Postby American Oyaji » Sun Jul 31, 2011 10:19 pm

Gotcha. Thanks for the regionalization!
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Postby Bucky » Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:32 am

[font="Arial Black"][SIZE="7"]B[/SIZE][/font][font="Palatino Linotype"][SIZE="6"]u[/SIZE][/font][font="Comic Sans MS"][SIZE="5"]c[/SIZE][/font][font="Impact"][SIZE="6"]k[/SIZE][/font]
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Postby Screwed-down Hairdo » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:45 am

I gave up translation because my doctorate (focusing on the pscyholinguists of translation between Japanese and English) simply couldn't compete for knowledge about either language with Kenji who spent three weeks at summer school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and, of course, 10 years learning English in Japan at junior high, high school and university.
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Postby matsuki » Mon Aug 01, 2011 12:47 pm

Screwed-down Hairdo wrote:I gave up translation because my doctorate (focusing on the pscyholinguists of translation between Japanese and English) simply couldn't compete for knowledge about either language with Kenji who spent three weeks at summer school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and, of course, 10 years learning English in Japan at junior high, high school and university.


...and this is why Engrish will never become English in this cuntry
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Postby IparryU » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:09 pm

chokonen888 wrote:...and this is why Engrish will never become English in this cuntry
told this to my wife and in-laws... everyone but my wife just couldn't understand why...
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