[HELP] Any tips on translating?

[gekiai 231]

Hi everyone,

 

I think it's time for me to contribute to this community (and my hobby) somehow and the first thing I think of is translations.

 

I've been learning Japanese for a few years on and off and I'm technically intermediate at best. However I know translating is more than just translating...words. And with Japanese you really can't translate "word for word" like in other languages.

 

So I guess I'm asking for any advice from experienced translators or even advanced Japanese speakers. How long does it usually take for you to go through a song? What are some obstacles you often come across? And anything else you think Ia novice should know ! Thanks in advance.

 

I hope I posted this in the right forum

[diryangrey 121]

hey - i'm like, the farthest thing from an 'advanced' translator but i thought i'd try to give my thoughts anyway -

one thing that helps me a lot (cuz i'm still just starting out) is going to jpopasia, finding a track that's already got the kanji written in romaji & translated into english already.
Then i'll try not to look at the english and, using the romaji as furigana if i don't know the kanji's reading, i'll type each 'word' i don't already understand into google translate one by one and then try to use what i know abt grammar and shit to make some sense of the line.
Then i'll compare it to the already translated english and see how close i got and if it's reasonable cool if not, then i can try to match the translator's clauses/phrases to those parts of the jp line, and usually that gives me a better idea of how the parts of the sentence work.

It doesn't feel as productive as taking a new song and coming up w/ an ~original~ translation but as far as something to do when i'm trying to increase my knowledge/fluency i think that approach helps a lot!
Especially bc even if your vocabulary is exactly the same as another person's, you'll probably interpret the grammar differently cuz it's all subjective anyway but imo reconstructing sentences in english is as much a skill as understanding them in japanese.

hope that wasn't like suuuper basic but that's about as much as i'm qualified to offer lmao

[inertia 61]

Hi. I think song lyrics are one of the hardest things to translate.  For a level reference I’ve passed N2 and have translated interviews from print materials, but I frequently find songs difficult to understand.

 

One of the things that’s especially difficult about Japanese is that so many words are left out which need to be included in English because of our grammar, and that’s even more common in song lyrics. English doesn’t let us leave the phrase as vague as it was in Japanese, so we have to get into the writer’s head and explicitly state what they’re only implying. The use of transitive and intransitive verbs, regular vs. passive form, formality level, etc, are important clues, and non-native speakers tend to have difficulty with this. I have trouble with them too, and it’s not uncommon for me not to be sure who did what to whom until I read an interview where it’s explained in plain everyday Japanese. And I’ve seen plenty of translations by other people where they got that who/whom part completely backwards. It happens a lot.

 

Anyway, my advice is to try to read or listen to interviews about the songs. It’s a lot easier if you know what the band meant to say before you try to translate their poetically incomplete phrases.

[gekiai 231]

8 hours ago, inertia said:

Hi. I think song lyrics are one of the hardest things to translate.  For a level reference I’ve passed N2 and have translated interviews from print materials, but I frequently find songs difficult to understand.

 

One of the things that’s especially difficult about Japanese is that so many words are left out which need to be included in English because of our grammar, and that’s even more common in song lyrics. English doesn’t let us leave the phrase as vague as it was in Japanese, so we have to get into the writer’s head and explicitly state what they’re only implying. The use of transitive and intransitive verbs, regular vs. passive form, formality level, etc, are important clues, and non-native speakers tend to have difficulty with this. I have trouble with them too, and it’s not uncommon for me not to be sure who did what to whom until I read an interview where it’s explained in plain everyday Japanese. And I’ve seen plenty of translations by other people where they got that who/whom part completely backwards. It happens a lot.

 

Anyway, my advice is to try to read or listen to interviews about the songs. It’s a lot easier if you know what the band meant to say before you try to translate their poetically incomplete phrases.

 

Wow this discourages me a little, especially since my listening skills are basic at best and grammar frustrates me at times ..

 

But this is seems like something very important to consider, thanks!

[gekiai 231]

8 hours ago, diryangrey said:

hey - i'm like, the farthest thing from an 'advanced' translator but i thought i'd try to give my thoughts anyway -

one thing that helps me a lot (cuz i'm still just starting out) is going to jpopasia, finding a track that's already got the kanji written in romaji & translated into english already.
Then i'll try not to look at the english and, using the romaji as furigana if i don't know the kanji's reading, i'll type each 'word' i don't already understand into google translate one by one and then try to use what i know abt grammar and shit to make some sense of the line.
Then i'll compare it to the already translated english and see how close i got and if it's reasonable cool if not, then i can try to match the translator's clauses/phrases to those parts of the jp line, and usually that gives me a better idea of how the parts of the sentence work.

It doesn't feel as productive as taking a new song and coming up w/ an ~original~ translation but as far as something to do when i'm trying to increase my knowledge/fluency i think that approach helps a lot!
Especially bc even if your vocabulary is exactly the same as another person's, you'll probably interpret the grammar differently cuz it's all subjective anyway but imo reconstructing sentences in english is as much a skill as understanding them in japanese.

hope that wasn't like suuuper basic but that's about as much as i'm qualified to offer lmao

 

I think this method will be very helpful for me as a novice.

 

I do need to build up more fluency and confidence before I take on a song not translated yet..because I'd hate to screw up an entire song...

 

Thanks for the advice !

[plastic_rainbow 2162]

I feel like this topic can probably go along with this thread, but idk.

 

Translating songs is a REAL struggle and @inertia already listed a lot of the reasons why. Every time I translate songs I'm always worried about what the subject is and which pronouns to use since they often get dropped. Some lyrics will explicitly state their subject, but most often times they will not. When that happens I always have to wonder, do I use I/we/you/he/she here?? Most of the time it's either the first three. I only use he/she when kare/kanojo is specifically used, then I know that they're talking about a boy/girl here and can figure out what pronouns to use from there. Likewise, if watashi/boku/anata were to be used in a line somewhere I can kind of guess which pronouns to use on areas where the subject is not specified. I usually have to read the lyrics over and over again, while listening to the song, to grasp some kind of understanding of the song. I will ask myself, Is this written in their perspective or someone else's? Are they saying "you" or "I" here? And so on. There really is no right or wrong way to do this. It all comes from your own understanding of the Japanese language and your interpretation of the song.

 

If you're just starting out though, you should understand that your first few translations will PROBABLY sound like crap....But don't worry, you'll get better and the process will become a little easier as you go, ONLY a little easier though cuz it's still really hard sometimes. I like to look at other song translations as well and kind of learn from it. Compare your translation from theirs, see which one you like better. And at the same time, you can pick up a few translating techniques too~

 

If you're really worried about whether you're translation might be wrong in some areas, you can always just make note of it at the bottom of your translation. Could just be that you had a different interpretation too~ ^^

 

Well, I don't know if that was helpful or not, but that's kind of how I go about with translating lyrics.

Good luck to you and have fun!

Edited March 1, 2017 by plastic_rainbow

[violetchain 912]

Yeah, like other people have said, songs are really tough to translate because the wording can be so vague. I also find it kind of difficult to figure out where lines start and end sometimes.

 

I've facepalmed many, many times after reading other peoples' translations of songs I butchered, but I tried, and botching things horribly is the best way to learn sometimes, so oh well.

 

I'm definitely not an expert, but the best method I've found is to write the song out in romaji first (using Rikaichan for any kanji I don't know) and then to read through it quickly (using Rikaichan where necessary, but without googling grammar, expressions, names etc.) and see how much makes sense. If I feel like I get the gist of about 65~70% or so, I'll usually give it a shot. If I get really stuck, I usually just post the romaji and come back to it later. (Like three years later, in some cases, but still...later) I try to go back through the ones I skipped every now and then to see if I've improved.

 

Like plastic_rainbow mentioned, if you're not feeling confident about something, making a note of it in the post is a good idea. While people are usually reluctant to go through a whole song, they're often happy to help correct a line or two if they come across your translation - especially in a forum like this, where so many people are either studying Japanese themselves or devoted fans that will understand obscure references and slang you might be missing after it is translated into their native tongue.

Edited March 2, 2017 by violetchain

[hiroki 5521]

(Edit: I realized after typing that my post is pretty long... sorry for that.)

 

There are a lot of reasons why translation is difficult, and especially so for languages that are not genealogically affiliated. If you ask me i think it's inevitable that at some point you're going to feel dejected that you've "butchered" the lyrics of a song you love, but hopefully I can show you that at least a part of that feeling stems from the fact that by and large Japanese doesn't translate very well into English at all, which isn't your fault (although of course, even though there's no perfect translation, there are translations that are blatantly incorrect). 

 

In general, here are some challenges confronting anyone attempting to translate:

 

1) You need to ensure not only a complete correspondence of just the denotative meaning of the word (possibly multiple), but also its connotations, nuances, implications, cultural 'flavor' that you need to drag from one language to another. Cultural expressions like 宜しくお願いします have to be translated variously according to the context but even so it's not exactly the same. Some words like 何番目 have no English equivalent. 

 

2) The etymology of the word that gives rise to its "internal" meaning, as well as its residual "meaning" that has accrued through its multiple usages in history (we call this the "trace" of a word). So for instance if you come across the word "individual" in 16th-century Renaissance poems, it actually refers to "that which is indivisible from the community/society" instead of what it means today ("that which stands apart from the society"). Attempting to translate the word into Japanese as 個人 compromises linguistic complexity because as a Sino-Japanese concept the word 個人 does not retain the same linguistic history of what "individual" means in English. This is kind of a nightmare when you're dealing with non-contemporary works.

 

3) The "metonymic" aspect of a word and how it functions in a sentence. What this means is that for every language, one word relates to the other words in a sentence in completely different ways, and this presents a serious impediment for translation because sometimes a language's syntax simply don't allow you to word things in a certain way. A classic example would be the perennial problem English translators of Franz Kafka encounter thanks to the author's extensive use of syntax and linguistic structures exclusive to the German language. In the context of Japanese, I recall the phrase "君を信じた僕を信じて" from BLESSCODE's Imperial City, which is cumbersome to translate into English because the pronoun "I" in English cannot be modified as by a phrasal verb like in Japanese. It's not impossible; but the feel is significantly different.

 

4) The "metaphoric" aspect of a word, i.e. how it triggers other words and concepts by association. A lot of this is cultural ("rose" for us signifies "love", which may not be the case for a different linguistic community) - so even if you translate the word-image correctly, you're losing what's arguably the more important dimension of the word if it's operating figuratively. If you think that's already hard, in Japanese you'll find idiomatic expressions (四字熟語), cultural idiosyncracies (various kinds of 慣用語), and notorious onomatopoeia (擬態語 and 擬音語) that abound not just in lyrics but also in day-to-day conversations. 

 

5) And finally there's everything else which affects how a word is perceived by a reader/listener that linguists can't exactly put their finger on... so they happily call all of that 'context'.

 

As mentioned above, lyrics are one of the most difficult things to translate and there are reasons for this. I'm not a professional translator, although I'm required to translate academic essays by Japanese writers as part of my job. For my purpose I assume that there's a message the writer wants to convey (in good faith) which I focus on delivering. Effectively that means points 2~5 above are relatively less important when I'm doing my translations. However the converse is true in the case of lyrics: because for lyrics you aren't translating a single "meaning" but a field of potential meanings that a reader can possibly rope off from the original lyrics. So 2~5 become as important (if not more important) as the denotative meaning of the words in a song. Obviously mapping that field 100% is an impossible task, so it's completely natural to feel like as a translator you're already intruding and helping the eventual reader of your translated lyrics make interpretations in advance.

 

One last point I forgot to mention: Japanese has 3 different scripts while English has 1. As a result there's invariably some level of homogenization that takes place when Japanese is translated into English. This is less of an issue in day-to-day usage of the language since the division of labor between the three scripts is pretty straightforward... but not in lyrics. I'll give you an example. I was just talking to my friend about the solo project of Ryutaro (Plastic Tree vocalist), whose debut release is called "デも". As you know でも is "but" and デモ is like "demo(nstration) cd". If you dig deeper into the "metaphoric" level, you'll realize that でも can be a sort of protest, a breaking off from the original (it's his solo project anyway), and so on. and デモ naturally signifies a "first" and a fresh beginning. In this case splitting his title into 2 different scripts has a kind of mutually enhancing effect (in other places, like in DIV lyrics, you find that they create a tension). So you really have to make a choice here when you translate; alternatively you can transliterate it as "Demo" which would convey none of  all of that unless you append a few paragraphs of footnotes.

 

tl;dr: Translation is difficult. Borrowing the words of John Ciardi (eminent translator of Dante's Divine Comedy): the translator strives not for success but "the best possible failure."  

 

Edited March 2, 2017 by hiroki

[diryangrey 121]

in all honesty though - it's a song, everything's subjective, most japanese-speaking people probably wouldn't agree on the meanings of every line, i'd assume, cuz everything's made of ambiguity anyway. imho that's what separates prose/poetry from factual statements.

if you get a 'wrong' translation who honestly gives a fuck, as long as you're not putting it forwards as though it was something the artist actually said, if you get some meaning out of the lyrics that interpretation's valid to you however you came across it, imho at least.

not like i remember this 100% correctly but i remember the vocalist from deafheaven saying something about him not having any 'meaning' in mind when he writes his songs' lyrics, he's just putting together phrases he likes, and if the listener gets something out of hearing them that's on the listener for getting to that meaning, & it's not gonna be 'right' or 'wrong' cuz there was nothing to start with.
I'm sure that's not every single lyricist's approach but i still think song lyrics aren't the place to look for an objectively 'correct' interpretation.

TL;DR i wouldn't worry about screwing up translations unless you're trying to pass a poor translation off as their words rather than yours.
If you're just translating for fun / practice / to get a general idea it's reaallly not that big a deal if you flip the tenses or tag some verbs to the wrong subject.
i think things like the moods/atmospheres of a song can still land if bits get confused, & even if higher-level things go right over your head (as i'm sure they do mine) part of learning to translate is you're always pushing your comprehension slightly further & reinforcing what you already know, so more advanced parts of the language are just things you'll get to understanding later.

[Komorebi 2193]

2 hours ago, diryangrey said:

if you get a 'wrong' translation who honestly gives a fuck

I honestly give a fuck.

 

It is true many vocalists don't have a meaning in mind when writing lyrics, Naru from Diealo even said he wrote about popular relateable subjects like lost love and despair, even if he didn't feel it, because he knew fans would like it and it would sell.

 

OK, so Hiroki already said most of what I wanted to say and already explained different meanings and nuances of a word..
While translating songs could be a good excersise to practise your japanese, I would advice to always keep working on your Japanese and improve your level as much as possible.

 

Translating from ANY language is hard, not only from Japanese, because language and culture are so closely intertwined they influence each other and it will be impossible to not find words that are deeply rooted in or influenced by culture.

 

I will have to say nothing is truly untranslateable, and the reason many think certain words have "no translation" it's because the do not posess and exact equivalent in the target language, but it doesn't mean the concept cannot be explained. And there is where you'll have to get creative and see how you can convey the ideas better in English. 

Another important tip is to NEVER translate word by word. In any language. Each language has it's own gramatical rules and translating word by word will end terminate in odd and gramatically incorrect sentenses in English.

Make sure your final product makes sense in English. I encountered not long ago a girl that translated Matenrou Opera's blog entries and her posts made no sense in English. Subject wasn't there half of the time and connectors were missing everywhere. When I pointed it out to her she said "I wanted to preserve the particularities of Japanese language". Please, PLEASE don't do that. Translation means taking the message from Language A and conveying it as best as possible into Language B in a way so that the core content of the message isn't lost AND it makes perfect sense and it's perfectly understandeable in Language B. Not a weird hybrid of both.

 

I also cannot stress enough the importance of context, which is also why word-by-word translation is NEVER a good idea. The longest part of a translation is always the correction. You can never go through the translated text too many times. There will often be that sensence that made sense when you translated it but doesn't anymore after reading it three times, or the words and connectors that suddenly don't fit. It's ok if you have to correct it twenty seven times, professionals do to and that's what makes a good translation good, not the initial perfection but the work put into it to make the final product as flawless as possible.

 

Feel free to include as many footnotes as you want to explain meaning where it can't be explained (because you can't keep a verse in a song ridiculously long)
I have some really really good translations of Do As Infinity lyrics that included tons of notes from the translators explaining why they did this and that and what they think the writer could have meant where meaning was vague, I can show them to you if you need.

 

Best of luck, and if you need clarification, help or anything let me know here or drop a PM.

[hiroki 5521]

3 hours ago, diryangrey said:

if you get a 'wrong' translation who honestly gives a fuck, as long as you're not putting it forwards as though it was something the artist actually said, if you get some meaning out of the lyrics that interpretation's valid to you however you came across it, imho at least.

 

Komorebi already explained the importance of fidelity in translation but i'll just add this: even if you're not "putting it forward as though it was something the artist actually said" a translation by definition finds an equivalent or at least a very good approximation to the original. A translation isn't simply a "review" of the original or whatever happens to be the translator's opinions on it. So it's my belief that every single translator whether you're doing for fun or professionally should have the basic commitment to convey the meaning of the original. As for what you're saying about interpretations: of course it's valid, but ideally a translator would strive to uncouple his/her interpretation of the text from the meaning of the text, so as to allow for readers to make their own interpretation from a translation that's as close to the source text as possible.

 

[Komorebi 2193]

As they tell us in college, translators don't "exist". We are merely comunicational bridges and our views and opinions interfeering with the message are not only both wrong and uncalled for, but a disgrace to the profession.

 

Edit for clarification: By "don't exist" I mean our existence shouldn't be noted, we are supposed to be invisible.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Komorebi

[jaymee 405]

Since I work as a translator I'll throw my two yen out there... A lot of it is just echoing @inertia

 

- Learn the language. My personal opinion is that you need at least N2 level. The more kanji and grammar you know, the better. Don't learn Japanese exclusively from anime, manga, or VK. Seriously no one in real life talks like that.

 

- Be well read in your own language (assuming it's English). It's difficult to  translate something well, especially poetically, if you don't know how to write well to begin with. Commercially you will probably have few or no fluent proofreaders so double check and proofread everything.

 

- Spend some time in Japan after you've become conversationally fluent. You'll get a better "feel" for how people of different personalities, genders, subcultures, etc. use the language. There are also a lot of Japanese words that are defined in the dictionary a certain way and might seem interchangeable, but really aren't, and hearing them used situationally helps. Example: "mesen" and "manazashi" both mean gaze, but the latter is almost never used in real life (but used in anime, etc.)

 

- Research whatever you're translating. I'd say sometimes half of my work or more as a translator is spent researching the topic. Unfortunately most clients fail to include essential background information or a guide of officially accepted translations of organizations, laws, company names, etc. that I then have to double check. When it comes to VK, like @inertiasaid, reading interviews or liners can go a long way. Even better if you are familiar with the band/their fanbase so you can provide tone to your translation.

 

- Japanese can be pretty vague so you'll probably have to offer up your own interpretations at times just to add subjects and have things sound natural in English. If it's a personal translation you can just mention that in the notes if you feel unsure, but for commercial translations it's better to seek confirmation from the client if possible.

 

- Be prepared to answer lots of annoying questions from clients like, "Why can't you translate this literally?" Or, "Google Translate says this, so why did you write it like that?" especially from Japanese people who only have a rudimentary understanding of English but think that qualifies them to be checking your work and second-guessing you.

 

Or people who have no idea how long translating takes nor its value, and don't understand that no, sorry, I cannot translate and proofread  10,000+ characters for you a day for 1-2 yen a character and give you a high quality translation so please quit wasting my time. Also people will want you to answer these dumb questions and edit for free.

 

If you aren't a freelancer and work for an actual translation company, be prepared to for your job take over your whole life and work crazy hours for likely not as much as you should be making.

 

- I did a lot of bad/ok translations before being able to do better ones. I still don't think I'm anywhere near the best out there and I'm still learning new things every day. If I could re-do things, I would have taken translation courses in college, studied harder, and gotten certified.

 

- It might help if you are well-versed in some of the major translating softwares like TRADOS, but honestly most of Japan is still technologically stuck in the 90s (most of their fancy tech stuff is export only lol) and you'll be translating mostly in Docs and Excel files.

Edited September 23, 2017 by jaymee