So. Translation. Lots of interesting questions about culture and the translatability of that, which got me thinking about my small knowledge of Japanese films, which now leads into this post which (sorry) doesn’t have much to do with publishing, necessarily, but I’ll try to find some roundabout way to relate it back at the end. Or, most likely, not.
Anyway, let’s talk about the famous animated film, 君の名は (Kimi no na wa) or the English title, Your Name. This is more for me to talk about some fun translation things, rather than anything else.
One of my favorite things to talk about is the title. The title in Japanese, is literally translated to, “What is your name?”. However, there’s a bit more to it than that. In Japanese there are different levels of speaking with familiarity. “Kimi” means “you”, but it’s a type of saying “you” that you would only use with close family and friends. The title is intimately asking what someone’s name is, however, if you were using “kimi”, you would already be well acquainted with that person. This perfectly encapsulates the plot and theme of the movie which I won’t go into because spoilers… also this post is about to be long already. But it’s so cool, right?!! There’s a certain kind of social complexity cannot simply be captured in “what is your name?”, because we do not have levels of formality in English that we commonly use.
Also in the movie is this great joke that is hard to translate into English. As I said above, there are different ways of saying “you”, so likewise, there are different ways of saying “I”. The protagonist (a woman who has been switched into a man’s body - it makes sense, I swear), slips up and uses different kinds of “I”, confusing the boy’s friends, until she settles on the right one. She goes from using “watakushi” (very formal), to “watashi” (somewhat formal?), to “boku” (informal, used specifically by young boys), to “ore” (informal, used specifically by older boys). I was curious about how they they translated it, so I searched and found a clip with both the Japanese version and the English dubbed version.
Speaking a little more to the Japanese language because I find it fascinating, the different levels of formalities in speaking express more (to some extent) than I think we could in English. In some ways, you can use language to gauge how close people are, just through conjugation. Slowly transitioning from speaking in formal Japanese to informal Japanese marks a shift in relationship - how much someone respects another person is implicit more or less in the level of formality that they use. It feels more like a social subtext, than something outwardly said.
All of this to say that perfectly translating not only language but societal contexts, issues, norms, etc. is not possible. I was thinking about this while Greg was answering a question about translating cultural norms. Would it be best to just put a footnote? Or let the reader have questions and then look into it more on their own time? Or try to change the story to fit our own societal ideals and concepts? (That last one doesn’t feel particularly ethically correct to me). Anyway, I’m gonna wrap this up since this post is long and I already cut a whole paragraph on Shall We Dance? because it was redundant but I just like talking about this kind of stuff. Thanks for getting this far and reading my ramblings!
One of my favorite things to talk about is the title. The title in Japanese, is literally translated to, “What is your name?”. However, there’s a bit more to it than that. In Japanese there are different levels of speaking with familiarity. “Kimi” means “you”, but it’s a type of saying “you” that you would only use with close family and friends. The title is intimately asking what someone’s name is, however, if you were using “kimi”, you would already be well acquainted with that person. This perfectly encapsulates the plot and theme of the movie which I won’t go into because spoilers… also this post is about to be long already. But it’s so cool, right?!! There’s a certain kind of social complexity cannot simply be captured in “what is your name?”, because we do not have levels of formality in English that we commonly use.
Also in the movie is this great joke that is hard to translate into English. As I said above, there are different ways of saying “you”, so likewise, there are different ways of saying “I”. The protagonist (a woman who has been switched into a man’s body - it makes sense, I swear), slips up and uses different kinds of “I”, confusing the boy’s friends, until she settles on the right one. She goes from using “watakushi” (very formal), to “watashi” (somewhat formal?), to “boku” (informal, used specifically by young boys), to “ore” (informal, used specifically by older boys). I was curious about how they they translated it, so I searched and found a clip with both the Japanese version and the English dubbed version.
Speaking a little more to the Japanese language because I find it fascinating, the different levels of formalities in speaking express more (to some extent) than I think we could in English. In some ways, you can use language to gauge how close people are, just through conjugation. Slowly transitioning from speaking in formal Japanese to informal Japanese marks a shift in relationship - how much someone respects another person is implicit more or less in the level of formality that they use. It feels more like a social subtext, than something outwardly said.
All of this to say that perfectly translating not only language but societal contexts, issues, norms, etc. is not possible. I was thinking about this while Greg was answering a question about translating cultural norms. Would it be best to just put a footnote? Or let the reader have questions and then look into it more on their own time? Or try to change the story to fit our own societal ideals and concepts? (That last one doesn’t feel particularly ethically correct to me). Anyway, I’m gonna wrap this up since this post is long and I already cut a whole paragraph on Shall We Dance? because it was redundant but I just like talking about this kind of stuff. Thanks for getting this far and reading my ramblings!
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