Half a thought on translation

[owlectomy]

Having just completed the first manga translation I've done in a couple years -- I finished it in a matter of two days, something I wasn't able to do before, although I think I managed something close for the more intense volumes of Matendou Sonata -- I've noticed the truth of the observation that good translators make freer translations than bad translators. If it can be said that I used to be a bad translator, and I'm now a better one. I know that I used to be so insecure about the accuracy of my translations that if I could get a translation of a line or a paragraph to be literal, and to sound like native English, that was enough. I'd hold onto it tightly. Sometimes I'd go to the trouble of putting it into a formal style if a princess was talking. But I had real trouble lowering my register--I didn't do vulgarity, or slang, or anything lower-register than the way I usually talk. (And in high school, when I started translating manga, I was such an uptight dork. I'd swear about twice a year. So everyone in my translations talked like real goody-two-shoes.) And now--well, I can listen to a character talking, and figure out that she's the kind of girl who'll take your head off if you look at her the wrong way, and perhaps write her accordingly.

And I don't think this translation would be quite literal enough for some people. There are some people who know *just enough* Japanese to perceive bad translations everywhere. But I didn't insert western pop-culture references (which is where I draw an absolute line), so--good enough for me.