Think in terms of language-to-language translators: to translate really well from language A to language B, you need be masterful at A (to understand all the subtleties of the meaning) and also at B (to convey that meaning while preserving those nuances). That’s why good translators (in both senses) are so rare.
Mastery of both A and B is great, obviously, but if you can choose only one, choose B.
I’ve spent a decent chunk of my life scanlating manga from Japanese to English, and my observation is that fluency in the target language (English, in this case) is much more important for a good translation than fluency in the source. I can overcome a misunderstanding in Japanese with copious amounts of research (Google Translate, JP dictionaries, etc); but the thing that my readers consume is a product in English, which is much harder to “fake”.
Two takeaways, continuing on the translation analogy:
If you want to get into cultural translation, start by writing for the audience you know really well, and then do research into the source culture. My bet is that Scott is more “fluent” in the analytical audience, not the social one.
Scanlation teams often have a JP to Eng translator, fluent in JP, and a second English editor who can clean up the script. Cultural translation may also benefit from two people from different cultures collaborating (SSC’s adversial collaboration comes to mind)
My mom is a translator (mostly for novels), and as far as I know she exclusively translates into Danish (her native language). I think this is standard in the industry—it’s extremely hard to translate text in a way that feels natural in the target language, much harder than it is to tease out subtleties of meaning from the source language.
Great post! One note:
Mastery of both A and B is great, obviously, but if you can choose only one, choose B.
I’ve spent a decent chunk of my life scanlating manga from Japanese to English, and my observation is that fluency in the target language (English, in this case) is much more important for a good translation than fluency in the source. I can overcome a misunderstanding in Japanese with copious amounts of research (Google Translate, JP dictionaries, etc); but the thing that my readers consume is a product in English, which is much harder to “fake”.
Two takeaways, continuing on the translation analogy:
If you want to get into cultural translation, start by writing for the audience you know really well, and then do research into the source culture. My bet is that Scott is more “fluent” in the analytical audience, not the social one.
Scanlation teams often have a JP to Eng translator, fluent in JP, and a second English editor who can clean up the script. Cultural translation may also benefit from two people from different cultures collaborating (SSC’s adversial collaboration comes to mind)
My mom is a translator (mostly for novels), and as far as I know she exclusively translates into Danish (her native language). I think this is standard in the industry—it’s extremely hard to translate text in a way that feels natural in the target language, much harder than it is to tease out subtleties of meaning from the source language.
This is a nice productive way of extending the conversation and generating a piece of actionable advice from the model. Strong upvote.