Re: Balancing Accuracy and Emotion/Feel of a dialogue
Sorry I completely missed the replies, I wasn't expecting any since it had been a while. Yes, I'll try to give some examples so I could explain better what I'm trying to get at.
Coincidentally, a conversation with a friend (let's call him Yamamoto) a couple of days ago serves pretty well as an example:
Yamamoto: 完全に出待ちじゃねーか
こいつちょっと
どんだけ俺のこと好きなんだよ
Yamamoto was talking about a persistent somebody who was waiting to make an appearance in front of him (to talk to him etc.)
If I were translating this into English, it would be something like this:
Yamamoto: He's totally waiting for me ain't he?
Com'on dude...
He's so in love with me (man)
Ok, here's my query:
1) 出待ち generally refers to fans waiting by the exit for their celebrity to come out. I admit my lack of vocab so I couldn't think of the equivalent in English. I translated it into "waiting for me" in the above, though the true implication of the original phrase has the fan-celeb reference. A possible related term could be "stalk," so it will be: "He's totally stalking me isn't he?" However, "stalk" is too much in the negative compared to the original phrase.
2) こいつちょっと Simply "That dude" could also work:
"He's totally waiting for me ain't he? that dude..."
Here, "that dude" serves to expressively conclude the previous phrase, at the same time adding more detail to it (dude/こいつ.) However, I also thought about "Com'on dude" as ちょっと suggests a reluctant and/or resentful tone.
3) I prefer the English equivalent of どんだけ isn't really a literally parallel phrase, but rather an emphasis on the point that is about to be made. Therefore, it becomes "so." I stuck the emphasis from どんだけ along with なんだよ, and turned the whole thing into "man" at the end of the translated sentence. Because I thought, if it were simply "He's in love with me so much!" then it doesn't carry any of the suggested negativity from どんだけ and the likes.
And then I thought, what if it ended in なのか, then would the translation be: "How much is he in love with me man?" Having translated this, I'm not satisfied with the flow of the sentence. Should it be something like お前どんだけ馬鹿なの? Then it would be something like, "How much of an idiot are you?" which flows perfectly. But not the other sentence, which involves the "he," who is committing an action towards "me." Please suggest to me a better translation ><; (Sorry if I sounded very confusing, I know that lol.)
A second example to further my query is as follows:
つ・・・つえーな・・・ コホッコホッ
まさかっ・・・ここで死ぬとは・・・
残・・・念・・・っ
...which I randomly cooked up. (Pardon my case of chu2 lol.)
Now, if I were to imagine different characters speaking these lines, my translation would vary:
Eg.1 Edward Elric from FMA (cool, intelligent, confident character, 16 male):
"D...Damn strong... cough cough
Can't believe... I'm gonna die here...
How... regrettable..."
"St... Strong"could do, but it's exactly these slangs which make me decide otherwise.
Eg.2 Any Chinpira from Worst (gangster type more than anything else, 18 male), or Revy from Black Lagoon (badass killer, grew up killing, ~25 female):
"Fucking... strong... cough cough
Can't believe... Imma die here...
Shame..."
"Shame," "What a shame," or something along these lines. "Yankees don't use big words" is my basis. Ignorant of me, but for the sake of grabbing the feel. For the same reason, I added the F word at the beginning, not only to be consistent with their swearing habit, but also attempt to reproduce the slang element in つえぇ.
Eg.3 Kushieda Minori from Toradora, or Yamanaka Ino from Naruto (out-going character, good natured more than anything else, ~16 female)
"So... so strong... cough cough
Can't believe... I'm going to die here...
How... sad..."
Above are the approximate translations for each of the examples. I have included a description of the character just in case you haven't come across of them, going as far as including multiple characters for the examples so you would at least be familiar with one of them. Sorry if I've still failed at attempting such.
I do notice certain translations are not as transliteral as they could have been. For example, "So strong" could be translated back to 強すぎ, though if it were originally 強すぎ, "Too strong" would have been my choice.
Sorry for being such a mouthful. I hope this would tidy up the point I'm trying to make. I typed this up over night (weekend yaay) so please be patient with me if certain ideas aren't clear enough ^^;
---------- Post added March 15, 2013 at 09:39 PM ---------- Previous post was March 02, 2013 at 05:47 AM ----------
EDIT:
Haha ahh I do know nothing beats a real example and it's pretty difficult to come by a clear, good one. Sorry for the confusion, please ignore the previous post if that was too messy to read.
Recently I watched an episode of an episodic anime in which I thought the sub group did a good job getting around of the wording.
Basically, this female student's been living off a male's student's bento at lunchtimes. The bento are usually tasty and colourful, except for the last two lunches which were nothing but purely veg and sausages respectively.
After getting a sausage-ful bento shoved in her face, the girl said in a (ー口ー;;) kinda face,
"一品物はやめてぇ~!"
which was subsequently translated to:
"What happened to variety?!"
This dialogue also makes up the final scene in the episode, if this information is of any use.
This is what I mean by compromising accuracy with expressiveness, if this is (finally) a lot clearer!