|
also there are lots of shower scenes
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 00:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 07:30 |
|
|
Dan7el posted:Can someone who has actually read a Japanese light novel in the original language tell me if the writing is really as bad as I've seen in the English translations? ok i'm gonna actually answer this seriously since i have actually read an LN in japanese. you can think of LNs like dime-novels targeted at young adult readers. writing quality will vary but generally not be anything close to the language an actually respected novelist can put out. go to your local wal-mart and up by the registers are probably a bunch of cheap novels by unknown authors that were still actually published; LNs are similar in writing quality. people buy them for the characters and stories they create (lol), not for the masterful way the author weaves his words into something beautiful and artistic. fan translations are awful because of a number of linguistic differences between japanese and english that translators either don't understand, or aren't willing to handle in a way that makes the resulting english work out nicely. the big one is in noun modification. japanese generally modifies nouns through the use of a clause or phrase prior to the actual noun, and big dramatic moments will often intentionally invoke this pattern. for example, see basically any episode of kaiji, where the narrator will say something along the lines of "kaiji is crying miserably, standing before a mountain with no way to climb it, on the verge of defeat", but the original japanese clearly says "kaiji" last, because the modifying phrases come before it. really bad translations will translate that as "[noun] that is [modifying phrase]" since that's the closest english equivalent, despite the fact that rather than sounding more artistic and dramatic, it just sounds ridiculous. baka-tsuki also tends to be bad because i'm pretty sure the translators usually use a single sentence as the basic unit from which to translate. besides just word ordering, colloquial japanese separates sentences in completely different ways than english does, and generally japanese sentences are longer than reasonable english equivalents. and at an even higher level, paragraphs etc. are organized differently because these sentences separate in different ways. if you choose to translate by making sentences one-to-one, you end up with something that doesn't read well at all. you need an extremely strong understanding of literature in both english and japanese to make intelligent decisions about how to take the content and reorganize it, cutting and combining sentences, reordering entire sentences or paragraphs, etc. to make those decisions you have to have to catch all the subtleties of the literature (admittedly much easier in LNs than real novels), and while you're doing that, you have to set a target for how you want the impression given by the translation to compare to the impression a native speaker of the original gets, and work within that target. it's really hard to do that, so fan translators tend to either not try, or not pull it off despite best efforts. i have tried making my own translations of what i've read, and it's beyond me to make something that looks like reasonable literature. i've bought a couple LNs from yen press and their translations tend to be quite good. the story is actually organized into reasonable paragraphs as opposed to the one-sentence pseudo-paragraphs that baka-tsuki puts out, and the language tends to be reasonable for an English book. there are still occasionally sentences that scream "this was translated from japanese," but that's generally true of most professional publications; newspapers especially are kind of jarring. of course maybe i'm just a lot worse at japanese and translating than i think and it's a lot easier than i make it out to be but hey.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 00:34
|
|
|
I wanna add to that and say that baka-tsuki literally has a policy that editors are not allowed to be editors. They're just glorified spell-checkers, and in a disagreement the translator is assumed to be correct. It's a clown town over there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 00:46
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:Nazi Strike Witches with Swastika Panties. please, don't leak your next project before you're done your first one
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 01:02
|
|
|
jon joe posted:korean light novel The disease has spread outside Japan? I think it's time to start closing borders
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 01:49
|
|
|
I Tried to Think of a Long Title for My First Light Novel, So I Asked My Childhood Friend for Help.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 02:15
|
|
|
jon joe posted:Have then animifie the korean light novel Legendary Moonlight Sculptor (Royal Road) "Weed wasn’t fearful of Darius in the sense of stats, but he knew that his weakness lay in the duration. He was, so to speak, a typical case of premature ejaculation, a man’s number one secret fear."
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 03:00
|
|
|
Compendium posted:I Tried to Think of a Long Title for My First Light Novel, So I Asked My Childhood Friend for Help. They should make a Plague, Inc. module for light novels.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 14:13
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:The disease has spread outside Japan? I think it's time to start closing borders I tried to close the frontiers to stop the Light Novel pandemic, but my imouto said it was already too late !?
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2015 14:33
|
|
|
Help! My Popular Light Novel is Ruining my NEET Life! The protagonist is a shunned high school student that turned hikikomori after being teased for his terrible fanfiction. His only remaining contact is his neighbor and childhood friend, who, unknown to him, was the original leaker of his work, and honestly enjoyed it. Feeling guilty for turning him into a NEET, she convinces him to enter one last writing contest. When his work starts gaining massive praise and even screenplay requests, he needs to adjust his former shut-in life with the newfound social challenges of being a rich and popular writer. Daedalus1134 fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jan 6, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 07:24
|
|
|
Daedalus1134 posted:Help! My Popular Light Novel is Ruining my NEET Life! I can believe in this one getting written and animated.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 07:26
|
|
|
Since this is the closest thing we have to a "Light novel thread", I'll just say here that today all the Spice & Wolf books that I ordered as a Christmas gift to myself have finally arrived! After reading several of the novels via interlibrary loan, I decided "Yes, this is a series that I must have." Not knowing Japanese and of course never having read the original books, I can only say that the books stand quite well on their own, and are a pleasure to read. It's a really good series, if you're interested in economics!
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 07:47
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:The disease has spread outside Japan? I think it's time to start closing borders What are you talking about? Harry Potter has been here since the 2000s.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 16:35
|
|
|
Insurrectionist posted:Hmmm, don't know about this. She meant babes as in babies. Postal Parcel posted:What are you talking about? Oh noooooo. Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 6, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 07:30 |
|
|
Here's waffleman's idea from the winter anime season derail:Waffleman_ posted:私は日本語がわからない場合、私は本当にライトノベルを書くことはできますか？ Waffleman_ posted:Mark Smith is an American transfer student at Iwasaki High School who made a bold statement on his first day. Don't let us down, waffleman.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2015 07:44
|
|