Translation Musings

I was re-watching a Japanese movie recently, and because the last time I saw it, my Japanese was still the self-taught variety, I paid more attention to the translation of the dialogue into the subtitles this time. Considering how ubiquitous this version of the subtitles was, one would normally assume that they had won out over the other crappy translations floating around, but with translations of Japanese material, it was entirely possible that this was simply the most widespread translation that got floated around more than other ones did. Turns out, the latter case seems more applicable. (I will also be making random comments about amusing lines and other thoughts I had during the movie, and not just about translations, in this post.)

One of the amusing lines was “耳落ちるぞ” [mimi ochiru zo], which was delivered in such a deadpan, indifferent tone that the subtitles just didn’t convey. Personally, I think it would’ve sounded ridiculous if it had been said in English.

I should point out to my Japanese classes that “どうしたの?” [doushita no] is a useful phrase: “what’s up?” or “what’s the matter?”, loosely. I should also point out to them two interesting sentence endings that I noticed and didn’t realize were usable. The first was when a girl used the sentence final particle “ぞ” [zo], which was explained to me, by a guy who lived in Japan until the age of 16, that it was the brutish-guy equivalent of “よ” [yo]. Karl likes to refer to it as the “yakuza particle,” but after hearing it in this context, I am really not-confident in the truth of that moniker. The second unexpected sentence ending was when the hospital security guard was speaking to the dark, empty room and said “誰がいます?” [dare ga imasu] with the inflection on “す” [su] that indicated a question. I had always thought that such a usage was fairly girly (and my Japanese 先生 [sensei] may have said as much, too), but maybe not? The guard did not seem particularly effeminate, at any rate.

One scene seemed particularly rife with interesting translations (or maybe I was just managing to pay closer attention, which seems likely). After saying that some previous situation was messed up, the detective then said “今こそ” [ima koso], which I would literally translate as “now too,” meaning that the current situation was also messed up; personally, I find this perfectly comprehensible in context as a translation. The subtitles, though, read “all of it.” Later in the same scene, one guy picks up the phone, hears the voice ask for another guy in the room, and hands the phone to him, at which point the guy who just received the phone says “変わりました” [kawarimashita], which is the distal perfective form of the verb “change,” to indicate that the speaker has changed. The subtitles, though, have been translated as “Hello?” (At some later point in the movie, the new speaker says “今変わりました” [ima kawarimashita] — literally, “now changed” — which gets translated as “Hi, there.”) Finally, in this scene, the verb “消える” [kieru] is translated as “lose,” while it should be more accurately translated as “disappear.” I think “does your connection disappear” makes just as much sense as “do you lose your connection,” and kind of fail to see why this particular choice in translation was made.

I’m also fairly certain that some of the numbers in the movie are mistranslated. A few times when the characters say “50″ the subtitles read “54,” and so on and so forth. And about ninety minutes in, a boy clearly says “あなたとあなたは” [anata to anata wa] which doesn’t get translated at all — the subtitles entirely skip this item in the boy’s list.

Last thing in this mini-rant/examination: when a computer screen displays “明日…のライブ会場に集まれ” [ashita...no raibu kaijou ni atsumare] it is translated as “…concert tomorrow” as opposed to “come to the concert venue tomorrow.” I … disapprove.