Evolmage's Workshop

Original Video:

I've been translating maps for a decent amount of time now. Even though I'm still an amateur translator, doing translations only as a hobby, I can say that I can still relate to most of what is said in this video, except for the business side of it, since I do all of my translations for free. I wanted to give my own personal point of view on this topic and maybe give my own insights into the more underground scene of translations which includes things like my translations, scanlations of manga/manhwa, and unofficial translations of novels/light novels.

First and foremost, they discuss why translations and localization is not an easy task because every different language has their own rules and usually contain words and phrases that have no exact equivalent in English or other languages. This point is very spot on, as I've experienced this with Korean. I've encountered the word 답답해 (dab-dab-hae), which has no direct English translation. It is used to describe the feeling of frustration felt when not being able to do what you want freely or feelings of being locked up in an uncomfortable situation, but there's no way to say this with a single word in English.

They also discuss what makes a localization bad, and they mention the Big Daddy of bad localization for Anime at least, 4Kids Entertainment. Personally, I grew up with 4Kids and did not even realize all of the weird things they did with their dubs until I was much older. On the other hand, good localizations keep the original intent of content while also liberally making changes to allow the people from whichever region they are marketting to to give them something that they can relate to or would actually be familiar with. Which again, is another point that is not really something that I can argue against.

There is one thing they talk about however, that is works completely differently in the underground translation scene, which is the political and business aspect of translations and localizations. In the scene where I do my work, there is no one there to tell you what you can and can not do. This makes the underground industry completely different from official translations and localizations that need to be liscensed and follow any kind of legsilation for whichever region they want to distribute the product to.

This one point is a double-edged sword, as while we have the freedom to translate anything we want without any restrictions, it's also very easy to end up with poor quality translations that have no quality assurance applied to it. But, this does not mean that every translation done by amatuers is bad. Of course, there will always be content out there that is similar to the almighty "Duwang" translation of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4, but there are also many individuals/times who put a lot of time and effort into their work to create quality translations for content that would more than likely never recieve any kind of translation.

Ironically, there's one advantage that the underground scene has that official translations seem to lack quite heavily in. Crediting and authorship is much more commonplace in the underground scene than the official scene. When was the last time you could name a translator for an official translation? I've been doing translation for so long, yet I definitely can not name anyone off the top of my head. That kind of information is only something you can find out if you look it up on the Internet, yet even then information about them is extremely scarce.

On the other hand, teams and individuals can go ahead and put their names wherever they want, usually at the start/end of a chapter for manga translations for example. They have the freedom to make themselves known to their audience. There's no company that just simply decides to not give them any credit since that's what everyone else does. Some teams or inviduals have donation services like Patreon to support themselves while they produce their translations.

In the video, they do not touch on the topic of authorship and credibility at all, but I think that's understandable since their goal was just to give an overview of the process of translation and localization, rather than discussing the actual industry itself.

Even though translators and not the ones who made the original content, there is still a very considerable amount of work that has to be done to create something in a completely different language that still captures the original essence of the work. Translators are always left behind in the background and are almost never recognized for their efforts. There's so little authorship for translators in the official scene, that they usually aren't even put in the end credits of the content that they translated. This practice is pretty discouraging and demoralizing. To know that you'll never be recognized for something that you put all of your blood, sweat, and tears into just doesn't sound very appealing. I feel like this practice should not be normal, yet as it currently exists, it is very normal and just something that you have to accept as a professional translator. I might be over reaching because I'm not a professional translator myself, but I still have a lot of experience with the practice of translating itself, which gives me some kind of say in how I would feel knowing that such a thing is just common practice in the industry.

That sums up my thoughts from watching this video, and I'd love to know what you guys think about the process of translation of localization as well, as I have enabled commenting on this post. You can also feel free to ask me any questions about the topic as well. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a nice day.

Evolmage's Workshop

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