User blog:Damesukekun/Song Translating and Mistranslating

Now many volunteer translators of Vocaloid songs are active on YouTube and other sites. Since the release of Hatsune Miku, tons of Vocaloid songs have been created in Japan and the songs have caught many music lovers around the world. Most overseas fans, however, do not understand Japanese so translators are of much need. Those translators have made a great contribution to the overseas Vocaloid fandom, but not all of the translators do high quality translations. Unfortunatelly many grave mistranslations that totally convert original lyrics are also going around.


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 * Damesukekun A native Japanese who speaks both English and Japanese

Understanding Language
Japanese language is one of the most difficult languages for westerners. Its words, grammar and structure looks very unfamiliar to those who speak Indo-European languages. The Department of States says that an American needs about 4,000 hours of study for basic Japanese skill whereas the Ministry of Education and Science of Japan says that a Japanese needs about 2,000 hours for basic English skill. You will face complicated conjugation and inflection patterns and confusing particles. A slightest misreading can easily lead to a grave mistranslation - misreading of subjects and objects, positive and negative, active and passive, modifiers and modifees, present and past and so on. In addition interword spaces are not used in the official writing system, which makes reading sentences tricky. Most Kanji have several pronunciations with different meanings.

Self-learning achieves nothing more than basic daily conversations. Learning Japanese through anime clips and Vocaloid songs is an awkward idea. If you want to understand the language properly, you should take a Japanese class with a qualified teacher. Yet a few months of studying basic terms, conjugations and particles is not enough to grasp the whole framework of the language for translating Japanese songs and literature. The Japanese verb has five conjugation patterns. The i-type adjective and na-type adjective have different inflections. More than 200 particles are in Japanese and many of them have irregular inflections.

Understanding Culture
Translating does not mean automatic word converting. Comprehensive knowledge of both the language he/she translates and the culture behind the language is a requirement for a translator. Even people who speak the same language but have different backgrounds suffer communication gap. Think about this case. First floor. The American would say "second floor" when the British are walking on the "first floor" in a building. This example shows that your thinking pattern does not always works well when you place yourself in other communities.

Here is an overview about Japanese thinking and view of life.

Way of Thinking
Japanese thinking is like watching a multiple viewpoint drama. They often describe one thing from various standpoints. That is, third person viewpoint may represents first or second person viewpoint. Thus "this man" or "that woman" sometimes mean "I" or "you" in Japanese songs and literature.

View of Life
Japanese culture has developed under the influence of Shintoism, Mahayana Buddhism and Confucianism. Putting aside minute differences, these religions at large evaluate the harmony with the society and surroundings you belong and the nature. Those in Japan are expected to act what others expect "to maintain the harmony of the society and the nature." In addition looking into inner self is a common Japanese reaction when facing difficulties. Zen (or Ch'en) class Buddhism, from which traditional Japanese arts such as Ikebana (flower arrangement) and Sadou (tea ceremony) were inspired, tries to search for the truth in inner self through Zen-mondou (profound riddles) and Zazen (Zen meditation). This view of life and self reflection makes a sharp contrast to Christianity, in which one finds his/her reason of existence and the truth through the connection with his/her family, friends and the God.

Machine Translating
Japanese and English practically share nothing except for adopted words and expressions. Their vocabularies, grammars, sentence structures, idioms and metaphors are totally different one another. Unlike translating languages from the Indo-European family such as German-English or French-English, machine translators cannot properly translate Japanese to English or English to Japanese.

Here are examples.

Google translation. Result. Correct translation with natural Japanese.
 * A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
 * 尻尾猫を運ぶ男は他の方法で学ぶことができる何かを学習します.
 * A man who carries a tailcat learns something that can be learned by other ways.
 * 猫の尻尾をつかんで運べば、他では得られない教訓を学ぶだろう. Or more naturally 何事もやってみないと、学ぶことはできない.

Even a simplest sentence may be awkwardly converted.

Google translation. Result Correct translation with natural Japanse.
 * The night is young.
 * 夜は若いです.
 * The night is in young age.
 * 夜はまだこれからだ.

Common Mistakes
Here are the typical mistranslations by beginners.
 * Negligence of sentence structure
 * Japanese word order is free. Objects can be placed before subjects. The only rule is that verbs and predicative adjectives should be placed at the end of sentences, but this rule is often broken in poetic lyrics with inversion.
 * Misreading of omitted subjects and objects.
 * Japanese language often omits subjects and objects. You need to read the context carefully to restore the words.
 * In English songs, one line usually makes one sentence. In Japanese songs, however, two or more lines make one sentence cluster. Beginners often cut a sentence cluster into several phrases like English lyrics. This easily leads to the grave misreading of omitted subjects and objects.
 * Ignorance on Japanese multiple-viewpoint thinking. As mentioned above, "this man" or "that woman" sometimes means "I" or "you" in Japanese songs and literature.
 * Another ignorance on Japanese thinking - self-reflection. This is also why many beginners often misread hidden subjects and objects. They mistakenly set "you" instead of "I" or "me" and "I" or "me" instead of "you" because they interpret Japanese lyrics by their western thinking way.

青い空に浮かぶ 白い雲がきれいだ. The white cloud(s) floating in the blue sky is/are beautiful. To English speakers, the word order is  In-the-blue-sky-floating white cloud(s) is/are beautiful. Yet the prevailing misinterpretation among overseas translators is confusing the attributive form with the terminate form. This results in the misreading ''The blue sky is floating. The white cloud(s) is/are beautiful.'' - phrase cutting. This also leads to grave misreading of subjects and objects.
 * Misreading of transitive verbs and intransitive verbs.
 * The Japanese transitive verb does not necessarily require the object. More accurately, the transitive verb often appears with the omitted object word .  
 * Misreading of main verbs and subsidiary verbs.
 * Misreading of 連体形 (attributive form), which works like the English participial phrase or relative clause.
 * The Japanese verb in attributive form is exactly in the same form as 終止形 (terminate form). This is an example. The attributive phrase is marked red.
 * Misinterpreting of the particle は. The particle は usually works as a subject marker, but sometimes adverbial marker.
 * Misinterpreting of the particle が. The particle が works either a subject marker or an object marker. The common misconception about が is が always works as a subject marker.
 * Confusing the adverbial particles では, とは, には and のは with the subject particle は.