Talk: サンドリヨン (Cendrillon)

Forums: Index > Vocaloid discussion > サンドリヨン (Cendrillon)

Wiki's forums are a place for the community to discuss subjects with other members. Remember sign your post with four tildes: ~~~~
Click here to edit page

This Talk page was moved to the Forums for archive purposes.

Re: Translation

I do agree with your opinion that the translation originally posted is not the most literal or true to the Japanese. However, the translation currently being used doesn't sound very good in English -- I'm not just talking about "flow" and "poetry", some of the grammar is intrinsically flawed. Would you mind if I composed an alternate translation? I do have [a] [short] [history] of the practice. (The second link is rather mediocre, as I did it only because a member of the Vocaloid LJ community requested the song (they never even responded), but the others I am rather proud of.) Lenga-chan 17:18, January 24, 2010 (UTC)

I've done some translation of songs too, so I understand what you want to say and I didn't mean to put down your work. As you know, form of grammar, way of wording, mode of expression and poetic devices in Japanese greatly differ from those in English, and what causes the problems most is the way subjects, objects and even verbs are omitted in Japanese sentences; this is one of the main reasons why word-for-word translation of Japanese texts sounds strange in English. Of course, there're some basic rules how to add those implicit missing words, but some words are up to each person's knowledge and imagination. And also it's not a bad thing at all to have your own interpretation and story; rather it's one of the best parts of enjoying vocaloid's songs.

The matter is that those can totally differ from one person to another and this page is on wiki, not your own. If we could write each and every interpretation on the article, that would be the best. But, regretfully that's impossible. And just putting a single specific interpretative translation would cause arguments, for no one can say which explication is perfectly correct.

However, Damesukekun has suggested using VocaloidLyrics@wiki http://www24.atwiki.jp/v-lyrics/ and establishing links to it. I'm completely in support of the idea. If we make it a rule to use it, I think that's would be fair. Then, I'll happily remove my literal awkward translation, too. What do you think of that? Blacksaingrain 01:19, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

By DOS, an American needs more then 4,000 hours of study to apply the basic Japanese skill. That means, another some more years after his/her graduating from college. Vice versa. Japan's Ministry of Education says a Japanese spends about 2,000 hours for the easy English conversation skill. I myself had more than five years to get this literacy after leaving (or dropping out.. lol) college. So please understand the "voluntary" translation by an amateur often works negatively, especially when you challenge the language which shares nothing with your original tongue.

By the way, this article suggests the latest air of the translation world. Damesukekun 06:58, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

I can't say literal translation is good, but the difficulty of communicative translation is that translators are always open to temptation to change the meaning of the original texts, unconsciously or without any malicious intent, into what they themselves want to say. If it's too creative and doesn't convey what the text tells basically, that's anything but a translation; it's a fan-fiction. Or it would be just a corruption of the original.Blacksaingrain 03:41, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

What I wanted to say is that translating is not just converting words and grammars but conveying idea. And it is possible to do this excluding the translator's subjective view as the article I mentioned above says. Of course, the translator needs the wide knowledge not only of languages but also of cultures, histories, thinking patterns and so-ons of both sides. This is the limit of amateurs, who cover the lack of knowledge by speculation. Further, I am trying to contact authors for their advice before translating. Damesukekun 15:48, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, translating is conveying authors' idea through translators' interpretation.The texts cannot be translated without each translator's own view and some texts have several possible meanings. Basically I agree with Peter Newmark's theory. I used the phrase "what they themselves want to say" to point out that sometimes translators embed their own ideas and explications needlessly in those of authors, leading the readers arbitrarily and enduring no other interpretations. What the originals intent is often disregarded by translators as they want to add explicitly what they themselves imagined. Those imaginations themselves are not bad though.

For instance, if someone puts "Mama, just killed a man", a famous phrase in "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, into Japanese as "ママ、僕は今、男を、僕の友達だった奴を殺したんだ(Mama, just killed a man, he was my friend)", this would be too much to say it's a good translation. Though such interesting interpretation might stir people's imaginations more (actually I love to see wonderful alternative fanfics and derivations), it's not clear in the context who the man is and such translation would cause misunderstanding that the original English text explicitly says so. This is just one of the most visible examples, but even such things can happen to professional translators. Since they're proud and confident of their own skills and knowledge, some of them believe they can make it the texts better. To be a good translator, I think one needs to see the text and his own work through both subjective and objective perspectives, because the original is not his own. Yeah, if we could work with authors, such problems would reduce. Blacksaingrain 09:23, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

そういえば有名な話に二葉亭四迷の「I love you.」→「死んでもいいわ。」なんてありましたね(個人的には大爆笑&大好きな訳です)。Damesukekun 15:55, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

四迷はペンネームのつけ方からして面白い人ですよね。文脈によっては誤訳になりかねない訳とはいえ、当時としては夏目漱石の「I love you.」の和訳と並ぶ迷訳かつ名訳だと思います（笑）二人の方向性が真逆なあたり、訳者の個性は訳文に出ますね。Blacksaingrain 09:23, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I see your point, I see your point. I'm an amateur, I'll back off. However, there is one slight problem: That wiki has no translations of Cendrillon. So... I suppose we have to contribute to said wiki to have multiple translations available when the ones provided are viewed as inadequate? Lenga-chan 10:59, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

The guideline of the Wiki is here. If you disagree with other translator's interpretation, you can post your translation like this. Visitors would have the chance to compare several translations avoiding edit war, which is the reason I push VocaloidLyrics@wiki. If you are going to post Cendllion, I'll generate the page. Damesukekun 12:40, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

I added a new page for Cendrillon there http://www24.atwiki.jp/v-lyrics/pages/505.html. I'm going to fix mine and post it. Whoever wants to post theirs can entry. Blacksaingrain 03:41, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

I posted it. Blacksaingrain 08:03, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

SEO

I'm having huge problems searching for things in this wiki. If you search for Cendrillon this page doesn't come up in the results. It could be due to the bilingual title. I agree that having a bilingual title is great/important, but maybe having disambiguation pages that explicitly list out the Japanese title and English title would be helpful. Who knows how many people have walked away from this site disgruntled that they couldn't find anything?

Redirects might solve the problem since theres its talking about one song. One-Winged Hawk 18:52, May 31, 2010 (UTC)

Are サンドリヨン and Cendrillon sufficient? - Lenga-chan 20:32, May 31, 2010 (UTC)