Balancing Japanese-English Translation

I recently mused about the career path of an aspiring entertainment translator and the tendency to move from direct word-for-word translation to a creative translation before settling somewhere in the middle.

Gauging this “somewhere in the middle” can be tricky to grasp at first. You need good Japanese comprehension, a strong understanding of English writing, and the experience to balance the two appropriately.

If I were learning how to translate from scratch I would appreciate learning more about the different ways you can balance the meaning, wording, and intent of the source text. So, here are some of my thoughts on balancing Japanese-English translation for media.

Knowing the Source

First things first, I can’t tackle a translation if I don’t understand the source. Not just the Japanese but also how the text is going to be used (is it system text? tutorials? menus? store text? advertising? story? dialogue?). If its story or dialogue, then I need to know the story and characters—the genre (horror? fantasy? sci-fi?), the characters’s personalities and backgrounds (hot-headed? rich/privileged? a brat? an old-sage?) as well as their goals and relationships with one another.

I ideally learn as much as I can about the story and characters in advance, but if there are no reference materials then I’m left to learn as I translate. This slows down the translation process as I do one pass with a very basic translation, then a few more passes once I have a better idea of the story and characters to accurately reflect the intent in the translation.

Knowing the source material helps me understand the meaning and intent behind the text (especially when ambiguous) a lot more easily. And knowing how the text will be used tells me what style of English I should be writing in (tutorials are worded differently from error messages, for example.)

Wording and Meaning

I harp on a lot about how you shouldn’t directly translate because words don’t always convey the intended meaning. Here’s an example of when meaning trumps wording.

Example: System Messages

Let’s say you have a generic system message for a game like the following,

ここまでの状況をセーブします

If you translate this sentence word-for-word you get,

“Save situation up until now.”

You probably understand what it’s trying to say, but it doesn’t sound right, there’s something missing—the subject! In English you often need the subject of the verb, which in this case is “you.”

“Save your situation up until now.”

That sounds better but it’s still not quite right… The problem is the “situation up until now.” Yes that’s what ここまでの状況 means, but in we don’t use the word “situation” for games in English, we say “progress”.

“Save your progress up until now.”

That’s much better, but there’s one more issue with it—redundant wording! “Progress” already carries the meaning of “everything that’s happened” so “up until now” is unnecessary. Bogging down a translation with unnecessary words slows the reader down and leads to misunderstandings.

“Save your progress.”

This reads like a system message for a video game. It conveys the original meaning while also being short, easy to read, and uses language the target audience are most familiar with.

The key aim of translation is accurately conveying the meaning of the source text to the intended audience. As seen above, this is often more than a simple one-for-one word replacement.

You could probably have guessed what the source text wanted to say from any of the above translations, but the best translation was also the most legible.

Meaning and Legibility

The easier the text is to read, the faster the information is understood by the reader. I don’t mean “dumbing down” the language, but instead removing unnecessary wording, changing words with ambiguous or potentially double meanings, rearranging the sentence structure to highlight important information, etc.—making the writing tighter.

Japanese can easily trip translators up because of different writing styles. This includes the frequent use of modified nouns, long sentences, double or triple negatives, and words that become superfluous in English.

Example: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai.

Let’s consider this segment from 失格人間 (No Longer Human) by Osamu Dazai.

自分は東北の田舎に生れましたので、汽車をはじめて見たのは、よほど大きくなってからでした。自分は停車場のブリッジを、上って、降りて、そうしてそれが線路をまたぎ越えるために造られたものだという事には全然気づかず、ただそれは停車場の構内を外国の遊戯場みたいに、複雑に楽しく、ハイカラにするためにのみ、設備せられてあるものだとばかり思っていました。

There are two sentences here, the second one is ridiculously long. Here’s a direct translation of the Japanese, which includes a closer translation of the wording and grammar structure.

“I was born in the Tohoku countryside, so I saw my first steam train when I was a lot bigger. The train station bridges, up and down, I didn’t notice they were made to straddle across the train tracks, just that the train station grounds were like a foreign theme park, only made to be complicated fun, high-collar, I always thought they were only installed for that.”

This sentence is way too long and gangly in English. You can understand the meaning, but it’s a bit of a struggle. If I were translating this, I would start by tidying up the wording. Such as the adjects 複雑に楽しく “complicated fun” and ハイカラ “high-collar” (which actually means “stylish” or “fashionable”) into adjectives that make sense in English.

“I was born in the countryside in Tohoku, so I was a lot older when I saw my first steam train. I only ever thought the bridges at the train station were built to give the station a bit of charm and flair, like some foreign theme park, and never considered that how they were built, going up and then down again, was to cross over the tracks below.”

Although this works there’s still some unnecessary repetition and the second sentence is very long, which makes it harder to keep track of information.

“I was born in the countryside in Tohoku, so I was a lot older when I saw my first steam train. I only ever thought the bridges at the train station were built to give the station some charm and flair, like a foreign theme park. I never considered that how they were built, going up and down, was to cross over the tracks below.”

We can tighten this translation even more up without losing any of the meaning.

“I was born in the countryside in Tohoku, so I was a lot older when I saw my first steam train. I always thought the bridges at the station were there to add a bit of charm and flair, like you’d see at a theme park. Their actual purpose, crossing the tracks below, never registered.”

Removing redundancies and superfluous words helps tighten the piece and focuses the attention of the reader on the intended meaning. This makes the sentence easier to read while improving the flow of the text without losing any of the original meaning, even if some words were removed.

Janet Hsu briefly discusses this in their article about technology and localization in the Ace Attorney games,

“I’m convinced that part of the appeal of Ace Attorney’s writing is in how short and simple each line is. No one line feels like a chore to read, and before you know it, you’re 100 lines on and have gone through three dialogue options.”

This applies to almost any form of writing—technical, marketing, narrative description, dialogue and more. They should be easy for the target audience to digest through the use of clear wording, short sentences, and commonly used terms. (The 10% Solution by Ken Rand is the best book for learning brevity and clarity.)

Legibility and Style

But knowing this rule also means knowing when to break it. The shortest, tightest sentence isn’t always the best for a piece.

Out of the four above examples from 失格人間 (No Longer Human), I would say the second-to-last revision is as equally valid as the last revision. If anything, it matches the flow of the original writing better than the final and shortest translation.

When can style be prioritized over legibility?

When it’s appropriate for it. There are some cases where verbose language can match the setting of the story or a character better than standard English.

High-fantasy stories are a good example of this. Japanese high fantasy is often written with modern language, while their English counterparts are normally written in high-register and/or British English. This is because the works of authors like J.R.R. Tolkien have become synonymous with western-style fantasy.

Translations of high-fantasy games will often take this approach to match the setting of the story.

Games like Unicorn Overlord and Dragon Quest 11 are great examples of strong translations that convey the meaning of the original Japanese in two different stylistic but fun ways that suit their fantasy settings.

“Alain: Then we’ll meet again ere our siege of Soldraga.”

“Noah: We didn’t ‘ave no grub left, no water, nuffink. We’d just about given up ‘ope. But then these soldiers from Gallopolis came along.”

Some argue that changing the style of writing from modern Japanese to high-register English, or to British English, contradicts the original intent, but I don’t think that’s the case. As the original aim is to tell a fantasy story, using fantasy style English accurately conveys that intent.

It’s okay to prioritize style when it works.

I’ve not had a chance to translate high-fantasy (although I would love to), but I always make the conscious decision to prioritize style to reflect a character’s personality or background.

Such as the head of a dojo who doesn’t use contractions, showing a step-by-step approach with no shortcuts, “It is unacceptable to be so weak. One must train daily to be the best.” Or a prince who uses very flowery language matching the opulence of his station, “My sincerest gratitude! My father bequeathed me those items.” (See Translating Character Voice for more tips on how to translate voice.)

But even in these cases where I add flair to character dialogue I still remove unnecessary words and edit for brevity. I always try to be conscious of how the audience will read a line.

Hsu also mentions this in their article;

“I have noticed that for The Great Ace Attorney, some people have commented on how the verboseness of the dialogue makes it harder for them to get into those games when compared to the mainline games. In that particular duology’s case, it was an artistic choice to mimic Victorian era writing, and yet, I believe those comments lend credence to the statement that brevity is the soul of wit.”

In other words, you can be verbose to match the story setting and/or characters, but you should consider what is gained and what is lost. For better or worse this can impact the audience’s enjoyment, so a translator must be aware of the audience and confident with their choices when balancing style and readability.

Intent and Entertainment

Intent and entertainment in media translation is probably one of the most difficult things to balance.

Some people prefer a more “direct” approach with wooden sounding English because it feels more Japanese (even though the original Japanese isn’t wooden to its native audience). While others prefer a more creative approach, with entertaining writing that’s fun to read. You will never be able to please everyone with your translation choices.

This doesn’t just apply to audiences, but translators too. Every translator has their own preferences and translation styles. Give one text to 50 translators and you’ll get 50 different translations back. (See Translation is a Spectrum.)

You can probably tell by now that I’m the type of translator who prefers text to be readable and entertaining, but I’m also a firm believer of balancing that with original intent.

How can you tell what the intent is?

You don’t even need the original author to understand intent, it can be gauged from common sense.

Let’s take the earlier example of ここまでの状況をセーブします. What’s the intent? It’s there to inform the player that their game will be saved. Therefore, you know it should be kept short and clear, because it needs to inform the player of important information quickly.

Similarly, the intent of tutorial text or a rule book is to inform the player how to play a game. Therefore, the text needs to be easy to understand. Or text used for marketing should sell a product and be appealing to a specific audience. While the intent of certain lines of dialogue might be to provide an emotional beat, so those emotions need to land in the translation.

Should you change the translation completely in order to match intent?

For the most part a translation should reflect the original meaning, but there are some cases where you can and should change it to match intent.

In particular, when a character’s personality is portrayed through a verbal trait that works in Japanese but doesn’t translate well into English.

For example, in Japanese a character trait is often portrayed by adding something to the end of the sentence. Such as a cat character saying ニャ at the end of all their sentences. If you translated every line with “meow” at the end of the sentence, that would get really annoying really fast. (Just take a look at Charlotte from Trials of Mana in Translating Character Voice.)

My approach to such characters is to ignore the verbal tick entirely and use different methods to convey the intent “this is a cat character.” If it’s a novel I might replace “hand/foot” or “hair” with “paw” or “fur.” Or in dialogue I might have them say “Hey! Lend me a paw here! I can’t do it by myself” or “You’ve got to be kitten me!”

Or you might have a character with a catchphrase or verbal tick. If the intent of the catchphrase is to make the character seem cool and mysterious, then directly translating it might not work, as catchphrases come off as corny in English.

Example: “Good grief”

A great example of this is with Jotaro Kujo in the anime series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. His character is based on Clint Eastwood who, when localized for Japanese audiences, often used the phrase やれやれ “yareyare”.

Jotaro was also given this same verbal tick, but when the anime was localized into English the やれやれ “yareyare” became “good grief”.

“Good grief…”

This would be okay on its own, but the character says it a lot, resulting in a weird verbal tick that comes off as amusing in English. Especially when the phrase “good grief” is commonly associated in English with Charlie Brown.

This makes Jotaro come off as comical, like Charlie Brown, rather than cool like Clint Eastwood. The intent is completely lost because meaning was prioritized.

Then again, even if it wasn’t the intent, this catchphrase has become an iconic part of the character.

Legends of Localization also discusses this,

“Whenever these weird catchphrase things turn up, it’s always a tough decision whether or not to include them 100% of the time. I mean, it’s important enough that the original creators took the time to write them down, you know? On the other hand, the original creators didn’t intend for the text to seem super-awkward. So it’s one of those little things translators and localizers have to think about for each new project.”

There are many popular characters that have been localized into English without their signature Japanese catchphrases. And from what I can see, most people who played the English never noticed the catchphrase was changed from the Japanese. But they can certainly tell when the catchphrase was kept.