[X] My Assistant

I was working on a translation bounty when I noticed that there was an existing gallery for the bounty in English, so I decided to skim through it and noticed a mistake right away. I pointed this out to the bounty poster and he told me to go ahead and work on the translation. Unfortunately the bounty was just claimed by someone else (though it hasn't gone through at the time of writing this), but that aside, I decided to check my half finished script with the TL and it made me burst out laughing

The translator got things comically wrong, more often than he got things right.

I'd post the links but I can't being a "new" member and all so you'll have to get it yourself, sorry about that.
The gallery is [Ortensia (Shinobe)] Kemono no Otonari-san
The English translation I'm talking about is the one with [BSN] at the end (There's only one at the moment)

If you can read any Japanese then you can check for yourself, but here's a particularly egregious example on page 6:
Japanese: ダメよお 生ゴミも入ってるでしょう？

In English, this basically translates to "That's no good! Aren't there kitchen scraps in there?"

His translation: "I really hate to bother you again, but could you grab another trash bag for me?"

And there are many points like that, to the point where some of it doesn't even make sense. That being said, there are also many points where he gets it right, or right enough. This guy's been posting for years too, and I briefly looked over one of his more recent translations and it was better, but he still sometimes skips over details or comes closer to giving his impression of what the person said than what they actually said.

So I guess my question here is, at what point is something a rewrite and at what point is it a translation?

On one hand he makes some crap up, and in the worst cases changes entire aspects of the story.

But on the other hand, it doesn't seem like anyone's noticed; he does enough that no one thinks it's a rewrite, so is it even a problem at all? Am I making something from nothing here?

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text, but I'm really curious as to what people think about this.

Cheers

TL;DR I saw some inaccurate translations that no one seems to have noticed and was wondering how people feel about it.

It's pretty straight forward depending on the person in question.

Literal: Come have fun with us, kid!

Trans: Come have fun, kid!

Liberal: Come on, let's have some fun!

Bad: Hey, get some eggs from the store, would'cha?

The point at when it's a rewrite to me is when the person goes completely off the rails and just makes up lines to a complete rewrite of dialogue, while being more liberal is when the context of the translation is shifted up a bit while keeping the point of the line. This is often when it goes from Jap to Eng to French, Spanish and so on, like a game of Telephone. Sometimes though with J-E you'll find where most of the dialogue is translated correctly, but then some small lines are completely different. I don't know what that's about.

Those parts definitely count as rewrite, no one noticed because it's not obvious if you don't confront it with the original but if I was tge commissioner/boutt poster I would not like that.
On the other hand, sometimes people just want to translate something because they really like it even though they don't have the necessary knowledge and I don't see anything wrong with them trying. If you see this kind of mistakes feel free to point them out, I'd definitely want to know if it was me (im fact I recently received feedback on some of my translations and it's been very useful to correct them.

This is surprisingly common, to be honest.

There are some people who have released a large amount of "translations" but don't seem to have the faintest clue about basic grammar. Not actually a rewrite - just mistakes galore. Like, to the point where if it were regular spelling and grammar mistakes, it'd be tagged as "poor grammar".

That said... I think a large portion of people who come across a story riddled with translation errors aren't really going to care - especially if they aren't aware of the errors existing. Unless the mistakes are jarring, I think most people are fine with it - at the end of the day, it's fap material.

It bothers me a bit, but that's only really because good translations (both accurate and phrased well in English) can sometimes take a bit of effort (especially something like translating puns and other sorts of plays on words) and to me it feels like a bit of a kick in the balls to see something butchered when it might otherwise have been done well.

That said, if it were something that was probably never going to be touched by someone else, then I guess it could be argued something is better than nothing. *shrug*

I mostly just read things raw nowadays so I don't actually care except when I occasionally come across translations of things I recognise and shed a single tear at the glaring mistakes. If I can be bothered, I might leave a comment with some of the obvious mistakes and a recommendation to have someone proofread their work, but I think that mostly falls on deaf ears.

This post has been edited by rqwrqw: Dec 3 2018, 09:58

Yeah, sometimes you have to be a bit liberal with it since it wouldn't make any sense in English. I think that's almost a necessity.

But at a certain point the lines get a bit blurred, for example, I can't remember exactly but a line I was reading earlier was something like: "She's completely enthralled, look at her face, it's the face of a girl who's learning the taste of cock."

And it was translated to something like "Look at her face, she sure loves that cock."

I guess it gets the sentiment across, but it's not really conveying all the same information. Oh well.

As for why some small lines are different, I think it's just because every so often we'll misread a line due either to a lack of focus or ability. That's why I make sure to read everything twice, then a third time once I'm finished. Even doing that though I'm sure things still slip by sometimes.

But how's a bounty poster or commissioner supposed to know? If they had someone on hand who could verify the accuracy of the translations, then it would be better to just have that person do the translating.

Yeah, I mostly agree with you. It seems like most people are pretty happy with the guy I'm talking about's translations since they have no idea they're off. I'd feel kind of bad bursting their bubble just for my own puritanical satisfaction.

I generally try to read raws, but I still need to hit the dictionary here and there while reading in Japanese which sometimes takes me out of it, so I'll read English stuff too. It just annoys me that I can't blindly trust all English translated stuff anymore.

This post has been edited by Secluded: Dec 3 2018, 14:12

Often there is no way for the commissioner to know unfortunately, but there are some translators too busy to make a full translations so they only do a general check to look for mistakes like this one.

This post has been edited by progste: Dec 3 2018, 13:43

But how's a bounty poster or commissioner supposed to know? If they had someone on hand who could verify the accuracy of the translations, then it would be better to just have that person do the translating.

As someone who makes bounties, they can't know. I just have to trust that they're competent enough for the job. It's unfortunate I know, but a lot of these works would've never gotten TL'd otherwise. Which is why I prefer to work in a group, it's incredibly hard to BS your way through or make mistakes with other translators QCing your work. (The people I worked with for bounties seemed competent anyway at least, like rqwrqw, he's good)

Yeah, I mostly agree with you. It seems like most people are pretty happy with the guy I'm talking about's translations since they have no idea they're off. I'd feel kind of bad bursting their bubble just for my own puritanical satisfaction.

I generally try to read raws, but I still need to hit the dictionary here and there while reading in Japanese which sometimes takes me out of it, so I'll read English stuff too. It just annoys me that I can't blindly trust all English translated stuff anymore.

Most people don't care. Some do but can't do anything about it anyhow, like me, and I like reading comments regarding TL accuracy, even if it "bursts" my bubble.
And it really sucks too since once that butchered version is out, it'll discourage better TLs from working on their version of that work (and even you did release a better version later, often it'll get less favorites/views than the first shitty version anyway, so what's the point?)
With that being said, yeah, I don't trust all english TL'd stuff either, unless it's coming from a good TL.

As someone who makes bounties, they can't know. I just have to trust that they're competent enough for the job. It's unfortunate I know, but a lot of these works would've never gotten TL'd otherwise. Which is why I prefer to work in a group, it's incredibly hard to BS your way through or make mistakes with other translators QCing your work. (The people I worked with for bounties seemed competent anyway at least, like rqwrqw, he's good)

Hoo, maybe I'll look into this more at some point and see if there are any common themes that pop up in awful translations so I can make a guide on how to sniff them out, to give bounty posters some piece of mind.

That being said, I doubt they'd be able to dispute a bounty claim just on suspicion alone. The guide would only really work to assure people that an already good translation is good, and might even make people doubt perfectly good translations if I did it wrong. The only real way to tell is to ask another J speaker to fact check it after all.

Most people don't care. Some do but can't do anything about it anyhow, like me, and I like reading comments regarding TL accuracy, even if it "bursts" my bubble.
And it really sucks too since once that butchered version is out, it'll discourage better TLs from working on their version of that work (and even you did release a better version later, often it'll get less favorites/views than the first shitty version anyway, so what's the point?)
With that being said, yeah, I don't trust all english TL'd stuff either, unless it's coming from a good TL.

Yeah, I just checked and it seems like some stuff that's clearly labelled as "rewrite" still gets decent votes just because it wasn't rewritten EZRewriter style so I guess a lot of people really don't care.

There was also one I just looked at that I remember reading earlier that didn't have rewrite in the title so I didn't even notice it was one until just now, which kind of pisses me off since I feel like 90% of readers don't check, and if it isn't obvious they might just assume it's a translation like I did and vote it up.

Oh well, I don't really care about favorites or views or credits or anything like that, I'm just trying to get better. But since I don't particularly want to edit, it's not likely that I'll go on a quest to faithfully translate the poor works with shit translations anytime soon unless people willing to edit want to see it as well.

There's obviously no clear line that divides rewrites from translations.
In a sense, pretty much all translations could be considered rewrites.
Too literal translations tend to sound bad. Keeping all the information when translating may seem like an obvious thing to do, but when you consider that Japanese, unlike English (and other languages), is a language that works a lot with implicit information, you may also have trouble getting everything across.
And sometimes keeping all the information when translating can be hard because of how different the language structures are.
Sometimes a phrase with loads of information sounds fine in spoken Japanese, but wouldn't sound as fine in spoken English (you'd need a number of commas or other grammatical tools to make it sound clear enough or maybe it wouldn't feel natural in a conversation).
And sometimes it's just wording.
But these are more borderline cases than the norm in hentai (except wording).

Saying that ダメよお 生ゴミも入ってるでしょう translates to "I really hate to bother you again, but could you grab another trash bag for me?" is just wrong. The only thing in common between those two phrases is "trash" (not even "trash bag").
If we were debating if "That's no good! Aren't there kitchen scraps in there?" is a better translation than "Don't that! There's raw garbage in there, right?", then we'd have something to discuss.

But Is that first one a rewrite? I don't know. In my mind, a rewrite, in this 'hentai written in English world', it's more about creating a whole new story disregarding the original text, not about bad/wrong translation. I may be wrong about this, though, as I don't read rewrites nor compare them to raws.

Oh well, I don't really care about favorites or views or credits or anything like that, I'm just trying to get better. But since I don't particularly want to edit, it's not likely that I'll go on a quest to faithfully translate the poor works with shit translations anytime soon unless people willing to edit want to see it as well.

You could always write the scripts and post here in the forums so willing people can pick and edit for you.
Wasn't there a thread for orphaned scripts? Create a similar thread.

Yeah, that's where translating moves into being an art of it's own, what do you include and what do you omit? Sometimes you may even have to add things as there are times when the J > E translation is ambiguous otherwise. All of this is ultimately up to the translator.

There are hundreds of ways to phrase something and still get the same information across. Aside from "raw garbage" replacing "food scraps" (if you said kitchen waste or compost instead it'd be fine) since raw garbage isn't a term used in English, and assuming you meant to say "Don't do that!", your translation is just as accurate as mine is, nothing to discuss about it I don't think, it's just preference.

But Is that first one a rewrite? I don't know. In my mind, a rewrite, in this 'hentai written in English world', it's more about creating a whole new story disregarding the original text, not about bad/wrong translation. I may be wrong about this, though, as I don't read rewrites nor compare them to raws.

And that's where the contention is, if a rewrite is done so that it seems like it could be the original, or the person knew enough Japanese to make it more or less like the original, is it even an issue? I mean, the people reading it probably aren't going to care. I haven't looked extensively, but no one's called out the BSN guy that I talked about on anything and he's been doing it for years as far as I know.

But in spite of that, it still bothers me. I'm going to have to boot up my old hard drive and skim through all the stuff I D/Led in English just to make sure none of it's egregiously wrong. But it seems like it only bothers me because I know Japanese and can see the difference.

Also, maybe I will make a thread like that asking people if there's any stuff they want re translated and post the scripts from there. But I don't want to spam the forum so I'll wait a bit. Until then, if anyone reading this is interested, or wants me to check if a gallery or script is accurate, feel free to PM me.

Probably nothing he's ever done has been looked at by anyone who actually cared enough to look at the accuracy. Looking at his upload history, it's mostly stuff I'd probably never look at. Or if anyone has actually looked at it, they probably didn't care enough to point it out. *shrug*

I opened up (C94) [Suzune Rai Chikashitsu (Suzune Rai)] Noja Loli Babaa Kitsune-sama to Furo [English] [BSN]] just now to have a look at something he's recently done and 3 pages in, it's basically a rewrite... Pretty much the entirety of the second and third pages are inaccurate with barely any resemblence to the original text (some of the vocabulary is the same but what's actually being said is entirely different).

It's sad, but oh well. Just remember the name and avoid translations like that in future unless you don't care about it.

"As someone who makes bounties, they can't know....."

Well, back in the day I would just ask in the Random Trans section to have someone check it, gain a sense of trust with some regulars around here and remember names of people I've worked with before when they come a knocking.

More than once I have worked on already translated work.
More than once I have done that because the quality of the one available was bad.
More than once I have read people commenting how "I shouldn't be working on what has already been translated".
At least once I have someone commenting how he/she preferred the first one available (the low quality translation).

So, yeah. Do people care? I don't think so.
To me it seems like people will be fine with a translation as long as there aren't many grammatical errors and the story flows fine. They don't care about accuracy or fidelity that much. Hence why you'll see readers commenting on how it's 'a waste for a translator to retranslate something', which also ends up discouraging translators from working on something that was already translated, regardless of how bad it is.

"As someone who makes bounties, they can't know....."

Well, back in the day I would just ask in the Random Trans section to have someone check it, gain a sense of trust with some regulars around here and remember names of people I've worked with before when they come a knocking.

I do occasionally use the random tl thread for help with stuff like that, but I always took it as something for quick questions instead of full on quality checks (those take way more time to do). And I'd feel bad for asking people to do checks of every TL I came across while offering nothing in return, dunno.

More than once I have worked on already translated work.
More than once I have done that because the quality of the one available was bad.
More than once I have read people commenting how "I shouldn't be working on what has already been translated".
At least once I have someone commenting how he/she preferred the first one available (the low quality translation).

So, yeah. Do people care? I don't think so.
To me it seems like people will be fine with a translation as long as there aren't many grammatical errors and the story flows fine. They don't care about accuracy or fidelity that much. Hence why you'll see readers commenting on how it's 'a waste for a translator to retranslate something', which also ends up discouraging translators from working on something that was already translated, regardless of how bad it is.

It's pretty depressing. Which is why I try not to care what readers think for stuff I work on.
Like do most people care if I redraw and handwrite every sfx in? No but I do it anyway cause I get enjoyment out of it.
And like I mentioned before, even with the few better versions I released some even had a lower rating and favorites than the garbage version as well. Which sucks, but I'll keep doing it anyway, just to bring out more high quality works in the world, for the few that do care, and for myself (It's just a hobby for me after all)

This post has been edited by knightmarepilot: Dec 4 2018, 16:37

It's sad, but oh well. Just remember the name and avoid translations like that in future unless you don't care about it.

Yeah I guess that's all there really is. I just wish there was a way to let people know. Is there a list on the forums of bad translators or people to avoid for xxx reason or something like that?

So, yeah. Do people care? I don't think so.
To me it seems like people will be fine with a translation as long as there aren't many grammatical errors and the story flows fine. They don't care about accuracy or fidelity that much. Hence why you'll see readers commenting on how it's 'a waste for a translator to retranslate something', which also ends up discouraging translators from working on something that was already translated, regardless of how bad it is.

That's how most people are yeah, but don't worry man, I appreciate you, and anyone else that provides a better translation.

I do occasionally use the random tl thread for help with stuff like that, but I always took it as something for quick questions instead of full on quality checks (those take way more time to do). And I'd feel bad for asking people to do checks of every TL I came across while offering nothing in return, dunno.

You can always ask about particular parts that look fishy to you rather than have them read over the whole thing.

And good on you man, I like people who care about the quality of their work, even if it is just porn. If you produce something, you should make it something to be proud of.

As someone who makes bounties, they can't know. I just have to trust that they're competent enough for the job.

Maybe E-hentai should have a category of bounties for proofreading. When I get stuck I start by searching the dictionaries, and then the Japanese web for similar sentences to try and figure out what it could mean, and then if I haven't figured it out I ask for help (which doesn't always come.) I try not to guess, but sometimes there's only a couple panels you're not sure of and it's better to take your best guess than to not finish it. Usually the context helps, and if you do mess up somewhere most of a story is just details, and it won't mess up the the main story.

Also, furry translations don't have standards. This gallery you linked is 3 years old and no one is gonna notice your corrections. People only kind of notice corrections if you make them within the 48 hours that most people read a new gallery.

Maybe E-hentai should have a category of bounties for proofreading. When I get stuck I start by searching the dictionaries, and then the Japanese web for similar sentences to try and figure out what it could mean, and then if I haven't figured it out I ask for help (which doesn't always come.) I try not to guess, but sometimes there's only a couple panels you're not sure of and it's better to take your best guess than to not finish it. Usually the context helps, and if you do mess up somewhere most of a story is just details, and it won't mess up the the main story.

I see people posting bounties for proofreading sometimes, but it doesn't seem like enough work to really deserve a bounty all on it's own.

Making a small mistake here and there is fine in my opinion.

Also, furry translations don't have standards. This gallery you linked is 3 years old and no one is gonna notice your corrections. People only kind of notice corrections if you make them within the 48 hours that most people read a new gallery.

Well, there was a bounty up for it so I did it. That being said, the guy who translated it 3 years ago is still posting galleries today that are just as bad if not worse than that one, as others have noted, and they're not all furry galleries.

He might also not be the only one doing this. Just yesterday I posted a correction on a gallery some other guy posted, and he just doubled down on his mistake. Though he was much better than the guy in this thread, so I can't be too upset.

Honestly, if you want to keep your sanity: don't check other peoples translations.
On a personal level the smartest choice you can make is to swallow the blue pill and assume every translator is doing a good job.

Once you start being curious and begin questioning things, you're down the rabbit hole. If the translator is actually good you wasted a few minutes/seconds of your life. If it's a really shit translator several problems and questions are going to appear for you:

>Is this guy really new and/or relying heavily on machine TLs? If so, do you want to be the one that hurts his feelings and tells him to improve first?
>Is the guy actually just an asshole or hardcore autist that doesn't care about essentially tricking people that don't know any better, since he's getting internet fame out of it?
>Was he just drunk as fuck or are all of his galleries like this?
>Are you going to fix every translation he fucked up for the greater good?
>And the heaviest question, do people actually care?

I honestly don't think the general public cares about shit TLs if they read good in english.
We have to remember that we are just a community of people on a porn site people go to in order to have a quick wank.

I've seen so many shit translations in other kinds of media that should have people care 3000 times more, and they still don't seem to care all that much.
Anime. Manga. Music. Movies. LNs. VNs. Games. Offical. Unoffical.
Most of them will never even find out unless they actively look for errors or threads like this one, and for everyone that does so there will be 10 more people that fully trust the translator without a doubt in their mind.
There's even people that will defend the bad/mistranslations because they still got enjoyment out of them, there being no alterntive to the bad TL, or they just have a case of stockholme syndrome

The "translators" won't care either. Very high chances they will just get ultra mad, or ignore you entirely. Most people don't take advice well.
It's not a problem that's fixable by few well-meaning people and site rules. Shit like this has plagued human society since it's inception in all possible aspects, and the only way to get rid of it is to rebuild the human spirit from the ground up on a global scale.

And I'm pretty sure god has averted his eyes from this site long ago.

I don't think it's possible to go back to being blue pilled. I can read Japanese alright (with occasional help from the dictionary), but I still can't listen well since I only started learning to read VNs and LNs. But I know enough to catch inaccurate translations while listening with subs pretty often, and it does bother me enough that I just haven't watched much anime in awhile. And yeah, not many people seem to care.

That being said, we can still do something for the 10% of people who do care. I only really bother checking a translation's accuracy if something in it is confusing or odd, and then I'll post in the comments about it if it turns out to be a translation error. Even if only one person notices and appreciates it, I'll be satisfied.

While I don't disagree with you, I will say that it IS worth it to hold yourself and the communities that you are a part of to a higher standard. Every one of us is a part of mankind, so even if we can't change everyone's spirit from the ground up, we can change our own, and that IS changing mankind, even if it's only a tiny amount. So yeah, the next time I see a post with the BSN tag (the tag of the guy I mentioned above), I'm gonna rip it to shreds.