To me a great translation should have Translator Notes (TN) and not be afraid of using neologisms. It seems TNs used to be more common but are increasingly rare.
All according to *keikaku*
(TN: keikaku means plan)
This meme comes from the overuse of TNs in anime fansubs to explain obvious things, things that did not need explaining, or where there would be a perfectly straightforward English word that would do the job.
Neologisms: do you mean neologism in the source language or the target language? This usually happens in the other direction, where the English words for things get copied straight over to other languages to refer to new items. There must be examples in the other direction but I can't immediately think of one.
I dislike translation notes. Translations are already a form of notes, so appending notes to notes is just bad form.
Some translations can be so awkward or simply impossible that leaving a translation note becomes inevitable, but a good translator should not have to need them everywhere.
I would be interested to know what you think about translating word plays.
One example. In LOTR there is a hobbit named Meriadoc, but his friends call him Merry, which is a shorthand for his name but also carries meaning. In one translation into my language, the translator opted to translate Merry into "Srečko", which is close in meaning. The connection to the original name is lost and the translator put that in the translation notes to explain that there is a connection. The rest of the book(s) then always use the semantic meaning. I found that solution to be great for the given problem.
Later translations didn't opt for that, instead keeping the shorthand, which would be just "Meri", which is a nice shorthand but completely drops the semantic meaning.
pjc50|1 year ago
Neologisms: do you mean neologism in the source language or the target language? This usually happens in the other direction, where the English words for things get copied straight over to other languages to refer to new items. There must be examples in the other direction but I can't immediately think of one.
Dalewyn|1 year ago
I dislike translation notes. Translations are already a form of notes, so appending notes to notes is just bad form.
Some translations can be so awkward or simply impossible that leaving a translation note becomes inevitable, but a good translator should not have to need them everywhere.
prerok|1 year ago
One example. In LOTR there is a hobbit named Meriadoc, but his friends call him Merry, which is a shorthand for his name but also carries meaning. In one translation into my language, the translator opted to translate Merry into "Srečko", which is close in meaning. The connection to the original name is lost and the translator put that in the translation notes to explain that there is a connection. The rest of the book(s) then always use the semantic meaning. I found that solution to be great for the given problem.
Later translations didn't opt for that, instead keeping the shorthand, which would be just "Meri", which is a nice shorthand but completely drops the semantic meaning.