Dealing with grating translation

Do you ever use correction fluid on you manga?

  • No, I can live with a few errors. And I don't want to damage my volumes.

    Votes: 20 95.2%
  • Yes, it's God Hand not Godhands!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, I wiped out all text and replaced it with a fan translation.

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • I read the original and learned Japanese just to read it.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Irrelevant because I AM Japanese.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    21
S

Saintly pants

Guest
For me it's number 2. Some word choices simply grate too much.

(But it's not so bad i want to rewrite everything)
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Nope, I leave the translations in the Dark Horse volumes alone and refer to the SK.net translations when I notice an error (which is pretty often, haha).
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
The perfect translation of some of these episodes is in my head -- a conflation of SKnet posts, discussions and DH.
 

handsome rakshas

Thanks Grail!
Hehe, funny topic. I actually used white out on a few Dark Horse volumes a couple years back. It took me three hours but I fixed those volumes up nicely.
 

Gobolatula

praise be to grail!
There are certain things that get on my nerves, such as DH's recent use of "karma" instead of "causality"... Other things, I can live with, such as "band of the hawk" and "hawk of light" instead of using "falcon." I can deal with that, because it was such a recent discovery that Miura always meant "FALCON" and the romanized term "hawk soldier" is all over official Japanese Berserk merchandise.

I still don't consider Dark Horse's releases to be horrendous; though they could be improved in a bunch of ways. Even if they were ultra shoddy, I don't think I could bring myself to physically alter any Berserchandise, ever. Wait, I take that back. I've been removing the mini-posters from the DH releases to put up on my wall. Hm. Combination of laziness and not minding. Like Walter said, we've got a great deal of supplimental reading material right here on this board!
 
S

Saintly pants

Guest
Gobolatula said:
There are certain things that get on my nerves, such as DH's recent use of "karma" instead of "causality"... Other things, I can live with, such as "band of the hawk" and "hawk of light" instead of using "falcon." I can deal with that, because it was such a recent discovery that Miura always meant "FALCON" and the romanized term "hawk soldier" is all over official Japanese Berserk merchandise.

I still don't consider Dark Horse's releases to be horrendous; though they could be improved in a bunch of ways. Even if they were ultra shoddy, I don't think I could bring myself to physically alter any Berserchandise, ever. Wait, I take that back. I've been removing the mini-posters from the DH releases to put up on my wall. Hm. Combination of laziness and not minding. Like Walter said, we've got a great deal of supplimental reading material right here on this board!

Thats interesting since in my books its "bende van de valk" and "causaliteit". They got that correct alright. Still, it should be "black ram heavy assault knights" and not "black sheep". They only got sheepish after :guts: was done with them.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Gobolatula said:
There are certain things that get on my nerves, such as DH's recent use of "karma" instead of "causality"...
There are actually legitimate uses of the term "karma" in Berserk as well though. For example, the "karma fire" that Flora mentions in vol 24 when speaking to Guts. And earlier in the same volume, she mentions over dinner how spirits in the afterlife are divided according to their karma (in this instance it's actually spelled out in furigana that the kanji use means Karma). This is a completely different concept from causality. It's when the kanji for Inga (因果) is translated as "karma" that it's erroneous.

Really though, I'm just glad when they get KEY scenes translated correctly, such as Void in vol 12:

ingasay.jpg

ALL LIES WITHIN THE CURRENTS OF CAUSALITY.

They thankfully didn't fuck with this line :void:

Which just makes it strange when, in vol 26, DH translates SK as saying "It's karmic" when speaking to Flora. That's just completely stupid...
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Gobolatula said:
I can deal with that, because it was such a recent discovery that Miura always meant "FALCON"

He didn't say he meant "falcon" all along. He said the two words are the same in Japanese and he chose "falcon" because of the "Millennium Falcon" from Star Wars. Which wasn't so much a discovery as a confirmation, considering we had already been thinking it was the case for years.

Gobolatula said:
the romanized term "hawk soldier" is all over official Japanese Berserk merchandise.

For the record, merchandise really isn't very reliable. It has used wrong names times and times again in the past. Even though we base some of the spellings we currently use on it (e.g. "Judo" or "Carcus") for lack of a better alternative, it isn't to be relied upon.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Walter said:
Which just makes it strange when, in vol 26, DH translates SK as saying "It's karmic" when speaking to Flora. That's just completely stupid...

Yeah, that was one of the only times outside of the first three volumes where they didn't use the term "causality" and went with something else. It's a strange inconsistency.
 

Gobolatula

praise be to grail!
Does it upset anyone that they use contractions when translating Skully? Like, "it's" instead of "it is?" He's supposed to be ridiculously proper I thought. :SK:
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Gobolatula said:
Does it upset anyone that they use contractions when translating Skully? Like, "it's" instead of "it is?" He's supposed to be ridiculously proper I thought. :SK:
SK, Void and Zodd (and I believe Ganishka as well) all speak with very archaic language. But from what I know of their speech, I wouldn't personally call it more "proper" per se. From what I've heard, it's more like an old man speaking.

Either way, contractions don't really bother me. It's when DH (or others...) add inflection or especially anachronistic slang (groovy anyone?) to a character's dialogue that really bugs me.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Walter said:
SK, Void and Zodd (and I believe Ganishka as well) all speak with very archaic language. But from what I know of their speech, I wouldn't personally call it more "proper" per se. From what I've heard, it's more like an old man speaking.

While Zodd indeed just speaks like an old man (which, being at least 300 years old, seems fitting), the Skull Knight, Ganishka and Void truly do use archaic language. SK and Ganishka also speak like emperors.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
I wonder why Ganishka speaks archaically? I thought he was relatively young (compared to Void and the Skull Knight).
 
X

Xem

Guest
Rhombaad said:
I wonder why Ganishka speaks archaically? I thought he was relatively young (compared to Void and the Skull Knight).

Well he's royalty. I'm sure was he taught to speak traditionally. If you look into history you'll see that most upperclassmen spoke like this, especially the top tiers. It's not like speaking like that only existed several thousand years ago either, hell, there's still many individuals today that speak that way.
 
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