Apologies for necro’ing the thread, but I’m currently reading up on translation theory, and so far I can conclude that Katrina is pulling stuff out of her ass.
if you don't mind I think it would be interesting if you made a thread about translation theory since you are reading up on it. It might be beneficial for people to have more info on it so we can better combat the bullshit spewed by people like Katrina.
I agree it would be beneficial to document what "those people" define "translation theory" as, along with what it entails. Maybe a separate thread so people can just refer to what is documented in there when needed. To defeat your enemy you must know your enemy. And credit where it's due because, yeah, it's not entirely black-and-white on the methods of reframing one language in(to) another. If you do it literally, you can end up with backwards and illogical English sentences (which I am sure many of us know very well from consuming eastern media, particularly Japanese). We
know this, so once again, don't fall for the "you just want a machine translation" trap (but really if a vandalizer gives you 15%, and MTL gives me 60%, then I'll be happy with the MTL and use my cultural knowledge to fill in). Also, the grammar is obviously different from English. You need to figure out how to best convey the same meaning... but that does NOT include lying about your intent to vandalize, and injecting something that didn't exist.
Slight tangent that isn't necessarily related to Katrina herself but is related to the syntax she often throws around: When it comes to western
vandalizers we know that "translation theory" is a BS term. Instead of using the term "translation theory," I would probably describe the act of translating something like "cultural understanding." It reeks of academia fart sniffing tendencies to inflate their own egos with fancy words (theory is nebulous and implies that those without esoteric knowledge cannot understand, which is perfect for their gatekeeping tendencies). They can't fool us. It reminds me of that Lucoa "patriarchal societal demands" scene in Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Yes, in that line there's that Japanese word that refers to a society (I think insinuates a societal standard as well?), but in English we infer the same thing by referring to society with a casual collective noun. Everyone wants you to get a job / Society wants you to get a job. People were looking at me weirdly / Society was looking at me weirdly (so I put on a hoodie). We
know it was just an opportunity for the people writing the dub script to inject their ideology. In their mind, they still referred to a society, which was in the original Japanese script, so they did their jobs correctly! Dishonesty at its finest. FE:Fates is another example of blatant malice. You can't lie about that, especially when an ENTIRE support conversation was removed in favor of ellipses.
One of my favorite sayings in Vietnamese is: "Nhà là phải có nóc," or "a house has to have a roof." So imagine you were watching a Vietnamese animated show and one of the characters says (in Vietnamese): "This is the house that I am the roof of". To the uninformed, just hearing the words and translating it literally to English gives you a very perplexing statement. In reality, the character is referring to his wife, because in Vietnam, the roof is the "head" of the house. The husband is the leader (roof), and the wife is what follows (the support and foundation). To translate (or dare I say localize) that scene into English, we would most likely use the simplest, most straightforward answer with the least confusion: "This is my wife." The original use of the house idiom is now gone in place of the actual meaning through use of the transitive property, because otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to the language being translated into. If some scholars figure out a way to involve the house metaphor while still delivering the line in a similar amount of time, good on them. Otherwise, I'd say... line translated, and we can make a (external) note for readers to learn about the source culture. That's all it takes! If these vandalizers were actually deserving of their positions and actually "translated" with integrity, people wouldn't be having a problem. All it took was that first noticing of censorship to start questioning everything... and they only have themselves to blame.
