Like manga, I hate it when they, for example, transliterate さん as -san, when there is an “equivalent” word for it, like Mr. but would it carry the same connotation as the source material? I cringe when I buy translated versions of Japanese literature due to this (which is why I stick to the source material), it just… does not sit well, I mean instead of writing -sensei, -senpai, or -sama there are “equivalents” in English for those but the catch is that would it work well upon translation?
It feels cringe because you’re not used to the cultural context. This kind of honorifics are everywhere in Japanese society. I think that if the intended audience is familiar to those quirks it’s better to keep it literal. And if not, the localization should mostly ignore the honorifics because they’re often impossible to translate them in an acceptable way.
There’s an interesting example. There’s a novel from one of the best Japanese writers (Natsume Soseki) called Wagahai wa neko de aru, which is normally translated as “I am a cat”.
The thing is that the protagonist cat refers to himself all the time as “Wahagai”, which is a very archaic and pompous way to refer to oneself. Maybe the closest thing here would be the majestic plural, the speech where a king speaks as “We/Us” rather than “I/me”.
It’s a difficult thing to convey because in the original the damn cat speaks about itself as if he were a noble or something, to a comedic effect. And in the translations I read this is lost.
I agree. I come from a country with a language that uses plural when speaking formally and many small language quirks that can’t be translated exactly, and I would find it silly if the translators just kept them as is in the book. I would also find it silly if they translated our polite plural as is in English.
I think that you can show the position of people by using similar words like sir,Mr,Ms, teacher, etc, and also by tone. However, this is a hard task, and you need to be skilled in translation to both keep the original prose and show whether someone uses an honorific that means they respect someone or not. I don’t think honorific are useful or make sense if you can’t understand them, basically.
At a guess, I’d say they retain the honorifics to preserve the culture as it is recorded in the books. It might not seem necessary, but that’s probably because most of us don’t use honorifics any more. We read foreign literature partly to see the culture of the setting.
And it’s not even unique to Japanese. Some languages that are way closer to English have honorifics that are very difficult to translate.
Spanish has a formal (usted) and informal you (tu). And its usage varies wildly across dialects, in European Spanish it’s barely used because it feels too uptight and archaic. Not even teachers are addressed this way nowadays. Meanwhile, in some places in Latin America it’s not uncommon to use the formal talking with your mother. And there’s also Argentina/Chile/Uruguay which has a whole different system.
English had a similar system in old times (you/thou). But it later shifted to exclusively using the formal “you”.
In general Japanese must be hard to translate well, just empirically based on how many translations are complete garbage. Honorifics are the least of your concerns, English translations often completely butcher the tone and emotion and leave dry and sparse sentences that capture none of the original Japanese.
You realize that after a few Japanese classes. The language has a grammar that is completely different to English. Most languages we are familiar with have a Subject-verb-object order (SVO). The cat eats a mouse. Even Chinese follows this structure, from what I’ve been told. While Japanese is a Subject-object-verb (SOV) language. The cat a mouse eats. A bit like Yoda speak. This forces the translator to restructure the sentence so much of the writing style is the translator’s job.
I’m sure that’s part of it but the worse offender imo is that Japanese expresses tone differently (with particles and context for instance). The biggest issue I have with JP>EN translations is that a sentence that could be playful and excited in the original will read like an 80 year old scientist who’s never played outside’s work journal.
If you use -san it registers as ‘oh these people are Japanese and addressing each other with Japanese honorifics’ while if you have a character who just keeps calling their peers ‘mister’ they kind of just come across as weird Agent Smith style constructs because nobody does that in English.
-san and -sensei have pretty direct translations, but other honorifics like -chan, -kun, -senpai, and -sama either don’t have direct translations or have ones that feel really forced if you try to use them. If you’re reading Japanese texts in the original language then you’re clearly aware that the social hierarchy delineated by honorifics doesn’t really have a one-to-one mapping to Western society.
Personally, I think it’s fine to leave some distinctive parts of the language untranslated for the sake of preserving some of the flavor of the original language. This doesn’t just apply to Japanese, you could translate “quincenera” and “Autobahn” to “15th Birthday Party” and “Federal Motorway” but that doesn’t convey the significance and uniqueness of those things to Mexico and Germany, respectively. And if you’re going to be leaving a few words untranslated already its not too much to leave a few more. I don’t think anyone would balk at Sra. or Hr. instead of Mrs. and Mr. for example.
Obviously someone who’s not familiar with the conventions will have a bit of a learning curve, but in my opinion a little extra study to learn more about another culture is a good thing.
I’m fine with keeping honorifics, especially when a change in honorific use is a notable part of the story (such as when characters become closer and start referring to each other more casually) or when characters have lines like “drop the -san.” Those things don’t work very well when translated directly to English because they rely heavily on a cultural aspect that doesn’t really exist in English.
I’ve noticed a lot in games and anime where the feeling that I get from hearing how a character is referred to and the feeling I get from reading how it was translated are two very different feelings. Sometimes they’ll remove honorifics altogether and you lose out on that information about their relationship. Sometimes they try to “translate” the honorifics and instead give a completely different impression of the characters and their relationships.
I think the most important thing in a translation is preserving the intended meaning… not of the words themselves but what those words are actually trying to convey. If you can do that with English equivalents? Great! If not, I’d rather the book require more cultural knowledge to understand than insist on scrubbing out anything that can’t be translated directly.
Usually when relationships change there a lot more things that change than just how they refer to each other. For example using a different pronoun for yourself, using the more casual version of verbs and so on. It’s just that the honorific suffixes are easy to notice for someone who doesn’t know the language. The problem is just that in english there is not much of a difference in how people talk depending on who they talk to, but a good translator might be able to reflect that change without relying on just leaving things untranslated.
Some are very difficult. In any romantic setting dropping the honorifics would be a huge deal because it implies a very intimate register, and it’s basically impossible to replicate if you don’t use them to start with.
Some yea, but idk one could just use the lastname in the tl before and after that the firstname which would be similiar. Honestly it has been so long since I last read anything that was translated from JP -> EN that I have no idea how stuff is translated lately. I’m not interested in checking how there are either. I’d rather read something new in jp.
Because Japanese and English aren’t related languages.
European and Indo-European Language can be much more easily translated with each other because they share root forms. Japanese and English do not.
Hence translations are adaptations.
The honorific not changing is considered correct in English btw. You should keep Monsieur or Frauline too. We just do that less these days because formality in the West is just about dead. In Japan it isn’t politeness/formality is invested in the language at deep levels.
Even with related languages. Afrikaans is descended from Dutch and practically next door to English linguistically. But it insists on the formal/informal pronouns which English abandoned centuries ago (to the extent that most speakers don’t know that Thou is the familiar form). And children will speak to their parents in the 3rd person, “Will Daddy come with us to the shops?”.
Furthermore it has completely lost the old past tense of verbs; you have to use the perfect past tense. Novels are written in the “historical present”.
Translation is never trivial.
That’s just one small aspect of keigo. I guess it’s the most easiest to understand for someone who doesn’t know the language though.
Because it doesn’t carry the same connotation. Forms of address and honorifics are often very culturally specific, and so even if there’s an equivalent, it’s not exactly the same.
Even English writings are sometimes translated into other languages maintaining certain terms in the original. Actually Mister, Miss etc. It’s a way to not lose sight of the original language - many times it’s not irrelevant that the action occurs in England, for instance.
It’s the same with Japanese: if you want to keep the reader always aware of it being a Japanese story, you use san instead of Mr.
It’s also common enough by now, that if you started using the English translations for -sama or Sensei, people would be confused.
I think the trouble is that “-san” is used at times that would feel unnatural for an English speaker to be using Ms/Mr. Same with sama. They have to find a balance between “English equivalent” and keeping a flow that feels natural. For something like sensei and senpai, the hierarchy is just a lot stronger in ways that they aren’t in western countries, so I suppose it reinforces that character dynamic. Japanese and English are such very different languages and cultures, it’s not easy at all to translate! I do prefer they keep the honorifics as it conveys more information/nuance to me than the English would.
That’s my opinion too. Besides, sama is literally untranslatable. You could use “lord” but it doesn’t fit at all because most of the times you’ll be addressed in extre polite jargon like this in restaurants and hotels.
It’s possible to replace the stock customer service keigo with similarly stiff English. There is a distinct register that customer service folks are expected to use in the US, so that does feel translatable. Of course it’s not a perfect match, but maybe that’s the price of translation.
They’re kept because it’s what everyone is used to. It would feel weird to have them say mister when we wouldn’t. But if they use -san, then it feels normal.
They either keep them untranslated or just drop the honorific entirely. Anything else would not feel well while reading.