Thursday, July 27, 2017

Random Rant

George Carlin once said: "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" Barring strict regulations, it is impossible to have one fixed standard about things. With that in mind, let’s talk about translating light novels.

Untranslated titles
You probably noticed by now that some translators leaves the title in Japanese romaji. Ever heard of Kino’s Journey? Some people within the community insist on calling it Kino no Tabi. Why? My guess is weeabooism.




Some translators are just lazy. Majo no Tabitabi? How difficult is it to translate that?

There is also an influx of titles translated from chinese, but they are all translated properly. Does Wo yu feng tian sounds familiar? How about I shall seal the heaven?


Untranslated words
Ever seen the words onii-chan, onee-sama and so on? Some parts of Japanese can’t be translated without losing its charm, so onii-sama and stuff like that are usually given a pass.

Have you heard of oiishi, sugoi, kuzu, gesu? They are Japanese word weeaboos think anyone should know. There is no value in leaving them untranslated, so why? If you are going to do this, just leave it as 美味しい, すごい.


Linking and Rehosting
You don’t need permission to link to another site. Hotlinking used to be frowned upon, but with the general increase in bandwidth, no one really cares that much now. For example, this page on baka-tsuki which links to my blog.

But don’t rehost other people’s work. For example, the people in this knight & magic wikia.
Copy pasting all four volumes? Why?

Did you see comics I posted above? They have been rehosted on numerous sites, and it’s fine since it’s just one, and can even serve as advertisement to the creator. But four volumes? What are you trying to achieve there?

Conclusion

Again, what you just read is just my rant, and is in no way the gold standard in doing things. There will be people who think I should lay off the weeaboos, and people who think I’m too lenient towards them. Find your own balance, and remember to chide the idiots and maniacs you meet out there.

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