Let's say you're a non-English studio and you have two options to write an RPG script, dialogues, etc. Either in native non-English, followed by a translation, or in mediocre quality native (since quality English speaking writers are almost all first-worlders).
Translation problems:
A technical translation of a beautiful book loses roughly 30-40% of its meaning and most of its style. And most translators are technical ones.
A writer-translator could transpose your text into another language, and although it would be quite different from the original material, it could be extremely good. He'd basically be rewriting your stuff in his language, as a standalone writer. The result should be a standalone work of art.
Here's some examples, each representing a different outcome.
1) Sometimes the translation is so bad, it's offensive.
It's from Notre Dame de Paris (the musical). Very beautiful in French. Absolute trash in English.
When Frollo sings:
Ô Notre-Dame! Oh laisse moi rien qu'une fois
Pousser la porte du jardin d'Esméralda
He begs God to let him "push the door of Esmeralda's garden", meaning he wants to deflower her. He's too ashamed of it (being a celibate priest), so he lets himself say it only in this seemingly non-erotic way (slipping in a religious theme of the garden), and yet the idea here is fully sexually charged at the same time. It represents him being torn between his life as a priest and his raw sexual desire for her. Multiple layers of meaning in one simple phrase.
In the English version he sings:
O Notre Dame, please let me go beyond God's law
Open the door of love inside Esmeralda
^ doesn't necessarily mean anything sexual, maybe he talks about the door to her heart. The focus is on the illicitness of such relationship (rational thinking), not on passion and pain like in the source material. Boring, bad, utter failure of a translation.
And mind you, they obviously had a huge budget and wanted to get it right. They just couldn't. Because this isn't easy.
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2) In this case, the translation is better than the original. Louis Aragon wrote:
L'enfer existe
II est la part du plus grand nombre
L'enfer existe
II est ce paysage fou
La résignation des visages à l'ombre
L'espoir tenu pour crime et la vie à genoux
^ Aragon was a communist poet. In this passage he's lamenting the worker's condition, but it reeks of resignation.
But in Russian, holy hell:
Да, существует ад! И в нем живут мильоны.
Да, существует ад! Его свидетель ты.
Ад — это труженик коленопреклоненный,
Смиренные черты, запретные мечты.
The RED idea is suddenly piercing, there's anger here, the language is simple and cuts to the chase. Perfect for the proletariat. It's like a call to arms! The words are more or less the same, but the wording is hugely different, and so is the result. I love the translation much more.
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3) Other times it can't possibly be translated, e.g. "La Légende des siècles" by Hugo, especially the magnificent "La conscience". There's been some attempts to translate parts of La Légende, but they were extremely poor and people stopped trying. They realized that it was impossible.
« L'oeil a-t-il disparu? » dit en tremblant Tsilla.
Et Caïn répondit: « Non, il est toujours là. »
Alors il dit: « je veux habiter sous la terre
Comme dans son sépulcre un homme solitaire ;
Rien ne me verra plus, je ne verrai plus rien. »
On fit donc une fosse, et Caïn dit « C'est bien ! »
Puis il descendit seul sous cette voûte sombre.
Quand il se fut assis sur sa chaise dans l'ombre
Et qu'on eut sur son front fermé le souterrain,
L'oeil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn.
It's powerful, it has a twist at the end, it plays on biblical words, and it's simply genius.
--------------------------
In GameDev, the only time I remember the translation being brilliant was in the Dark Souls series.
The narrative here is environmental, meaning you get scattered pieces of information from item descriptions or from someone talking nonsense here and there, and you try to piece it together. You'd think something like this is impossible to translate well. And yet the result was impeccable. On top of it, the translators came up with a style that submerged you into the atmosphere.
A character tells you: "Return from whence thou cam'st, for that is thy place of belonging". I know this isn't real old English, but it's a style that works extremely well for the game.
Another example of a fake style that does wonders can be found in Spartacus. A show with gratuitous sex and combat scenes. And yet they stylized English to sound like Latin, which was amazing. "Turn desire to piss and shit, and see yourself well satisfied", "You kiss my cheek, only to finger my ass?", "They give us swords absent edge", "Once again the gods spread the cheeks and ram cock in fucking ass!".
It's stylized as Latin speech ("swords absent edge"), it uses latin-sounding vulgarity and references gods all the time. Perfect job.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject, if you have any.
Translation problems:
A technical translation of a beautiful book loses roughly 30-40% of its meaning and most of its style. And most translators are technical ones.
A writer-translator could transpose your text into another language, and although it would be quite different from the original material, it could be extremely good. He'd basically be rewriting your stuff in his language, as a standalone writer. The result should be a standalone work of art.
Here's some examples, each representing a different outcome.
1) Sometimes the translation is so bad, it's offensive.
It's from Notre Dame de Paris (the musical). Very beautiful in French. Absolute trash in English.
When Frollo sings:
Ô Notre-Dame! Oh laisse moi rien qu'une fois
Pousser la porte du jardin d'Esméralda
He begs God to let him "push the door of Esmeralda's garden", meaning he wants to deflower her. He's too ashamed of it (being a celibate priest), so he lets himself say it only in this seemingly non-erotic way (slipping in a religious theme of the garden), and yet the idea here is fully sexually charged at the same time. It represents him being torn between his life as a priest and his raw sexual desire for her. Multiple layers of meaning in one simple phrase.
In the English version he sings:
O Notre Dame, please let me go beyond God's law
Open the door of love inside Esmeralda
^ doesn't necessarily mean anything sexual, maybe he talks about the door to her heart. The focus is on the illicitness of such relationship (rational thinking), not on passion and pain like in the source material. Boring, bad, utter failure of a translation.
And mind you, they obviously had a huge budget and wanted to get it right. They just couldn't. Because this isn't easy.
---------------------------------------------------------
2) In this case, the translation is better than the original. Louis Aragon wrote:
L'enfer existe
II est la part du plus grand nombre
L'enfer existe
II est ce paysage fou
La résignation des visages à l'ombre
L'espoir tenu pour crime et la vie à genoux
^ Aragon was a communist poet. In this passage he's lamenting the worker's condition, but it reeks of resignation.
But in Russian, holy hell:
Да, существует ад! И в нем живут мильоны.
Да, существует ад! Его свидетель ты.
Ад — это труженик коленопреклоненный,
Смиренные черты, запретные мечты.
The RED idea is suddenly piercing, there's anger here, the language is simple and cuts to the chase. Perfect for the proletariat. It's like a call to arms! The words are more or less the same, but the wording is hugely different, and so is the result. I love the translation much more.
---------------------------------------------------------
3) Other times it can't possibly be translated, e.g. "La Légende des siècles" by Hugo, especially the magnificent "La conscience". There's been some attempts to translate parts of La Légende, but they were extremely poor and people stopped trying. They realized that it was impossible.
« L'oeil a-t-il disparu? » dit en tremblant Tsilla.
Et Caïn répondit: « Non, il est toujours là. »
Alors il dit: « je veux habiter sous la terre
Comme dans son sépulcre un homme solitaire ;
Rien ne me verra plus, je ne verrai plus rien. »
On fit donc une fosse, et Caïn dit « C'est bien ! »
Puis il descendit seul sous cette voûte sombre.
Quand il se fut assis sur sa chaise dans l'ombre
Et qu'on eut sur son front fermé le souterrain,
L'oeil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn.
It's powerful, it has a twist at the end, it plays on biblical words, and it's simply genius.
--------------------------
In GameDev, the only time I remember the translation being brilliant was in the Dark Souls series.
The narrative here is environmental, meaning you get scattered pieces of information from item descriptions or from someone talking nonsense here and there, and you try to piece it together. You'd think something like this is impossible to translate well. And yet the result was impeccable. On top of it, the translators came up with a style that submerged you into the atmosphere.
A character tells you: "Return from whence thou cam'st, for that is thy place of belonging". I know this isn't real old English, but it's a style that works extremely well for the game.
Another example of a fake style that does wonders can be found in Spartacus. A show with gratuitous sex and combat scenes. And yet they stylized English to sound like Latin, which was amazing. "Turn desire to piss and shit, and see yourself well satisfied", "You kiss my cheek, only to finger my ass?", "They give us swords absent edge", "Once again the gods spread the cheeks and ram cock in fucking ass!".
It's stylized as Latin speech ("swords absent edge"), it uses latin-sounding vulgarity and references gods all the time. Perfect job.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject, if you have any.
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