The
flood of Japanese animated shows and video games coming to the U.S.
have kept veteran translator David Fleming busier than ever in his
career. His work involves making the first
translation of a project, the basic script that then is rewritten into
one version for dub actors and another version for subtitles. Fleming's
job is made tough by the complexity of the Japanese language (at his
Anime Central panel, Fleming displayed a phone-book-sized translation
guide) and the need for unquestioned clarity in his translation. Any
ambiguity or confusion left over from Fleming's initial translation can
cause trouble when the separate sub and dub scripts are written. "If
the translation is fairly rough, you can misconstrue what the
translator is trying to say," Fleming noted. "The ADR writer and the
subtitle writer can have different ideas of what the translation was
trying to say. That's why you can have such divergence between the dub
and the subtitles. It's really an adaptation of an adaptation. Your
adapters, they can only understand a certain amount of what the
translation was trying, to say, so a lot can be lost." So, Fleming's
scripts include as much explanation as plot, giving the rewriters as
much information as possible.
At
the time of Anime Central, Fleming had completed his last translation
for the final Ghost in the Shell series, a series known for scenes
packed with dialogue. Fleming noted that the "Ghost in the Shell"
franchise had proven more popular in the U.S. than in Japan and
had been extended because of demand in English-speaking markets.
Fleming used an example from the ongoing "Gankutsou - Count of Monte
Cristo" series, sold in the U.S. by Geneon, to show the complexity and
artistic decisions that a translator must make. For one thing, the
Japanese original includes French dialogue that had to be rendered into
English along with the Japanese lines. Also, there's a catch phrase in
the series that proved to be complex to turn into English, because of
the need to make the phrase match lips flaps in the dub. A simple
translation of the phrase, Fleming said, would have been "wait and
hope," but Japanese isn't that simple. The language has what he
referred to as "command forms," used in that phrase, that required a
different reading. Also, the original Japanese had seven or eight
syllables for that phrase, so "wait and hope" with three syllables
would not have fit in the dub. So Fleming came up with "bide your time,
and hold out hope," which can be heard in every episode of the series.
The
flood of Japanese animated shows and video games coming to the U.S.
have kept veteran translator David Fleming busier than ever in his
career. His work involves making the first
translation of a project, the basic script that then is rewritten into
one version for dub actors and another version for subtitles. Fleming's
job is made tough by the complexity of the Japanese language (at his
Anime Central panel, Fleming displayed a phone-book-sized translation
guide) and the need for unquestioned clarity in his translation. Any
ambiguity or confusion left over from Fleming's initial translation can
cause trouble when the separate sub and dub scripts are written. "If
the translation is fairly rough, you can misconstrue what the
translator is trying to say," Fleming noted. "The ADR writer and the
subtitle writer can have different ideas of what the translation was
trying to say. That's why you can have such divergence between the dub
and the subtitles. It's really an adaptation of an adaptation. Your
adapters, they can only understand a certain amount of what the
translation was trying, to say, so a lot can be lost." So, Fleming's
scripts include as much explanation as plot, giving the rewriters as
much information as possible.
At
the time of Anime Central, Fleming had completed his last translation
for the final Ghost in the Shell series, a series known for scenes
packed with dialogue. Fleming noted that the "Ghost in the Shell"
franchise had proven more popular in the U.S. than in Japan and
had been extended because of demand in English-speaking markets.
Fleming used an example from the ongoing "Gankutsou - Count of Monte
Cristo" series, sold in the U.S. by Geneon, to show the complexity and
artistic decisions that a translator must make. For one thing, the
Japanese original includes French dialogue that had to be rendered into
English along with the Japanese lines. Also, there's a catch phrase in
the series that proved to be complex to turn into English, because of
the need to make the phrase match lips flaps in the dub. A simple
translation of the phrase, Fleming said, would have been "wait and
hope," but Japanese isn't that simple. The language has what he
referred to as "command forms," used in that phrase, that required a
different reading. Also, the original Japanese had seven or eight
syllables for that phrase, so "wait and hope" with three syllables
would not have fit in the dub. So Fleming came up with "bide your time,
and hold out hope," which can be heard in every episode of the series.
