View Single Post
Old 2013-01-21, 03:26   Link #318
Kudryavka
Senior Member
 
 
Join Date: May 2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quarkboy View Post
Here's an interesting theoretical question to ask yourself though:

Let's say you have 3 translators, A, B, and C.

A can translate from language J to language X
B can translate from language X to language Y
C can translate from language J to language Y

You want a translation into language Y, so have 2 choices: double translation A->B or single C

The question is, what level of skill of the translators A, B, and C makes one or the other a better choice?

Clearly if C is a terrible translator and A and B are both excellent, the double translation is superior. And if A, B, and C are all just as good, then C's single translation is superior in all cases. But what if C is half as good as both A and B?
Is the quality of A's translation more important than B's? (I would hypothesize this).

Especially with more obscure languages, finding a competent direct translator may be nigh impossible...
Its not about skill of the translators, unfortunately. No matter how good, a translator is rewriting the authors work into something of their own. The more it gets rewritten, the farther it gets from the authors original vision (unless the author is in contact with translator, which is never the case in fansubs). I suppose a terible C translator coould put out a bad translation, but if B has no knoowledge of language J, how are they supossed to respect the original authors vision at all? They cant, they can only guess what the author meant through A's work.

And yea for some languages its either multi-regurgitated translations or none at all.
Kudryavka is offline   Reply With Quote