Question about ben(dialects) and its translation

[Proto]

Today while talking with some people from Ayu I though about this. How do most fansubbers decide on the how to translate things like Osaka-ben, Kyoto-ben, Tokyo-ben, especially when they are all packed into the same series, by different characters that end up interacting and talking their respective slang, for example. Do you choose to translate it all into plain English and just modulate the levels of formality, or you try to regionalize it into some equivalent slang (England english, ireland's, west coast, east coast etc)

PS: I searched for dialect and ben and didnt find anything relevant, but sorry if this has been made before.

[Sairai_X]

It's mostly ignored.
I hear that Oosaka-ben is given a southern accent in dubs, most of the time.
Kyoto-ben shows up too rarely to matter... I've seen it ONCE. (Kousetsu Hyakumonogatari episode 8)

[AndrewLB]

My suggestion is to translate it according to region and economic status.

So for example, if the Osaka dialect is in a southern region dependant on fishing perhaps with lower economic class than say Tokyo, then find a dialect in the United States with similar attributes.

All dialects are the same on a strictly linguistic level, but when you take in other factors, then you can rate them accordingly and possibly find comparisons across languages.

[Sylf]

I've thought about putting Osaka-ben -> southern accent. But rather, I think I end up thinking more like slurry speech -> slurry speech translation. Who speak more proper form of Japanese, and who speak in more relaxed manner?

And still, I'm not sure how much the viewers appreciate these efforts, so my effort on this topic is pretty small.

[Sairai_X]

Characters who speak in Oosakaben generally used relaxed speaking styles anyway.

[ichido reichan]

on a side note, there is a character on kimengumi that keeps speaking weird with the "ia"

example:

okashian, otoshian, nadesu-kia (otoo-san, okaa-san, nande suka?)

or umiai (instead of umae =delicious)

I dont know how I gonna make this character speaks, but I think I will put funky subs with intended mispellings to see that you have to put real attention on what he say.

On the case of osakan accent, I think every country has it's own slang, way to talk and different words, if I speak my slang spanish to a mexican guy, he wont understand anything, but I been listening to mexican slang so I know that.


is impossible to simulate a correct osakan slang without using the "ia"

yoshia, sora-ia, chumon dechu, and so on

[SirCanealot]

I dislike accents being translated into weird English dialects unless the person doing the editing is REALLY good (eg: Dark Horses's Hellsing, and that's all Euro accents anyway, heh :P).

I prefer to see the use of increased (and less common) contractions, as well as a bit of in' here and there, as well of course, a decrease in formaility. I think this can be used to differentiate a character effectively, but finding the balance of how far to go is always the point...

[Uska]

Be glad none of you tls have to do Nyasu's speech from Pocket Monsters :P Sure you may think Pocket Monsters is a 'kid's' show and it's not that hard, but he sneaks nya in a lot of words in a sentence.....and it's sometimes REALLY hard to make sense of what he says. That goes the same for Shinchan too...*shivers*