things I learned during the years I was a pirate manga translator:
- there's no such thing as faithful translation. all translation is rewriting, some just try to mask it.
- the hard part is not having the skills to read source lang, but to write well in target lang
- and the hardest part of that is keeping character voices clearly distinct, while making dialogue feel natural
- the biggest temptation and the downfall of translators is to explain, to make clearer, to unweird, to homogenise
@elilla I can appreciate that last point. I recall reading a doujin with 1 or 2 "TN: [note about japanese culture]" every other page (barely exaggerating). Clearing up untranslatable puns or idioms helps, but turning into a tour guide...I guess it just changes the tone of the work too much for me. Like it's turned into an anthropology text.
