This week's poll comes from 8-3. I'm just gonna quote what he said, since it's a good explanation:


You can submit poll ideas here (and try to keep them manga/anime-related)
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: Do you celebrate the Lunar New Year?
Choices:
Yes - votes: 1264 (22.3%)
Used to, but not anymore - votes: 295 (5.2%)
Never have - votes: 4098 (72.4%)
There were 5657 total votes.
The poll ended: February 4th 2017

I had a lot of good Chinese food last week!

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I went with the third option because I generally advocate preserving the "feel" of the setting, though I'm sure most people couldn't care less.

But I suppose if the story acknowledges certain characters as being Chinese, then even if it's set in Japan it'd be better if their names alone were in the Chinese pronunciation.

Last edited by calstine at 2:01 am, Feb 4 2017

I am a person that likes things as close to original as possible, so I wanted choose option 2, but...
a lot of Chinese names sounds the same to me
so I chose the first option.

We are going though Chinese history month, ok. Change them into their proper Chinese pronunciations only if the story takes place in China, i guess. I never asked myself this question but this seems logical. Have the name pronounced as the characters "realistically" would.

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Mostly option 3, but I would actually pick the name that is the easiest to remember. In your example of "玉玲" is pronounced "Gyokurei" in Japanese and in Chinese, it's pronounced "Yu Ling" I would take the Chinese name, because it is easier for me to remember. But that probably has to do with the fact that I have been reading Chinese webnovels. For someone who knows nothing of how Chinese names work, they would be confusing.

I guess option 3 is the best option as that would be how the characters would call each other in the story. Still, if the story has many characters coming from one family... that is a pain. I can never remember many of their names...

This is an excellent question.

My answer is that, with a few exceptions, Chinese (or any other) names need to be translated to the proper spelling of the target language. It's very common for personal and geographic names of a neighboring country to start to significantly deviate from the original language due to both historical and phonetic reasons. Let's take Deutschland as an example, also known as Germany in English and Allemagne in French. So if you were translating a French text about Germany to English, and you kept using the term "Allemagne" instead of "Germany", even if neither has anything to do with "Deutschland", you would be considered an incompetent retard, and rightly so. Or to take another example that recently caused me to roll my eyes: http://puu.sh/tEP0T/9cc9e3337c.jpg What we have here is a mix of translator's ignorance, incompetence, and laziness.

So, to get closer to the specifics of the topic, the name 孔子 found in a Japanese text should not be translated as "Kou Shi", nor should it be translated as "Kong Zi". The correct translation is "Confucius". But other than well known figures whose spellings are historically derived, any names should be based on the current standard of transcribing Chinese names in English, which I believe is their pinyin spelling.

Now, the exceptions (there are always exceptions). The necessity of such exceptions is obviously derived from context. If we are talking about a Chinese person living in Japan who is called by the Japanese reading of their name, and the whole dialogue takes place in Japanese, it would make sense to use the Japanese pronunciation. Or, I remember watching a silly anime a while back, where there characters were Japanese, but they were named after characters from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms for whatever reason. In that case, it would also make sense to use Japanese pronunciation. You have to take it on a case by case basis.

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Leave them as their Japanese pronunciations, just like the author did.
I believe this is how, it would keep it's originality. Author intended to be this way (as he/she didn't do it otherwise because of laziness or whatever reason he/she may had), so keep it how it is. Else, every other things (mainly nouns) taken other places need to be pronounced as it's origin.

Qi, Chi, Ki are all the same you see...different names on different places. Chakra is similar but not the same thing.

Last edited by MinatoAce at 1:31 pm, Feb 4 2017

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Praha = Prague. In what way is it ignorant of the translator not to change it?

First of all, it's not the only mistake in that line.

And the ignorance can be deduced from the fact that the tler hadn't heard of Prague (or of Antonín Dvořák for that matter) before tackling that particular drama. The fact that he got the Czech spelling out of Japanese プラハ is obviously a coincidence.

Why, were you going to claim the tler did it on purpose? That would be a bold claim for someone who hasn't seen the tl in its entirety.

EDIT: Upon further thought, most likely "Praha" isn't a coincidence, it's the result of incompetent Wikipedia usage. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%97%E3%83%A9%E3%83% 8F The tler found the page, but didn't take the next logical step to check the English page for the proper English spelling. Thus, ignorance compounded by incompetence and/or laziness.

Last edited by cmertb at 6:56 pm, Feb 4 2017

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My question would be how many translators would know the proper Chinese translation? And how much effort would it take to find out the correct Chinese pronunciation and how to reflect pronunciation in English?

Also, for me since I don't know Chinese it really doesn't matter to me how it gets translated. If they leave the Japanese pronunciation or if they try to keep things authentic and give them the proper Chinese pronunciation, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Last edited by KaoriNite at 6:45 pm, Feb 4 2017

I'm with cmertb, it's all about context, if they're from China like Syaoran Li (Cardcaptor Sakura) or Kong Wenge (Ping Pong), then please use their proper Chinese pronunciations. And if they were raised in Japan and go by the Japanese reading, then do the Japanese.

I do wonder though, how often mangaka provide the Chinese reading vs the Japanese in the manga or if they provide one at all.

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Quite the interesting poll this time. Can't say I really have a preference.

As long as the names are consistent, I don't really care.
The problem only arises if the series gets picked up by another group halfway through and all of the character names suddenly change.

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The English spelling is listed on the Japanese Wikipedia page, so why would he need to check a different one?

I wouldn't claim that...but I also wouldn't claim it was a coincidence. Unlike you (and despite his "Devorak Hall"), I still give him the benefit of the doubt. Sure, I haven't seen the translation in its entirety but at the same time, you didn't provide more than one sentence on which you put him down.

Because "Praha" is one the first line, and "Prague" is a few lines down. Checking the English page is SOP for decent translators. Or we can go back to my old theory that he simply dropped the reduced vowel from the Japanese spelling, since that is also SOP for translators.


Benefit of the doubt in what regard? What do you claim his motivation was in misspelling two words anyone even half-educated would know? It doesn't matter what you wouldn't claim since you haven't actually done any research (i.e. watched the damn fansub ). You can check it out, it isn't actually a secret: it's Nodame Cantabile streamed on kissasian (not sure if I can provide a direct link to fansubs here).

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