Translating manga from Japanese, which would have the more accurate translation?

I have a friend who reads in Chinese and he says it's better, since many Japanese phrases which don't translate directly to English does for Chinese. I can see where he is coming from, since I understand Chinese but don't read (shame), but he doesn't have fluent English.

I guess this requires people who have a good command of Japanese, Chinese and English.

"I'll shut your mouth~~~~~ with mine~~~"

二息歩行

Over at jcafe, some people were talking about this the other day.

Quote from lucifell

Quote from Mr. Ku

Quote from PROzess

[quote=Mr. Ku]Hey Lucifell, did you translate that from the Japanese RAWs? Because they seem a little different from the Chinese ones in a few parts. I guess the Japanese ones are definitely more accurate as the ones that translated from the Chinese ones are actually Taiwanese people, therefore the grammar is terrible :S

Not to insult any chinese translators (I'm sure they are doing a great job), but Jap->Chin->Eng is just FAIL.
A translation should NEVER be done over third-translation. But hey, it's just a hobby and no one cares about accuracy. I mean, there are plenty of japanese "translator" out there, who think they can "translate" when they only know as much as my mother about japanase ("Doumo" "Sumimasen"...)-.-'

I agree, but sometimes, how can they stray so far off? 😐

Like form Lucifell's translation, which I assume is JP to ENG, there's one sentence that goes:

"It's good to let your hair down on your days off, huh?"

But then from the JAP to CN translation on the dm5 website, the same sentence goes:

"就应该在快关门的时候出手呢" which when translated to ENG is "You must strike just when the shops are closing ne~."(Assuming it's used in context) or more literally, "You must strike just when the doors are closing ne~" or something similar to that

I just find it kinda weird lol

In this case, I do believe the CN translations are a bit skewed, but they got around 75% of it right(grammatically, not sure about the actual translations), so yeah,I guess they did do a good job.

This is the line in question, オフの時位羽根をのばさないとね
and I went with what I thought it was, even though I MAY be wrong. I've been trying to teach myself Japanese off and on for the past few years as a hobby. As far as I know, I only know about as much as a pre-schooler or a 1st grader AT BEST. And it doesnt help that the dialogue is really bad=hard to translate accurately in certain places, so there are certain lines that I am only 50/50 on, so I go with my best guess with regards to what I was able to discern of the line, the situation at the time of it being said, what was being said before it, and of course what will fit well with the flow of the story. Even though I strive to be as accurate as possible, I am by no means a professional, I doubt I would even be on par with a kid who took Japanese in high school, and I know there are probably some lines that I didnt get totally accurate, I just hope I didnt get anything blatantly wrong. I have no problem skewing a bit of chit chat in the manga, as long as I correctly translate what was basicly being said, but I worry about fudging up a main story point. [/quote]

Quote from PROzess

Quote from silentpolar

I'm really glad that I'm born Chinese 😛 teehee

Yeah, you get to read a lot of faulty translations. I'm so envious 🙂

[color=green]"Officially, this machine doesn't exist, you didn't get it from me,
and I don't know you. Make sure it doesn't leave the building."[/color]

I'm not surprised that the quality of translations of Chinese groups aren't always brilliant.
But putting work ethics aside, which would capture the original meaning better?

For example, take the title 君のいる町 (Kimi no Iru Machi)

For English, we get "A Town Where You Live". Not bad.

For Chinese, we get 小镇有你
I've actually seen this on Chinese volume covers.
This doesn't translate well into English, but literally "small town has you".

I don't know, kind of hard to explain, but the Chinese title sounds more graceful and romantic, and while I can't say this with full confidence, it portrays the original meaning better than the English title.

"I'll shut your mouth~~~~~ with mine~~~"

二息歩行