Putting it into Practice

I wrote most of this at about 4 AM so I may be a bit incoherent. I did revise it a bit just now but no guarantees. Also, everything expressed in these posts is my personal opinion, etc. etc. only listen to me if you feel I'm worth listening to.

More walls of text, more eyecandy to tide you over. Picture unrelated again. Source: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=84705

After I posted my last essay, I had three more essays on general topics planned in my head, and this was supposed to be the last one. However, I ended up completely flipping the order from what I had planned because I realized too much of my later argument rested on this.

I’ve ranted on in the last two essays about some theoretical stuff and also given some examples, but I haven’t really touched on how to apply these ideas to the practical process of translation. What sort of things should you keep in mind while writing each line? What sort of criteria should you use in order to decide on your conventions?

What Not to Translate?

Even bigger wall of text this time. Source: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=464124

It seems like a simple question. I’ve heard people mockingly say, “You’re writing English, not wapanese, it’s that easy.” Now, I’m an analytical person, and I’ll be the first to admit I tend to over-analyze and over-think things. But I have to wonder if it’s really that simple.

On Conventions

I mentioned before that I wanted to write one of these posts about translation, and some people (i.e. two) expressed interest. So here goes:

Walls of text ahead, so I figured I'd give y'all something nice to look at first. Picture unrelated.
Source: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=922199

Today I’d like to talk about conventions. No, not the kind that you spend sweating bullets in your heavy cosplay and eating nasty overpriced hot dogs at. I’m talking about translation conventions.

The way I use the word, a translational convention is a consistent choice that the translator makes that doesn’t affect the essential accuracy of a translation. This is a bit tricky because there is no fine line between what does and what does not affect accuracy. Rather, it’s very subjective, and depends on how you define “accuracy”. If a translation does not capture a character’s emotion, is it inaccurate? Does dropping honorifics affect the accuracy of a translation, or is it just a convention?