Subtitling question

[solo]

I read a really interesting sub-thread in a convo I can't find again now, but as somebody who's very interested in language, it made me think.

So far in the subtitling, I've privileged English over Chinese because I want stuff to be accessible to people like me, who don't know any Chinese. But even as I get more used to it I become more aware of the nuances and with that, the difficulty of choosing the right words/things to do.

So. Until now, I've always translated 'lao' as 'old' and 'xiao' as 'little'.

But I'm really and truly easy on this - no solution is ever perfect, and I can do a search-replace easily.

Only one question really because the rest will follow.

Poll #21652

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

Lao Chu or Old Chu?

View Answers

Lao Chu
22 (68.8%)

Old Chu
7 (21.9%)

other and I will make your life even more complicated with my comment but it's totally worth it
3 (9.4%)

*note I'm not going to turn Zhao Yunlan's 'Hei Lao Ge' into 'Lao Bro Black', that is a step too far into madness for me, and I want people to get the flavour of this thing and also, I'm ultimately doing the subs for me and I like the 'Old Bro Black'.**

**and also, also, it's softsubs so anyone who hates it can change it easily if they care enough.

Comments

[jo_lasalle]

Strong, strong preference on the translated terms here. So if you end up doing a full search and replace (the Lao X versions certainly seem popular in fic), maybe shoot me the pre-S&R versions? ^_^ *bat's eyelashes*

[teaotter]

In American English, at least, I think the closer form is Big Chu -- yes, I know that Lao is frequently translated as Old, but it has connotations of respect that the word old just doesn't have in English.

Back when we used nicknames more often, Old John was usually about age, but Big John could be about size or power or respect (think "Big Man on Campus").

[trobadora]

Personally I prefer Lao over Old.

(Also, "bro" sounds so American to me, it keeps kicking me out of the story. But that's neither here nor there; there really isn't a good English translation.)

[maggie33]

I prefer Lao Chu and Xiao Guo, the same way I prefer, for instance, Hong-jie and Chu-ge instead of sister Hong and brother Chu. But I don’t mind the English version.

[riventhorn]

I like Lao Chu and Xiao Guo best--once I got used to them and understood them. If it was me, I would like the subtitle to read at first:

Lao Chu (Old Chu)

Do that for the first few times, and then just use Lao Chu going forward.

Um, it's late where I am and this may not be as coherent as I think it is, fair warning.

[firestar]

This monolingual Anglophone tends to prefer honorifics/suffixes etc left as they are, there's nuance and context that doesn't really translate well in English, especially if the form of address changes throughout the show. Not to mention the workarounds can be... hit and miss. A (Japanese) show I love has a couple of characters who use -chan on the end of each other's names and the subbers translated that as Kenny and Ranny, instead of just going with Ken-chan and Ran-chan, which is perfectly fine and not as oh god why cringe-inducing cutesy that makes me want to stab my eyes out*. There was much wailing in despair before I went into aegisub and just changed it for my sanity. >.>

Also, seeing people referred to as Brother 'name' or Sister 'name' just gives me connotations of religious orders and 'Bro' also seems very American and/or dudebro'ish. Old Bro Black works because Yunlan is deliberately being irreverent, but generally it makes me twitchy.

*Okay, that's an exaggeration, but if nothing else this comment has shown me that I do indeed still have Feelings on this topic, even if I thought Toku fandom had worn me down with it. >.>

[melannen]

I am almost always in favor for the untranslated terms for things like that; as has been pointed out above, any possible English translation will miss nuance (or even be misleading.) But also that English as a language (and English speakers as a whole) are incredibly flexible and variable, so that if you leave in the untranslated terms for something that comes up a lot, people watching will almost always just start reading it as a newly-adopted English term amazingly quickly.

But also re: translated terms, I know Anglo American native English speakers who casually refer to friends and relatives as "brother so and so" and "sister so and so" on the regular. (It used to be way more common a hundred or two years ago, but it's not gone.) - 'Brother Lin Jing' would strike me as a perfectly normal translation. So honestly, English is also such a mess of different regional/subcultural usages that any attempt to translate the terms is going to read very differently to different people anyway.

(Also I think "Bro" is fine for Zhao Yunlan if you do translate! He reads to me as the sort of person who would use "Bro" a lot in his English because he wants to appear to be the sort of person who uses "Bro" even if he isn't, and that's most of the people who use "Bro" in my area anyway.)

[goss]

I also second the comment above about placing the English translation into brackets at first, and then transition to later down the line removing it altogether.

In addition, I could be way off here, but I was thinking that maybe using a completely different title that commands respect/power would work to express the spirit of 'Lao' if not its exact meaning.

eg. Master, Officer, Venerable, Captain, Warrior, etc.

[powwie]

I think that is the never ending debate when translating from asian languages when honorifics are required but have no meaning in the translated into language.

It's the same dilemma with japanese.
Officially, and I mean in manga, anime, movie officially released they never translate honorifics like -kun. -san is a bit easier to portray in any languages.
Fans, at least here in Italy, always complain about the lack of honorifics in the translated text, because they say, the translation doens't convey the relationship status those honorifics implies.
True, but either you add footnotes everytime you write them or they won't convey anything to those who don't already know.

As for your poll, I chose Old Chu because to me it just sounds better than mixing chinese and english.
I wouldn't use the -ge, -jie, -didi or any of their translations the same way I wouldn't use -kun, -chan, -tan in Japanese. Those who know, they will hear them anyway. To people who are not familiar with honorifics, they only add to the confusion.

[likealeafonthewind]

I grew up watching fansubbed Japanese anime, where usually the honorifics are kept in and I felt like that added more to the show than it detracted because they tell you how the characters relate to each other. I feel like it would be the same with Guardian, so my personal preference would be to keep the honorifics in their original form, with maybe a note of what meaning it's conveying.

Same with titles like Heipaoshi (though I know you're asking more about ZYL's informal addresses and not SW's actual title). It just always looks weird to me to see that translated to Black Cloaked Envoy, like it loses some of the formality when it's in English. Though I've been trying to think - if there was a person in real life whose title is Heipaoshi in Chinese, and they visited an English-speaking country, would their title get translated into English when people are addressing them or speaking about them? Or would they still call them by the Chinese title?

....maybe we do always translate titles from other languages, because I can't think of any non-English titles that I've heard of in real life.