Translation review: [Mazui] Hyouka 01

 

The translation is literal, but not incorrect.

It’s not about how you put it, but how you live it. Eg. “a lonely way to live”. (寂しい生き方 sabishii ikikata)

I didn’t know 自虐趣味 (jigyaku-shumi) could be translated as “inferiority complex”. Oh wait – it couldn’t.

This is just so wrong. The translation is okay, or how should I say this. I know what’s being said, so I understand why they would write it like this, and how this can mean what’s being said. But not even I would write down this level of Engrish, and my command of the English language is lacking at best.

This is the first line that felt like dialog.

I won’t comment on the typesetting being totally borked, because it’s a player-dependent thing and they apparently didn’t optimize for mine. As for “Specialist Building”, it’s a literal translation, but I can’t help but doubt that in a high school they’d actually call a building that.

The opening is nice liter— Then come stuff like this. Half of the lines don’t make any sense and/or are mistranslated. They didn’t even try to make it consistent (or comprehensible for that matter), even though the connections between the lines are pretty clear for most of the song.

On the one hand, Mazui uses honorifics, so if you prefer it that way, you can rejoice. However the episode title shouldn’t be translated like that. If I were to maintain the grammatical structure, I’d put “Revival of the Classics Club, that has a long history”. The “traditions” (伝統 dentou) in the title is an attribute (or however you call that grammar structure) to the “Classics Club” (古典部 koten-bu). The same goes for the next episode’s title in the preview.

They use honorifics but still manage to entirely erase the politeness level difference from these lines. Good job. (Not.)

They interpreted this and the previous line different from how I did, but I guess this is okay too.

I love this “rising powers” thing. Really.

This is very well handled. You can’t translate よろしく (yoroshiku) literally, because there is no direct equivalent. This is well done.

Pretty much.

This part in the subs suddenly switches from the overly literal to a comfortably liberal style. I guess it’s just to maintain the literary style,

Silk Spider is not an obvious translation for 女郎蜘蛛 (jorou-gumo), but since the spider is connected to silk production and it sounds cool, why not.

I seriously don’t know what is this supposed to mean.

Disappointing? Why? 屈託 (kuttaku) doesn’t mean that for sure.

Conclusion: Okay

This feels like it was done by two different people. The first half has mistranslations and the style is so literal it can’t be enjoyed, while the second half is pretty much how it’s meant to be done. The whole thing in general severely needs editing.

This entry was posted by Vale.

7 thoughts on “Translation review: [Mazui] Hyouka 01

  1. though Houtaoru mentions the name sounding like Benaru, the correct name of the place from India is Banaras (with Bana spoken as in Banana) Just telling 😉

  2. 1st Ep is out already, so i guess it’s too late for that, but how about translating the episode’s title as:
    “(The) Traditions of the revived Classics Club”
    It doesn’t matter whether you use the first “the”, but i think this way the title is still somewhat literal and doesn’t sound stupid.
    I also think that your suggestion of “…, that has a long history” sounds a bit unnatural (no offence intended)
    On another note: I think what you meant with attribute is the genitive case, because the “Traditions/dentou” belong to the “Classics Club/koten-bu” (not that anyone cares, though)

    • Um.. Then how do you translate this?-> बनारस (that word is the exact way in which is it written in its original language) Ofcourse, as wikipedia says its alternate name is वाराणसी
      In devnagari script, maybe you might already be knowing, each letter is spoken the way the letters are written i.e., each letter has a distinct way in which it is spoken. ब is written in english as ba though strictly speaking it should translate as b only, ना as na, र as ra and स as sa.

      Well I am sorry I am not too happy with the wikipedia information. Maybe I am lacking knowledge in the general bacground of how the name came into existance. However, I think i pretty much have an idea that the name benaras may not be exactly the way in our devanagari script.

      And also I just wanted to share this info since I came across really detailed reviews on different episode releases on your blog. This word which I am pointing out is not at all significant for the anime in which it has been used. So no need to excessive discussions as well. But as a native speaker I though I would share some info I had. Thank you for your already nice reviews 🙂

      • It’s just that I grew up reading Kipling’s books so I’m used to the old spellings. I know it’s Varanasi/Benaras.

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