How would you guys go about translating these 3 sentences? (These sentences are from Resident Evil Zero Trailer)
２人をつなぐ　「パートナーザッピング」

時に協力し、あるいは孤独という不安の中単独で調査することも

背中合わせのライブ感


I would break these down (vocab by vocab) and then form a general meaning of what it says. Then I would work on building a better translation (make it sound better in English). I know there are several translators here, how do you guys do your translations?

Translation for marketing generally involves first trying to find something else that was translated before that is similar (consistency is huge for a brand, especially a luxury one), and then fumbling through the meaningless marketing speak while confirming with the designer wtf it's supposed to mean when they say pseudo shapes subliminally connect distinct forms for a dynamic expression (this is an exact example of something from earlier this week). Often the Japanese is just horrible and full of incorrect kanji and grammar mistakes, or just otherwise means nothing because the writer's thought process was interrupted. Sometimes you just have to go for a literal translation until you get feedback from the designer.

On a more technical level, translation doesn't work like you wrote in your last paragraph. Translation happens on a minimum of a sentence by sentence level, not word by word. I read a sentence, understand it, and then write an English sentence that means the same thing in the same tone. I then do the rest of the sentences for the paragraph, going back to adjust previous sentences to create a good flow if necessary. Sometimes three sentences become one, other times one sentence becomes five. Translation is a creative process, not a technical process of converting things.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Translation for marketing generally involves first trying to find something else that was translated before that is similar (consistency is huge for a brand, especially a luxury one), and then fumbling through the meaningless marketing speak while confirming with the designer wtf it's supposed to mean when they say pseudo shapes subliminally connect distinct forms for a dynamic expression. Sometimes you just have to go for a literal translation until you get feedback from the designer.

On a more technical level, translation doesn't work like you wrote in your last paragraph. Translation happens on at least a sentence by sentence level, not word by word. I read a sentence, understand it, and then write an English sentence that means the same thing in the same tone. I then do the rest of the sentences for the paragraph, going back to adjust previous sentences to create a good flow if necessary. Translation is a creative process, not a technical process of converting things.

Thanks for the comment, so one has to have a knowledge or at least read up on it before diving into the material. Since this is coming from a game, I know the translation has to resemble how they use certain phrases in trailers. Yea I do both vocab by vocab and the overall meaning of the sentence. It's just to wrap my head around trying to get the most out of the sentence. But I definitely know translations are about "editing" it around to make it make sense in English but also making it sound good based on what type of content it comes from

The gist of what I was getting at towards the end is that you shouldn't be going word to word, since there is no 1:1 relationship between the two languages and you shouldn't be trying to make a Japanese word into an English word. You should be working with the meaning in your head. Of course, if there are words you don't understand in the source that has to be dealt with before continuing. Going word by word often results in stilted destination text and it takes longer to do (the expectation at my company is a maximum of two hours per full page of text for a perfect translation).

About 80% of the effort when translating is making the destination language sound good, reflect nuance and be consistent, not dealing with the source language (unless it's really bad Japanese).

Jarvik7 Wrote:The gist of what I was getting at towards the end is that you shouldn't be going word to word, since there is no 1:1 relationship between the two languages and you shouldn't be trying to make a Japanese word into an English word. You should be working with the meaning in your head. Of course, if there are words you don't understand in the source that has to be dealt with before continuing. Going word by word often results in stilted destination text and it takes longer to do (the expectation at my company is a maximum of two hours per full page of text for a perfect translation).

About 80% of the effort when translating is making the destination language sound good, reflect nuance and be consistent, not dealing with the source language (unless it's really bad Japanese).

Thanks for the comment, I get what your saying. I had a feeling that it really does come down to making it sound good in the translated language.