Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It’s so interesting. I’d wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of “yeah, that’s what it literally translates to, but that’s not what it means” or has answered a question like “how do you say _____ in (language)?” with “you don’t, it’s just … not a thing, we don’t say that.”
I’ve had my fair share of “[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it’s text!” “[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it’s text!” and every time. Every time I’m just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.
Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn’t. To lots of people, it doesn’t. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It’s great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn’t available through my local library very much wasn’t available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.
Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn’t led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.
And that’s … idk if it’s fine, but it’s what happens! A lot of the time, concepts – expressed in language – don’t translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn’t very idiomatic because there’s a register mismatch or worse. And that’s even before cultural assumptions come in. It’s normal to have those. It’s also important to remember that things like “thanks I hate it” as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn’t easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.
Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don’t have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator’s discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it’s the listener’s responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it’s lacking).
Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of “Go?” - “Go.” does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as “is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?” - “yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are” in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It’s arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying “Are you going?” - “I am (going)” might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.
This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking “are you going” or “is she going”? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it’s important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like “are we all going?” - “yes” or “they going, too?” might work. Context!
As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it’s because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it’s because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn’t. However, because in most cases translators don’t have access to the original authors, or even the original authors’ agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn’t get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it’s more of a “fuck it, I’ve got to put something and hope it doesn’t get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down” (especially fun when you’re working on a series that’s in progress).
For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there’ll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what “effectively” even means …
ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I’d love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don’t speak the material’s original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we’re basically working from a secondary source, and if we’re doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there’s nothing substantial being (literally) lost – or added! – in translation?
I’ve always wondered why I could remember my past lives. I couldn’t forget them even if I wanted to. But the most memorable life out of them all… was the warm and ordinary summer days with you. I think I can finally understand why my mom brought you to me. Seo-ha. I’ll stay by your side until you can stand on your own two feet. Seo-ha. Seo-ha. I was reborn this time solely to meet you.
Oh, I love them. Especially Kazuma. You can feel the young crush and the old love still there for him, the way he still feels so much and so big for Ren but tries so hard to not push because he’s insecure and he’s unsure and he’s just come back and Ren is still this superstar in his eyes, this man who is just too good to be true.
And this comes back to all the feelings and the moments they share. Kazuma feels like Ren has, and always had, surpassed him in every way. Kazuma feels constantly like he is looking up at the perfect Ren, the perfect man.
(Kazuma spent the summer vacation in the hospital and no one knew, no one had any idea how sick he was or that he went back to the US because of that illness and how long has Ren thought he left because of him?)
I am dying to know how everything went down while Kazuma was basically in a coma and unaware of the world and then left without getting the chance to say goodbye because so much had to have happened it can’t even be imagined.
I cannot wait for what happened because both Ren and Kazuma left and I strongly suspect Ren made the choice to leave.
Kazuma’s insecurity is going to destroy me. Absolutely and utterly destroy me. He wants desperately to be close to Ren but the secrets and the space between them leaves him feeling empty and he’s trying to cross the line between them but he’s too scared of losing even the semblance of a one-sided (he feels) friendship he has with him now.
The barrier and the introduction and just all of it…
The implications here about how much Ren talks about him and cares about him and how Kazuma is just going to ignore that entirely because of his own worries and fears.
PS I love this lanky doodle of a man who is just leaning all over the place and takes up whatever space he feels like and does not care how delicate the dance between these two is right now. He is far, far too much fun.
Taking into account that Kazuma literally missed an entire summer due to illness and then moved and lost his best friend/crush/first love but also that Ren lost Kazuma and then left… there’s so much between them and we know so little, like an iceberg of hurt floating between them. Also, @absolutebl, that line is so good in every context and I love that there is no answer yet because neither narrative, neither the past nor the present, has reached the point that either of them is ready or realizes what the other person doesn’t know or needs to know.
Ren looks happy in the middle of a crowd but we know wouldn’t have come if Kazuma hadn’t asked him and Kazuma off by himself, entirely alone at a different table, watching the scene unfold.
Oh man. This show is breaking my heart in the most perfect ways. It’s Ren accepting the invitation from Kazuma but rejecting the rest of what he wants and Kazuma taking that was a general rejection and the shock he has every time their coworkers call them friends, close friends, good friends, because he doesn’t feel like one.
And then he takes care of drunk Run carefully and tenderly and with so much of his heart going into it every choice. Kazuma still loves Ren so much even if he feels like he’s on the outside looking in. That’s just familiar to him.
Kazuma stopped Ren from having casual sex with a stranger and then they fucked and then Kazuma got sick and vanished. Ren has probably spent a decade running from what he did that he believed lost him a friend and that was just Kazuma being too nice and too innocent and caring too much and now here they are a decade later both convinced the other simply abandoned them and this is seriously Our Dating Sim but on both sides.
(Or maybe not, I don’t know how much Ren knows about Kazuma’s illness but since Hide had no idea…)
Wrong words, Kazuma. Not in that position!
Without having read the OG source I gotta say, I’m just as obsessed. They have me in a choke hole. I personally believe after they fucked, their parents might have found out. And sent Ren (and maybe Kazuma too) away because of that. At least I’m sure the rumors Hide talks about are something of that nature.
Hide might’ve joked about them being too close, or said the wrong things and hurt Ren in the process. Idk. But I for sure know that the rumors were definetly about how weird it was for both Kazuma and Ren to disappear at the same time, and how it might be because they parents caught them being homosexual with each other (it’s a very common trope and Im 99.9% sure that’s what everyone believed)
Just Jeng breaking down over how much he loves Pat while Pat only sees him as a coworker. This man has been dreaming of marrying Pat since he saw him in a suit, of cooking with him since they played pretend in the store, of cooking with him since they shared ramen, of cooking for him since he took those restaurants, of buying furniture and taking care of him and growing better together and supporting him and now he’s trying to let go of all those dreams, trying to stop thinking about a love that has grown and captivated him and gave him hope.
Intense Subtext in Front of Oblivious Side Characters: “I had no wife in the year six”
There’s a thing, I guess it would be considered a trope, that is one of my favorite such things in any form of media but especially any sort of romance-centered story. I don’t know of an existing term for this and I’m terrible at being concise so I’m not sure how I could put it briefly. Basically, it’s the thing that happens when a larger interaction is happening with a group of people but there’s a subtext to it that means something very different–and generally, much more meaningful–to the central characters. You could call it something like Intense Subtext in Front of Oblivious Side Characters.
I’ve been thinking for a while about possible parallels between BLs and Jane Austen novels and/or adaptations. This is my attempt at taking a small, specific example of a parallel I sometimes notice and talking about it. Austen’s novels do a lot of this trope I mentioned. That’s in part because of choices Austen made in what she wanted to write about. But it’s also because of the social context of her time. There was a lot going on that people couldn’t be explicit about, for a variety of reasons. I think one reason why I see similar things happening in some BLs–and maybe one reason for the appeal of certain types of BLs–is the fact that being queer in a homophobic society makes openness complicated in a way that doesn’t come up as much for hetero relationships these days. Especially when we get into things like office romances, in which appearances have higher stakes. These complications around openness have a kind of similarity to the reasons Austen’s characters had to play a lot of things close to the chest.
Fellow Old Fashion Cupcake fans will remember an example from that series that I think really fits here. Nozue and Togawa agree to attend a goukon, or “mixer” as it’s sometimes translated–basically a group hangout intended to help men and women meet for the purpose of finding people to date. Nozue is hitting it off with a cute younger woman, which is bad enough. But then he mentions his “anti-aging” efforts, and because of the mysterious way he words it, the woman asks, “Does that mean you’re in love?” which of course catches Togawa’s attention even more. He’s clearly affected when Nozue answers, “If I were, I wouldn’t be here.”
@jdramastuff did a great screenshot post of this scene if you want to see what this looked like.
After Nozue’s comment, Togawa starts knocking back alcoholic drinks like it’s going out of style, ensuring that Nozue will have to help him home instead of going home with the woman who’s been flirting with him.
(You could argue that this isn’t so much a case of subtext as it is the significance one person assigns to what another is saying. Subtext really requires some degree of communication between more than one person. But while Nozue doesn’t fully grasp what’s going on, I think he does understand in some ways what he’s communicating. I don’t want to go on too much of a tangent, so I’ll just say that having just read the manga the series was based on, it strengthened my belief that while Nozue is repressed, insecure, even deluded at times, he has glimmers of awareness of his feelings for Togawa and even suspicions of Togawa’s feelings for him, and on some level he knows what he’s saying, though I don’t think he knows in this moment how much these words will hurt Togawa.)
I have another favorite example of this, a scene from Persuasion. It’s rendered really well in the 1995 adaptation of the novel with Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root. (The whole thing is phenomenal, by the way–I think it’s the best Austen adaptation ever made, personally.)
A bit of background for anyone not familiar with the story: Anne Elliott was engaged to Captain Frederick Wentworth in 1806 but was convinced by Lady Russell, her neighbor/family friend and a kind of surrogate mother to her following her mom’s death, to break off the engagement. She has regretted it ever since. Wentworth was deeply hurt and angry when she broke things off, not surprisingly.
More than eight years later, Anne is visiting her sister and her sister’s in-laws, the Musgroves, when Wentworth comes to the area and starts spending a lot of time at the Musgrove place (and with the Musgroves’ eligible young daughters). Wentworth acknowledges Anne, but just barely, while paying enough attention to both the Musgrove girls that everyone is gossiping about which one he’s going to marry. Anne’s sister Mary was away at boarding school when her previous relationship with Wentworth happened, so neither Mary nor the Musgroves are aware Anne and Wentworth were involved and think they were only acquaintances.
At a dinner party, the Musgrove girls try to look up the ship that Wentworth first commanded, the Asp, in the Navy List, a book that chronicles the various ships in the British Navy, their commanders, and so forth. Wentworth tells them not to bother–“she” is not in the current version of the List because “she” no longer exists.
Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove are suitably horrified.
Admiral Croft, Wentworth’s brother-in-law and superior in the Navy, remarks that Wentworth was lucky to get a command so early in his career at all, no matter how seaworthy (or un-seaworthy) the ship was.
(Remember, 1806 was the year that Anne and Wentworth became engaged and then un-engaged.)
Gut-wrenching. And nobody else sitting at that table has any idea what just happened. I love it.
I have some more thoughts about this languishing in an excessively long post in my drafts, which I’ll try to get out one of these days. I know I’ve talked to a few people about trying to do some BL/Austen posts and had meant to tag them but the only person I remember talking with about it was @absolutebl. If you’re reading this and you want a heads up next time I write about this stuff, let me know!
