This comma behind a time adverb in the beginning of a sentence is a new American invention. British English has almost none of those. When translating you should always follow the rules of your own language, including punctuation.
My God, onomatopoeia is by far the worst! Skip! Skip! Skip!
Also, if friends with them, notify Eng Mod to ask the Chief segmenter to delete those segments (if they only consist of sighs) before many other languages have created translations for it. This is sometimes a team communication error.
I would say assassination implies somebody ordered a murder and a payed assassin executed it. Killer would be someone who commit murder on his own accord. Was this what you were referring to?
And then come the OL subbers who have zero clue what the sub actually means. To the Kor-eng subber everything is clear. To the rest of us not so much.
The official wording was “killer string” (it is like killer clam, but a music instrument in this case). Clear and short. The assassination does not make sense in this context because - as you said - assassination is an order to murder someone while in this context it was about a certain kind of magical attack but also in a defensive way. It was not for assassination in first place even though it may cause severe injuries or death to protect something/someone. So assassination causes the wrong impression for me when I read it and it is about protection…
I sometimes show certain scenes or sentences to my origin language friends and the somehow funny but sad thing was that they said my version was closer to the origin version (meaning) than the English version even though I did neither translate English to my language wordly nor did I understand 100% of the origin language (but I translated more context wise so I transfered the meaning of the origin scene into my language).
But that needs like 3-5x more time than just translating English to my language without additional proof…
It’s not a thing for easy lines/scenes but for more complex ones (the simple scenes are usally okay here, but I often had quite complex scenes).
Maybe I should not think about it and just translate but I always feel that if I think there might be a lack I should prove it (that includes also the sentences with wrong negotation forms because it can give the story or a character a wrong direction/impression for the viewers).
So I think if there still would be something like lutra wrote here I’d feel more comfortable:
There are a few Chinese drama OSTs that I not only love the beautiful music but the lovely lyrics. On YT the lyrics are translated one way, but on Viki they might be translated in such a way as to give a totally different meaning and context. On the other hand I have a Chinese friend who also speaks fluent English and I’ve had her translate the lyrics as well. She gives another deeper meaning. Some translations don’t quite get the subtle differences and something is definitely lost in the translation, and I’m assuming English just does not have the subtlety (even with all the non-essential phrases) that the beauty of Chinese has.
Maybe that’s the reason. Some of my Chinese friends with whom I talked about different languages told me that they really love German but don’t like English that much. They also said in their opinion German and Chinese language is similar in certain aspects (e.g. they like the possibilities how German words could be combined to create something new in a similar way as signs even though we have letters).
Some combined verbs are also not available in English in the way they are in German, e.g. “versuchen”. I once read an English sentence with “tried”, “search”, “find” but the German line just needed “versuchen” and “finden” because “versuchen” already included trying and searching in a way.
In Saimdang Light Journal they say, “Are those the newbies?” and similar expressions which are jarring and takes you out of the drama. Couldn’t there be guidelines for historical dramas?
The guideline is common sense. If the Chinese or Korean is archaic language, then use old-style English. Not Shakespearean language, but at least don’t use words which came into use in the last half of the 20th century or later.
Korean-English subbers often don’t know how people spoke English in the old days - and when i say old days, again, I’m talking about the 1950s, not anything decrepit - because they don’t have the background from their parents and grandparents. So they translate in the only English they know, today’s English.
I’ve seen “okay” spoken to a member of the royal family in a sageuk, and to a company chairman by a subordinate!
See, it’s not only historical dramas… Koreans think that because the English only has “you” and not five or more different nuances of politeness/formality, it means that everyone speaks in any way they want even to high status people. Which is just not true. You don’t speak to your company president or your friends’ father as you speak to your buddies. The verb does not change but there are other ways of showing respect.
For instance, whenever I see a young person speak to an elderly or a subordinate to a higher-up, I correct “okay” to “alright”, “yes”, “fine” or “yes sir” I keep “okay” only when in Korean they are speaking in banmal, among friends or family members close in age.
If they someone orders a subordinate to do something and they agree saying “ye” instead of “ne” (=the two equivalents of yes, but ye is more formal), or 알겠습니다 algesseumnida (=I understand, I got it, alright, it will be done), then we know it’s formal and you absolutely cannot use “okay” or “I got it”, unless it’s playful/ironic. It should be “yes sir/ma’am”, “It will be done”.
You don’t need to know the intricacies of the language. It’s enough to use common sense and know the relationship among the characters.
For Other Language translators it’s difficult to understand where to use formal and informal. I know I struggled with this a lot, and I always sought help in Team Discussion.
Most of the times you’re good if you use formal for everyone except close buddies and immediate family (although most of them do speak formally to their parents). Higher-ups often use informal towards subordinates, but even if you miss this, nothing terrible will happen. And it will sound weird because in Europe we speak to the cleaning lady formally.
The difficulty is with couples, knowing when they pass from formal to informal, since the English gives no clues. When I didn’t know how to recognize it, I had made my own rule-of-thumb: once they kiss and start dating officialy (and or have sex), I pass to informal. Although I know pretty well that it’s not really true for the Korean (in “Encounter” the couple didn’t switch to informal until the very last scene of the last episode, after the time gap and in "The Secret Life of My Secretary she keeps calling him “Director” even after they sleep together!), I know it would make zero sense to Western viewers to have a couple kiss and make out while using formal speech, so I usually choose not to be too faithful.
That’s true. You would use a different tone of voice and the respect is shown in this way and through your body language. You wouldn’t roll your eyes or look half bored or yawn in front of your boss for example. Generally speaking you would maintain eye contact, listen well and be more calm yet alert when speaking to a superior at work.
Are most subbers from Korean into English native Korean speakers? Or if they are British, American or other native English speakers why do they not have the background? Some of the words I’m talking about have only been used in the last 10-15 years so their parents, teachers, employers should understand standard English. Why wouldn’t they have the background from their parents and grandparents?
When I was in school we used slang but we still knew how to speak without and wouldn’t have spoken that way when writing a paper for example. We understood the difference. In fact most subbing I see doesn’t use common slang or internet slang. Much of the subbing seems excellent. I just thought maybe making a guideline stating, “Please don’t use slang for historical dramas” and possibly giving examples would encourage the ones who do use present day slang for historical dramas to stop. But perhaps there’s something else going on that I don’t understand.
This summer I was riding in a bus, sitting next to an older lady who kindly explained to me that English “you” is a highly respectable form of addressing a person. It is not the German “du”, it is “Sie”. English “du” was “thou”, which was at some point completely dropped in an effort to simplify the language. So, basically, Englishmen have been addressing everybody with utmost respect for centuries, having no informal pronoun, but somehow people forgot about it.
Most of them are Korean-American. Of course there are also people of other nationalities who are advanced students of Korean language. Some would be English-speakers, but many others could come from whatever country.
I don’t mean that at all. Of course body language will also be used, but I mean actual way of speaking to them.
Let me try to find an example of things you wouldn’t say to people you are supposed to respect, and what you would actually say:
Yeah, sure, whatever! — Some people would say that, but I don’t agree.
You wanna bet? — I’m not sure about that. The opposite might be true.
Cut the BS! — I don’t think that’s relevant.
I don’t give a damn — Although I do understand your point of view, this matter is not that important to me.
Are you f**** serious? ---- I’m sure you don’t mean that, sir.
Even though it is part of Germanic languages you can’t really compare German grammar with English grammar since German is a precise language with complex grammar while English is one of the most imprecise (“Western”) languages. Compare German, French, Latin, Italian grammar… and then look at English…
English and German do have several words with the same letters but with complete different meaning or opposite meaning like “lies” and “Lies!”
So today when languages are mixed or one sees more English than in the past it can be really annoying because of eventually not understanding what’s really meant at first second because same spelling but different meaning. Or the new Denglish when even journalists use partly English words and then add the typical German endings like -isiert, -in, etc. Doesn’t look nice anymore.
Double negative -
example someone can’t stop himself from working:
It’s company work.
I received my salary. I can’t not do anything.
I am not a native English speaker nor is this used that often but is this grammatically right? Or maybe it only feels wrong because of the addition of the word anything?
@sonmachinima
Are we talking about a womanizer? I could give you the German old style expression - Lebemann, Schürzenjäger, Schwerenöter, Frauen-/Weiberheld,
Maybe dangler in English?
Or Lebenskünstler but the best I found was “connoisseur of the art of living”?
I am curious too, I guess it’s about a historical drama?
It was a fantasy drama with swordsmen and some magic aspects and in one scene the English line was like: He is such a playboy.
So I chose Charmeur for the German version because in that context it was not about hunting girls to get them into bed but more in a way that he is quite nice and kind to people (no matter of the gender) to get what he want. You could call him a Süßholzraspler but I liked Charmeur more since it includes the way the character is and it is oldfashioned enough for a fantasy drama in my opinion.
Lebenskünstler does not fit for the character because it has a different nuance, more about surviving and making the best of a situation instead of being kind to others to get personal advantages.
