I was wondering how people decide whether to use formal or informal speech when translating from English where such differences are not obvious? Without knowledge of the original language it is very hard to make the right choice.
As a workaround, I am thinking I can try to watch as much as possible of the drama first, to gauge the relationships and the level of formality. Do you have any other advice? How do you make these decisions - for the languages where formal vs. informal speech is a fact?
Common recipients of formal speech include colleagues, senior management, clients, conference attendees, officials, or guests at formal events like weddings and graduations.
Key audiences and contexts for formal speeches include:
Workplace/Professional: Colleagues, supervisors, or stakeholders during meetings, presentations, or company updates.
Academic: Faculty, students, or peers during lectures, debates, or seminars.
Ceremonial/Formal Events: Guests at weddings, receptions, or award ceremonies (e.g., toasts, acceptance speeches).
Public/Official: Community members, government officials, or general audiences at ceremonies, rallies, or public lectures.
Basically, you can use a formal speech to the people who are not friends, don’t know each other very well or who work together (boss and employees)
I made a short guide about how to recognize formality levels in Korean.
JAPANESE
** Forms of address after the name:**
san - polite,
chan and kun - informal,
sama-superformal Titles:
Senpai, sensei, fujin, Oniisan (お兄さん?) and oneesan (お姉さん?) meaning elder brother and elder sister, Otōsan and okaasan (father and mother if you speak formally). All those indicate polite level or formal level, not casual. Verb endings that indicate formality
〜ません (-masen): Present/Future Negative (e.g., tabemasen - do not eat).
*〜ました (-mashita): Past Affirmative (e.g., tabemashita - ate).
〜ませんでした (-masen deshita): Past Negative (e.g., tabemasen deshita - did not eat). Sentence Ending
Sentence endings in です (desu): While not a verb ending, this polite copula is attached to nouns and adjectives to end sentences formally (e.g., hon desu - it is a book).
CHINESE
With Chinese it’s much more difficult, you have to rely on relationship hierarchy and the forms of address.
|Eldest Sister|大姐 (dajie) |
|Older Sister|姐姐 (jiejie) /~姐 jiě|
Elder Brother 哥哥 (gege) /~哥gē and 兄 xiong
Big brother Lao Ge
|Uncle|叔叔 Shushu|
|Aunt, Auntie, Aunty|阿姨 Ayi|
|Senior (Brother|Shixiong|
|Senior|前輩 qianbei|
|Junior (Brother|Shidi|
|Senior (Sister|Shijie|
|Junior (Sister|Shimei|
|Eldest Senior (Brother|Da-Shixiong|
|Laoshi|old teacher|
|Mr.|先生 (xiān sheng|
|Miss |■■ Xiaojie |
Old/Elder. Lao (老)
Master/teacher 師傅/师傅 Shifu
-san can be used with both first names and surnames. -masu is polite indeed, but not necessarily formal. You’ll notice that mainly women tend to use -masu a lot compared to men, so -masu can be both formal and basic politeness (during lessons we always used desu/masu with fellow students, but I wouldn’t use polite speech in German toward them). You’ll see lovers addressing each other by surname-san. This is completely unheard of if you look at the German Du/Sie (informal/formal). Formal indeed is the usage of keigo which are different words used for a couple of words… like watakushi instead of watashi (I) for example - but it’s more difficult to track down unless you know them.
Chinese has nin (formal) and ni (informal).
However, Japanese, Korean and Chinese all know one-sided politeness (like being very polite toward superiors, elder family members, your master etc.). Our translations to German do not always just base on these indicators since some leave space to interpret. Titles can be quite helpful (like Mr. XY or Ms. XY), but sometimes you’ll still have to make decisions if the CEO and his lover stand somewhere, and she addresses him as President XY. It remains confusing to some extent. So I try to differ between public/private and possibly insert a full name instead of a title if it seems too far off otherwise.
The idea is to know what’s going on in the original. Then each moderator can choose whether to keep this faithfully as cultural flavour or adapt to what is the normal usage in his/her country.
Because even if we simplify the 7 different degrees of formality in Korean to just 3 basic ones (casual, polite and formal), it’s still one more than we have, because we only have casual and formal, having dropped the polite. In Italian we had tu, voi, Lei. After the war, the middle one, “voi”, used for your parents, your spouse or strangers who are not socially much above you, was sadly dropped. This makes a gap that is too great between formal and informal. And those cases where Korean (I’m saying Korean because I’m not knowledgeable about the other two languages) uses the polite form (a new person of roughly your age, your seonbae at school or work, your grandfather, your husband if you’re a woman of the past generation) are now a problem for us, because we have to choose between casual and formal, and in many cases neither is exactly right! For instance, for school and college mates, we turn everything to casual. But then there’s a scene where someone makes a fuss “why do you address me informally when I’m your seonbae?” or a scene between lovers when they switch from name+shi to to just name, which is awkward, they seem to struggle with it and it’s cute etc., but if we have switched to casual since three episodes back, then all this is lost, and we are in a difficult position, we have to invent something else to explain the sweet awkwardness.
So yeah, there are choices to be made. But it’s best to know what exactly is going on in the original language, to be able to make informed choices afterwards.
Yes, sometimes females will be expected to use more polite forms, because just being a man makes someone hierarchically superior (it sucks, but that’s the situation in those countries). There was a show, “Memory”, in which the wife was a judge and the husband was a lawyer. I don’t know about their ages, but as a position she was much “higher” than him. And yet she was using the polite form while he was using the casual form. I hear that in Japan this is the norm still even in the younger generation.
I would also like to add that in historical/period dramas I use formal speech not only for royalty and nobility, but also for addressing parents, their generation and any other older generation within the family.
I indeed find it hard with Chinese.
