Post AC21cGhhe9QHMnfxmi by kinsey@cybre.space
 (DIR) More posts by kinsey@cybre.space
 (DIR) Post #AC1yYOo3HRmjTW6oJk by kinsey@cybre.space
       2021-10-04T19:33:42Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       thinking about Japanese translated very literally again and like, "big sis"/"little sis"/"big bro"/"little bro"/etc. is definitely one of those Okay This Is Happening Way More Often Than You'd Expect So Clearly It's A Japanese Thing but a very basic/obvious one since even people who are into manga and anime fairly casually will likely recognize terms like "onii-san", "onee-san", "imouto", etc.so I have some Opinions on this one actually. I think it actually makes the most sense to just leave these alone, romanize only, because this is literally a cultural thing that straight-up does not exist in English. in English you'd most probably just call your sibling by their name. yeah, it makes things require either research or a translator note, but honestly I like when I get to engage with the culture that a work came out of instead of it being "localized" away. I want to experience the work, not an Americanized/Anglicized version of it.
       
 (DIR) Post #AC1yYPH7XN2Mvfi1cu by kinsey@cybre.space
       2021-10-04T19:39:33Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       in one thing in particular I've been reading, I actually see stuff like "Ajisai Big Sister" which is a bit of an amateurish translation since it's just word-for-word translating "Ajisai-onee-san". but I wouldn't really like something like "Big Sister Ajisai" either, I just feel like it should be left as-is because Japanese has honorifics and English doesn't. there's no point trying to find an equivalent because there is none. and just removing them entirely feels like scrubbing away the cultural context of the original work, in some cases removing valuable information about the relationships between characters that isn't really conveyed any other way in the text.
       
 (DIR) Post #AC21cGhhe9QHMnfxmi by kinsey@cybre.space
       2021-10-04T19:44:52Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       any work is only fully comprehensible within the context of the culture it originates from, and I feel like the role of a translator should be to help readers engage with a different culture across the language barrier, not to distort the original work into something that doesn't challenge the reader.