What's Lost in the Translation?
Last night I was watching "Trigun" DVDs that I'd borrowed from a
coworker, and marveling at the terrible quality of the English
subtitles. I'd guess they were inaccurate or wrong at least half the
time, and 75% of the time I knew I could've written a better subtitle
myself. But, accuracy aside, that got me pondering about all the
things that are lost in translation from Japanese to English, whether
in anime or manga form. I've occasionally mentioned this data loss,
but I figured I'd try to write out more completely some of the nuances
that are lost.
The Japanese Language
The Japanese language is well-known for both the complexities of its
social nuances, as well as onomatopoetic qualities (having words that
imitate natural sounds). I'll discuss the social nuances first, since
it is by far the more profound in terms of loss of information in
translation. After that, I'll have a look at written sound effects
in Japanese - there's not much to be lost in translation, but I wanted
to know, why do English sound effects feel stilted in comparison?
The social nuances of the Japanese language often mean that every
speaker identifies gender, social status, the listener's social
status, and the type of social situation, purely by the choice of
"I" and "You"
For example, there are many different words meaning "I" in
Japanese, and likewise many different words used for "you" - and each
word has different implications about who the "I" is and who the "you"
is. Just to give you a better idea, here are some versions of "I" and
their social implications:
The word choices for "you" must also be heavily geared for the target
of the word and based on situation:
- watashi - I am female, or (less used case) a dignified male
- watakushi - I am a dignified female speaking in a formal setting,
or a dignified male being particularly formal
- atashi - I am female, perhaps (but not necessarily) slightly less
sophisticated than someone who says "watashi"; I may be a young girl.
Informal variation of "watashi."
- atai - I am a "country" female (implications of "simple country girl")
- boku - I am male. I am either a young boy, or I am playing
down my status, perhaps because I am among superiors
- ore - I am male. I am probably an adult or nearly so. Somewhat
- oira - I am a "country" male (implications of "simple country boy")
- wai - An even more "country hick" kind of "I"
- washi - I am an elderly person, male or sometimes female, and
accordingly should be treated with respect for elders
- ware - A somewhat archaic form of "I" or referring to oneself.
"Wareware" is common, though, and means "us."
- sessha - an archaic (masculine) form of referring to oneself (used
by Kenshin in "Rurouni Kenshin" aka "Samurai X" and used in other
- (name) - To refer to oneself by one's own name seems particularly
self-effacing. In manga, it tends to be associated with simple,
innocent young girls. ("Naoko wa iiko ni shite imashita" could be
a little girl named Naoko saying she has been a good little girl.)
has more on these words.)
- (status)+honorific: In many cases, polite discourse demands that
"you" is not used; the person's status (parent, older man, older
woman, customer, little boy, guest, etc.) is used instead. At a
store, the store workers are likely to say "o-kyaku-san" (honorable
guest) to customers. On the street, a child might say "o-neesan"
("older sister") to an unknown woman up to about 25-35 years of age
(or less) under some circumstances, might say "o-basan" (elder
woman/"auntie") to a somewhat older woman, and "o-baasan" (old
woman/"grandmother") to a clearly elderly woman. But even these terms
change in appropriateness depending on the relative age and status of
the speaker and the exact circumstances ... so ... beware!
- (name)+honorific: Instead of hearing "Would you like some
chocolate?" addressed to Reika by someone who doesn't know her well,
you're more likely to hear "Would Reika-san like some chocolate?"
When a name is used, whether last name or first name is used
will depend on the relationship, and likewise so does the
honorific. For example, "Matsumoto-san" (last name) would be good for
polite conversation between adults, such as in a work setting, and
"Rika-chan" for polite conversation between kids.
- anata: polite word for "you" - used mostly by women, but can be
used by men in formal situations. "Anata" is also a commonly used
word used by wives when speaking to their husbands, like saying
"honey" or "dear" - in this case, using the husband's first name is
sort of frowned upon, even though the husband often will use his
wife's first name. Go figure.
- anta: a casual form of "anata" - used mostly by women, sometimes
by men, usually with people who are known to them.
- kimi: a lightweight form of "you" - used mostly by men among
friends and family.
- omae: a familiar form of "you" - used mostly by men, and can be a
common term to refer one's spouse or family members. Never used in
polite discussion. May be used by some women, especially more rural
women. The manga character Black Jack often referred to other people
- omee ("omeh"): a more slang-like form of "omae." Mostly used by men.
- temee ("temeh"): even more slang-like word, and a corruption of
the word "temae." If used normally, indicates the speaker is of
fairly low breeding. If used during times of stress only, indicates
the speaker has a particularly negative opinion of the target.
Another mostly-male word.
- kisama: a vulgar form of "you." Often indicates great hostility.
Another mostly-male word.
(Side note: It is also very difficult to create a mysterious,
gender-neutral, societally ambiguous Japanese character, because the
person's choice of words for "I" and "you" and so on would naturally
betray a lot about the person's social standing.)
In addition to all this, the sentence structures and verbs convey a
lot about why something is being done - for example, "I'll do it for
you" in Japanese may well have connotations of doing a favor for
someone - or, depending on word choice, connotations of being honored
to perform a service for someone of higher rank. There are probably
a half dozen ways, also, of saying plain old "Go." For example:
Now we add a "please" to that "Go" and get these variations:
- Ike - Brusque, commanding form.
- Ikinasai - Softer, feminine form, almost a recommendation more than a command.
- Yuke - A more archaic form of the commanding form.
- O-iki - A softer, sort of archaic, feminine form.
- Itta (itta) - Technically past-tense, an informal form; "Gone (gone)!" - "Shoo" comes close
- Ikiyagare - Very rude form of "Go."
- Itte kure - an informal male request form; "Go, please."
- Itte o-kure - an informal "country" or elderly request form; "Go, please."
- Itte kudasai - a polite request form; "Go, please."
- Itte kudasaimase - a politer request form; "Go, please." Often feminine.
- O-iki ni natte kudasai mase - My feeble attempt to write an even more polite form. Usually feminine.
Even Laughter Has Implications
Even laughter can convey a great deal more than how "Ho Ho Ho" usually
means Santa Clause to Americans. In Japanese, some of the forms of
laughter commonly seen in manga and anime are as follows:
- ha ha ha: Normal exuberant laughter
- hih hih hih: Creepy laughter
- hu hu hu (or fu fu fu): Somewhat sinister laughter
- heh heh heh: Somewhat embarrassed or self-conscious laughter
- ho ho ho: Refined feminine laughter
- ka ka ka: Sometimes, rustic (old) man's laughter
- ku ku ku: Evil chuckle
- ke ke ke: Evil cackle
Sentence Endings Add Character
In addition, there are sentence endings the Japanese use to convey a
lot of information about the speaker. Women, for example, are
expected to end most sentences in "wa" (e.g. "soudesu wa"), which adds
a distinctly feminine touch. Men may use "zo" or "ze" (e.g. "iku
zo!") to add a rough-and-tumble masculine edge. Cartoon characters
add their own distinctive sentence endings, including sadly
stereotypical ones (the Japanese popular thinking seems to be that
Chinese will add "aru" to the end of sentences), to weird personal
touches (such as "nyan" (meow) being used by cat people).
Dialects and Formality
Finally, as noted with choices of "I" and "you," there are also
regional dialects. Just as "ya'll" is a characteristic of the
stereotypical American South, or "eh, what?" is characteristic of
parts of Britain, there are forms of speaking that are typical of
different regions of Japan. These, too, will tend to be lost in
translation unless the translator can successfully map Japanese
regional dialects to American character stereotypes.
Also, very formal Japanese is almost as striking as another dialect.
It's rarely used (though common in some comics), and it has a lilting,
poetic quality that makes it the equivalent of speaking with "thee"
and "thou" and other such more historical forms of English. The
difference between the "feel" of a King James Bible versus a modern
American-English text is a fair comparison, though a big difference is
that highly formal Japanese is still considered modern Japanese (last
I knew, at least).
Summary: What ARE We Missing in Translations?
Hence, in a simple exchange of, "What are you doing?" and "I am
waiting for someone," a Japanese dialogue can convey gender, social
status, who's higher ranking than whom, where the people are from,
and, with a few words, can also convey if one of them is doing a
social favor for someone else or vice versa. A reader of written
dialogue can delight in the refined and poetic language in a phrase as
simple as "What are you doing?" - or can cringe at the crudeness and
raw masculinity in a phrase as simple as "I am waiting for someone."
In phrases this short, it would be very difficult for a translator to
carry the full poetic beauty or the full crudeness over into English.
(For the latter case, shortening "I am" to "I'm" and changing
"waiting" to "waitin'" is a step in the right direction, but still
conveys only a minute fraction of the impact, comparatively.)
As you can see, a lot of social data can be lost in translation. It's
easy to miss things like female Ranma's jarringly male speech ("Ranma
1/2"), Vash's humble speech, Meryl's refined sentences, and Wolfwood's
"country" accent ("Trigun"), Oscar's highly respectful and
aristocratic speech with the queen, contrasted with her rough and
masculine speech with her troops ("Rose of Versailles"), Kenshin's
charmingly distinctive and archaic speech ("Ruroni Kenshin"/"Samurai
X"), Amuro's notably polite form of "I am going" when launching Gundam
(in the original "Gundam"), and so on.
A lot of personal relationship information is lost as well. The
gentle maternal relationship of an elderly character to a younger
character can be expressed, in Japanese, in the simple choice of words
in saying "You go on now" - but is more difficult to convey in
English. Likewise, a literal translation of an exchange between a
couple - with the woman saying "you," and the man saying the woman's
name - would fail to convey the familiar, family-oriented, comfortable
relationship implied in their choice of words. And, of course, the
common scene in which the hero screams "YOU!" at the enemy loses much
of its emotional energy if one doesn't realize how much anger and
resentment can be invested in the choice of which "you" is
So, while a good translation would manage to preserve the general
meaning of an anime or manga, it would truly take very careful and
thoughtful translation to even begin to transmit the hidden cultural
information, the message behind the words. And, coming from a society
like Japan, there is a lot of cultural and social information to be
lost in translation!
Finally, of course, flowing, poetic Japanese text can only be fully
re-created by a translator who can create flowing, poetic English
Sound Effects in Manga
Note: I am not a linguist; the below is simply an amateur effort on my
own part to compare and contrast Japanese and English sound effects.
It reflects my limited experience, and some of it is pure
conjecture. My primary question to myself has been: Why do I find
English sound effects stilted in comparison to Japanese sound effects?
Written sound effects in Japanese are a splendid affair. In the same
way that English has words like "crunch" or "gurgle" or "splash" or
other words that try to imitate sounds through onomatopoeia, Japanese
likewise has words that do so. However, Japan relies on these words
in a somewhat different way.
Have a look at these two paragraphs:
"The rain splashed the street, and the child trotted up to the door.
She rang the doorbell. She dug a candy out from her pocket and
crunched it while she waited. A dog barked nearby."
"The rain fell pitter-patter on the street, and the child ran
trot-trot-trot up to the door. She rang the doorbell: ding-dong. She
dug a candy out from her pocket and ate it, crunch-crunch, while she
waited. Nearby, a dog barked `yap yap.'"
The second one is obviously awkward in English, but also provides more
immediate and direct sound effects than the natural English version
(even though both versions use a lot of onomatopoetic words). It is
also a fairly natural way of speaking in Japanese (e.g. "Onna no ko
wa, ta ta ta to doa ni hashirimashita."). Direct sound effects that have
yet to be turned into verbs are the norm in Japanese (I mean for
example, "gulp!" versus "he gulped," "crunch!" versus "he
In a language that's so dependent on sound effects, then, it's no
wonder that sound effects flow naturally in the pages of manga, too.
Japanese manga overflow with sound effects for big and little things:
the clink of a teacup on a table, the steady throbbing sound of
helicoptor rotors, the deep rhythmic thrumming of a giant starship
engine, or the gasping breath of the worn-out hero. But, for
depicting these sounds, it winds up being less awkward to say
"thrum-thrum-thrum" or "gasp - gasp - gasp" in Japanese for the same
reason it is MORE awkward in English to do so. It's simply natural
and commonplace in Japanese, and not so natural in English.
For another example, consider how Americans describe sound effects in
casual conversation. It seems to me that few people take "bam" or
"pow" seriously as a realistic sound effect; people are more likely to
imitate, parrot-style, the "whpsh!" or "pbhhk!" or "hfh, hfh, hfh"
sounds from the movies. In contrast, I think (I could be
wrong) that the Japanese tend to verbally rely more heavily on
Japanese-syllable-based sound effects, which are "close enough" and
yet also easily spelled and easy to read (contrast with the "whpsh" I
wrote above, which is not easy to spell in a traditional sense).
Here are some Japanese sound effects and their English equivalents.
Perhaps you can draw your own conclusions about some of the
differences between Japanese and English:
But it's not just sounds that have sound effects. These are not
exactly sounds, but they have their own onomatopoetic terms.
I've tried to find English equivalents:
- shiin: sound of silence
- pota: drip: sound of a drop
- pota pota: drip drip: multiple drops
- kata: rattle, clink
- katata: rattle: gentle sound of rain rattling on a roof top, or
wood-frame houses rattling from a train passing nearby.
- zaaa: sound of a light, but steady rain
- jyaa: sound of a bathroom shower or heavy rain
- sara-sara: sound of gentle flowing stream
- sawa-sawa: sound of leaves rustling
- kiri kiri: sound of some types of crickets
- koto: clink: sound of small hard object being placed on hard surface
- kari: crunch: lightly crispy sound
- kori: crunch: crunchy
- karan: clunk: sound of empty hard object being struck
- chin: ding: sound of a bell
- pin pon: ding dong: sound of a doorbell or TV game show bell
- jiriririiin: brring: sound of a school-type bell going off
- uuu: growl: dog growling, human in pain, etc.
- gururu: growl: dog growling, or stomach growling ("grr")
- wan wan: arf arf: dog barking
- kan kan: arf arf: dog barking sharply
- kyan kyan: yap yap: high pitched dog barking
- bau bau: woof woof: big dog barking
- uo uo: woof woof: dog barking
- kyain kyain: yipe yipe: dog yiping
- puchi: snap: small snapping noise, as of snapping a cracker in half
- pachi: snap: small snapping noise, as of a fire
- bachi: snap: large snapping noise, as of a branch or large fire
- boki: snap: heavy snapping noise
- baki: whap: heavy hitting noise
- pisha: slap: slapping noise or small splash
- bishi: whop, whoosh: sound of slap, or fast slapping motion, or fast strike
ending in a pose
- basha: splash: large splashing noise
- guchya: squish
- gashan: crash
- zugaan: bam: gunfire with echo effect
- bababa: bam bam bam: gunfire
- hyurururu: whistling effect of bomb falling through the atmosphere
- dokan: kaboom: sound of large, sharp explosion
- chudohn: kaboom: sound of a large, sharp explosion
- zudaan: kaboom: sound of large explosion
- dohdohdohdoh: deep throbbing rumble of a waterfall or giant engine ("throbthrobthrob")
- goro goro: rumble of thunder ("rumble-rumble")
- haa haa: pant pant or gasp gasp
- goho goho: cough cough
- kyaa: scream (female)
- gyaa: scream
- uwaa: scream: sort of surprised
- iyaa: scream: (sort of means "no")
- guaa: scream: usually in pain
- kyaa-kyaa: noisy, as of screaming girls
- doki doki: thuddup thuddup of a pounding heart
Anyway, while English does have almost as large a selection of
onomatopoetic words, somehow the immediacy of the English "cough!"
feels to me, personally, as if it's one step removed from the reality
compared to the Japanese "goho!" and the same with many other words.
It may, of course, simply be personal bias, exemplified by the fact
that, if you listen to an American sneeze, odds are he will say,
"Ah-ah-ah-choo!" - while the Japanese will say, "Ha-ha-ha-ksho!" And
there, at least, nothing will be lost in the translation.
- pika: effect of light being flashed ("flash")
- ssa-ssa: quickly ("whoosh-whoosh"?)
- shaa: quickly, like a fleeing snake ("whoosh")
- jita-bata: hectic, harried
- gata-gata: quaking with fear ("quake-quake")
- gaku-gaku: shaking with fear ("shake-shake")
- pun-pun: steaming hot angry ("steam-steam"?)
- jiro-jiro: effect of staring
- kuru-kuru: effect of twirling/turning/rotating ("twirl-twirl")
- nuru-nuru: effect of being slimy
- buru-buru: effect of shaking with cold (perhaps "brr-brr" is close)
- oro-oro: effect of being nervous and shaken
- kachin-kachin: effect of being frozen stiff ("clink-clink")
Copyright 2005 Eri Izawa
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