Translating emotions is harder than grammar…

[Sam7010]

Just a random thought:

I’m translating my Japanese novel into English, and honestly…
conveying the feeling behind a simple line is way harder than the grammar part.

Sometimes I spend 10 minutes just wondering if a character should say “…you know?” or “…never mind.”

Anyone else struggle with this?

 

[Nolff]

Just a random thought:

I’m translating my Japanese novel into English, and honestly…
conveying the feeling behind a simple line is way harder than the grammar part.

Sometimes I spend 10 minutes just wondering if a character should say “…you know?” or “…never mind.”

Anyone else struggle with this?

This is the sole reason why I respect good translators: They know the meaning and the emotion of the work they're translating and they want to do it justice.

I've never tried translating a novel from English to my native language, but there are teams of translators, typesetters, and proof-readers I've witnessed whose works I can always feel excited, despaired, sad, wholesome, angered, brave, witty, and funny. Those people are working on websites such as IKIRU.id and Shinigami, the first being a website made after its predecessor (Mangatale) was banned and the latter being the biggest manhwa/manhua hosting website in my country, Indonesia.

If you ever learned about Indonesian's language, then you'll understand why these two websites are my go-to whenever I want to read manhwa/manhua.

 

[Clo]

This might help!

 

[Empress_Omnii]

This might help!

View attachment 37843

I would also just recommend a thesaurus

 

[LuoirM]

Hey, unreleated

How do you tackle translating うん and はい in speech?

I cry everytime they appear, because I can not think of anything other than "Yes" especially if it's repeated across multiple pages

Once I tried "roger" when someone was in a team listening to orders for はい and got shit for that.

English is such a wet slob of snot that having emotions in its word is hard

 

[Clo]

"roger" or "copy that" would be 了解 , no?
うん to me sounds almost like an onomatopeia! I'd probably go with "mhm!", "mmm" "yeah..." "uh-huh"
はい is the one to translate as "Yes" "Got it" "Understood" "Right", although context matters a lot.

Answering はい to お元気ですか would probably translate to "I'm doing okay/alright" instead of "Yes"

 

[Sam7010]

Posting here took some courage since it’s my first time on an international forum.
I really appreciate all the helpful and kind replies!

I still struggle with English expressions—
even the ones that native kids use naturally!
We never learn those in school in Japan, so I need to read a lot more novels to catch up.