General wording question
  • modatimodati August 2010

    OK so I've noticed stuff like 聖剣伝説 (seikendensetsu) is translated into Holy Sword Legend but I've herd it referred to as Legend of the Holy Sword. I'm not really sure if it matters with the order or what. I'm just basically curious on if it is valid to interpret it both ways.

    A couple of more examples of what I mean...

    Is world domination said 世界制覇 or 制覇世界?

    What is 冒険の世界? I would say World of Adventure because of の particle. So World is described by Adventure. World of Adventure? Am I doing that right?

    Is 崩壊前 said Collapse Before or Before Collapse. It makes more sense to say Before Collapse in the context of what it is.

    Is 崩壊後 said Collapse After or After Collapse. Again it makes more sense to say After Collapse due to context.

    What is 崩壊前の世界? Here I understand like the second one I posted... World is being described by Collapse Before. So it would be World Before Collapse I guess right?

    Same with this one... 崩壊後の世界. Am I right? Since the stuff before the particle describes what comes after it... it is translated to World After Collapse.

    If someone could explain the order of stuff without the particles and how it is significant that would be great. Or if I am even interpreting the particles properly. Thanks.

  • RichardRichard August 2010

    You shouldn't be thinking about how to translate everything word by word. Instead, you should be thinking about what's natural in English. Some of your questions seem to be more about English than Japanese anyway. For example, 'collapse after' sounds completely unnatural in English so you wouldn't use it.

    のcan be translated as of and 'World of Adventure' sounds natural enough, but sometimes it sounds old-fashioned or long and unwieldy to translate as 'of'. Like Akutagawa's story 'Kumo no Ito' is translated as 'The Spider's Thread' rather than 'The Thread of the Spider'.

    With 崩壊前の世界, you could translate it as 'The World Before the Collapse', but you could also use 'The Pre-Collapse World'. 崩壊後の世界 makes me think 'The Post-Apocalyptic World' but I don't know enough about the games you're talking about to know if that would work.

    But the main point is that translation isn't word-to-word.

Add a Comment

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Apply for Membership

Categories

In this Discussion