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Translation Mini Essay: Clashing Values, Mean-Spirited Translations, and "Nudging"

I hate the phrase "just a friend."

As someone kinda sorta not really haha unless? on the aromantic spectrum*, I don't think romantic relationships are automatically more important than platonic relationships. I don't even think there needs to be a clear delineation between romantic and platonic affection. Ask ten different people what romantic attraction means to them, and you're likely to get ten different answers. In light of that, when writing that someone is "just" a friend, we are implying that friendship is a step below romantic partnership. I try not to say this IRL, although ingrained habit means it sometimes slips out.

But just now, I wrote the phrase "just a friend" into a translation when the source text contains no such wording. What gives?

I want to talk about circumstances where the translator's values clashes with the author's values, possible ways to navigate these circumstances, and how to avoid creating mean-spirited translations. I'd like to use the insults in Hypmic's raps as a case study and compare and contrast instances in other works where I made different decisions. Most importantly, I'd like to examine why I made those decisions.

It is not uncommon for a translated work to espouse values the translator disagrees with or is personally uncomfortable with. In some cases, the translator may also intuit that the majority of the intended audience will be uncomfortable with these values too.

There are great arguments to be made for not altering the espoused values in a work whatsoever, typically by appealing to the artistic or academic nature of a work. I don't disagree with this line of argument; however, as a media translator, I don't subscribe to it fully because I recognize that the majority of the audience--to say nothing of the author--is engaging with the work in an academic or artistic way. In works like Hypmic, the primary purpose of the work is to entertain, and I believe a translation should center this purpose as well. This is not carte blanche to make things up--unless the author has okayed it, and in such circumstances, the made-up text should have a purpose and fit seamlessly into the rest of the work--but it means that humorous works should be translated in a humorous fashion. Tragic scenes should aim to make the reader cry; romantic scenes should get hearts pounding. And so on.

The translator is essentially reading a work and doing their best to reassemble the exact same work without using any of the same words. The translator reaches for words that they use frequently in their life or writing, and in doing so, they insert some aspect of themselves and their understanding of the world into the work. Apolitical or value-free language use is impossible. Even small phrases like "just a friend" contain underlying messages--in this case, the message that romantic relationships are more important than platonic relationships. I consider it important for the translator to be aware of their values and how these values seep into their work.

Do you ever read a translated work that is just kind of...mean? Full of insults as a shortcut to humor? I see this sometimes in otherwise stellar video game translations, and it always puts me off slightly.

Take the Switch version of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which has an amazing translation courtesy of XSEED's Adrienne Beck and Elizabeth Bushouse. I very, very much like this translation, but I also know that I would've taken a different direction with the translation had I directed it. Consider a case in which a somewhat spacey and artistic NPC (Brandon) is introduced as a man wandering aimlessly through the woods. The JP player can choose to respond with either "変わってるね" (You're a bit of an eccentric/You're kind of a weirdo, aren't you?/etc.) or "気をつけてね" (Be more careful next time/Watch yourself out there/etc.). In English, these options are "So are you visiting from Crazytown, or…?" or "You should be more careful." Had I been translating this game, I wouldn't have written that first line. I would've used something akin to--well, the two examples listed above. (Realistically, I would've found a slightly more humorous way to express it because the goal of that translation would be different than the translations in this essay. Here, I am trying to educate, so I need to avoid embellishments in order not to obfuscate the source's meaning and style. In a game, I would be attempting to entertain, so I would have more creative freedom.)

Crucially, I am not saying that Beck and Bushouse have mistranslated the intent of that line. The protagonist does think the NPC is strange and is insulting the NPC. The underlying message is that "strange = bad." If someone subscribes to the message that "crazy = strange = bad," then this line is true to the author's intent. And that is probably the case of the game's Japanese authors! Many people think "crazy = strange = bad," not as some grand conspiracy, but simply because people who are "crazy"--ie, people who have psychosis--are not on most people's radars. It is not inappropriate to translate or understand 変わってるね as "You're crazy," but I still choose not to do it in most scenarios because I don't like espousing the view that "crazy = strange = bad."

But would it be appropriate for me to change that message? Why would I choose to remove a message I disagree with here ("crazy = strange = bad") and add a message I disagree with in another work ("friendship < romantic partnership")? Let's consider a few criteria:

Is the value central to the work? Does removing or adding the value change a core message of the work? In the case of Story of Seasons, "crazy = strange = bad" is not a central message. It's a farming sim. It has nothing of note to say about people of psychosis. If Brandon's romantic subplot revolved around the protagonist learning to accept his eccentricities, it would be inappropriate to remove or downplay a "strange = bad" message (although an argument can still be made to remove the "crazy" element). However, it doesn't, so there is no harm in removing a comment that could alienate IRL psychotic people or further support a broad societal understanding that "crazy = strange = bad."

Is removing or adding the value tonally appropriate? Would a lack of the value be tonally inappropriate? A rude narrator or character is not inherently a bad thing, and downplaying their rudeness to the point of toothlessness is tonally inappropriate. Similarly, it is not a crime for an author or character to have different views than their translator! In the translation example I opened this essay with, the character who said "just a friend" is a mother struggling to understand and respond compassionately to her teenage son's homosexuality. A character who has difficulty conceptualizing romantic relationships as anything but heteroromantic/heterosexual isn't going to view romance the same way that I do, and when she hears that her son is spending the night with a "friend," it is entirely appropriate to convey the incredulous tone of her response as "Just a friend?"

What is the social impact of removing or adding the value? (Perhaps controversially but pragmatically,) what impact will removing or adding the value have on the translator's standing with the fandom and well-being as an individual and/or professional? Is it practical to remove or add that value? No one is looking to a farming sim to learn core moral values. In the grand scheme, it matters very little if one more work contributes to the idea that "crazy = strange = bad" because this is baked into society. However, words do have consequences. For the same reason that we seek not to use casually racist or sexist language, I believe it is worth tailoring our language to avoid casually insulting individuals for traits they have no control over. A person with psychosis reading "Are you visiting from Crazytown?" may feel uncomfortable or alienated by this language, and these sorts of microaggressions are truly death by a thousand cuts. I would consider it a slight social good to remove this message from the work. I would also consider it safe for me, the translator, to do so because the Story of Seasons community is generally respectful of their localization staff. (Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons has historically had some absolute dogshit translations, and no one complains much haha. I don't blame the individuals involved; rather, it seems to have been a structural issue of underfunded and overworked localization teams, especially ones who may not have had access to native English speakers.) Tweaking "crazy" to "eccentric" is also simple. It's a single line, and judging by the number of characters used in the English line (40), the line limits are forgiving enough to allow a rewrite. That is, there's no need to use the word "crazy" just because it's really, really short. If the game's engine mandates that a line has to be something like 15 characters or less, I could see an argument for "You're crazy." (13 chars) But that's clearly not the case here.

I want to examine how these three criteria work in practice by walking through five case studies, one of which is Hypmic. The details of the other four studies will be fudged slightly in the interest of not doxxing myself. If you by chance do recognize what I'm alluding to...please pretend you don't. Hahaha. (One work's fandom has a big overlap with the Hypmic fandom, so... Well, thank you for being a reader of both works! Hahaha.)

Case 1: Hypmic's Insults

Hypmic is a series about rap battles, and rap battles prominently feature insults. Go figure. To some degree, it is tonally inappropriate to remove intentional insults from the work; however, I would argue that it is advantageous of me to mitigate incidental harm.

We'll look at three examples.

In Stick to My Mic, one of the battle songs in the Hypmic movie, Dice says of Doppo "ま確かに良い飯食ってそうだ" (you certainly look like you're eating well). Dice means this as an insult. He is espousing the idea that "fat = bad," an idea I don't subscribe to and try to avoid espousing even in casual language. (We will revisit this idea later.)

Let's consider the three criteria outlined above. Is the value central to the work on a broad level? No, Hypmic says very little about body size (apart from a low-level message that physical traits don't change how much of a man or woman a person is), and major characters are uniformly hot anime man/woman thin. This is more reflective of unconscious societal fatphobia. However, in the narrower context of this scene, Doppo being "fat" (??? he's drawn as hot anime thin as the rest of the cast, but whatever, Dice) is a part of Dice's argument. Dice states that Doppo has everything handed to him, thus overeating, thus becoming fat (also implying that "fatness is caused by overeating," another value we may want to consider removing or toning down). As mentioned above, removing intentional insults is tonally inappropriate for a rap battle, and that holds true for this scene. Just above this, Doppo insults Dice by implying "laziness = bad," and just below, Hifumi bases an insult off of shabbiness. Insults are being slung around left and right, and removing the insult here could make Dice look incongruous. That would be an inappropriate representation of his character in this scene. Furthermore, because this line is part of the "hungry" and "eating" imagery used in Doppo's and Dice's verses, replacing it with another food-related line piece of wordplay is difficult to the point of impracticality. Finally, we must consider the purpose of this translation. In a fan translation blog post, the translator is expected to provide some measure of an objective look at the work. It could be considered disingenuous to translate this line without the "fat = bad" message. Is there a slight social good to removing this message? Yes, I believe so, but I also believed the other factors outweigh this benefit. In my translation of Stick to My Mic, I kept this in as "Not too shabby, stuffed shirt. Free or no, you sure aren’t missing any lunches…stuffed shirt." (I don't think this is a perfect TL, but it works fine for the stated purpose.)

But I do downplay insults in raps, and it's worth examining when and how. An older manga rap contains Jirou rapping the line "見渡す限りダセェ優男" (everywhere I look, there's feminine men). This contains the message that "feminine men = bad" (and, underneath that, "femininity = bad"), which I don't agree with. To the criteria we go!

Is this message central to the work? Yes and no. Hypmic argues that any form of healthy expression of gender (that is, anything but toxic masculinity/femininity) is appropriate, so this runs contrary to one of Hypmic's main arguments. That's why it comes from Jirou--a teenager who doesn't have everything figured out yet. Jirou is sometimes crass, and this crassness is sometimes expressed in silly ways. ("The popo? More like the poopoo!", anyone?) That silliness is crucial for this line; the inclusion of the rhyme on "feminine men," the roses framing "feminine men," and the character reactions (including Dice going, "Wait, I'm feminine?") indicate that this should be read as a joke. Jirou is more conventionally masculine than, say, Ramuda; he's also a lot more insecure of his masculinity than Ramuda. It's appropriate for a thoughtless teenage boy to try to brand all of FP and MTR as feminine men even as it's somewhat thoughtless of the authors to imply that feminine men and femininity are bad. As a result, it becomes tonally inappropriate to remove this value entirely, but it's just as tonally inappropriate to treat this seriously. I also have a vested interest in not making fun of feminine men, regardless of my opinions on feminine men (which are "hell yeah, fuck it up"), because there are quite a few feminine men in the fandom and people who would take umbrage to feminine men being insulted. Because I am so closely intertwined with the fandom and partially depend on your goodwill in regard to translation distribution, it is in my best interest not to piss you off. I also just don't want to?? I don't like pissing people off? In the end, I decided that it wouldn't be appropriate to remove this idea entirely, but if I could nudge it into joke territory, there would be a good chance that people would overlook the underlying negative message. So I picked a word many people find silly ("twink") and wrote a really silly rap: "Yo, my haters in the cheap seats! Your rapping friggin' stinks. I'm out here catching bad beats from the mouths of fuckin' twinks."

In the end, this was not entirely successful, as some individuals were still upset with how I handled this. That's fine! I'm not blaming you. I don't like the "feminine men/femininity = bad" idea any more than you do. "Twink = funny" isn't an idea I like pushing either, and that's a negative value I'm solely responsible for introducing to the work. I don't think my solution is a perfect one. I also don't think there is a perfect solution, and I hope my reasoning is understandable, if not agreeable. I bring this up now not because I'm fixated on the incident but because I think it's such an illustrative example of a middle ground between preserving a message I disagree with and removing a message I disagree with.

Let's take a look at one complete removal--one of, like, two in the entire manga; I do this very, very rarely--with the infamous Jirou transphobia line. In this scene, Jirou is in a hurry to get information on Nemu. Underlying this is the desire to impress Ichirou, a desire that informs the core conflict of Jirou's character arc. When Urumi playfully flirts with him (something I also downplay because there's no predatory intent, and I think "trans woman = predator" or "drag queen = predator" are two values best avoided in this work), it makes the conversation take longer, and Jirou gets annoyed. Urumi tells him that's no way for a gentleman to treat a lady, and in Japanese, Jirou responds "何が男と男だ…　男と男だろうーかよぉ..." (What gentleman and lady? It's a gent and a gent). Urumi follows this with a similarly playful line, and Jirou says that he's not feeling up to "playing the gentleman" because he's in a hurry. The line is crass in Japanese, but it is clear that the authors do not intend this to be as outright insulting as it is in English. Jirou is in a hurry and is in no mood to play games--which Urumi's over-the-top feminine presentation is; she tones it down when she's being serious--and this message reflects that. It's also clear that Jirou likes Urumi quite a lot; he goes to her when he's in need of emotional support and feels comfortable enough to spend the night with her. Urumi also doesn't seem upset, as she continues to tease Jirou in the exact same tone.

Before I proceed further, I want to be clear on two points. I don't think the authors of Hypmic conceptualize gender, sex, or transgender people in the way that I do, and I want to draw a distinction between what the authors think and I think. I don't see gender or sex as binary concepts, and I think it is an insult to not view a transgender person as the gender they present as (or their "true gender," I guess is how I think of it)--much less to say that to their face! I think Jirou is being a little shit when he says this to Urumi, and I think she has every right to be offended. I also think this holds true if Urumi isn't a trans woman but a drag queen, which brings me to my second point. I try to be very careful about saying outright that Urumi is a trans woman (even if that's how I think of her in my head and when translating her) because I don't know if the Hypmic writers understand the distinction between a trans woman and a drag queen. (I also dislike assigning sexualities or gender identities to characters in JP media unless it's clear that they use the English LGBT+ framework of sexuality/gender--not everyone in Japan does, especially those in older generations! But I also don't think the Hypmic writers are knowledgeable enough about trans issues for this distinction to matter.) I do know that Urumi at least partially views her femininity as a role because she downplays it in serious scenes or dials it up a notch when she wants to tease Jirou. She has fun with it! And good for her! It's clear that when she's in her bar, she's in "woman" mode, and that's what's important to me--whatever she may do outside of the bar hasn't been shown and doesn't matter. I strongly believe she deserves the same respect and pronouns as anyone else who presents as a woman in this series. However, I don't think the Hypmic authors do, and I don't think they expect us to be as upset as we are when Jirou calls her a man. I think Hypmic's authors think her AGAB overrides her presentation (which I don't! not in the slightest!), and they think we also think that. Which we don't. Well, most of us. If you happen to think otherwise, I really could not give a flying fuck for your opinions. Trans women are women. People who present as women with the intent of being treated as women should be treated as women. The end.

This is what I would consider incidental harm. Transphobia is not a crucial message in Hypmic--it's there by accident. It's there by virtue of the authors not thinking and having background transphobia. Urumi is consistently portrayed as a good person, and while her portrayal is stereotypical of Japanese trans women, drag queens, and those who self-identify as okama, the negative traits associated with those stereotypes are missing. She's flirty and campy because it's fun for her, not because she ever seriously makes a move on Jirou. She smokes and drinks, but no more than the rest of the cast. She treats femininity like a role in the same way that most of the cast treats masculinity. Hypmic espouses the view that it's fine to be trans, a drag queen/king, or an okama--but it also considers AGAB essential. Which, okay. Whatever, Momose!! Would removing that concept be inconsistent tonally? Considering that this is the only instance where AGAB is explicitly made more important than the gender someone considers themselves to be, I don't think so. There are other instances of LGBT+-phobia sprinkled throughout Hypmic, but these are also examples of incidental harm. I don't mind leaving those in when we have the breathing room to go :/ at them, but that would be inconsistent with the tone of the scene. It is a serious scene, and the audience needs to empathize with Jirou throughout his arc in order for the arc to be fulfilling. It is in service of the work to skirt around this for the English fandom. Finally, is there a social impact? Yes, removing the explicit transphobia allows trans and trans-friendly English readers to connect to the work without feeling alienated or offended. It is also practical to sidestep the transphobia--it's a single line, and we'll discuss shortly how naturally the conversation lends itself to a workaround. Finally, it is also pragmatic for me, the fan translator, to not open myself up to backlash by pissing off 95% of my audience. And again--I just don't want to?? I don't want to make a bunch of people unhappy if I don't have to, and I have plenty of good reasons to think I don't have to. This is the least of the reasons informing this decision.

Now let's look at how to "nudge" this line out of transphobic territory without losing the purpose or tone of the line. To do that, we need to understand the purpose and tone of the source material. Urumi is being playful, which is dragging the conversation on and making Jirou irritable. Jirou is irritable because he wants to hurry up and impress Ichirou, and we need to understand just how much his desire for Ichirou's approval effects his emotional life. The tone of this line is snippy and rude. This is a thought he could've kept to himself. Jirou is, as mentioned above, often ruder than he should be by virtue of not thinking before speaking. It is okay for him to sound kind of rude in English, because we already know he can be kind of rude and thoughtless. It is not okay for him to drop a hydrogen bomb when the authors don't see it as such. So we need to write something that's rude and tells Urumi to stop messing around. Fortunately, Urumi and Jirou say right after the line in question the bit about acting like a gentleman and a lady. Okay, so it's an act. Let's treat is as such. Instead of focusing on Urumi not being a "lady," let's lean into Jirou not being a "gentleman." I wrote this as:

Jirou: Look, could you spare me the spiel and get on with it already? Urumi: How rude. Jirou, you know better. That's no way for a gentleman to treat a lady. Jirou: Sorry, but I'm not about all that gentleman bullshit. What'd you manage to dig up anyway?

The conversation flows naturally, and the tone and purpose are expressed appropriately. Jirou is impatient and being kind of rude by cutting Urumi off, and Urumi is mock offended that he's not playing along.

All three examples make sense within the context of Hypmic and my relationship with the Hypmic fandom, so I want to examine a few other works and their respective considerations.

Case 2: Teen Comedy Yuri

Before discussing an instance of clashing values, I'd like to highlight an instance where my values align with the author's and how that expresses itself in the work.

In TCY, the teenage narrator and the broader narrative espouses the view that friendships and romantic relationships are weighted equally--that is, that romantic relationships are not inherently better than friendships. Furthermore, the narrator states that each relationship she has with her various friends and girlfriends is different from one another. The feelings she has for girlfriend 1 are not the same as the feelings she has for girlfriend 2, even if she chooses to classify both as romantic. While the author comes at this view of relationships from their poly angle vs my aromantic angle, this is consistent with my view of relationships and contrary to how relationships are viewed in broader society.

As a result, I do not let the narrator say "just a friend." Adding the message of "friendships < romantic relationships" would run counter to one of the work's core themes. When new editors step onto this series, I make a point of leaving a note for them to this effect, as I want to ensure this message doesn't accidentally creep in.

However, the author and I don't see eye-to-eye on other topics. TCY's author likes sister yuri--which I don't, and my opinion on the morality of the underlying messaging is far more complex, far more contentious, and far beyond of the scope of this essay. For the point of this essay, I'm going to treat this as a personal preference and not a message of "incest = okay," but I think that's an oversimplification. The narrator has several flirtatious interactions with her sister, most of which can be treated as comedic fan service.

Is it appropriate to tone down the sister yuri? I decided no, it would not be appropriate to exert my preference onto the work. The sister yuri is one of the work's core appeals, and removing it would change the nature of the work in a major way. The question of tone doesn't quite apply here, but practicality does. There are multiple scenes containing sisterxsister ship teasing, and it would be difficult--but not impossible--to downplay all of them. Finally, while a significant portion of this fandom doesn't like sister yuri, an even larger portion does. It's inappropriate for me to derive this core chunk of the audience what they want. Is there a social good in not casually depicting incest in fiction? That's too thorny to get into here; ultimately, I am abdicating responsibility when the author is the one pushing the sister yuri angle. This also plays into pragmatism. I don't interact with this fandom, but I do look at fan art/fan commentary and thus will stumble upon comments about the translation. This fandom is generally really, really positive toward me--and I admit, it's gratifying to see things like "Give this man a raise" or "If you replace him with AI, I'm blowing up the whole building"--but I've also seen them be hostile and reactive toward translators on other parts of the series. One individual once petitioned that I be fired for a romanization that the author themself stipulated which...okay...? In an ideal universe, the opinions of the fandom should not matter, but the fact of the matter is that a translator does have some interest in keeping the fandom from doing things like--well, petitioning to have them fired for a romanization they didn't even choose. This is especially true for female and nonbinary translators, who are at greater risk of being harassed and doxxed online. Because so much of translation networking and recruitment happens in closed online communities or social media, many translators feel the need to maintain a social media presence, and being driven offline actively impacts their ability to find and secure work. (To say nothing of the psychological harm!) Fandom harassment isn't a victimless crime, and while the translator shouldn't be kissing ass at the expense of their work, they do need to have a thumb on the pulse of the work's fandom.

I also want to highlight instances in which I've added messages that I disagree with--instances that have made me uncomfortable, actually! TCY is, like the name suggests, a comedy narrated by a teenage girl who doesn't have everything figured out. She's self-deprecatory to an extreme, which can bleed into incidental meanness. I actually struggled with the first few books because it was so draining to be writing "I'm so stupid. I'm so ugly. I'm so fat. I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself. I want to kill myself." multiple hours a day, day in and day out. And in those first few lines, we can already see several examples of value judgements: "lack of intelligence" = "bad," "ugly = bad," and "fatness = bad." I don't think any of these things! I try to curb them from my casual speech (not saying "stupid," "dumb," and "idiotic" is a pretty recent thing, so you'll see it all over older posts), but when I catch myself writing things like "big, fat lie" or "stupid idea" in her narration, I don't trim them.

These values aren't central to the work, but they are present. TCY's narrator thinks her thighs are too big. She thinks her poor test grades are indicative of self-worth. I could remove "big, fat lie" and "stupid idea," but the underlying messages are still there. Furthermore, TCY's narrator is so self-deprecating and--accidentally--so rude to other people that making her internal narration less rude is incongruous. This is reflective of how she sees the world. On the flip side, it wouldn't be too impractical to avoid it--and I do avoid certain things, like using "That's wild" in place of "That's crazy" because I've built up that habit--and I do think it would be kinder to readers to not be so derogatory. I occasionally see readers who empathize with the narrator find the first couple of books difficult to get through, just like I did. However, the books would be challenging to read regardless of these small instances of negative messaging, so I've chosen to let them stand.

Case 3: Dudebro Comedy Isekai

Not being a dudebro, I disagree with DCI's author's values on every topic under the sun. Unfortunately, I also think we're drift compatible. It's incredibly disconcerting to find that you, an autistic, avoidant fuck whose special interest is translating wordplay, have a counterpart across the ocean: an autistic, avoidant fuck whose special interest is writing wordplay. And he makes my life hell.

Because DCI is 5% wordplay by weight--and I'm actually not exaggerating; there is an average of at least one pun every twenty words. Look at this essay and count the words. Every time you hit twenty words, add a pun. You will quickly realize how overwhelming (frankly, horrifying) this is--I am required to rewrite huge chunks of it, sometimes taking out entire paragraphs and writing parallel, but totally original, paragraphs of my own. This makes DCI an interesting case to examine, because so few translations require such a high level of rewriting. I could, if I really wanted to, remove all sorts of messages I disagree with.

However, I generally don't, for the same reasons as with TCY. The work is mean-spirited enough--and also narrated by a particularly thoughtless teenager--that removing all of its meanness would be untrue to the source and affect the work's ability to cohere. (Well...in as much as it coheres anyway. DCI is experimental, to put it lightly. Imagine James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov had a baby, and that baby was only half as skilled a writer but plenty skilled enough to use his considerable talent for evil. Also, the baby was obsessed with bad isekai. And bad sex. The baby is terrifying, and the baby is being bad on purpose, and we (those involved in the publication in both JP and EN) are all suffering for it.)

And to the author's credit, he's a hell of a lot more considerate than most dudebro isekai authors! He has quite a lot to say about the importance of consent, the evil of slavery, and the necessity of caring for people, all of which are unfortunately rare in dudebro isekai. But he also doesn't mind calling characters "stupid" or "crazy," and I am so busy fighting for my life against his 500+ translation puzzles per enormous volume that I don't care to challenge him.

This, unfortunately, leads to instances of practicality overriding my better judgement. I've written a handful of tasteless jokes in the spirit of the work because...look, that 500+ number is not an exaggeration. I simply do not have the time to handcraft each joke. I have to write down the first thing that comes to mind and go. This is not how translation should be done, but there is no such thing as good translation practices in this assignment. There is only survival.

But I limit these tasteless jokes to things that I know the dudebro audience won't question because the underlying messages are so baked into society. One example was a pun about being a "nutter for hazelnuts." I do not like the casual use of the word "nutter" because of the underlying message that "psychotic = bad." However, I also know the fandom will not care and will not suddenly change their minds about "psychotic = bad" should I not include it. The societal good is negligible. (This particularly fandom regularly makes jokes or bets about my sanity or lack thereof, even after I've asked them to stop, so this isn't me making assumptions either! I don't think I need to say this to you, but this is a wretched thing to do in sight of someone, regardless of if they have a history of psychosis. Don't do it.)

I would consider some tasteless jokes off-limits, including one instance of a joke in the source that I steered around. I want to discuss my reasons for doing so using the framework outlined above, because it's such a novel case of approaching a problem. It would not be acceptable on anything but DCI, and to any other translators out there, do not do this.

A short, throwaway scene contained several jokes about trans women being ugly, violent brutes. I do not think it needs to be said that I was unamused. I wrestled with how to handle this scene for a short time before deciding to pretend that I didn't understand the joke being made and instead pivoting to a vaguely sexist but tonally appropriate joke about certain violent girls the narrator knows. Now. Normally, I would never condone this, and were someone to feign incompetence to avoid dealing with a thorny scene, I would hope they would take that secret to the grave. I only talk about this now because a) the editor, who has higher authority than me, was aware and okay with me doing this, b) I am, again, so often rewriting whole paragraphs that rewriting jokes is common and a necessity, and c) the Japanese audience's chief complaint of the work is that its vocabulary is so broad and style so idiosyncratic that some native speakers find it too difficult to read. That a non-native speaker would misunderstand a somewhat vague joke is plausible, particularly when said non-native speaker is stressed out of his fucking mind and barreling through 20,000 Japanese characters a day.

My reasoning was as follows: Transphobia is not a core message in the work. The author's view of gender is strictly binary, and there are no transgender characters in the story. To cut a small transphobic scene removes nothing from the broader context of the story. Similarly, when the character is otherwise crass--and is still making a somewhat crass joke in English--the tone remains consistent throughout. It is relatively practical to remove the transphobic messaging as the scene is short and throwaway; it does not become a running gag. The biggest arguments for and against ultimately come down to the fandom. This is one fandom I do interact with--originally, they came to me, and I was happy to provide them with behind-the-scenes translation notes when appropriate--and while they generally like me a good deal, they are also very sensitive about what they perceive as censorship. One individual was quite upset that I made a backronym (an acronym that is made to fit a desired spelling, like the DREAM Act) with a word that was 7 letters long vs its 19-letter-long synonym. I said that I chose the 7-letter word because I have to make multiple backronyms per book, and he failed to understand why this would be a consideration. "Why can't you do 19? This is censorship!" The gall.

However, I also knew that the work's fandom contains a handful of trans women who already feel unwelcome and isolated in the fandom. Much of the fandom is either anti-trans or on the fence about transgender issues, and in the current political climate in the US and UK (where most of the English fandom is located), I didn't feel comfortable contributing to the constant transphobic messaging being poured down our throats. I knew the passage, if it appeared in its original transphobic form, would cause arguments in the fandom and would quite probably lead to harassment against its transgender members. Because the fandom isn't litigious about checking the translation, already knows I do a lot of rewriting, and quite frankly probably can't read that passage anyway (I'm not being mean; I'm being serious. Reading Japanese does not mean you can read and understand this author's writing), I thought there was greater social good in nudging the joke into less turbulent waters.

I want to stress, once again, that I didn't make this decision lightly and wouldn't do such a thing on other works. I believe in full transparency when making significant changes--either to the fandom or to the author/management--but I felt that this was appropriate for DCI and DCI's fandom.

I would also like to stress that while I often use hyperbole for humor, I am being stone cold serious about everything in this section. There is truly nothing else like this beast of a series. I've joked that the author is intent on making every piece of wordplay in the Japanese language and dragging me along for the ride, but this is only partially a joke--when translating the Hypmic movie raps, there was a disconcertingly high number (10 or 12) of rhymes or instances of wordplay that I'd already seen in this text. It feels very similar to translating raps--even when the narrator is not rapping, which he often is--to the point that I feel I'll never complain about Hypmic raps again. When I TLed Sougyaran Bam a few years back, it's because I was tired of working on this series, and while Sougyaran Bam was frighteningly similar looking, it was actually easier to parse and translate than the average bit of narration in this series. I'm actually quite nervous about posting this because DCI is so unique that you'll instantly clock what I'm talking about if you've ever read a snippet of it or heard me/the previous translator talk about it. I'm simply praying the fandom is so far removed from Hypmic and this essay is too long for anyone having gotten this far to know of it... Ha ha ha...

Case 4: Socially Conscious Serious Work

And now for something completely different.

These last two examples will be much shorter, but while I've talked abut nudging in comedic works--where, by virtue of needing to rewrite jokes, adaptation is common--I want to examine how that can feature in a more serious work.

SCSW's author's values closely align with mine, and her work reflects serious thought and care in portraying tense, complex issues of race, gender, and sexuality. However, some of the language she uses is inconsistent with the discourse in English-speaking progressive spaces, and it takes some careful nudging for her work to land the way she hopes it would.

I want to be careful of implying that the frameworks English-speaking progressives use are inherently better than the frameworks of Japanese-speaking progressives. It's true that Japanese progressives are generally more socially conservative than English-speaking progressives and USA/UK/Australia/Canada multiculturalism lends itself to a more nuanced understanding of racial and ethnic issues, but Japan's status as the one nation to have been atomic bombed by an enemy, urban/rural distribution, and complicated history with Westernization tends to give Japanese commentary on disarmament, rural depopulization, and alternatives to Western-led globalization the edge. "Different" does not equal "better," and in some cases, certain phrasings serve a different purpose in one language versus another.

Take, for example, the narrator describing his boss several times over as "the chocolate-skinned man" in quick succession. Apart from epithets appearing amateur in English, this focus on the boss's skin color can appear uncomfortably objectifying. In English, comparing skin color to food is often associated with romantic overtures, which also creates the uncomfortable and inaccurate sensation that the narrator is coming onto his boss. However, in Japanese, this phrasing is somewhat novel, and by associating dark skin with positive imagery, the author is challenging colorist ideas. In order to honor her intent, I chose to cut the epithets and move the phrase "chocolate-skinned" (or "skin the color of chocolate") to the beginning of the passage where the boss was introduced, which is a natural place for such information to go in English writing. This slight reordering of information allows the narrator to comment on the boss's skin color in glowing tones without implying that he wants to jump the boss's bones. Reordering information is standard and uncontroversial in translation--but, as with any adaptation, it needs to have a purpose. I sometimes use reordering to direct the reader's attention away from phrasing that is a little thoughtless. For example, if I have a list of three items, one of which I think would scan as objectionable in English, I'll put the objectionable item in the middle, which is the least focused-on part of the sentence.

Another notable example of nudging to help the work land in its intended light was an extended passage about a femme gay man who worked as a dancer in a strip club. The third-person narrator of that passage (not the same first-person narrator who was eyeing his boss) knew the man's feminine stage name but not the masculine name he went by offstage. Instead of using the stage name, the narrator either dropped the subject of the sentence (which is common in Japanese) or used "the stripper [with various descriptors]" as an epithet a handful of times. When translating into English, it is necessary to add dropped sentence subjects, and I didn't want to use "the stripper" over and over. It felt objectifying for a character the narrative wanted us to empathize with, and while the narrator is, admittedly, a bit of a dick, this wouldn't have been in line with his characterization. So instead, I took those various tidbits of descriptive information sprinkled throughout the dialogue tags--a common writing technique in JP that we don't use as much in EN--moved those up to the top of the scene to handle the first few instances of "the stripper," used "the dancer" or "he" for several other instances, pronoun dodged (a technique in which a translator abuses assorted English writing conventions to avoid writing he/she/they without drawing attention to the lack of pronouns--super hard to do, but amazing when done well) a couple other instances, and used the character's stage name--first in quotes, then without quotes as the narrator got used to thinking of him with that name. By naming this character, he became a person in the eyes of the English reader early in the scene in a way that he wouldn't if he'd remained "the stripper" for several pages.

Let's examine these decisions using the criteria stipulated at the top of the essay. SCSW's core anti-discrimination messages would be undercut by accidental or carelessly discriminatory phrases. It would be in service to the work to carefully nudge the phrasing in sticky passages to be in line with the author's espoused values. It would also be tonally jarring for a work that is otherwise so careful with its ideas. I did not want to cause offense to the largely progressive audience and paint the author in a poor light. I am not too concerned about this fandom's reactivity, and I don't interact with them, but I do have an interest in keeping the author happy, as she can read English fluently and reads the translations after they come out. She's been nothing but lovely to me and has publicly complimented my work several times, but because her command of English is great enough that she can--and does--engage with English progressive discourse, I want to ensure she feels her thoughtful ideas are represented in the same style as the thoughtful English articles and stories she comments about online.

Case 5: Joseimuke Romance Game

Thus far, I've talked about works in which the translator works independently of the author, has little contact with the author, and is expected to adhere to the author's style and word choice. Let's go in the complete opposite direction and talk about a game where part of my job is determining the direction and style of the English translation.

I have certain directives to follow from management, but beyond that, I am free--and encouraged--to change everything from the framing of scenes to small actions (gestures, etc.) to the style of the prose. JRG's Japanese protagonist is, like many joseimuke romance protagonists, frequently passive and innocent to court both the "hot boy is into me" fantasy and the "I'm pure and free of unfeminine [society's views, not mine] desire" fantasy. Both fantasies are common in English media too, but at management's discretion, we don't lean into the latter fantasy much, especially when it makes consent dicey. (Unless dicey consent is part of the fantasy! I don't work on these scenes much out of personal preference; I really don't like being in that headspace when I'm doing so much original writing in first-person.) JRG's English protagonist is much more sex positive, emotionally intelligent, and secure in her attraction to men than the JP protag, and I need to make frequent rewrites for this to work.

Which management and the fandom are fine with, because that's what both expect!

I want to give an example of reframing a scene, because it's a skill that can elevate someone from a good translator to an excellent translator, and it's so rarely talked about despite being so, so cool.

Assume the protag lives and works in an area full of male courtesans but doesn't engage in sex work herself. Think of Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries but in a male harem. Our Maomao has never been with a courtesan until the scene I was writing, when the whole cast of courtesans treated her to a night of titillating but ultimately sex-free entertainment. The source text wrote her as shy and scared about even being in the courtesans' presence, long before they started fawning over her. This makes sense if the writer wants Maomao to seem like a "good girl" who's too pure to have sex, but this makes no sense with her English sex-positive characterization. Like. Girl, you live in a harem. These are your coworkers. It was so strange seeing this normally confident character written like "Oh no...! If this man that I've known for years goes near me, I shall blush and faint...! Today is my first day out of doors and Papà forbade mirrors in the house lest we fall victim to vanity!" that I just burst out laughing. It was doubly strange when Maomao said that her female friends regularly visited these courtesans, but she herself never had. If casual sex with the courtesans was so normalized that everyone else did it, why would Maomao not?

After considering that question, I decided that, much like the real TAD Maomao, it would make sense for Maomao to simply not be interested. I didn't want to write anything about her not wanting to sleep with the courtesans due to a desire to remain "pure"--again, management doesn't want this idea espoused in English. Instead, Maomao's lack of interest would be attributed to two things: practicality and lack of attraction. Overtly, I had Maomao claim that sleeping with coworkers is too messy to be worth it--but again, I didn't want her to cast judgement on her friends who do. So, underneath that reasoning, I made it clear that Maomao--even if she isn't aware of it herself--just wasn't sexually attracted to men. (This was an AU that didn't have sex scenes; I wouldn't have been allowed to change her sexuality in a mainline story. Think of it like an ARB event vs a drama track.) She didn't sleep with men, even if it was normalized, because she didn't want to. She was still romantically attracted to men--and drooled over them a bit because she's written as a big dork in English--and enjoyed the attention that way.

How that worked in practice was twofold: adjusting Maomao's thoughts and how Maomao emoted. Because no characters are shown onscreen during narration and Maomao's thoughts, narration blocks are open canvases to write whatever the story needs. If the JP had five or six cells that set the scene and talk about how Maomao feels nervous about her first time... with a man...!, I'd take those same five or six cells and write an original story opener that sets the scene and indicates that Maomao is giddy, but not too nervous, about this new experience. It's fulfilling the same purpose but nudging the story's underlying message to one the writers want the English audience to receive. The same could be done for Maomao's reactions. A hot guy kabedons her? Whoa! How exciting! I'd focus on how the interaction made her feel, and I'd have her blush or be breathless from the stimulation instead of flinching or stuttering. This also means that the male love interest needs to react accordingly. Because their sprites appear when they speak and I don't have the ability to change them (rather, it's a pain to request permission to do so, so I usually don't), I need to ensure his dialogue is compatible with her new emotional response. A concerned character might frown (at the flinch or stutter) and have to be rewritten to express something like "Oh no, am I coming on too strong?" (at the blushing or breathlessness). A teasing character might grin (at the flinch or stutter) because he was glad to have unsettled Maomao, which is retooled to something like grinning and going "Oh, you like that?" (at the blush or breathlessness).

Finally, let's consider the three criteria. The messages being removed are central to one of the work's fantasies; however, other elements are being inserted to cater to different fantasies at the writers/managers' discretion. It is not tonally inappropriate to do so because the entire work receives the same treatment. Maomao remains consistently sex positive and consistently an active participant in sexual and romantic scenes. The question of social impact is a sticky one. The passive joseimuke protagonist is written as such to cater to a specific fantasy, and fantasies do not always align with one's morals or views. Someone who enjoys roleplaying or reading about a submissive heroine in male/female sex does not have to think that all women should be submissive to men in male/female sex. Having a sex-positive protagonist isn't inherently better than having a protagonist who is shy about sex, but it does cater to different fantasies. Providing different viewpoints can also unlock new ways of thinking. If a society only produces works in which women are passive participants in their sex lives, it is difficult to conceptualize of other alternatives. It's not that I think people are basing their entire romantic and sex education on joseimuke games, but I know that doing research for this game and working on this game changed my relationship with the concept of sex and gave me a greater appreciation of works that cater to a wide variety of fantasies. Interestingly, I also gained a greater appreciation of passive joseimuke heroines in the process by better understanding the reasoning that governs them. I've seen reader testimonies that say similar. Allowing readers to explore their sexualities through these fantasies is, imo, a social good. Finally, as the developer is up front about the changes made in the localization process, the fandom's reaction isn't a threat. The biggest argument against these changes is actually practicality--I change so much on even just a prose level that it's like writing long stories from scratch multiple times a month--but that is outside of my jurisdiction. So it goes.

Conclusion

Well, this is not a mini essay at all. I lied.

At any rate, I wanted to discuss the topics presented in this essay because the language that we use does not exist in a vacuum. The translator, while not responsible for the underlying ideas in a work, is responsible for their presentation, and pretending that such presentation is inherently apolitical or harm-free is a fool's errand. A translation will, by nature of requiring a whole different language and a whole different human being, contain new values and lose old values, and it is the duty of every translator to ensure they are giving due consideration to what is added and lost.

I absolutely believe it's possible to go too far and undercut the author's message. In such cases, I do not think due consideration was achieved.

Similarly, I do not believe my approach is the only approach, but I wanted to illustrate how someone can apply the exact same set of questions to multiple works--or even different examples in the same work--and arrive at vastly different answers.

As ever, if this informal essay encouraged you to question or engage at a deeper level with the translated works you encounter, I will be very happy. Thank you for reading.

*"kinda sorta not really haha unless? on the aromantic spectrum" If you ask me my sexuality and/or romantic orientation, you're liable to get three different answers depending on what level of complexity is appropriate for the given situation. I've mentioned in passing that I'm a an asexual gay man, and this is still true! I'm romantically attracted to men, but I've found that my version of "romantic attraction" doesn't align with most people's idea of "romantic attraction." But it feels different than what I conceive of as "platonic attraction," so it doesn't feel right to call those two the same thing. My ideal romantic relationship most closely resembles what people would call a QPP. Is there a specific name for this orientation? Maybe, and more power to those who use such labels, but I'm at the point in my life where I'm comfortable just vibing without searching for a name to describe my experiences. I'm happy just experiencing life as it comes. I mention all this because it contributes to the way I conceptualize romance, which is central to several points in this essay.

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