I've been thinking about a post the Mexican HBO Max Instagram made about the LatAm translation of the Kids Next Door and how it takes creative liberties by using regional pop culture jokes to enhance the comedy, and it made me want to talk about the comic I helped Lui translate.
Everyone that read the original comic can tell that it's not a 100% accurate translation from Spanish, some dialogues were even changed. I tried to adapt mannerisms from the English version, while maintaining the integrity of the original dialogue.
For example, I made some of Dexter's dialogue longer, or picked choppier words to match his original cadence. In English, Dexter has a thick fictional accent that drags a little at the end; he doesn't have that in LatAm Spanish, but he does have the dragging of the last sentence. I decided the key to Dexter's dialogue is that he talks like he's describing his thought process with "precision".
Dexter's written dialogue in the English version tends to be written as it sounds in the comics ( ex. "Stupid Sister" is written as "Stoopid Seester" ), but since this comic has a lot of dialogue, I decided to focus on structure and sound.
In Spanish, we use the noun "Usted" to refer to a person with respect, with a special conjugation that makes the verbs of the sentence sound polite. In English, there is no special conjugation to make sentences sound polite; instead, we have honorifics, such as "Sir", "Ma'am" ( "Madame" ), or "Miss" for young women, that are used at the beginning or end of a sentence to indicate that you are referring to someone with respect. The elderly tend to use words such as "Son", "Young man/lady", and even "Sweetheart" to show respectful endearment.
I also took the opportunity to add some iconic lines from the show, or some Hannah Barbera references to spice up the dialogue.
I think my favorite part was finding an English equivalent to "Órales". The closest translation would be "Wow", but it doesn't have the wordy quality of the original word, so after some thinking, I thought "Wowzers" carries the aloof energy of "Órales". My second favorite word was "Rayos" ( "Lightning" ) as a curse word; it's a PG word commonly used in cartoons, but all I could think of was Mojo Jojo saying "Curses" in that voice of his', so I knew it was perfect! 😆 ( also yes, Mandark's name in Spanish is "Brain" ).
While juggling languages, sometimes we'd forget to translate some words. We read the translation a couple of times to proof read, but some mistakes made it into the final post 😅
Needless to say, I have a newfound appreciation for Fan Translations of manga and anime. Their job sometimes requires redrawing bubbles and pieces, and I'm amazed at how some people become so natural with practice, that they can deliver a solid translation at a short notice.
This was fun! Thank you, @lui-ra-art, for letting me help you with your comic 💝 I hope this brings some perspective to the language dynamics to someone.