Translating MCYT into Chinese

She/They. Pfp by @/dirt-and-scrivles.

[translatingmcytintochinese]

Do I have to make Hermitcraft translations now?

[translatingmcytintochinese]

finally settled on a translation for e1!scott. that’s one down, several more to go.

[translatingmcytintochinese]

Scott, why the fuck is your name so hard to translate? Even worse is that you have like, at least five different aliases that you go by. How the fuck am I supposed to translate all of them while making it all make sense. Like, yes, direct transliteration works for you, but any Sinicization methods almost always go to shit because you don’t universally go by a primary name, you just use all of them.

Anyways, I finally figured out a possible neutral Sinicized given name for you. I hope you’re happy. Now, as for the surname... do I make the pun or do I not make the pun?

Is it advisable to send an ask to the content creator who is on this hellsite to ask his opinions on name translation/transliteration, if he has asks open?

[translatingmcytintochinese]

One of my smaller issues with translating is when the content contain some sort of pun. Like, I cannot just transplant the conversation without certain contexts and slap a footnote at the end of it. (Well, technically, I can, but it would not be as fun.)

Examples of this as of typing that I can think of: “Tilly Death Do Us Part”, Gem’s name in ESMP 2 (thankfully, that is very easily resolved), anything in the context of translating the word “lore”

[translatingmcytintochinese]

Introduction 自我介紹

Hi, everyone. This is Aqua, or @minecraftrelatedrandomness, on a sideblog. This is intended to be a pet project to translate MCYT content in general, and not just DSMP, into Chinese. 

I originally considered it a spin-off to @dreamsmpinchinese, an older sideblog more dedicated to DSMP, but since making those posts, I have considered branching out into more extensive projects, hence this sideblog. Also, I have decided to make my tags and content more accessible to an English-speaking audience on this blog.

Content-wise, other than retranslations of DSMP, I may translate from any server that I am familiar with, including and not limited to Empires, the Traffic series, ALSMP, Lovely World, and Hermitcraft by proxy (I may get into the series in the future).

I mainly use Traditional Chinese on this blog because I grew up using it, but I can also read Simplified Chinese, so feel free to send me asks in either variant of written Chinese or just English.

大家好，我叫雅嘉，是住在香港的MCYT愛好者。這個部落格 (blog) 本來是 @dreamsmpinchinese 的衍生物 (spin-off)，但我現在的翻譯方式已變得比當時更靈活變通， 因此我再造了這個新的部落格，希望把MCYT更佳地翻譯成中文/漢語，讓其他說中文的人愛上它他們及其創作的內容。

我主要用英文/英語說MC或MCYT有關事情的部落是 @minecraftrelatedrandomness。

Translation Methods 翻譯方法

Language-wise, I will make a division between translating into Mandarin and Cantonese, or use a neutral variant that suits both. The reason behind this is because Cantonese is my mother tongue, but Mandarin is more widely spoken, so I try my best to find a balance between the two.

In terms of names, other than the linguistic divide, I may make two names or more for each person, at least a direct transliteration/translation and a Sinicized variant, mainly because the latter was the historical traditional method for translating that still continues to this day in Hong Kong, and I find it fun to do so.

Unlike the historical method, however, I prefer to use given names or screen-names as the basis for transliterating/translating names rather than the surnames, mainly because that is the persona us viewers are familiar with.

Another method I plan on using is giving the content creators and characters different names, especially if there is a greater disconnect between the two, to establish them as different people. This is something I did not do on my old blog, but frankly, this makes things more fun to me.