Talk:Suzumiya Haruhi:Volume1 Prologue

Resolved Issues

The previous discussion regarding a disputed lack of literal translation has been moved to the forum. Please click on the following link to view it: Not literal enough?

Open Translation Issues

Suggested alteration

I wanted to be the one who used my courage, ...
I wanted to be the one who uses his courage, ...
-- Dirk Eismann, 23-dec-2006

Differences with the stratos translation

This is an experiment where I go through and note discrepancies between stratos' translation and the current wiki translation. This section is intended to be edited as things get resolved, and as new discrepancies are found. Depending on how many people edit this, we can either append signatures so that the last editor is the last signature seen, or we can just leave only the last N editors, if it gets too unwieldy.

I believe the best way is to mark a section fixed, along with your signature, and later if there seem to be no objections to the changes, that section can be removed.

Note that I'm not necessarily making a judgment, just noting what I see as different, though I do, of course, give my opinions in the comments. I don't expect most of these changes to be applied, but I feel that we should still note any subtle translation differences in a side note like this, just as a service to readers.

It is interesting to note that many of these discrepancies I note are the same ones pointed out by Cardcaptor on this same talk page. (Or at least it USED to be on this same page. Follow this link for the text.) This gives me an extra bit of confidence in stratos' interpretations.

Also, it may seem like I'm picking on the current translation, but that's because this is the one I'm editing. There are English mistakes in the stratos translation as well, but that's not the point of this exercise. And I can't really say anything as to mistakes in translation.

format:

This line is the current translation.

The following indented line is stratos' translation.

(Any following line in parentheses is a comment on the difference between the two.)

differences:

Although I had never seen my mom kiss Santa Claus

without having to see Mommy kissing Santa Claus.

(this exactly mirrors the famous lyrics to that song.)

imprisoned in a bowl-like fortress.

imprisoned within a giant, transparent pea shell.

used my ... trusty laser gun to fight against villains from the future trying to change history

Repel a laser-wielding time traveler trying to change history

against evil mutants.

against evil espers

didn't make my pencil move a single millimeter

didn't even move it a micron.

I couldn't help but get depressed at how normal the laws of physics were.

One has to admire how well the laws of physics were written.

because I finally convinced myself it was impossible.

They can't possibly exist... though I kind of wish they did.

I even reached a point where I only had a sense of nostalgia for those things.

So I suppose my ability to hold convictions while accepting reality is a sign that I've matured.

(no real parallels, except nostalgia hints at maturity, e.g. time having passed)

--The naming game 22:42, 19 August 2006 (PDT)

Proposed Edit

I've taken the Baka-suki translation, and with references to both the a.f.k fansubs and Starto's translation have attempted to do an edit job over it. The results are here.

http://lumbargo.googlepages.com/themelancholyofsuzumiyaharuhi

If you hate it, tell why. If you like it, tell why. If you'd like to use it over what's here, or pull a further edit job on it, feel free.

We do not use AFK/Strato's translations at all here. When this project first started, two things happened: One, Strato was already working on it and apparently it bruised his ego. Two, people would often think they were helping by copy-pasting Strato's work verbatim into the wiki. The result is we've basically banned that content completely from the project. Please do not do this anymore, it only makes things worse. Smidge204 09:40, 22 January 2008 (PST)

You're telling me it's totally impossible to use his Translations at all? Shit. If I re-edit the whole thing using only the Baka-Tsuki translations, is that acceptable in that case? :/ I don't want what I've done and what I plan to do to be a waste entirely, which is what it will probably end up being if I can't use Baka-Tsuki to do the editjobs.

Grrr... this fouls a lot of stuff up...

- Lumbargo

There's still some bad blood between BT and AFK/Strato so we just avoid it entirely. You should be more careful considering huge, sweeping edits anyway - they are less likely to actually be reviewed, so errors you might introduce (especially translation errors) will never be corrected. It's amazing how easily you can change the meaning of a sentence even by just reordering the words... If you have specific cases where you think an edit is really necessary then we can discuss it, otherwise stick to grammar and spelling edits only. Remember that others are using the English translation to make further translations - French, Spanish, Vietnamese. We try to aim for accuracy rather than natural flow (also contrast to what AFK/Strato does). Smidge204 03:31, 23 January 2008 (PST)

So were I to edit for flow instead of accuracy (not the best choice of words, but given I don't speak Japanese, probably... accurate enough...), I'd be better off leaving Baka-Tsuki to its normal translation and just publish on my own. Aiyah, depressing. Understood.

-Lumbargo