Predictable responses from the inhabitants of the goldfish bowl creative writing circle and their sycophantic bottom-feeder hangers on.
- We're doing this for free.
- We're putting in the hours, so are entitled to what we want.
- Anyone not willing to kiss the ground the machine translator worshippers walk on can sod off while we continue our "noble" work in the autistic bubble. Translators can continue to misrepresent creative writing as "translation" and the "fans" will lap it up since they're so starved of anything to fap to.
etc.
Unsurprisingly there's not been a single rebuttal regarding the actual translation itself. It's a very basic point: if what little accuracy to begin with is being sacrificed on the grounds of expediency then it's not a translation. It's a localisation and/or creative writing and should be marketed as such. Putting in 20 rewrites based on zero fundamental understanding of the original text is not something to be proud of, it's a blatant omission the job is based on educated guesswork. That's fine for a rewrite, but not for something which claims to be a translation.
Assertion: Literal translation is impossible because of character limits.
Rebuttal: Machine translation doesn't even do a good job to begin with, and the translators are so liberal with the interpretation it ends up embellishing the original intent and adds unnecessary words to the word count.
Methodology:
Work from the original text. Identify base meaning and do basic translation preserving as much original meaning as possible. Taking into account 25 character limit, preserve core meaning of phrase while keeping to strict limits.
E.g. 人族風情が私に挑むとはな
Full translation: Lowly humans dare to challenge me?!
Core meaning: Humans aren't fit to fight the sovereign.
Trial translation: Lowly human fighting me? (24 characters including spaces and punctuation)
Rinse and repeat. Any liberal translations (貴様 becoming "bastard", "scum" or some such) is taken out of consideration. Complaining about word limits and getting even the basic understanding wrong makes whining "translators" look like fools.
More examples:
これを受けきれるか、貴様が
Can YOU withstand this?
この魔力に抗えるか?
Resist this magic?
ほう..., 面白い!
Hm, interesting!
何だと!私の鎧を弾くか、人族の剣が!
(One example of the 25 character limit being insufficient)
Full translation: No way! A human's sword able to rip apart my armour!
Core meaning: Human sword able to pierce her armour
Either change font (as suggested by one of the sycophants) or reduce size to accommodate. If not possible, preserve as much of the core meaning as possible. Word tricks like removing vowels while preserving meaning can be exploited.
Trial translation: His sword broke my armour (25 spaces)
我ら魔族の力を知れ
Know Our strength
覚悟せよ、人族の戦士
Steel thyself, warrior
うっ!?貴様、まさか狙って…!?
Ooh!? You aimed there!?
私を力だけの王と思うな
Full translation: Don't think I'm an all brawn, no brain monarch.
I'm not all brawn
む......、これくらいはやるか
Hmph, you'd go this far
なっ!?これしきて動きを止められると思う
Ah!? This won't stop me
The longer dialogue-based lines have more freedom to work with, but require the same attention to brevity and precise summary. Not that I'd expect the self-professed "rank amateurs" to care about, since they prize the hours devoted to the mundane copying, pasting and word editing to the actual task of getting the meaning across without winging it.
The above is no where near a perfect translation, but I'm not taking liberties with the text nor twisting the original lines with "creative license". This won't matter anyway to the "translators" and their hangers-on who have sworn oaths not to read anything from their detractors, but it'll serve as a reminder that their crusade is nothing about doing a proper job and more about boasting to others the number of hours dedicated to copying and pasting fabrications which will be lapped up by their slavishly devoted followers. Anyone not partisan to this debate can make up their own minds on what they think a translation should be, but it's going to be an argument using source material and primary interpretation on the one hand versus creative writing interpreted from machine output with no fundamental understanding of the original text. "World-class" interpretation isn't being requested, just the minimum of language equivalence to do justice to the task of interpretation. If that can't be done, especially by a team of "veterans" with long hours of copying and pasting behind their belt, then call it what it is and admit it's a rewrite and/or liberal reinterpretation of machine translation.
An epitath to the dying art of language translation(?), assuming the bubble inhabitants haven't already raised multiple petitions to delete the post.