So, probably not quite what you meant but I find annoying nonetheless… Bible translation

It’s almost impossible to find an English translation that doesn’t allow tradition to seriously skew how ideas are presented. And I say this as a secular scholar (and someone who recognises that the oldest greek text we have is very very very old). Messing with the translation just leaves it open to criticism unnecessarily.

Here are some examples…

An “angel” in the new testament is not a distinct thing. The word simply means “messenger” and was the mundane, every day, word for messenger. It was the word used if someone came from the next town over to tell you something in person. Without any of our cultural baggage added on top the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary is - on face value - Mary being surprised to encounter a man who told her things. Same for Zechariah (both in Luke 1). It’s only when you get to the shepherds the field that the messenger is accompanied by a heavenly glow. But this idea that they’re perfect beings clad in white with wings is completely absent from the text and, imho, promulgated by the persistent use of the word “angel” when it should simply say “messenger”. (The NT itself goes on to say people have had such messengers as guests in their homes without realising, implication being they often look and sound like regular people. Hebrews 13:2)

Same for “baptism”. This is also a traditional translation of the completely mundane word “immersion”. It’s translated that way to retain the idea of baptism as a distinct church idea. But the text literally says “John the Immerser” not John the Baptist. And he stood in the river Jordan immersing people. Which gives a very plain mundane view of what was happening - he was dunking people in the water as a purification rite - something that already existed in Judaism. The traditional translation is used so that churches can wedge in their own view of what baptism is - say, a delicate sprinkling of water from a font or some such.

Even the word “church” itself. The church in the new testament is never a building. It means “assembly” (of people). So the “church” can meet anywhere, and in fact met in houses or sitting on the ground in the temple courts. Allowing a special Christianised word like “church” to be used instead of the mundane translation “assembly” let’s people think whatever they want to picture church as instead of what the text is directly saying.

While we’re on that, Jesus’ name is actually Joshua (if we want to be consistent) and his mum is Miriam. Names that are far too obviously Jewish and connected to the old testament, so we get a traditional rendering of “Jesus” and “Mary” and so on which makes them all sound a lot more white Anglo Saxon.

In a similar vein “testament” is just a weird translation of “covenant” which itself is just a religious way of rendering the word “pact” or “agreement”. The old testament is a pact between God and the Jewish people made through Moses. When the plain meaning is made clearer then other meanings shine through more clearly, namely, the behaviour standards of the old testament “pact” were exactly that, requirements of a pact between God and the Jews. They were never universal requirements that the Jews were supposed to go out and make the rest of the world follow. This translation choice is used by the modern church to obscure the fact that the old testament moral codes were a distinctly Jewish thing - because the modern church would like to piggy back on Leviticus when it suits its narrative.

Finally, the word “Bible” itself doesn’t appear in the bible. Bible means “library” or collection of writings. It doesn’t appear in the any of the writings because none of the Bible writings are self-aware that they’re going to be compiled into such a collection. The word “scripture” is used (literally “writing”) when Peter’s talking about things Paul’s written but that’s about it. When translated straightforwardly it takes the “holy” shine off things and it’s clearer to see these are people making “writings” to communicate with each other or remember things that have happened. A far cry from the “inerrant word of god” that the church traditionally turned the new testament into.

I could go on, but rant over…

Many years ago, there was a televised interview with Saddam Hussein. I don’t remember which TV network it was on but it was a pretty big deal. This was early 2000’s before the US invasion of Iraq. I think the translator referred to then President Bush as “Bush”. Saddam didn’t understand a lot of English but he understood that. He interrupts the translator mid-sentence to inform him that what he should have said was “Mr. Bush”, with a sort of tone that felt like he did not appreciate being misquoted.

I don’t know if that dude even realized how close he probably came to being strangled to death with a microphone cord.

There was that one time the translator fucked up royally and I lost my shit in The Devastation of Baal by Guy Haley.

To understand we have to look at the pronoun „you“ and it’s German equivalents “Ihr“ and “du“. English doesn’t differentiate between a formal and an informal “you”. It’s just “you”. So you can use “you” in both ways and the reader gets the meaning and tone from context.

For example: “My lord, you have to act!” Gives you everything you need and you know from context how the power dynamics between the characters are.

The German equivalent for that sentence would be: „Mein Herr, Ihr müsst handeln!“ To be fair, you can confuse the possessive pronoun “Ihr” with the regular plural pronoun “ihr”. Both of which are completely different. That’s German for you.

But our translator used the common “du”. The sentence “Mein Herr, du musst handeln!” Not only makes my ears bleed, it also makes no sense in universe. You cannot stand before one of the most well known and revered ANGELS OF MOTHFUCKERING DEATH and say “du”! You uncivilised donkey!

I do this for a living so I have a few words about it.

1. Obsessing over the meaning of individual words, and wrecking what the text (or dialogue) says on a discursive level. I see this all the time with Latin, but it pops up often in Japanese too - such as muppets translating “貴様” kisama as simply “you…” (literal translation) instead of something like “bastard” or “piece of shit” or whatever. Sure, “貴様” is “ackshyually” a pronoun, and then what?

2. Not paying attention to the target audience of the translation. JP→EN example again - it’s fine if you keep honorific suffixes as in the original if the target audience is a bunch of weebs, we get it. But if you’re subbing some anime series for a wider audience, you need to convey that info in some other way. (Don’t just ditch it though, see #1.)

3. Not doing due diligence. It’s 4AM, you got more work than you have time for, you need to keep pumping those translations. Poor little boy, I don’t bloody care - spell-proof and grammar-proof the bloody thing dammit. “Its” for possessive, “it’s” for pronoun+verb; “por que” if question, “porque” if answer; “apposto” if annexed, “a posto” if it’s OK.

4. Abusing translation notes. If your “TN” has four or more lines, or the reader already expects one every single page, you’re doing it wrong.

Translators - ehh. I don’t speak any other languages so I have no basis for comparison.

But closed-caption writers for TV shows… all of the fucking rage.

I have some audio-processing issues meaning that closed-captions make life vastly easier, but I’m not actually hard of hearing per se.

Why do they always dumb down the dialogue? I can understand abridging rapid-fire chatter if there’s just too much to fit on screen, or not enough time to read it, but they’ll dumb down a six-word sentence with ten seconds of on-screen time.

You know hard of hearing people aren’t fucking stupid, right? If I did lose my hearing and I were denied the actual writing as written by real writers, in favour of the rough gist supplied by some glorified typist, I would be absolutely goddamn livid. How dare they assume I’m semi-literate just becasue my hearing is crap?

When they get the AI to do the work.

On subtitles - when the person on screen literally says a word in english but the subtitles replace it with another word.

censorship / changing the original meaning to fit the translators personal agenda

I don’t know if that counts but fan translating comics/novels using machine translation WITHOUT DOING ANY PROOFREADING AFTERWARDS.

I consume quite a bit of anime and manga (just look at the communities I moderate), and I see a number of regular complaints about translation in that space. I personally think most of them are overblown and that translators are doing their best. Translation is far from a science and almost every sentence/paragraph has judgement calls that need to be made by the translator. What some people find annoying about a translation might make the work more approachable to somebody else.

One thing that does bother me for Japanese is the exclusion of honorifics. Most subtitles these days include them, which is a definite improvement over official subs of the past. In subtitle form, honorifics are usually the only indication that a speaker is using something like formal language (keigo) unless you have some knowledge of the spoken language.

As a bit of an aside, if you are interested in professional translation and some of the challenges they face (especially with MTL on the horizon), then Anime Herald did an interview with several of them. Check it out!

For Manga and Anime in particular:

• Removal of honorifics which convey a person’s status which can ba explained in a translators notes page or a quick look at Wikipedia

• Giving people with different dialects from standard Tokyo dialect different English accents like southern americanese or Scottish. They’re Japanese, not Scottish or american

• Using american English

• Using american slang which no one outside of america understands

• Even though I don’t watch dubs anymore and prefer subs every dub I’ve seen poorly attempts to imitate the way Japanese people speak