There seems to be thousands of anko stories and I am very interested in reading them, and not just a summary of events but a full translation. However there's barely any full translations, with no more than a dozen as far as i can tell. I was wondering if hiring translators is a possible option, and I wouldn't mind paying, it's just that yukkuris are kind of a weird subject that very few people know about and translators might do improper translations. I know very little about the Japanese language but if this is possible and we can find some translators, I can pay them and post the translations here.
I don't mind them being expensive I just hope they don't get confused and mistranslate some of the terms. Yukkuris are kind of a weird subject after all and i was hoping if anyone here has experience with the language or translating works, even chinese works since the language is similar i could get some advice on how it would work and whether experienced translators would be able to do a good job.
Chinese translator here. I think the biggest problem you may find isn't the yukkurisms, because those could be fixed by a fan (you) after the first draft of the translation is produced, or by just sending the translator over to the yukkuri wiki and having them read up on yukkuri behavior. And then providing them with that one page of standardized yukkurisms that's floating around.
The biggest headache, at least for me so far, is the slurring. It depends on the original writers, and how far they take it, but sometimes it can get REALLY wretched. To the point where I end up staring at a single line for a few minutes before figuring out that it's something like 'Mister Bed is really easy.'
zidana123 said: The biggest headache, at least for me so far, is the slurring. It depends on the original writers, and how far they take it, but sometimes it can get REALLY wretched. To the point where I end up staring at a single line for a few minutes before figuring out that it's something like 'Mister Bed is really easy.'
how so? because they misspell the words or they run the words together?
Well, neither spelling nor spaces exist in Chinese, so I guess the slurring problem doesn't translate into English all that well as it has letters. Chinese slurring will actually substitute completely different words for the original words, like so:
Original: 魔理沙的头痛啊 Original Phonetic: Mó lǐ shā de tóu tòng a Original Literal: [Magic-Reason-Sand] [Possessive] Head Hurt [Verbalized-Exclaimation] Original Rendered: Mólǐshā's head huuuurts!
Slurred: 麻立傻打掏汤啊 Slurred Phoenetic: Má lì shǎ dǎ tāo tāng a Slurred Literal: [Numb-Stand-Stupid] Hit Dig Soup [Verbalized-Exclaimation] Slurred Rendered: Málìshǎ is hitting the dug-up souuuup!
The slurred version has absolutely no meaning. Now, you can see that the phonetics are similar, which means by saying it out loud you can kind of sound out what the original phrase was supposed to be. But that depends on the original writer and what they chose to replace the original words with. Depending on the gap between individual choice of words, this can cause ALOT of difficulty in figuring out the slur.
This happens purely because Chinese has no letters. See, in English, when you slur like so:
"Take" > "Tage" or "Chake"
You know that "Tage" or "Chake" have no meaning. They are a phonetic arrangement of letters. But because Chinese has no letters and no phonic system, you can't just invent a new symbol, because it has no sound associated with it, instead, you MUST use a pre-existing word with a similar sound. But this pre-existing word will have a completely different meaning.
Slurring is a pain in the ass for sure for people learning a language (japanese slurring is a huge annoyance for me). But if you're fluent or native with a language it should be no issue at all.
Unfortunately I don't think I will be able to hire translators. The longer anko stories contain over 10,000 characters, and the cost for that is several hundred dollars. Longer ankos such as anko1317 costs over one thousand dollars. I was prepared to pay 30 maybe 40 for a story but this is too much.
Yup... like I said, most translators work by either by page or by word basis. It's entirely not feasible to professionally translate fan works of any sort because there's too many.