Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
I find that Japanese literature is often more expressive than English. You`ll hit this a lot if you compare translations - You need far more text to convey things that are quite short in Japanese... And often it loses an incredible amount of meaning even then.
But in the end, I`d really say they`re almost entirely equal. My answer to which is better would change based on what it is I`m referring to, the time of day, or my mood.
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This is what I was getting at!
By the way, after having gotten better at Japanese I can read a translated book and almost translate it exactly back into the original Japanese. While that kind of "transparent" translation may be appreciated by some people, I feel like some of the phrases are stock out of cheap dictionaries.
As far as Japanese books being shorter than their translated counterparts goes... I'd like to make a couple of comments. First of all, Japanese uses Kanji, which can express a lot of information in just two "letters" (so to speak). I know this was a big issue for video game translators in the mid 90's. Translating the text into English became a file size issue. Just as an example-- 梅雨 (Tsuyu). It's just two characters. In English, you could roughly interpret that as meaning "the rainy season". That phrase consists of 16 characters (including the spaces). Second of all (and I think this is the most important issue), a Japanese book by a Japanese writer will be conveying Japanese thought... in other words a decidedly Japanese setting. A situation that is that
Japanese will obviously benefit from being described in Japanese. The translator thusly has to not only "translate", but will have to re-paint the situation in more universal colors (if that makes sense). In doing so, a simple word or phrase that is understood at face value will suddenly have to be elaborated on in order for it to be appropriately received (with hopefully the same or similar feeling) in the new language. And Nyoroin, I know this is redundant for you so please don't take this as directed at you. It's more of a comment on the idea as a whole.