sigh

I started my story on Tapas! Due to my health and work, it's just a novel for now but I'd appreciate any attention/comments/thoughts on it!

translators are supposed to be invisible. when you’re translating or adapting a text from a source language into a target language, you need to alter the text as little as possible while still trying to keep true to the meaning / message (or style if you’re translating writing). Caleb not only takes many liberties with the source material (the most obvious one being the “chicken soup for the soul” localization he did in chapter 290 without a real need for it, but in general he tends to embellish things to sound as smart as possible whenever possible), but he also injects his own biases in the translation, like when he purposefully softens the heroes’ harshest lines and instead makes the villains sound more evil

Compare the two versions:

the meaning’s the same, the nuance is different. The fantranslation makes it very easy to see the flaw in Jeanist’s reasoning and recognize that he’s wrong in not seeing Dabi’s victimhood, because there’s a stress on his concern for discretion. He sounds selfish and casual, just how someone who’s brushing off child abuse should sound like. The official translation not only sounds way more demonizing of Dabi’s actions, putting emphasis on how unjustified Dabi’s claims supposedly are, but he also calls him a fiend. If you check the raws here he calls him “ 荼毘め” which just means “damned Dabi”. It’s a simple imprecation that Caleb took as an opportunity to slip in his bias. Nowhere on the text is there a mention of Jeanist calling him a fiend.

Ah, by the way. I’m stating this before someone accuses me of reading too much into it. I’m not making up the fact that Caleb is unsympathetic towards the villains. He freely admitted it himself on more than one occasion.

Just two I can think of off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more. I stopped reading this “notes” when it became clear that he justified a military state that uses child soldiers to kill abuse victims.

Now, I definitely understand not being as incensed as I am about this. For me, this kind of behaviour is unjustified both because he’s the official voice for bnha for the whole western fandom, and as such his opinions are regarded as absolutes, and also because I have a degree in languages & translation and I notice these things and they upset me because that’s my dream job right there, and he’s doing it wrong.

Hey! long time no see! 

I had the pleasure to participate in this year’s Erasermight BigBang, illustrating two scenes for my ever so patient partner SerasKucheki and their wonderful fic Rewrite the Stars. I strongly encourage everyone to check it out!