As promised, I am working through all of this.

Chapter 10

STYLE OF THE PILLOWS

Manabe: Because I don’t really think we are making music which has no popularity... Because I don’t think we are making music that no one can understand.

Yamanaka: To say “I’m making music for huge enthusiasts”, well I don’t really think that’s the case.

Manabe: Aren’t we standing on the same ground here?

Yamanaka: As for our contemporaries and such, we’re a group of friends. There’s a lot of “Did you sell a lot?” or “Did you break up?” and discussion like that.
Eh, about whether you can or can’t sell, we’re more concerned with other things. I mean, aren’t we a type of band which doesn’t put that high on our priority list?
The sound they are doing helps to instruct us. So what I’m saying is, as a songwriter, how are they different from myself? Why am I not accepted? There used to be a lot of stuff like that.

Manabe: I would see Yamanaka groaning, right, and I’m just like “Eh, do want you want”.

Introducing the pillows’ manager, Miura-san.

Yamanaka: Ahhh! He’s suspicious looking eh?

Manager Kazushiro Miura

Miura: Since it was the heyday of tie-up programs (referring to a 15 second commercial at the end of a program), I was like “if you did a tie up program you could sell like a million copies!”

Manabe: There was this so-called tie up boom going on, it was like to be able to sell you had to do a tie up. It was an era when a 15 second catchy hook (note: hook here refers to the “high point” of a song) was a prerequisite.

Miura: With the member’s thoughts, and in relation my baseless “1 million copies”, without a doubt a sort of gap resulted.

Manabe: We also decided to challenge that didn’t we. But in the end, in reality we didn’t challenge it.

Sasagawa: In terms of music, there were a lot of great songs in the first and second waves. But uh, for me to say this is kind of out of my place but, in terms of business, we weren’t extraordinarily blessed during the second and first waves.

Yamanaka: Anyways, the end of the second wave was both the best and the worst of times, in terms of the band’s health.

Miura: Really, around that time I think the members were probably bitter, and I was also really bitter.

Satou: We did a live in Iwate. Exactly around the time of the end of the second wave.
The head of the office was like “this is not good”, and expressly established meetings.

Kadoike: There were just too many various things going on, and we just didn’t know what to decide to do. Those kinds of things were felt during the lives of those times. “Now, there should be things we have to do. We should once again return to the high school student time, the image we had when the band was made, and try making music”. That kind of thing was discussed. Though I think that’s becoming the pillows rock sound now.

Satou: Well we probably didn’t do it enjoyably in those days, eh. Those kinds of things circulated. Around the end of the second wave was really the bands biggest slump, though it’s a pretty well known story. I think I wonder whether that slump showed up in our lives too. Lives are kind of like being in a dream but, I also feel like we were not wasting our energy.

I'll try to start reviewing this weekend... this week has been exhausting. o_o

To make it easy, you don't have to retranslate everything, more so just make sure every line I wrote in english makes sense in english. and if it could be altered to make it sound better, then of course change it. but you should probably change things sparingly because I am trying to keep the translation as literal as possible. It pisses me off when people change things to make it sound better but alter the original lines somewhat.

[quote="zorahk"]I am trying to keep the translation as literal as possible. It pisses me off when people change things to make it sound better but alter the original lines somewhat.[/quote]

Yeah, translations that are edited to make sense and flow naturally are just the worst.

Either way, you did a great job!
I'm so grateful.

[quote="lo-fi boy"][quote="zorahk"]I am trying to keep the translation as literal as possible. It pisses me off when people change things to make it sound better but alter the original lines somewhat.[/quote]

Yeah, translations that are edited to make sense and flow naturally are just the worst.[/quote]

No, you're missing my point entirely. I want these to make sense and flow naturally. What I don't want is to change the meaning to be more convenient for english speakers.

For example, I was watching a clip of this show "Legend of Koizumi" on youtube. Koizumi walks up to Kim jong-Il, and says "待たせたな". This literally means something along the lines of "I made you wait eh" but they translated it as "Let's delegate" because that made more sense to english speakers in the context of the show.

My goal here is not convenience, it is to produce an accurate translation.
My translation as is may be a bit rough and not flow naturally, that's because it hasn't been edited yet. After editing it will flow just fine, but I'm saying I don't want to change it for the sake of convenience if it will reduce accuracy.

[quote="zorahk"][quote="lo-fi boy"][quote="zorahk"]I am trying to keep the translation as literal as possible. It pisses me off when people change things to make it sound better but alter the original lines somewhat.[/quote]

Yeah, translations that are edited to make sense and flow naturally are just the worst.[/quote]

No, you're missing my point entirely. I want these to make sense and flow naturally. What I don't want is to change the meaning to be more convenient for english speakers.

For example, I was watching a clip of this show "Legend of Koizumi" on youtube. Koizumi walks up to Kim jong-Il, and says "待たせたな". This literally means something along the lines of "I made you wait eh" but they translated it as "Let's delegate" because that made more sense to english speakers in the context of the show.

My goal here is not convenience, it is to produce an accurate translation.
My translation as is may be a bit rough and not flow naturally, that's because it hasn't been edited yet. After editing it will flow just fine, but I'm saying I don't want to change it for the sake of convenience if it will reduce accuracy.[/quote]

There's a HUGE difference between translating incorrectly, and altering the translation for the sake of sense and flow. For example, you translated:

"Satou: We did a live in Iwate. Exactly around the time of the end of the second wave."

Well, as far as literal meaning goes, you're probably spot on. However, there is more to "meaning" than literal meaning - in your translation, you do not want to unintentionally express anything that was not expressed in the original. This translation sounds awkward, when in Japanese, it likely did not. A better translation would be:

"Satou: We did a [show] in Iwate - [at] the end of the second wave."

This translation does not change the literal meaning, but improves the flow, similarly to how it was originally expressed. Sometimes a literal translation can even be more misleading and less correct than a more liberal translation.

Good work, by the way, and thanks.

To be honest, that's just nitpicking. Live/show/concert/gig are all equally understandable. I chose to use live because that is what they are saying in the video, even though concert, show, and gig are all equally acceptable words in Japanese. If they said コンサート I would have used concert, for example. I've heard all four of those terms used in Japanese, so it's really kind of irrelevant.

Another thing is, the flow is going to be bad by default because this is not a scripted show. There's a lot of ums, ehs, pauses, irregular sentence breaks, etc, because this is an interview. You changed my translation of that line from two irregular sentences into one complete sentence, when in fact, Satou says it awkwardly as two sentences because he is thinking about it while he is speaking.

"Live" is not a noun in the English language, nor is it even English slang. Like I said, it's perfectly understandable, but it demonstrates an awkwardness that is not apparent in the original Japanese. It changes the "meaning" of what he said; "meaning" encompasses tone, style, etc. In Japanese, "live" may very well be a loanword, and even a noun, but if you're going to make a translation, it is far better style to use "show" or "concert."

Furthermore, my changes were not solely for the purposes of "flow," but rather sense. Surely, Satou did not say something quite as awkward or in poor style as "Exactly around the time of the end of the second wave." However, if you believe the hyphen to be insufficient to mark the pause, then a period could work there as well - but either way, it is still much better style the way I put it.

Of course, as long as we can understand it, what I'm saying [i]is[/i] irrelevant - however, if you want to develop your translation skills for more professional translations, you will heed my words. I am only trying to provide you with constructive criticism.

Meh, I feel authenticity trumps editing for the sake of making it easier to understand. And honestly most of the translations haven't been that hard to interpret in the slightest imo despite they're pretty straight-forward literal translations, if it's that much of a bother for you to do a little bit of thinking to get the jist of what they're saying then oh well.

[quote="The Little Buster"]if it's that much of a bother for you to do a little bit of thinking to get the jist of what they're saying then oh well.[/quote]

umm. "doing a bit of thinking to get the jist of what they're saying" is what everyone's been doin since this came out.

The whole point of translating something is that the viewer doesn't have to do this internal "processing"(especially if the phrasing is awkward); the audience can immediately receive and understand information as if it was in their native language to begin with.

that said, this is really great stuff; I am very excited that someone is continuing this.

[quote="sheerheartattack"]"Live" is not a noun in the English language, nor is it even English slang. Like I said, it's perfectly understandable, but it demonstrates an awkwardness that is not apparent in the original Japanese. It changes the "meaning" of what he said; "meaning" encompasses tone, style, etc. In Japanese, "live" may very well be a loanword, and even a noun, but if you're going to make a translation, it is far better style to use "show" or "concert."

Furthermore, my changes were not solely for the purposes of "flow," but rather sense. Surely, Satou did not say something quite as awkward or in poor style as "Exactly around the time of the end of the second wave." However, if you believe the hyphen to be insufficient to mark the pause, then a period could work there as well - but either way, it is still much better style the way I put it.

Of course, as long as we can understand it, what I'm saying [i]is[/i] irrelevant - however, if you want to develop your translation skills for more professional translations, you will heed my words. I am only trying to provide you with constructive criticism.[/quote]

I know you're only here to help, so I'm not really arguing with what you're saying. What I might do actually is change words like "live", which are loan words but sound awkward by themselves, into something like "live performance".

Again though, everything I have now has not been re-edited for quality. Me and I think Terra will go over it later and smooth everything up so that it's easy to read. For now, what I am posting is my initial translation, I'm just posting them as I go so that you guys can look over them and Terra has access to them to check up.

The remaining chapters should be done in the next day or so.

Let me clarify, particularly to The Little Buster: This is not entirely about being "easier to read." Stephenie Meyer is "easy to read," and like I said, his translations are excellent and perfectly understandable. This is about applying the basic tenets of style, diction, and grammar to translations. If you want to be a mindless translating automaton, then a literal translation is fine. However, if you want to make a professional translation, your job is so much more than providing the literal meaning bereft of style. There is an art to retaining 100% of the literal meaning of a translation, without adding or removing anything, while adhering to the basic rules of style (for example, [url=http://www.bartleby.com/141/]one of the greatest books ever on the topic[/url]) in the English language. A translation requires not only an expertise in the original language, but the translated language as well.

Meh, fair enough.

What Sheer said.

Honestly, it is impossible to make a translation both as literal and natural-sounding as possible- grammatical structures and words simply don't match up one to one between languages.

And zorahk, good translating is 100% about nitpicking and attention to detail - understanding the nuances of words or grammar rules so that you can write a translation that sounds like a fluent speaker said it. But anyway, I'll help with that part and make it smoother.