Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26871067-20161019085933/@comment-26871067-20161019232348

Mountaintimber wrote: Citing Viz as fact is disingenuous IF said info differs from what's written in the Japanese original- for that I'm largely opposed to writing Senritsu as "Melody", and even more importantly, renaming Yorkshin as "Yorknew" (blegh). For Senritsu I suppose it could be argued as an alias but that would make more sense if her name was kanji, instead it's just katakana like every other character name and you don't usually translate katakana. While I completely agree 100% on the Senritsu thing (this has admittedly been one of the most unnecessary changes imo), I have to say that Yorkshin's renaming does make a little more sense to me - it's preserving a reference to New York that doesn't translate.

I don't particularly agree with it, the same way I personally use Kujira over Whale re: Kujira Island, but I don't feel the Yorkshin change was as obnoxiously random as Senritsu. What I have always thought on the matter is this - yeah, understanding the origin of the name (or what it means) is relevant to an understanding of the character, but, her name isn't Melody. It's Senritsu - that's what's spoken aloud, that's what's written in the original text.

When it comes to transliterating a character's name, I'm fine with that - that's how we have Freecss instead of Furikusu, or Illumi instead of Irumi. It's an understandable transliteration - when spoken, accounting for the difference between Japanese and English re: sounds used in the languages, the two names sound the same. Some transliterations don't make sense to me (Morau -> Morel? this drove me crazy during the CA arc of the anime, I was sitting there going "Are my ears broken?"), but for the most part they do.

And Crunchyroll in particular feels arbitrary on this - they translate Senritsu, Nanika, and Yorkshin, but have (maybe unfortunately because I think it's hilarious) not given us "Sneaky" instead of Hisoka.

Being a secretive person is a part of Hisoka's character, just like music is a part of Senritsu's, but Viz and Crunchyroll only translated Senritsu's name. Sure, it's probably because "Melody" is a real English name and "Sneaky" sounds ridiculous. Which tells me it was an arbitrary choice - there's no rules for it, which we see in the fact that Viz/Crunchyroll do not maintain this as a standard.

The way I look at it, if you're going to translate one name that's spelled out in katakana based on a word in kanji that's pronounced the same way you gotta do it with the rest. All hail Sneaky Morrow, who skulks at dawn.

I understand the change from Nanika to Something, as this is sort of an element of her character (and the exchange between Silva and Killua re: Nanika's name wouldn't work without some degree of translation), but I also disagree with it.

I don't know what Viz is going to do with the dub regarding that - I'm honestly quite confident that the reason they chose not to translate Nanika's name in the manga is because the manga's font is written in all caps - without the capitalization of the first letter of "Something", there is no way to differentiate (outside of context clues) the word itself from Nanika's name, which can be confusing for readers.

Viz did in the manga what I honestly wish happened more often both in this series and others - they used a translator's note. Confusion as to what the line meant? Bam. Translator's note: "Nanika" means "something". Though it bears repeating - both names are spelled out in katakana, and only their pronunciation gives them a translatable meaning - the katakana itself has no meaning, it's just sounds. The only reason Senritsu is "translatable" is because her name is pronounced the same way the word 旋律  is pronounced. Her name doesn't mean anything, it's just a homophone for something that is a word. Related, Nanika's name isn't spelled 何か (this is more forgivable imo given the context surrounding Nanika's name - it's discussed that it's a homophone with  何か ), and Yorkshin isn't spelled  ヨーク 新.

The fact that this translation practice has apparently gone the way of the dodo has resulted in a lot of changes that I personally feel are unnecessary - you could just use a short t/n and go on with your day, and then your translation matches up with the name actually coming out of a character's mouth. Obviously, others don't share this sentiment, and that's fine. I won't even start to pretend I'm the indisputed authority on translation conventions.

Sometimes things just don't translate well. The priority is making something work in the language you're translating it to. It's best if you're able to preserve the emotion of a line, but sometimes you just can't, and you have to sacrifice that for the sake of a sensible translation.