Why translating "何も言えなかった" as "I couldn't say anything" is usually the worst choice you can make.

A thread about literal translations (1/?)

Japanese is considered a high-context culture, which “reads into... less direct messages with more meaning.” This means that completely literal translations often can’t convey the complex nuances that were originally built into the Japanese source text.

If a literal translation effectively conveys nuance and sounds natural in English, then it’s all right by me. However, many times literal translations strip the source text of the emotion it was trying to make readers feel and end up being the worst thing you can do.

For example, the phrase “何も言えなかった” literally translates to “I couldn’t say anything.” The Japanese phrase might appear when a character is shocked beyond words, too embarrassed to say how they truly feel, nervous and feeling like a cat’s got their tongue, etc.

But try sticking “I couldn’t say anything” into each of the above situations. When paired with another sentence (that infers how the character is feeling), it might work. But alone it may confuse the reader, which means the sentence is not conveying the meaning of the original.

Which means that over-literal translations can, in fact, become unfaithful translations. If the nuance of the source text is not being properly conveyed, then it is not being properly translated. Literal translations are not always loyal translations.

So, what does “I couldn’t say anything” mean anyway? Honestly, not much. If you google the phrase in quotes, you won’t find the phrase by itself. The only page you can find it by itself is here, https://bit.ly/2VjECuv , on a site that literally does one-sentence translations.

You can also find a clip of someone saying it here: https://bit.ly/2DwA4qk . But Tom Cruise’s face describes exactly how I feel about the phrase’s accuracy when written alone.

If “I couldn’t say anything” or “I couldn’t speak” was followed by “words couldn’t express how (emotion) I was,” then okay, it gets the job done. But this is only permissible if the original text is written in a 2-sentence format. Otherwise, I would go with a stronger one-liner.

If a character admits they’re 6 mos pregnant to their boyfriend and his internal dialogue is just “I couldn’t say anything” in English, an editor might find this too weak or unclear ion its own. Other options could be “I was left speechless,” “I was too startled to speak,” etc.

To recap: in some cases, literal translations create stilted, awkward sentences. If readers happen upon unnatural-sounding sentences, they may misinterpret them to mean something that the Japanese author did not intend.

This means that the literal translation now literally means something entirely different, which defeats the whole purpose of creating accurate translations.

For other ways "何も言えなかった" can be translated, one could write “I was speechless,” “I couldn’t tell (person),” or even “I didn’t have the guts to say it” depending on the context... and there are many more options!

The nuances packed into Japanese text CAN be effectively translated! But literal 1:1 translation can’t always accomplish this, and the translated text must be tailored to fit each unique (in my case, fictional) situation. I hope this helps some of you! Let me know what you think.

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