There is no such thing as “objective translations”, but even if there was viz’ wouldn’t be an example. Their history of over Americanisation of texts aside, there have been clear times where text has been deliberately altered and original intent has been consequently skewed.

It is such a joke that people who are fluent in japanese will sit here and make tweets defending blatant mistranslations because they think there’s something wrong with criticism.

This isn’t about the fact that things aren’t being literally translated, don’t act as if it is. That’s impossible, and making sure things can be correctly understood in another language despite that fact is a crucial part of translating.

But that does not mean you don’t have to preserve the original intent of the text. It just means you have to be more careful with it, and think harder. Taking creative liberties is fine and is what any translator does lol...as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of that fact.

This is, again, the problem with not including things like translators notes. You are translating so that an audience outside of what the original text was created for can understand it.

Said audience is therefore a guest, and the translation should pay respect to the original work. Because of the aforementioned fact that you cannot translate things literally from one language to another 100% of the time, and because often times the audiences come—

—from two different cultures, things like T/N’s are therefore necessary. The lack of them has been a persistent and very glaring problem with Viz’ translations, and this extends to Haikyuu.

It is not fair to paint fan translations with the same brush because there may be “biases” in what is being translated. Before the ‘official’ translation was widespread and accessible, many people (myself included) read fan translations.

In fact, fan translations were a necessity before viz took haikyuu localisation under its wing in June of 2016. I was into haikyuu before that, and so were a lot of other people.

And regardless, as I’ve already said in the first tweet, “objective” translations do not exist. I also have seen countless examples of fan translations being better* than Viz’ translations of the text.
*more true to the source (in a coherent manner of course)

It has been a relatively recent development that viz’ translations have started being the ‘norm’ for reading haikyuu for a lot of people, and because of that there have been some chapters that until recently I hadn’t seen the viz translation of.

These were really “what the hell” moments for me, because some translations completely changed what the original text said, even ones that wouldn’t require T/Ns. Asides from that, there were also the more common ‘weird’ parts that I just..didn’t get.

I acknowledge a number of things.
1) that I’m white, and Japanese is also not my native language. I am still learning it.
2) that translating is hard, and everyone’s translations of text will be different.
I have made this as transparent as I can when talking abt this topic, but—

—I apologise if I’ve ever not been clear enough. But this brings me onto the ultimate point that I really want to convey with this thread.

To me, translating is a delicate task. It’s one that must be done with care and respect towards the original text. Alongside that, translating works best when you do it with others.

This gives a number of benefits such as saving time and reducing individual effort of course, but in relation to my two points above ^^, it helps you to both understand other people’s interpretations of the text that may be different to yours,—

—*and* (and I think this is the most important part when talking abt translation of manga or similar texts in general) it helps you, if you are not someone that is from the place that the series was created in, understand things that you otherwise wouldn’t.

This was all I really wanted to say with this, but something I saw made me mad enough to make it (lol).