
Why Mistranslation Matters - akakievich
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/why-mistranslation-matters.html
======
knorker
A documentary I saw years and years ago would say that this article is not
being honest about the Japan memo.

The documentary said that Japan used a super-obscure word, and that there was
a team of translators digging through books who eventually told the president
that Japan it means that Japan is both responding and not responding. They're
giving a "NULL" answer.

In other words it wasn't the words that were mistranslated, but that Japan was
using something that doesn't fully translate _culturally_.

E.g. apparently in Japan if you do something unusual while on the train then
you may find that everyone around you is suddenly "asleep". They're so
embarrassed for you for violating a minor cultural norm that the easiest way
to make this better is to pretend to be asleep and that they didn't see it. (I
guess I never made such mistakes while there)

If you've worked with people from other countries you may know similar things.
Like in some countries they say yes to everything. They can't deliver some of
the things, but it would be rude to say no.

Back on topic: In the end Japan did not answer in time, and "surrender or get
bombed, we will end this war now" ultimatum doesn't give room for "No comment.
We need more time".

Japan didn't say "we surrender". They didn't say "we don't surrender". Not
literally. It's more comparable to "Yeah we definitely should hang out some
time!". It's not the words that matter there. It's the meaning. And the
meaning was unclear. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while people were
dying every day.

~~~
coldtea
> _Japan didn 't say "we surrender". They didn't say "we don't surrender". Not
> literally. It's more comparable to "Yeah we definitely should hang out some
> time!". It's not the words that matter there. It's the meaning. And the
> meaning was unclear. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while people were
> dying every day._

And that was, to the US, unacceptable while the USSR was closing in on Japan
from the other side, and they had two perfectly good bombs they wanted to test
and send a clear, post-WWII-era message.

I wouldn't call dropping two nuclear bombs on civilians (men, women, and
children) a concern for the human toll. Not even conventional bombing (which
had gone on for a while) was needed at that point, Japan was giving up the
ghost and just wanted to save some face.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>And that was, to the US, unacceptable while the USSR was closing in on Japan
from the other side, and they had two perfectly good bombs they wanted to test
and send a clear, post-WWII-era message.

The final stages of the Manhattan project hummed along without much political
involvement. Dropping nukes to show the USSR who's boss really wasn't on the
radar of the military (they were preoccupied with the war). Politicians
outside the executive branch were mostly in the dark and Truman wasn't exactly
keeping a close eye on things.

Remember, the alternative in 1945 was more firebombing and an invasion several
months down the line. The Soviets just finished mopping up the problems in
central Europe. They couldn't be counted on to commit their armed forces to
the far east in meaningful quantities. "But the civilians" isn't really a
valid concern when there's a Japanese army running around China committing war
crimes and enemy civilians will commit suicide (or be murdered by their army)
rather than surrender at all. In 1945 you can't justify the alternative
courses of (in)action.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
And the US casualty estimates for that invasion were staggering. In fact, if a
US soldier gets shot in Afghanistan today, the Purple Heart they receive was
created for the invasion of Japan. After Korea. After Vietnam. After Grenada,
and Panama, and Serbia, and Kuwait, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, we're _still_
using Purple Hearts that were made in 1945 to cover the expected casualties
from the invasion of Japan.

About the USSR: The deal was that they were supposed to attack Japan three
months after the surrender of Germany. They did so to the day, on August 8,
1945 - two days after Hiroshima.

You can interpret this two ways. One is that the US wanted to send a message
to the USSR. The other is that the US wasn't sure that the USSR would do what
they said, or wasn't sure that it would be enough if they did. And in fact,
there was a mutiny in Japan to disobey the emperor and keep fighting - even
after both atomic bombs _and_ the USSR attack.

So saying "that was just politics, sending a warning to the USSR" is very much
not warranted, given the situation at the time.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>And the US casualty estimates for that invasion were staggering. In fact, if
a US soldier gets shot in Afghanistan today, the Purple Heart they receive was
created for the invasion of Japan. After Korea. After Vietnam. After Grenada,
and Panama, and Serbia, and Kuwait, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, we're still
using Purple Hearts that were made in 1945 to cover the expected casualties
from the invasion of Japan.

>About the USSR: The deal was that they were supposed to attack Japan three
months after the surrender of Germany. They did so to the day, on August 8,
1945 - two days after Hiroshima.

Citation? Both of those sounds believable but I want to read it somewhere
other than a pseudonymous online comment.

>So saying "that was just politics, sending a warning to the USSR" is very
much not warranted, given the situation at the time.

That's what I'm saying. The political situation with the USSR wasn't even on
the radar of the people managing the bomb program.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Turns out the first quote was a bit off. [https://www.stripes.com/blogs-
archive/the-rumor-doctor/the-r...](https://www.stripes.com/blogs-archive/the-
rumor-doctor/the-rumor-doctor-1.104348/are-purple-hearts-from-1945-still-
being-awarded-1.116756) says that there have been _some_ new Purple Hearts
ordered, but there are still Purple Hearts from WWII in stock, and they are
still being given out.

For the second quote:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War)
(first paragraph under "Summary").

------
docdeek
As a native English speaker living in France, I notice a lot of translations
from English into French as being less-than-accurate. It's most obvious when
journalists are trying to translate live.

The recently concluded Tour de France was a standout example of this as
journalists with responsable English sought to translate what English-speaking
supporters/fans and riders had said. Sometimes it is close enough, but some
commentators and journalists get it really, really wrong - on in particular
(who seems to be rolled out for any sport where the winners are likely to
speak English) is famously bad, sometimes inventing what he WISHED the person
speaking had said rather than something close to what the person actually
said. Good for a chuckle when its not consequential, but potentially
disastrous for more serious matters.

~~~
pouetpouet
not only live events. Even books are sometimes mistranslated. See
[https://www.amazon.fr/Syst%C3%A8me-deux-vitesses-
pens%C3%A9e...](https://www.amazon.fr/Syst%C3%A8me-deux-vitesses-
pens%C3%A9e/product-
reviews/2081211475/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_kywd?showViewpoints=1&filterByStar=one_star&pageNumber=1&filterByKeyword=traduction)

------
laurieg
My hobby is finding translation mistakes in movie subtitles. I'm a native
English speaker and I also speak Japanese.

Essentially every show on Netflix seems to have some lines which are
translating 100% incorrectly. They're not just issues of interpretation, they
are full blown mistakes. Let me give a few of examples:

The West Country (an area in England) was translated as "America" in the
subtitles.

"Boogie board"(a small surfboard-like toy) was translated as "electronic memo
pad"(there is an electronic memo pad with the brand name "Boogie Board").

"Middle of the road" (not good and not bad) was translated literally.

Most of the mistakes I see seem to stem from the fact that the translator
didn't understand the original content. I assume they are an individual
Japanese native speaker, or a team with no English native speakers.

The article also mentions Trump's tweets, one of which triggered a very
strange phenomenon in Japan. The famous "grab her by the pussy" tweet was
deemed "untranslatable" by professional translators and the news repeated as
such. It won't surprise you to learn that Japanese has plenty of words to
describe genitals, both vulgar and not. The translators were essentially
lying. There is a huge gulf between "can't" and "won't".

~~~
jpatokal
Subtitling is really hard even at the best of times, especially when working
off only a script without seeing the program. (This is, incredibly, apparently
common practice, because it's faster.) Not only do you need to translate
faithfully, but you need to mercilessly crunch it down into a few words that
will be understandable if flashes onto the screen for a few seconds.

There's a famous blooper in the Finnish translation of Star Wars where the
phrase "Maybe it's another drill" is rendered as the type of drill that cuts
holes ( _pora_ ), not drill as in exercise ( _harjoitus_ ).

[https://archive.is/3Lyem/bcd9c7ef4efb3ff594bb5dba1d515dc0182...](https://archive.is/3Lyem/bcd9c7ef4efb3ff594bb5dba1d515dc0182deaef.jpg)

~~~
skgoa
It's not just subtitles. The german dubs of both Simpsons and Futurama are
infamous for being extremely literal translations.

~~~
thesimon
Pulp Fiction is probably also a good example for this.

The famous joke

>"Three tomatoes are walking down the street -- a poppa tomato, a momma
tomato, and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa
tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and squishes him... and says,
'Catch up.' "

Instead of "Catch up", they translated "Ketchup".

But as "Ketchup" doesn't sound like the German "Catch up", it sounded like an
anti-joke.

~~~
brusch64
Yeah this joke didn't make any sense in German. The problem I see with this
kind of jokes is that they can't be translated to German.

e.g. another joke like this Did you hear about the country with the fastest
growing capital? It's Ireland - every day it's Dublin.

I can't think of any way how to translate this joke so it would be funny in
German. But I have a feeling that these word play jokes aren't used much in
German speaking countries anyways. Most of the humor is about people acting
different or surprising.

~~~
pluma
As a fellow German: I don't think puns are very popular in German (except for
intentionally cheesy dad jokes).

The closest equivalent I can think of are sentences where the joke lies in
using a different word at the end than the (likely, extremely crass) one the
audience expects. These tend to work better in German than in English because
of the sentence structure, I think.

EDIT: Example of a dad joke pun: "Was sagt ein Sachse auf dem Weihnachtsmarkt
in New York? Ä Tännschen, please." \-- "What does a man from Saxony say at the
Christmas market in New York? A fir, please."

The joke is that "ein Tännchen", "a (small) fir", when pronounced with a
Saxony accent, sounds a bit like the English word "attention". The joke works
because most Germans know the phrase "attention, please" from movies,
vacations and/or multilingual announcements. I believe this particular joke
was invented some time in the 60s or 70s and ceased being funny about two
seconds after, but that wouldn't stop "your dad" from using it.

~~~
brusch64
I think this is pretty universal between languages that puns and double
meanings are hard or impossible to translate.

------
CarVac
As someone who does fan translation of Japanese stuff, I've come to the
conclusion that all non trivial translations are inadequate. Even my own.

There's so much nuance and implied connotation that simply cannot be expressed
across different languages, even if you're lucky enough to have the surface
meanings fit.

~~~
pluma
The problem is that there is never a phrase-by-phrase exact match when
translating. Everything is ambiguous and in order to translate from one
language into another you need to resolve that ambiguity while you're also
adding new ambiguity.

The "I will bury you" example is entirely plausible: it might have been a
fitting translation if the intent was merely to say "We will still exist when
you are long gone" but the connotation is "We will kill you before you can
kill us", which might have been completely lost on the translator (or even
worse: it might be a misunderstanding of the original phrase's intentions
resulting in an intentionally hostile translation).

Really the only way to avoid this problem is to use extremely specific
registers in both languages, but that's rarely feasible outside of legal or
technical documents. And even then the two languages might have slightly
different meanings to some seemingly shared vocabulary translators need to be
aware of.

~~~
randcraw
But depending on context, multiple connotations are possible for every
euphemism. That's part of their charm in a literary context. But in politics
it's the responsibility of the speaker _not_ to be euphemistic, because
deliberately trying to be being misunderstood is always a stupid tactic.

"We will bury you" can mean either a) that we will kill you or b) we will
outlast you. But either way, we will be alive after your death and present at
your burial.

Regardless of which meaning was intended, Khrushchev's decision to bring up
the topic of the death of the entire "first world" at the UN was deliberately
provocative, so it's hardly a mistranslation to conclude that the US and NATO
have just been threatened, no matter how obliquely.

~~~
pluma
My point was that a phrase that might have meanings {A,B,C} when translated
might end up having meanings {A,D,E} (keeping its primary intended meaning A
but also gaining unintended meanings D and E while losing B and C) or, at
best, {A,B} (merely losing the nuance of also meaning C).

There's still a difference between mere provocation ("I will live longer than
you...") and a direct threat ("...because I will kill you first"). The former
could still merely be a statement of confidence (i.e. "our form of government
is more stable and resilient than yours, whereas you're overextending
yourselves and will deplete your resources").

------
DoctorOetker
quote from the article:

 _Nikita Khrushchev’s infamous statement in 1956 — “We will bury you” —
ushered in one of the Cold War’s most dangerous phases, one rife with paranoia
and conviction that both sides were out to destroy the other. But it turns out
that’s not what he said, not in Russian, anyway. Khrushchev’s actual
declaration was “We will outlast you” — prematurely boastful, perhaps, but not
quite the declaration of hostilities most Americans heard, thanks to HIS
interpreter’s mistake.

The response of Kantaro Suzuki, prime minister of Japan, to an Allied
ultimatum in July 1945 — just days before Hiroshima — was conveyed to Harry
Truman as “silent contempt” (“mokusatsu”), when it was actually intended as
“No comment. We need more time.” Japan was not given any._

Whenever I see interpreters on footage of trials or negotiations, I have the
impression the interpreter is a native to the target language, and is there on
authority of his government, i.e. A Soviet interpreter working for Kruchev
translates from english to russian, and a US translator working for USA
translates from russian to english. I could be wrong though, but I always
thought the responsibility of correct translation was placed at the receiver
of information (otherwise, the non-elected interpreter would have the final
word on phrasing a comment!)

The 2 examples of Kruchev, and the failed pre-Hiroshima bomb are phrased in a
way that insinuates the problem to have been at the foreign side!

------
doombolt
"Мы вас похороним" definitely does not sound benign. The problem here is not
mistranslation but choice of Russian words, deliberate or not. Maybe he did
refer to Marx but then again, who cares when being told he's getting a burial?

~~~
Grue3
Yeah, as a native Russian speaker, the translation "we will bury you" seems
correct ("We will be at your funeral" is a more literal translation). "We will
outlast you" would be "Мы вас переживём".

