how translation in anime is done
recap of 🌸 sakura con 🌸
👂 community questions
reader casey asked (paraphrased):
how do you know when to pronounce ‘u’ in japanese? for ex, in desu and masu ‘u’ is silent, however in names such as sasuke or sakura you clearly pronounce ‘u.’ why is ‘u’ pronounced in the jun togawa’s song ‘suki suki daisuki’ when usually it is silent?
thank you, casey, for the question! this is a great question and touches on what i would consider a key milestone to making your japanese pronunciation sound more natural and more like a native. :)
technically you could say ‘u’ is always pronounced (aka ‘voiced,’ you can feel the vibration in your vocal chords). however, when spoken at a faster / native speed, ‘u’ can become almost silent (aka ‘devoiced,’ it’s a sound solely made with your mouth and you won’t feel a vibration in your vocal chords).
tl;dr ‘u’ becomes silent when:
in desu and masu
in between voiceless consonants (k, s, sh, t, ch, ts, h, f, p)
for example:
学生 (meaning: student)
がくせい
ga ku se i
‘k’ and ‘s’ are voiceless consonants so when gakusei pronounced at a native speed, the ‘u’ becomes almost silent.
in terms of ‘suki,’ this is an example of the pronunciation being exaggerated (because it’s in a song) and also because it’s not being spoken at a natural speed.
i strongly recommend this video to learn more about devoicing and more natural japanese pronounciation! 😄
you can always comment or hit reply any questions you have about learning japanese. :)
🌸 sakura con recap 🌸
last weekend i attended sakura con! it was my first time ever attending an anime convention. 😮
the highlight of sakura con for me was katrina leonoudakis’s talk about translation in anime.
today I want to share with you some of my favorite learnings from her talk. ❤️🔥
🧠 translation in anime
one of the key themes i talk about on my tiktok is when subtitles don’t quite match what’s being said in japanese and what we might be missing. i feel like my brain grew 20 iq points from katrina’ talk. 🤯 katrina explained that what we’re experiencing is:
the goal of translation in anime is to give you an equivalent experience to japanese viewers.
this is achieved by writing dialogue that sounds natural in the target language (ex. english).
🤔 so how do you make a good translation?
japanese grammar, structure, and culture is incredibly different than english. to make a translation sound natural, translators like katrina use the technique of deverbalization to derive what’s really being said, then reformulating the content into the target language.
an example:
“just as i’d expect of a maou i chose” is a bit wordy in english even though it matches the original japanese sentence more closely. to give an equivalent experience as an english viewer, the subs may be changed to “i knew i picked the right maou.”
find more from katrina by following her on x (formerly twitter), her website, and checking out her entire presentation slides!
📚 community & learning resources
japan society of new york offers virtual and in-person classes across a variety of topics and levels of japanese! i took the onomatopoeia workshop last year and enjoyed it!
japan cultural & community center of washington provides many cultural community events to the local seattle area.
[intermediate / advanced] gambling scandal aside, ohtani shohei’s translator (mizuhara ippei) is a really impressive live translator. you can watch a breakdown of his translations here.
🥰💞❤️🔥💖 thank you for reading, bestie!!
feedback is always welcomed! smash that reply button and tell me what you’d love to see more of! :)
❓send me any questions you want me to answer!
if you have questions about linguistics, translation, learning japanese, culture, etc - send them my way and i’ll answer them in an upcoming issue! :D
i made a typo in the community question at the beginning! it should say "why is the 'u' not pronounced in names such as 'sasuke' but it is pronounced in names such as 'sakura'?"
thanks for reading and sending in your q's :))