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So many people, including myself, have translated this phrase incorrectly,
It's from Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda" series. The entire lore of the series is confusing due to incorrect translations by Nintendo of America's localization team. But by following the original intent of the creators, everything is clear and concise.Why are so many blind men gathered around this particular elephant?
I'm curious what it is that makes this so interesting, why so many people who apparently don't know what they're talking about are working on it, why you all thought you'd do better than the professional translator hired to do the official translation....and just why the hell you're doing this at all if an official translation exists.
What's the story?
If you'd like to plug your YouTube channel, no one will mind so long as it isn't all pirated stuff. I think posters from Vietnam have a monopoly on that anyway.
Now I see the "context". Then, the work of the professional translator is not wrong. Grammatically, a temporal adverb かつて should be put before 古代文明, as I wrote previously, but 古代 can be the key to show that the civilization doesn't exist anymore. Besides, the readers must know the context in the first place, like you. So, the correct translation should be A city in the sky where an ancient civilization once flourished, and where the Sky people live (now).The issue with this quote is that, for the first time, even the original Japanese version seems to be in error. This is because in the game, the ancient civilization is NOT flourishing. Even though the Sky people still live there, the city is clearly dilapidated and almost no traces of their civilization can be found there.
So when translating, people either attributed "ancient civilization flourishes" to the sky people (which is what Dark Horse Comics did), or put it in past tense (which is what another 'professional' translator did), or both. But their translations just didn't sit well with me.
Again, not fair lol. I saw the post and I got distracted because of family on Christmas. This tab has actually been open the whole time.And I see by profile time stamps that the OP has come back and presumably has read the last two replies....
I was hoping to hear his feedback regarding them.
If I had started from a point of knowing absolutely jacksquat about Japanese grammar in particular or the Japanese language in general and then self-assuredly arrived at the conclusion I had not only discovered a professional translator's error but also an error in the original Japanese, only to find out what an aśś I had made of myself....I probably wouldn't say anything either.
The blind-men-describing-an-elephant-to-each-other farce kind of falls apart and quits being fun when you invite players who can see....
Not really. The correct interpretation about the tense of the original Japanese clause is the present tense, as I, a native Japanese speaker, initially interpreted. It's not "it isn't needed to know the tense of the verb", but "it's already clearly provided by the final verb 住む", as I explained previously. The author shouldn't make a sentence that can't convey what they want to say correctly, or rather, that spontaneously conveys a meaning different from what they want to say unless the readers revise it by the context which is not mentioned in the article. They need to put an adverbial phrase かつて before 古代文明 or a comma after 古代 if the past tense is what they want to express, as I wrote. I Have to point out that the original Japanese is inaccurate.So to clarify, even though the verb ending (る / た) is missing, it isn't needed to know the tense of the verb. The readers already know the context, so they should know the tense.
Okay yeah, that certainly clarifies it. Thank you guys so much for helping me with the translation, but more so for showing me how fun it is to study Japanese.Not really. The correct interpretation about the tense of the original Japanese clause is the present tense, as I, a native Japanese speaker, initially interpreted. It's not "it isn't needed to know the tense of the verb", but "it's already clearly provided by the final verb 住む", as I explained previously. The author shouldn't make a sentence that can't convey what they want to say correctly, or rather, that spontaneously conveys a meaning different from what they want to say unless the readers revise it by the context which is not mentioned in the article. They need to put an adverbial phrase かつて before 古代文明 or a comma after 古代 if the past tense is what they want to express, as I wrote. I Have to point out that the original Japanese is inaccurate.