Translation - Past tense or present tense

I assumed as much. Thank you!

HaipaBoi said:

So many people, including myself, have translated this phrase incorrectly,

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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.

Mike Cash said:

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.

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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.

In 2011, Nintendo released a book called Hyrule Historia, which is like the "Zelda dictionary" basically. However, Dark Horse Comics, Nintendo's official translators for the book, also mistranslated various entries in this dictionary, so many people prefer to follow the original Japanese version of the book.

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.

So yeah, even professionals seemed to have trouble with this. I just decided to go further and ask someone who doesn't know about the story for help.

Thank you. Now I see where the problem comes from.

As has been pointed out, in Japanese the overall tense is dictated by the final verb and there is no final verb in that sentence fragment. 栄え is in a "continuitive" form, which really has no definitive tense. Japanese is fine with that; English is not.

Regarding how to know definitively whether it should be past or present, you have unwittingly answered your own question. If you ever study Japanese and have to ask questions about what x means or how y is used...you will find your questions answered with a question....the SAME question...to the point you'll get sick of it: "What's the context?" Japanese is a highly context-driven language, and also a language which is perfectly happy to drop from sentences parts which are obvious from context.

You can SEE the run-down state of the city and that the ancient civilization no longer flourishes. Context answers your question. People who study Japanese very early on learn to provide adequate context for their questions, as they're going to get asked for it anyway, likely as not, and it just saves the hassle.

HaipaBoi said:

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.

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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).

EDIT:
Another way of interpreting is that 古代 is an adverb, thus, A city in the sky where a civilization flourished in ancient times. A comma is usually put after 古代 （古代、文明が栄え、） in this case, though.

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....

This is VERY interesting, because I learned something similar when studying when to use は and が . Context is very important. 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.

Mike Cash said:

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....

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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.

You and Toritoribe implied that their translations were incorrect, but that's because you both lacked context. So after being told that it was present tense, I came to that conclusion. But again, that's my fault because I left out the context.
However, in the beginning I said "even the original Japanese version seems to be in error.". I never gave a definitive statement.

HaipaBoi said:

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.

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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.

Toritoribe said:

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.

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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.