Tips for Translating Popular Entertainment Texts

Translators working in the field of popular entertainment can take an important cue from politicians, used car salesmen and journalists… or at least the popular image we have of those kinds of people. 

Stereotypes: 

• • A politician will say anything for a vote. 
• • A used car salesman will say anything to sell a car. 
• • A journalist will write anything to sell a newspaper. 

Underlying Principle:

• ¬ Your message is only as good as the result it brings and it can and should be tweaked to get better results.

The number one rule of translation is: Be faithful to the original; don’t add anything or take anything away. When translating popular entertainment, though, success often depends on bending this rule to the limit, and sometimes – if you’re working closely with the original writer – disregarding it altogether. Your main goal is to sell more merchandise; any changes to achieve that end should be welcome.

Here are three of the many situations where a literary translator has to use a more flexible approach than a technical or legal translator: 

1. 1. Source culture behaviors and conventions that are viewed differently in the target culture 

A woman who walks up to a man who is not her significant other and kisses him on the cheek may not be viewed as unusual in Italy or Puerto Rico, but a woman who does the same in Istanbul or Beijing might receive some unwelcome propositions. Someone who likes a glass of wine with lunch might be viewed as a distinguished and refined person in California, New York and most of Europe, or as someone who lacks self-control and has loose morals in parts of the American South and the Middle East. An overly literal translation might convey something the author didn’t intend or confuse the reader. At the very least you’ll have to give some enlightening background on the custom. In some contexts, it may be necessary to insert a different behavior all together (Japanese > English, “bow” > “handshake”) in order to convey the author’s core message pithily and without distractions.

Even the way a language uses the word “you”, “him” or “her” might be really different from one language and culture to another. Some languages don’t distinguish gender, in other words, no he and she – which speakers of these languages may mix up when speaking English. Other languages go further, distinguishing not only gender but also social relationship, distance from to the speaker and even various levels of age. In some cases, the original language does not provide enough information to produce the translation without consulting the author. Sometimes, it gives you more than what you need, but don’t ignore the possibility of using that information to inform the rest of your translation.

1. 2. Subtle meaning in fictional place and character names 

Sometimes the choice of character or place names is an integral part of an author’s style. Take J. R. R. Tolkien who was so dissatisfied with how the first two translations of Lord of the Rings rendered his character and place names that he wrote a treatise on the subject for future translators to use as a reference. The town Esgaroth, for example, didn’t need to be translated at all since, in the original, it was an untranslated name from a fictitious language. The original Swedish translator, though, apparently thought Mr. Tolkien had the French delicacy in mind and dubbed the town Snigelöv… which, of course, means “snail leavings”. 

Sometimes character and place names are essential to a specific work of literature’s style – the Asterix series by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, for example. Translators of Asterix have taken considerable liberties with the humorous names of the characters… and quite successfully so. For example, the original name for Obelix’s canine companion is “Idéfix” which, if you only know English, means nothing. In French, it gives the notion of someone who is stubborn and hard-headed (idée fixe = set idea). Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge came up with a stunning solution: Dogmatix. With the creation of this name, they preserved the meaning and humor of the original and added a pun, since the character is a dog.

1. 3. Different pop cultural canons

More often than not the source and target cultures often have different pop cultural canons – in other words, different familiar famous people and art. For instance, in a recent Portuguese to English translation, an author wanted to encourage his readers not to give up after a setback and cited Herbert Vianna – a musician who suffered a coma but bounced back and had several post-coma hits – as an example of someone who persevered despite difficulties. I could have gone into a belabored explanation about who Hebert Vianna was to try to get the point across, but a thought occurred to me: Jerry Garcia, a parallel scenario of a musician who bounced back from adversity (in his case a diabetic coma). I was somewhat hesitant to discuss the option with the author since I knew I was on the fringes of my purview as a translator as it was. However, since the author had been such a pleasure to work with up to that point, I moved forward. He said he loved it, thanked me for the contribution and gave me the green light to include it in the translation.

Good translation in the field of popular entertainment, like so many other things, is about knowing what the rules are and knowing when breaking them skillfully is a thing of beauty.