A Not Very Serious Hebrew Translation

[Minister of Gloom]

It's not like I am a very busy person, you see. And I do like translating things from English to Hebrew. I guess I like the challenge, it makes me feel smart. Sometimes I translate short stories, poems, stuff like that. Nothing serious or official, it's not like it's my job or anything. Just for myself, you know? So that I can tell myself I did it.
So, anyway, about an hour ago I said "why the hell not?" and started translating the KS act 1 story scene by scene. I am finished with the third one already, and in a few minuets I believe I'll be done with the fourth. It's difficult, but somehow I expected it to be far more difficult.
Now, I don't really know why I am telling you that. It's not like I can actually present my work to you or something. You won't be able to read it anyway. You won't even be able to pretend to read it(since the Hebrew alphabet is so different from the latin one). And it's not like I'll be able to use any of this in an official Hebrew translation, I really doubt that I have the skill or the willpower to manage such a feat. Not that a Hebrew translation would be of much use to anyone, of course. I am one of about three people in Israel who have any idea that the game exists, and of them I am the only one who doesn't think it is either incredibly creepy or incredibly ridiculous.
But I am doing it anyway. At the very least, I may gain a few points towards improving my "English-Hebrew Translation" skill. Useful a skill as it is. You know, Hebrew has about as much in common with English as Japanese has.
So... yeah. I do that and I guessed I wanted you to know, for some reason. If you are interested, here are a few notes/insights from the process, for now. More notes will probably appear soon.
1. I am also translating the names of scenes, and translating the name of the first one, "Out Cold", was a serious pain in the ass. It's a really beautiful pun, but it just doesn't work in Hebrew. Nothing even close works in Hebrew because Hebrew doesn't really have any phrases or terms that deal with cold or snow or winter. I don't think I need to explain why. Best I could manage so far is the phrase "Sheleg D'eShtakad", which roughly means "Snow from last year". Unlike in the famous French poem, in Hebrew the phrase has a completely different meaning: "Things that are no longer of importance". I think it's interesting.
2. Everything looks positively horrible because the Hebrew language reacts very badly to foreign words. Words like "Katawa" or "Shoujo" or "Hisao". They look very very bad, but I guess there really isn't any way around some of them. By the way, if I ever need to actually translate the term "Katawa Shoujo" to Hebrew, I think I'll go with "Yeladoth P'gumoth", which means "Flawed little girls", or "Broken little girls", or "Defective little girls", and other such lovely things.
3. In many cases, an accurate translation is all but impossible. Some positively beautiful sentences became either mundane or desperately ugly because of that.
4. The linguistic register of it all is very very messed up. One moment Hisao speaks like a literature professor and the other moment he sounds like a six year old boy. You see, you can't just combine different registers in Hebrew. It doesn't work. Either you speak completely "high" Hebrew or completely "low" Hebrew, or it seems really bad. So... I suck, I guess.
5. The doctors and the nurses from the second scene, who are supposed to be "impersonal"? Well, in Hebrew they are sort of like "not human". It's all very disturbing.
6. The word for "hospital bed" is depressingly close to the word "death". I never noticed that before.
7. In some places Hisao feels "numb", but a direct translation won't work here. So he feels "hollow" instead.
8. Some things are supposed to "best" for him, but now they are just "preferable"(because Hebrew doesn't really have superlatives and comparatives like English does)
9. Going to a special school may be a "Step down" for Hisao, but unfortunately for him a term doesn't really exist for that in Hebrew. So he'll have to make do with "It's humiliating".
10. "A person doesn't have to be held back by there disability? That's what a disability is!" has been replaced with something that would be more along the lines of "A person doesn't have to be limited by their disability? That's the meaning of the word!".
11. Now that I think about it, the word for "Disability" in Hebrew is very very very close to the word "lesser" or "inferior".
12. There is only one word in Hebrew("Matzav") which means both "situation" and "condition". Translating the second scene was tons of fun. In the end I just gave up and wherever Hisao says "condition", I say "Matzav Rephoe'y", or "medical situation".
13. Hisao thinks about schools for the disabled and wonders "How are those even like?". In my translation, he says something like "How do they even work?". I am very sorry.
14. Beginning of the third scene. The term "Uncanny Valley". It doesn't have a Hebrew version. In the end I had to make a whole sentence of it. "It's so similar, yet disturbingly different".
15. Mutou's speech, for some reason, is very difficult to translate.
16. The Hebrew word for a male nurse("Akh") also means "brother", and also, interestingly enough, "fireplace".
17. Hebrew, as I have already mentioned, is a bad language for slang. You can't just say something like a casual, easygoing "yeah" without sounding like a complete gangsta. You have to use the rigid, formal "yes". It disturbs me, for some reason.

That's all for now. Back to work, I guess. I will report once I am done with a few more scenes.

Another note(as I translate yet another scene): some scenes have subtle differences depending upon choices made in others. Right now I don't worry about them too much. That's for professionals. Which is what I am not.

[Mirage_GSM]

You know most translations will have the similar problems - not the same problems but similar ones.

English is a language with a lots and lots of figures of speech half of which will be hard to translate to any given language. Also the vast english vocabulary means that any translation will have to make do with approximations.
Don't even try for literal translations. Ask yourself how the character would express himself in your language and go with that.

Currently I'm working on the german translation and one of the problems I've run into is the prevalent use of gerund ("-ing") to fuse several sentences into one. (I've noticed this is especially abundant in Shizune's path, so those scenes are a real bother to translate.) This construction also exists in german, but it sounds old-fashioned and noone - least of all Misha - would use it in casual conversation. So I end up cutting those sentences into two or three bits or rewriting them completely.

Rearding Uncanny Valley, I wouldn't translate that at all. It is a fixed expression for a psycological phenomenon, that has been adopted into several languages including german, meaning there is no german "translation" at all. I don't know about hebrew, but you should be able to find out.

Another note(as I translate yet another scene): some scenes have subtle differences depending upon choices made in others. Right now I don't worry about them too much. That's for professionals. Which is what I am not.

If you're serious about the translating, PM delta for access to the script files.

Good luck and have fun!

[Minister of Gloom]

I don't know about a serious translation. That's a huge responsibility. First I'll see if I can handle this as it is. Thank you very much for all of your advice, though! Misha was driving me nuts, too. I'll try making her speech sound more like Hebrew. It might work.(The Japanese names are still something I can't escape, though. Like calling Shizune "Shicchan". I considered making her call her "Shishi" or something like that that would sound like a Hebrew nickname, but the game still takes place in Japan...)

[Darroth]

1. I am also translating the names of scenes, and translating the name of the first one, "Out Cold", was a serious pain in the ass. It's a really beautiful pun, but it just doesn't work in Hebrew. Nothing even close works in Hebrew because Hebrew doesn't really have any phrases or terms that deal with cold or snow or winter. I don't think I need to explain why. Best I could manage so far is the phrase "Sheleg D'eShtakad", which roughly means "Snow from last year". Unlike in the famous French poem, in Hebrew the phrase has a completely different meaning: "Things that are no longer of importance". I think it's interesting.

There's no loan words for those terms?

5. The doctors and the nurses from the second scene, who are supposed to be "impersonal"? Well, in Hebrew they are sort of like "not human". It's all very disturbing.

Which works. I'd imagine it improves the scene.

[Minister of Gloom]

Finished with day 1 now(this was way longer than I expected). Thank you again for your help, Mirage. You made things far, far easier for me.
Further notes:

1. "the teacher drones". No expression like that in Hebrew, so I make do with "the teacher speaks dryly and boringly".
2. Because of the way Hebrew expression works, it took me two whole sentences to describe Shizune's eyes.
3. A translator's still got to love that girl, though: "...!"
4. Misha speaks like an eight years old. Funny thing is, I think it's actually quiet an accurate translation.
5. "You look just like a Hichan!"="You look like a perfect Hichan!"
6. It was very hard to translate Misha's difficulty with long words. In the end I just added another sentence to make it all clear.
7. Did you know that according to the Hebrew translation, Misha is "naughty"? How kinky!
8. It was very difficult to translate the fact that Misha is "easily distracted". In the end, I came up with "and has a very short attention span."
9. Problem: in Hebrew, every word has a specific gender. So there isn't a word like "nurse". It's either "male nurse" or "female nurse". That's a problem because if everybody refers to him as female, well, that's just weird because they know he isn't, but if everybody refers to him as male then Hisao has no reason to be surprised when he meets him. For now, I am using the female form, but it also makes him sound really, really gay. Not that I am implying anything.
10. The term "Auxiliary Building" just doesn't exist here. In the end, Misha just refers to it as "the small building", which I figured out is how and eight years old would probably call it.
11. You can't mix "capital" and "regular" letters in Hebrew. It just doesn't work that way, these are two different forms of writing. So instead of saying "Oh, you'r THAT Nakai!" the Nurse says "Oh, you are the infamous Nakai!". I think it would be quiet in character for him.
12. In Hebrew, Kenji speaks like a total gangsta, and frankly, it's quite hilarious.

Moving forward to day 2. Long one, this time.

[Mirage_GSM]

9. Problem: in Hebrew, every word has a specific gender. So there isn't a word like "nurse". It's either "male nurse" or "female nurse". That's a problem because if everybody refers to him as female, well, that's just weird because they know he isn't, but if everybody refers to him as male then Hisao has no reason to be surprised when he meets him. For now, I am using the female form, but it also makes him sound really, really gay. Not that I am implying anything.

Mutou could send him to the medical office or something. That way Hisao could still be surprised to meet a male nurse.

11. You can't mix "capital" and "regular" letters in Hebrew. It just doesn't work that way, these are two different forms of writing. So instead of saying "Oh, you'r THAT Nakai!" the Nurse says "Oh, you are the infamous Nakai!". I think it would be quiet in character for him.

Neither can you do that in english - normally. This is just to indicate emphasis with a script that doesn't support italics or bold type. Your solution does also work.

Moving forward to day 2. Long one, this time.

Day one and two are the shortest by far (no branching). I'm currently doing Thursday, and about than half of it is Misha...

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Another note(as I translate yet another scene): some scenes have subtle differences depending upon choices made in others. Right now I don't worry about them too much. That's for professionals. Which is what I am not.

If you're serious about the translating, PM delta for access to the script files.

I think the devs prefer at least 3 people per language - one native speaker fluent in English, one native English fluent in target language, and a proofreader. But they make the rules, they can break them too.

17. Hebrew, as I have already mentioned, is a bad language for slang. You can't just say something like a casual, easygoing "yeah" without sounding like a complete gangsta. You have to use the rigid, formal "yes". It disturbs me, for some reason.

In some cases, could you just have the person nod or something?

As to translation, nobody has responded to this post yet in the Chinese language feedback forum, which seems to be asking about the translation/meaning of the scene title "Nc5xb3" (it's algebraic chess notation, and according to wiki, Chinese uses the same letters for pieces as English, so it should be the same in Chinese, but Hebrew would be "פc5xb3").

The Japanese fan at this blog entry appears to be complimenting the Japanese translation, using a rather tricky example.

As for me, since I only speak English well good, the only thing I've done in my head is try to come up with Anglicized first names of some of the characters:
Lilly stays Lilly
Misha stays Misha; not very common, but known
Emi becomes Emmy (or maybe Amy or Emma)
Rin becomes Lynn
Hanako becomes Hannah?
Shizune is tough; "Suzanne" works, but would perpetuate the incorrect Shi-Zoon pronunciation.
Kenji becomes Ken
Hisao also has no clear Anglicized version; blah, call him Harry. Heart-attack Harry.

[Mirage_GSM]

Translating names is one of the great sins of translations. The story takes place in Japan and there's no reason for all the people there having american names.
There are very few justifications for translating a name. The only example I can think of right now is Tina/Terra in FF VI. The name Tina was chosen in the original version, because it was supposed to sound exotic. Tina doesn't sound very exotic to americans, so they changed the name to Terra. Still debatable but at least a plausible reason.

[Minister of Gloom]

I think the devs prefer at least 3 people per language - one native speaker fluent in English, one native English fluent in target language, and a proofreader. But they make the rules, they can break them too.

That's one of the major reasons I really doubt this is ever going to get official. I don't have the resources(will, time and manpower) for a serious translation. I doubt I even really have the skills. I am hardly fluent in English, and believe it or not, I am also hardly fluent in Hebrew.
Just a test of my skills, for now, nothing more. If some more Israelis suddenly get interested enough in the game for this, then perhaps.
For now, you get amusing translation notes.

[Darroth]

That's one of the major reasons I really doubt this is ever going to get official. I don't have the resources(will, time and manpower) for a serious translation. I doubt I even really have the skills. I am hardly fluent in English, and believe it or not, I am also hardly fluent in Hebrew.
Just a test of my skills, for now, nothing more. If some more Israelis suddenly get interested enough in the game for this, then perhaps.
For now, you get amusing translation notes.

What is your native language, if you don't mind telling me?

Something has always confused me about Israel. As far as I know, the official language is Hebrew. But, a lot of people speak English and Russian. The Arabs speak Arabic and the Ultra-Orthodox think speaking Hebrew is heresy and so speak Yiddish instead.

So, what language do people speak in Israel?

[Caesius]

4. The linguistic register of it all is very very messed up. One moment Hisao speaks like a literature professor and the other moment he sounds like a six year old boy. You see, you can't just combine different registers in Hebrew. It doesn't work. Either you speak completely "high" Hebrew or completely "low" Hebrew, or it seems really bad. So... I suck, I guess.

This reminds me of my posting habits between different Internet forums.

[Minister of Gloom]

That's one of the major reasons I really doubt this is ever going to get official. I don't have the resources(will, time and manpower) for a serious translation. I doubt I even really have the skills. I am hardly fluent in English, and believe it or not, I am also hardly fluent in Hebrew.
Just a test of my skills, for now, nothing more. If some more Israelis suddenly get interested enough in the game for this, then perhaps.
For now, you get amusing translation notes.

What is your native language, if you don't mind telling me?

Something has always confused me about Israel. As far as I know, the official language is Hebrew. But, a lot of people speak English and Russian. The Arabs speak Arabic and the Ultra-Orthodox think speaking Hebrew is heresy and so speak Yiddish instead.

So, what language do people speak in Israel?

Hebrew, and in fact, I speak Hebrew better than most Israelis do, it's just that most Israelis speak very, very bad Hebrew... You see, Hebrew is a fantastically difficult language to learn and master. It was taken to pieces and reconstructed, like, seven times in history, and each reconstruction added even more retarded and obscure grammer laws to a language that is already pretty retarded by today's standards(which isn't surprising, because it was literally invented like five thousand years ago). There probably about five people in the whole world who can speak "perfect" Hebrew, and four of them are probably professors who specialize in it.
Then again, it does feel kind of cool to know that the language I speak with my sister every day is, in fact, very very similar to the language spoken by our ancestors thousands upon thousands of years ago. Things have changed, as I have already said, but it's still similar enough that even four year old kids with only rudimentary knowledge of the language can listen to a reading of the bible(which is always done in ancient Hebrew) and pretty much understand everything.
But we do also have to learn English(because it's just a useful skill), and either French or Arabic(most learn both). And in the last few years, also Russian.

[Minister of Gloom]

Fate has conspired to keep me away from my computer this day, thus preventing me from doing much. Fridays are always busy around here. Only managed one scene by now("Smalltalk"), but I'll keep going a little and see how far I can get.
Notes for now:
1. First and foremost, I don't know what happened to me during the night, but things are far easier now. My writing is flowing much better and much faster and far more naturally. In comparison, the things I wrote yesterday seem very mechanical and low quality.
2. I need to find some way to play around the Hebrew word for "dark", because either Hanako's hair is black or it is associated with evil forces.(and I would like to think it is neither)
3. Shizune's eyes are "magical/enchanting".
4. Instead of owing Misha "candy", Shizune now owes her ice-cream. The word "candy" in Hebrew is a problem here. I need to specify what kind of candy it is, and I just don't know many Japanese candies. If a type of candy is not specified, then "candy" means "a dog treat". While I do find the implication that Shizune feeds Misha dog treats very amusing, I doubt that this was the intention.
5. The first game Misha suggests to play with Hisao is "Rich Man, Poor Man", a card game which(as far as I understand) is quite common in Japan but is virtually unknown in Israel. It gets worse: due to the peculiarities of Hebrew grammer, there is practically no way to even figure that Misha is referring to a card game. It comes out like she is suggesting they actually go and play a game with rich and poor people.
6. Misha's problem with long words yet again makes things difficult. There just aren't that many "long and complicated" words in day-to-day Hebrew, and none of which even remotely fits the situations in which she has problems. And I can't just have her having problems with "normal" words because it makes no sense: she uses other "normal" words all the time.
For now, my solution was to have Shizune actually combine "Hebringlish" in her speech(producing a note from Misha "What does it even mean?..."). I don't think this is a very good solution, though.
7. Misha's description of how paper-football is played sounds hilariously sexual in Hebrew.
8. Instead of "No strings attached", Shizune offers to play Risk with "No tricks, this time."

[Esa94]

2. I need to find some way to play around the Hebrew word for "dark", because either Hanako's hair is black or it is associated with evil forces.(and I would like to think it is neither)

--

7. Misha's description of how paper-football is played sounds hilariously sexual in Hebrew.

For some reason these amuse me

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

1. First and foremost, I don't know what happened to me during the night, but things are far easier now. My writing is flowing much better and much faster and far more naturally. In comparison, the things I wrote yesterday seem very mechanical and low quality.

Don't be afraid to rewrite.

2. I need to find some way to play around the Hebrew word for "dark", because either Hanako's hair is black or it is associated with evil forces.(and I would like to think it is neither)

TVTropes points out that Hanako's hair is purple and she's a shrinking violet. Can you do anything with purple?

5. The first game Misha suggests to play with Hisao is "Rich Man, Poor Man", a card game which(as far as I understand) is quite common in Japan but is virtually unknown in Israel. It gets worse: due to the peculiarities of Hebrew grammer, there is practically no way to even figure that Misha is referring to a card game. It comes out like she is suggesting they actually go and play a game with rich and poor people.

Can it just be a generic phrase meaning to play an unspecified card game? Like "Play cards" in English.

6. Misha's problem with long words yet again makes things difficult. There just aren't that many "long and complicated" words in day-to-day Hebrew, and none of which even remotely fits the situations in which she has problems. And I can't just have her having problems with "normal" words because it makes no sense: she uses other "normal" words all the time.
For now, my solution was to have Shizune actually combine "Hebringlish" in her speech(producing a note from Misha "What does it even mean?..."). I don't think this is a very good solution, though.

My impression of the game is not that Misha as a problem with long words, but that she hesitates when Shizune uses a word that doesn't have a direct sign and has to go to finger spelling, which is slower and harder to decipher, so any uncommon word could take longer to translate.

7. Misha's description of how paper-football is played sounds hilariously sexual in Hebrew.

That sounds ideal.