I love making silly videos :3

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

First 2 pics and the last were done at different times, but they're during the same bit. At first it was just gonna be Jayce dealing with that alone and I almost scrapped it, but having Lucy there to help him deal and clean up made me think to maybe keep it anyway! X'D Definitely a sucker for these kind of scenes.

Basically his glamour started wearing out and got a tear and then he was barely able to get away to the public bathroom at a restaurant before it went haywire and broke loose, letting his huge form out fully... Really bad timing. Esp bc they're out with Lucy's parents and meeting them for the first time lol Poor Jayce. They still try to salvage things from here, but it is later into the story when things are getting worse for him and his form with the Dread.

Also in the last pic, Lucy was trying to help and got her forehead cut on one of his spikes trying to get in closer and he demanded to see the damage and inspect it closer, even tho he's clearly got more going on than a scrape atm, but he wants to make sure she's ok!!

Darcy's role in P&P would work for me anyway, but tbh it works for me 10x better because he halfway reverts back to form towards the end of the book.

The first ever experience

It took them only 100000 years to finally get confident enough

Bonus:

prowl has 0 idea what goes on in protoform development these days

(V.S. = vector sigma)

Old art: I wanted to show the whole thing but it’s a mess, so here’s these two idiots without context. (And Breakdown in the background)

dont worry about the stains what matters is he had fun 😁💕🤗

I made this meme days ago but too afraid to post it here because I don't know much about them yet.

Is it true tho..???

I mean, if they look like this… I won’t judge😅🤷🏻‍♀️

Post Lost Light dratchrod scene from a fic I’m working on 😊💖

I keep seeing people redraw this screen shot as Megatron tilting Starscream's face up, and I'm always like. This is from Quest for Survival. Megatron is choking and berating him. I realize what it looks like, but that's not what's happening.

On the other hand, no one ever mentions this moment from The Insecticon Syndrome, which happens right after the Seekers are freed from Bombshell's control:

Some out of context plot points that will be explained at some point.

Woodrow and Charlie are half brothers (different dads)

Mrs. Neededlander threw a brick at a cop

Cody fights a bear

Blades has a daughter (who's dead)

Heatwave lies through his teeth about Cybertronian anatomy

Blurr gets drunk after a sip of high grade

Boulder got thrown through a wall at the academy

Jack commits federal crimes

Hot Shot was Optimus Prime's scout before Bumblebee (later trains Bumblebee)

Mainland first responders refer to Griffin Rock as "Hells Island"

Hightide and Blades both kill members of MECH

Raf gives Bee a spark attack by appearing on Cybertron

Quickshadow has to babysit Swindle and other ex-cons who are on Earth

Medix threw a grenade at Skyquake (and hit)

Speaking of Medix, his Adsero (dad) tortured Blades for 9 human days straight. Family dinners are fun

Kade calls Mayor Luskey an idiot (family friendly terms for now)

Miko explodes a building