I’ve translated two lines of dialogue in fiction from Japanese to English, which is my favourite hobby. Female Mechanic: Those who work in the commercial district have it easy, surrounded by glamour and glitz, while we mechanics are covered in dirt and dust!
{I want to effectively contrast the two groups of people – and rather comically, I might add.} Concerned Big Brother: My brother has up and joined the military. He was always just an average office worker, though. I hope he can hack it in such a demanding job.
{I’m wondering how to most smoothly connect the sentences.}
The translation is good enough, I think. It doesn’t stand out as awkward.
Here’s my slightly less formal take:
Female Mechanic: Commercial district workers have it easy, glamorous and glitzy, while us mechanics are covered in dirt and dust!
Concerned Big Brother: My brother went and joined the military, even though he was always just an average office worker. I hope he can make it in such a demanding job.
Melia Antiqua, I see that you have started 10 threads about English grammar in the past two days. I remind you that the Registration Agreement has the following clause:
In order not to have an excessive number of questions of this kind on the front page of General Questions, I am going to request that for future questions you open a new thread, entitled “Questions on English usage” in our IMHO forum. You should confine all your questions to that single thread.
I can’t imagine mechanics (or anyone else) using the phrasing “those who work in the commercial district” in conversation. “Office workers” or “white collar workers” or “suits” or “business people”…without knowing the context it is hard to offer a more specific alternative.
They’ve got it good downtown. They dress up in their fancy suits, they work in their squeaky-clean offices, they stroll down the block after five to eat at the finest cafes in town and attend the classiest shows. It’s not like that out here. We work for a living, we get our hands dirty.
My brother enlisted last week. He was a C student at best. I hope he’s got what it takes.
Commercial district is not a common expression in American English. If somebody used it to describe an area of their town, I wouldn’t really be sure what kind of businesses were located there. Is it the kind of neighbourhood where you go to consult a corporate law firm, where you go to buy an expensive pair of shoes, where you go to buy a discount stereo, or where you go to buy some bootleg dvd’s?
The parallelism in this sentence doesn’t quite work. You’d never say “Commercial district workers have it glitzy” or “have it glamorous”, so you can’t string the adjectives together after “have it easy”, either. Also, it should be “we mechanics”, not “us mechanics”, unless you’re purposefully going for not-quite correct English. Many native speakers would say “us”, but it’s not correct.
My suggestion (a bit further from the original, but more natural sounding to me): “Office workers are on easy street. They get the glitz and glamor, while we mechanics just get covered in dirt and grime.”
“Glitz and glamor” is almost always in that order in English; it’s rarely “glamor and glitz”.
I also don’t see much of a problem with those translations. The only thing they’re missing is that they don’t capture any kind of regional dialect, or the slang/colloquial terms a real person might use that wouldn’t translate.
As an example, “commercial district” would only be used at a city planning meeting or something. A regular person might say something like “downtown” if we had to find a generic term that’s in general usage, but we’re even more likely to use an actual name that applies to our area. “Main street” maybe or “Fifth and Main” (referring to the intersection of streets).
“SoHo” is a specific place name, but it’s interesting because different cities use it for their own particular locations (examples). In Seattle, we have “SoDo” instead.
Same with “military” and “demanding job” - we’d probably say Army, Navy, etc. and something more descriptive for the job when we’re speaking of a brother. We’d only be so vague if speaking of someone where we don’t know the details. (So the brother’s comment might be “My brother up and joined the Marines. I hope he can hack it as a jarhead.”)
Jarhead is slang for a Marine. You couldn’t use it for any other branch of the military. That’s where being specific can help, and it might not be an option if you’re trying to translate faithfully.
My thoughts on “hack it”: this is not a common expression where I live (Vancouver, Canada) but perfectly understandable. “Cut it” is more common and sounds better to me.
I’ve translated some lines of dialogue in fiction from Japanese into English, which is my great passion.
I’d appreciate any suggestions to express these sentences in more natural-sounding English. Serious-Minded Woman: Excuse me, a copy of the Daily Trimelton, please? I simply can’t start my day without reading it.
Some might see Trimelton as a little too serious for their tastes, but its hard-hitting articles sure do appeal to keen readers like me.
They’re above covering shallow ‘news’ just for the sake of shifting more copies.
I might omit “Daily” unless it’s part of the paper’s actual title, which the next sentence suggests it isn’t.
If these are three items put together as a monologue, seeming addressed to a newspaper vendor, I would eliminate the second two blurbs altogether. People generally don’t attempt to justify the incidentals they’re buying to the people they’re buying them from. And ending a sentence with a preposition is bad!
If the second to bit are addressed to other people for other reasons, well then …
Is Trimelton a newspaper? If so, I’m doubtful people would express an opinion that it’s too serious. Newspapers are supposed to be serious. Rather, I would express an opinion like “it’s more hard hitting than the others.” Also,get rid of “keen” – actually, this is where I would use the word “serious.”
Substitute “fluff” or “celebrity news” for “shallow.” “Shifting” should be “selling,”, or perhaps “pandering to a lower class of readers” as the whole second part of the sentence.
Good point. What is your philosophy on translation? Are you primarily interested in getting as close to a word-for-word translation as you can, or are you more interested in identifying the fundamental points and expressing those points in fluent English?
Perhaps you could phrase “Those who work in the commercial district have it easy” as “Downtown office workers have it easy” or “White collar people have it easy.”
Now that you mention it, “fluff” does sound like the exact right word here. Thanks!
As for “keen”, I was wavering between “keen readers”, “avid readers”, and “serious readers”. I didn’t go for “serious readers”, as the preceding clause already used “serious”, though in a different sense.
