Don’t -chan Me, Bro! — The Problem With Honorifics in Translation
As I’m sure even the most casual fan of Japanese culture must know, honorifics are a pretty big deal in Japan. So big, in fact, that there are literally dozens of choices for what you can toss at the end of someone’s name, depending on your status status in society, their status in society, your mutual relationship, or some mixture of the three.
Just to list a few:
(source)
- Simple attachment to a name
-chan, -san, -kun, -shi, -sama, -dono (ちゃん, さん, 君, 氏, 様, 殿) - Relational
-fujin, -kika, -sempai (夫人, 貴下, 先輩) - Occupation / Organizational position
-senshu, -bucho, -souri (選手, 部長, 総理)
And this is only a small list. In fact, due to the way that Japanese allows for you to attach a job position to someone’s name (not much unlike saying “President Lincoln” or “Manager Smith”), you could argue that the number of possible honorifics expands into the hundreds, if not beyond.
But we’re not here to talk about the sheer number of honorifics that Japanese will throw your way — no, we’re talking about the problem translators face, and how you can try to deal with these linguistic peculiarities.
Even Google is referred to as sensei!
Translate ‘em!
While it may on the surface seem like the correct, and blatantly obvious, choice to actually translate the darn things, things in life are almost never that easy. Sorry.
More often than not, there’s simply no corresponding word in English. Going back to the list above, -san, -shi, -kun, and -sama would all be translated the same in English — Mr./Ms. would be a good starting point, depending on context.
What about -sensei? Well, this is also not as simple as it sounds. A high school teacher, judo instructor, doctor, lawyer, and manga artist are all called -sensei. Even Google is referred to jokingly as “Google-sensei”! (source)
In context this might be okay sometimes, but if you don’t know the relationship between the two speakers, you’re outta luck.
And -chan? Well, the less we talk about how that gets rendered in translation, the better. One anime I saw many years ago translated every single instance as “my precious.” So within a 22 minute period, you’d be confronted with at least 5–10 “Hey, my precious Taro!” over and over. I don’t think I need to tell you that is not ideal.
Even when you can find an appropriate English word, frankly, it often sounds really unnatural in English. It’s such a prevalent and natural part of Japanese language that it occurs frequently… which starts to break up the proper flow in English conversation.
I’d personally avoid the translation approach for that reason.
Leave ’em in!
So if honorifics are unique to Japanese and carry with them a nuance English can’t capture, just leave ’em in!
… and I can totally see where you’re coming from. Really, I can. In fact, I used to think like you once, many years ago. But — and please hear me out before you start typing up your replies — I’d argue that this is not what we’re paying a translator to do.
Anime, books, manga, and movies are all meant to be enjoyed — not treated like a research project. While many readers may be aficionados in the intricacies of Japanese culture, many more aren’t.
If I broke out a Sato-fujin (married woman, typically upper class), Kawashima-dono (respectful, similar to -sama, but to a lesser degree), or even an exciting kankei-kakui (to all those concerned), how many people would know what that means?
My point here is that by not translating, you’re essentially telling the reader/viewer to “go figure it out yourself.” I may have a degree in Japanese history, but why does someone who wants to enjoy a simple manga need to go through all that?
Even if you’re going to grant that some things can’t be translated, where do we draw the line? If we’re going to keep honorific suffixes, why don’t we keep first-person pronouns, too?
There are a ton of them in Japanese, all with different nuance: watashi, boku, ore, wagahai, jibun, oira, honshoku, toushoku, uchi, or if you’re feeling like being a little more unique, you can even use your own name. And that’s just off the top of my head.
I think we can all admit it’s ridiculous to leave these in rather than I / me / my. It makes it way too confusing once translated.
Work around ‘em!
Last, but not least, is the idea of translating around the honorific. You can probably guess that, by virtue of the fact that I’m writing this last, it’s the strategy I prefer.
What do I mean by working around them?
Well, unless I’m translating a contract or something where 100% true-to-source accuracy matters, I believe in taking the sentence as a whole and determining the character’s “voice” from that. Distill all the individual words down to their meanings, then write the dialogue in a natural way.
Honorifics affect this by informing the translator what the relationship between the two people are.
- 田中さん、ランチを一緒にしようか？(-san)
“Hi Tanaka, do you want to get some lunch?” - 田中くん、ランチを一緒にしようか？ (-kun)
“Wanna grab some lunch, Tanaka?” - 田中ちゃん、ランチを一緒にしようか？ (-chan)
“Let’s do lunch!”
As you can see, the exact same sentence can be translated differently depending on how you take the nuance. In my opinion, this is a far more natural way to express, in English, the nuance of the characters’ relationship than writing:
- “Hi Tanaka-san, do you want to get some lunch?”
- “Hi Tanaka-kun, do you want to get some lunch?”
- “Hi Tanaka-chan, do you want to get some lunch?”
But hey, that’s just me.
Obviously, there’s no right answer to these things, and more often than not it’s going to be a case-by-case call. But, if nothing else, it should make for some interesting food for thought!
Want to see more content like this? Why not check out my other blog, Tuxedo Unmasked, or follow me on social media at @t_unmasked on Twitter and TuxedoUnmasked on Facebook!
