Light Novel Prose and Translations

Light novels have been a source of conversation among the PulpRev this summer, and not always for the best. Even as one of the most enthusiastic advocates for these foreign descendants of pulp, I have to admit that most don't aspire to the literary heights of a Bakemonogatari. In truth, all too many are shovelware, and the prose shows. But many middle quality stories and way too many aspiring literary light novels are just as painful to read.

I've read a couple dozen light novels this summer, with most placing a damper on my enthusiasm for the medium.  From a prose perspective, reading light novels has been an exercise in what doesn't work in English rather than examples of good writing.

I've suspected for a while that Japanese translation, while recovering from a love of 2000s animu jargon, still remains on the sentence level. And something this simple affects the reading experience. For instance, several years ago, I considered editing a fan translation of A Certain Magical Index, but quickly decided against it as the English version was functionally unreadable. Worse than George Lucas's "You can write this, but no one would say this." It lacked any semblance of flow of ideas or language. Yen Press's recent release of the same title, however, is readable as an English work. So I'm a bit more sensitive to the effect a translation has on a story. And regardless of the translator, I'm seeing the same issues.

It is way too common to find long stretches of tagless dialogue--and I already know the tricks used there to keep track of characters in the original language, da ze. But I'm also seeing what might be called deconstructed paragraphs, where the thoughts that would be one English paragraph are spread out among many. And I see the same issues in the most formulaic isekai as I do in the more literary occult detective stories. Something is being lost in translation.

To reinforce this, let's turn to the author's comments at the end of Invaders of the Rokujouma #9, by Takehaya.

While working on this volume, I had something on my mind. And that was regarding translation. As of writing this, there are two foreign versions of Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, a Taiwanese version and a Korean version. There’s been talk of a third one, but these were the two I was thinking of. 

In Japanese, we can distinguish the characters based on how they refer to themselves. Here’s a list of how it generally works out.

Ore = Koutarou
Atashi = Sanae
Warawa = Theia
Watashi = Yurika
Waga = Kiriha
Watakushi = Ruth
Oira = The Haniwas

On top of this, the characters can be differentiated by what they’re saying and their tone. When it’s all taken together, dialogue tags to label the speaker aren’t necessary.  

But a question popped into my mind the other day. How would this work in another language? Take English, for example. In English, all subjects refer to themselves as “I.” As a result, Sanae, the haniwas, and everyone else would all talk about themselves the same way. It would be impossible to distinguish them based on pronouns.  

Moreover, there aren’t as many linguistic distinctions between genders and social groups as there are in Japanese. While that kind of thing could be conveyed through body language and such in person, it’s much harder to do with just words. I think that’s one of the reasons people speak using such colorful language in English novels.  

But this isn’t about which language is superior. It’s just a difference in how we communicate. To someone who speaks English, Japanese must look like an incredibly inefficient language, trying to convey everything through words rather than using expressions and body language.

Takehaya. Invaders of the Rokujouma!?: Volume 9 (Kindle Locations 2363-2376). J-Novel Club. Kindle Edition. 

The emphases are mine. Here we see Takehaya understand a fundamental difference between Japanese and English; that one language can freely avoid the dialogue tags the other so desperately needs. Translation at the sentence level misses this, while an idea or a composition level translation would be more sensitive to what is required for an English speaker to understand the ideas.

Now, a proper idea translation isn't going to turn In Another World with My Smartphone into the Divine Comedy--or even Harry Potter or the Destroyer. However, if it is acceptable for scholars to write prose translations of the epic poetry of Dante, it should also be acceptable to put the occasional "he said/she said/I said" into the dialogue and reorder sentences and paragraph for better readability in English.

Until readability is a consideration in Japanese translation, light novels will continue to be negative examples for grammar and paragraph structure.