初めまして！よろスく

どうも、初めまして！本日から私の勝手なつぶやきをブログに書きとめたいと思い、このブログを立ち上げました。日本語と英語を交互に書きますので、多少の語学又は翻訳の参考になれば幸いです。よろしくお願いします！さて、記念する第１回目のカキコは単純なグチです…（すみません！）

マンガを英訳する際、けっこう困ってしまうのは、擬音です！特に、英語に存在しない擬音なんてもう最悪。「しーん」「ドキ」「わくわく」「ツッコミ」「ぎく」など。あうー。どうしても説明文になってしまいますね、こーゆーのは。それか、音をそのまま適当なアルファベットに並べられますが、その場合、擬音の本当の「意味」が読者に伝わらないかもしれない。例えば、モノが滑る音「ずざざざー」と「スルー」。英語ではどうあがいても「SKRRRSH」や「SLIDE」と、味気ない音に変身してしまいます。日本語では明らかに物の重さと抵抗の違いが分かるのに、英語では絵と一緒に見ないとそれが分からない。

…それがとてももどかしい今日この頃です。

Hiya! Nice to meet you!
Hi there! I decided to start this blog to capture my random thoughts. I'll write stuff in both English and Japanese, in hopes that it'll help with language studies or translation. Thanks! Well, my first entry is just a simple rant... (sorry!)

When I translate manga, one of the common headaches I run into are onomatopoeia! Especially sounds that simply don't exist in English. "sheen" "doki" "waku waku" "tsukkomi" "giku" etc... Arrrgh. Some of them turn into explanations of the sound effect. Either that, or I could romanize the sound, but sometimes the readers might not comprehend what sort of sound the random jumble of letters is conveying. Let's take the sound of something sliding, "zuzazazaah" and "suruu." I could translate it into "SKRRRSH" or "SLIDE" - which are too vague with regards to meaning. In Japanese, you could sense the density/weight of the object and amount of resistance just by reading the words, but in English, you have to look at the image to get a better understanding of the sound effect.

...It's a constant struggle that frustrates me to no end these days.

(Note: "zuzazazaah" is a sliding sound of an object that's heavy and/or has high resistance [eg. a person sliding down a gravel slope], and "suruu" is a sliding sound of an object that's light and/or has little to no resistance [eg. penguin belly sliding on ice].)