Found this one on Yahoo Japan's news thingy. How could i resist clicking on a headline like the one above? I know the translation sucks, this is why i'm not working for a newspaper. And i realise i have fallen into the same "trap" as many others attempting to translate from Japanese to Chinese.Probably because 汉字/漢字 is common to both languages, some subtitlers-who-happen-to-be-fans tend to borrow phrases wholesale from Japanese instead of translating them into their proper equivalents in Chinese. An example from the headline above would be "暴走", which doesn't actually exist in the Chinese language although i noticed it has come into common usage among Chinese-speaking anime fans. The meaning (going berserk, out of hand) could be deduced from context and by putting together the individual meanings of both words in Chinese, but i probably would have failed if i had written "暴走" in my 'O' level Chinese essay.
"声优/声優" doesn't exist in Chinese either, although Chinese Wikipedia would make you think otherwise. When local Chinese newspapers talk about voice actors, they use the term "配音员", which literally means "someone who does voiceovers". I guess they are not really thought of as actors, probably because there is no tradition of high profile voice actors in Chinese television and no animation industry to foster such a tradition. (Fann Wong doesn't count even if she did voice something in Zodiac; the AVA should deploy her voice for culling crows.) Voice actors belong to the backstage crew over here, although their work was a staple on local TV dramas for many years before the stations switched from dubbing to live recording. I seem to have gone off point.
Another example off the top of my head would be "存在感". This is stuck in my mind because of Motteke Sailor Fuku, but that's not the point. My point is, although any Chinese-speaker would instinctively understand the meaning of "存在感", this phrase is very awkward in mandarin. Ok, maybe just awkward where i live, i haven't actually spoken to many people from ROC/PRC/SAR so i can't say for sure.
One instance of such lazy translation that i found really funny was "娘". It means "daughter/girl" in Japanese but "mother" in Chinese. So "猫耳娘" -nekomimi musume- totally cracks me up. At least no one has left “大丈夫” untranslated so far. I would have laughed my ass off otherwise.
Something like "萌" isn't as bad, since there is no real equivalent in Chinese. Even English speaking fans had to import "moe" into their vocabulary; plus i don't think that particular kanji originally meant what it means now among otaku. "萌" actually means "sprout". My theory is that the term came to be because "萌" girls made otaku "sprout" erections.
On a side note, it took me a while to figure out that the phrase "工口" seen on Chinese-language anime forums is not pronounced "gong1 kou3" but "Ero". Now that's a word to describe Ms. Kobayashi's quadriceps.
p.s. If you're interested in details of the news article, i have no idea. I only paid attention to the photo.
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