Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Burai: Speaking of translator microbe breakdown ... is "allaku" an ad hoc hypothetical case, or an actual example/reference to a real instance? If it's the latter, citing the source might be less confusing. (Maybe I'm just painfully under-read, but FWIW a Google search gives me nothing in English :-( .)

Lale: What about names and titles entirely in English that are still redundant? (i.e. "Unsolved Mysteries"- well, if they were solved, they wouldn't be mysteries!)

Seth: That was a made up example that someone posted on the YKTTW.

Ununnilium: Actually, it's a real example, from the Sandman Mystery Theater: Sleep of Reason comic, which inspired me to start the YKTTW.

Seth: Then google has failed me

Morgan Wick: Google works only if it's been put on the web and can be easily hunted out by a crawler. It generally doesn't really work on words that appear on images, so anything that would be just a GIF wouldn't work unless it was transcribed. In other words, Google was doomed from the start, not only for comics but also for virtually all media except webcomics, select daily printed comic strips, short stories published online, and non-graphic books that have been reposted online. Though Google is working on the other stuff, judging from their numerous side searching projects.

Ununnilium: Well, to be fair, Google is for searching the web, not random other stuff. ...except as far as their "search random other stuff" projects go, which admittedly is pretty far. ...I'll stop talking now.

Morgan Wick: You basically just repeated what I said in a much shorter form.

Paul A: I don't doubt that Dracula has a bunch of examples, but the quoted extract isn't actually one. The people talking aren't doing what the trope says, they're just talking in their own language with the narrator inserting translations at appropriate points.

Seth: But the effect is much the same.

Malimar: The tendency in children's educational television such as Sesame Street to use a Spanish word, then the same word in English, in order to attempt to teach children Spanish: Does this count?

I added it whether it does or not.

Skarmory The PG: I'd add an "actually..." for this one, so here it goes.

Ditto in Escape Velocity: Nova, where several of the storylines gave the player the name "Ory'Hara". (Including, somehow, a random-name generator. Of a group that had nothing to do with the group(s) for whom the word has meaning). Only in some was the player informed that it actually meant anything.

As far as my few playthroughs through the game have told me, the italicised part isn't true. Ory'hara comes up in three of the six major storylines, Vell-Os, Polaris and Rebel. If I recall correctly, to the first two Ory'hara is a prophesied hero who leads them to ascendance, with the caveat that it means "outsider" to the Polaris (who the player isn't born a member of). In the rebel storyline, Ory'hara is something the name generator spits out for your codename, and the name gains you some clout with the Polaris once you visit them on a diplomatic mission later in the storyline. The epilogue (after you in a roundabout way help the Vell-Os ascend) describes that there was another Ory'hara during a future great conflict, and another in yet another great conflict. It isn't until all of humanity ascends that they understand the true meaning of Ory'hara, and telepathically inscribe the name into every artifact they leave behind, leaving far future alien archaeologists very puzzled.

Sweet lord I need a better spellchecker.

Ununnilium:

He Who Pours Without Foam!
- He Whose Fruit-Like Soul is Tempered to a Soft Consistency!
Hebrew? This troper thought the Fremen of Arrakis were culturally Arabian, not Jewish??
Kwisatz Haderach is a Bene Gesserit thing, not a Fremen one.
This troper would like to note that both Jews and Arabs are, being Semites, culturally and linguistically related.

Conversation In The Main Page.

The Dark Tower. From That Other Wiki: "King created a language for his characters, known as the High Speech. Examples of this language include the phrase Thankee, Sai ("Thank you, Sir/Ma'am."), Dan-Tete ("Little King") and Can-Toi ("Low man/men"). In addition King uses the term Ka which is the approximate equivalent of destiny, or fate, in the fictional language High Speech."

This is in dialogue, not on a reference page.

The Enders Game series divides alien species in raman (friendly) and varelse (hostile).
- Actually it divides them by how possible it is to communicate with them. Ramen and varelse are not inherently peaceful or hostile, but you can work out communication with ramen so it is possible to find a peaceful solution. Varelse are intelligent species where no basis for communication can be found so you may be forced to resort violence. It's actually part of a larger system of categorization with only the lowest level meaning something like the slobbering beast that comes in the night, which is inherently hostile.
The Wheel Of Time books are sprinkled with references to the fictional "Old Tongue," with one group (the Aiel, or "Dedicated") including several words and phrases from it, untranslated, in their dialect (Car'a'Carn: "Chief of Chiefs", and Alcair Dal, or Al'car Dal: "The Golden Bowl" being examples).
- And then, there's Mat, who tends to speak the Old Tongue unintentionally...
The Dunmer in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind use the word n'wah all the time; based on its use and context, it seems to mean something like "infidel" or "enemy".
- According to the Word of God (namely, Michael Kirkbride), "n'wah" means "foreigner" or "outlander."
  - This is a culture which absolutely abhors foreigners, so "infidel" and "enemy" probably work better.
- Other notable Dunmer words include "sera" (gender-neutral term for sir/ma'am), "s'wit" (fairly profane term, basically meaning "scum"), and, perhaps most relevantly, "Nerevarine" (the reincarnation of the Dunmer war hero Nerevar).
- You're also called on to be a "Hortator", which is Latin for "urging speaker".

Are these translated this way in dialogue?

Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me, aka The Movie, cut out the middleman; the barely comprehensible backwards-forwards talk of the denizens of the Black Lodge was subtitled. So when the word garmonbozia came up at the end, it was followed by "(pain and sorrow)." In the subtitles. The character didn't actually translate it.

So not an example.

Jack in Samurai Jack is a subversion. While the name Jack would be familiar to Western audiences the name is totally unfamiliar to him, has no particular meaning and is future slang (for "some guy") in the setting.

Not really a subversion as much as has no connection to the trope at all.

Archived Discussion Main / YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord