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Why do translators do this?
(hexbear.net)
Just write bad 
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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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Tbf I enjoy it. Dumb translator notes are deeply unprofessional, and therefore a sign that they're being done for the enjoyment of it. They're bad but they're kinda cozy in their own way.
That's probably partly why they do it.
In this instance though, if the original author had just wanted to say bad, they would have put {悪い|warui}. {やばい|yabai} is colloquial/slang and has some different meanings:
If anything what's lazy is not the untranslated word, but the TN just saying "bad"
This is an excellent point regarding translation. Often, so much is lost simply because it would take too long to fully explain the cultural details of how to interpret a word choice.
A good translator can bridge the gap while still keeping the dialogue natural (some of the nuance gets lost nbd), but that brings us back to Shaleesh's comment lol
On that note, I've been reading through an English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front, and it tries to bridge the gap by swapping out German slang from the time for rough English equivalents.
Only it was translated in the 80's, so the people who translated it are operating on, like, media portrayals of ww1 British slang and laying it on way too thick.
It makes for an incredibly weird tone 'cos you have all these German farmers talking like overly stereotypical tommies, asking doctors if their injuries are "blighty ones", etc.
That's nuts