The English Is Fine: Defending BA's Translation from Undue Criticism (In This One Specific Instance)
I already submitted this as a comment in another post, but the post itself is getting old and it was already seen by a lot of people, so I thought I'd submit it as a separate post so more people can see. Hopefully this doesn't count as spamming.
Now, before I begin, I do want to make it clear that I am not defending BA's translation quality in general. As a Korean to English translator myself who is growing more and more frustrated with the seemingly industry-wide indifference toward translation quality among Korean video game publishers and developers, I'm more than happy to see BA, or any other game for that matter, get called out for their less-than-stellar translations. I just believe that this specific instance is not one of them.
The translation in question is the following:
(You can find screenshots in other languages in OP's post linked above)
KO: 네! 우리들의 집이자, 우리들의 이야기가 시작되는 곳으로!
JA: はい！私達の帰る場所であり、私達の物語が始まる場所ーBlue Archiveに！
EN: Yes, we're on our way to our home, where our story begins!
The Japanese text explicitly title drops "Blue Archive", but the title drop is conspicuously missing from the English translation. The OP that I'm responding to points this out as a significant translation error. I, however, disagree.
But before I go into my argument, I want to clarify that I'm not trying to call out OP. BA's translation team seems to have lost faith among the EN community, and that's on them. I just have reason to believe that the choices they've made w/ regards this particular line are valid, and I just wanted to pitch in my two cents in hopes that I can improve the feedback BA's translators receive from the community.
My argument is as follows:
- The phrase "our story" used in the English translation is in itself an implicit title drop
- Assuming the original text is Korean, the Japanese translation is the one with the discrepancy, not English
And to expand on my argument, here are my original comments, mostly copied and pasted from the OP, with some edits:
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My explanation might be a bit convoluted, but an explicit reveal of what "Blue Archive" is supposed to mean appears at the end of Hifumi's speech in Vol. 3 Ch. 2:
ですから、今から始めます！
私達の物語を！
学園と青春の物語を！
NB: This is based off of the VO in the Korean version which is still in Japanese but different from the Japanese voiceover, interestingly enough (not sure about EN). But the important part is the part in bold and it's the same in both versions. Link to video comparison
So the part to note is "seishun no monogatari", i.e. "story of [our] youth". And since "seishun" is spelled with the characters for "blue" and "spring" (and hence "aoharu", the title of that one BGM, you know the one), the word/color "blue" is often times associated with "youth". If you're into manga or anime you may have noticed the word "blue" often featured in titles revolving around schools or students; this is the reason why.
So the intended meaning of "Blue Archive" is the collection of stories (i.e. archive) of youth (i.e. blue). And they pretty much drive the nails in that coffin at the end of Hifumi's speech by splashing "Blue Archive" in furigana above the text "私達の、青春の物語を！！"(JP ver.) / "학원과 청춘의 이야기를!" (KR ver.). And since "story of youth" refers to Blue Archive, we can also infer that "our story", when spoken by a student (who is young, presumably), also refers to "Blue Archive" via some analogue of the transitive property.
So, to reiterate, the phrase "our story" is in itself an implicit title drop.
Also worthy of note, Hifumi doesn't actually speak the words "Blue Archive" in her speech. The text "Blue Archive" is only displayed in furigana above her spoken words to assign additional meaning to what she says, an effect that you see quite often in video games and manga.
And here, in Korean, the main text says "우리들의 이야기가" (i.e. our story) and "Blue Archive" is displayed as furigana on top. Since Korean does not use superscribed pronunciation guides (i.e. furigana), any usage of such notation is going to be for the purpose of assigning additional meaning. Which is to say, if they were to VO this line in Korean as-is, they wouldn't say the words "Blue Archive". Or, in other words:
Assuming that they are translating from the original Korean, the translation of the main body of the text to English here is accurate. Given the original Korean text, the real discrepancy here is in Japanese, not English, in that it brings out the furigana into the main body of the text.
As for the question of how to then express "Blue Archive" in English, I'm guessing the English translators chose not to use furigana altogether in their translations as part of their style, thinking that it might look messy in combination with the Latin script (a valid choice imo—even its usage in Korean is very unorthodox). In this scenario, they would have had three options:
- Break style and use furigana in this one specific instance
- Shoehorn in "Blue Archive" and risk bogging down and throwing off the flow of the dialogue, even though there's another critical title drop coming up in the screen right after this one (whatever they put in this line needs to flow smoothly into "Where all miracles begin.")
- Drop the furigana altogether and hope that people who are fluent enough in Japanese to have read the different Japanese version would be able to pick up on the "our story" -> "Blue Archive" connection
They went with option 3, and I, for one, agree with their decision—a savvy reader should be able to read between the lines here when reading both the JP and EN versions. Blue Archive's translators have made plenty of mistakes, for sure, enough so that I personally play the game in Korean so I don't have to deal with them, but this imo is not one of them.
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Replying to my own comment, but maybe if they were to incorporate the phrase "Blue Archive" without negatively affecting the flow, they could have done something like the following:
Arona: Yes! We're going home, to the place where our stories begin!
Arona: Come with me—
Cutscene: —to Blue Archive, where all miracles begin!
Also, I just want to make clear that I'm not defending the general quality of Blue Archive's translation. I'm only saying that in this one specific instance, their translation wasn't inaccurate (although upon second inspection the phrase "on our way to our home" as opposed to "on our way home" seems a bit unnatural; while very minor, this stands out to me as a fluency issue) and that they shouldn't be beholden to discrepancies in Japanese when they're translating from Korean.
Edit: Linebreak issues