Thread by @GodanoMarco, One seldom discussed thing that I believe is crucial to a good [...]

One seldom discussed thing that I believe is crucial to a good translation is the contrast between how different characters speak. This is especially difficult to get right when translating from Japanese, which has lots of shorthand for distinguishing speakers. (1/13)

In general, a character's speech in Japanese is (mainly) defined by three characteristics
1. Their first person pronoun
2. The level of politeness they use for verbs
3. The 語尾 (gobi), small sounds that are added to the end of a sentence that carry no intrinsic meaning. (2/13)

#1 is the most obvious:
俺様 is a narcissistic man, わたくし is a well-to-do lady, 儂 is an old man, and so on.
#2 depends on whom they're talking to, but generally a more polite/educated character will use a higher level of politeness.
#3 is similar to the pronoun one, (3/13)

for example わよ for very feminine characters, ぞ for very masculine/rude ones, etc.
(obviously they all have exceptions)
Now take these two sentences:
「わたくしはパンにしますわよ」
「俺はパンにするぜ」
They both mean the same thing: "I'm going to eat bread."(4/13)

The problem is that a Japanese reader can easily tell that the first sentence was uttered by a woman (probably a rich/noble one) while the latter by a (probably young) man.
When we translate this, of course, we want that characterization to come across.(5/13)

For example, you could have them say
"Why, I shall have bread." and "I'm gonna grab some bread."
The issue here is that whereas all that shorthand is used in everyday Japanese, people don't normally go around saying "I reckon bread would be marvelous indeed" and such.(6/13)

So you lose any subtlety. But if you try to make everything too natural, you lose all characterization. That balance can be very difficult to achieve, but I think that it often makes or breaks a whole translation. I do have a couple of rule of thumbs to guide myself:(7/13)

#1 For a serious story, you want to err on the subtle end. You don't want to make people laugh (or worse cringe) at the dialogue.
An over-the-top character in an otherwise serious work is an exception.
For comedies, I think you can indulge.(8/13)

#2 The more dialogue a character has, the tamer the characterization should be. "Gonna" and "why, yes" and using "them" instead of "the" can be handy, but if you use it too often the character just becomes a caricature and an annoying one at that.(9/13)

#3 Ideally, only resort to the more on-the-nose ways to influence character voice when all else fails.
What is "all else"? These are all those parts of character voice that are not quite the same in Japanese.
Does she prefer the passive or active voice for verbs?(10/13)

Does she use big words or normal ones?
Does she use short sentences or long ones?
Does she phrase arguments as questions or as statements?
Does she use a lot of exclamation points?
I could go on. The point is: these things are not necessarily dictated by the source text.(11/13)

A page-long Japanese sentence which uses the passive voice twelve times is... just a normal Japanese sentence.
But if someone spoke to you like that in English, you'd probably get a very specific feeling about that person.(12/13)

All of these things are very subtle, and they often aren't enough to tell who a character is by one single line, but the translator must play the long game and use a hundred different minor word choices to get a character who is unique AND realistic. (13/13)

Bonus: your doctor won't tell you this, but characterization is much easier to do with well-written Japanese text. If, instead, all your characters have to show for differences are their pronouns and gobi, the translator is going to have a very bad time.

Imagine an anime where all characters have the exact same face, but with different hair and eye colors.
Not naming any names here

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