This article is available in English and Chinese
Since I’ve learned Chinese and Korean for a decent amount of time, I thought that it would be convenient to put it to some use. I had been thinking of what exactly I could do, and an opportunity came up just as quickly as I had the thought for a project itself.
Mirrored Mind [click] is a film directed by Gakuryu Ishii and starring Miwako Ichikawa. I won’t go into the plot of the movie here, but please do check it out if you enjoy calming movies. If you need help finding the movie file itself, you can message me and I’ll gladly help you.
I had originally watched the film about 1 year ago and didn’t think much about it until recently in the midst of a fit of exhaustion. While I was looking for subtitles (I do not speak Japanese), I noticed that that there were no Chinese subtitles, but there were Korean subtitles. So I figured I would take on the task of translating it by using the Korean subtitles as a base. Of course, I do not know Japanese. This also an indirect translation and I am not a professional at all. However, if you ever want to watch this with Chinese subtitles it is now the option.
I had some goals in mind:
- Avoiding translatese: The English subtitles that I have found have problems such as having extremely confusing lines that almost come off as machine translations. Maybe this is a problem in the Korean subtitles too, but I don’t think that is really the case.
- No machine: To really challenge myself, I didn’t use any machine translations. That means no Artificial AI or translating services.
- Not changing the story.
Materials Consulted (Will provide if curious)
- Mirrored Mind (The Movie)
- Korean subtitles (Main base)
- English subtitles: not used heavily, only for small cross references.
- Naver Chinese-Korean dictionary
- Wiktionary
Results
mirroredmindZH.srt - usable in any program that takes SRT files!
Completing this project really made me have a newfound respect for translators. This film has only around 200 lines due to its sparse dialogue, and still it took me a whole week to complete. I think I did a servicable job, yet I still feel like a lot was lost in translation due to how much has to be left out for the sake of brevity. There are so much things to consider, especially made harder to having to assume information from context. (Probably where the translations were the most muddy).
Another thing I noticed was that the subtitles one uses actually has a HUGE influence on the viewer’s interpretation of the story. It’s hard to explain, but by my interpretation, the English subtitle’s version has a far more matter-of-fact tone when compared to the Korean version. However, this can be just due to my ameteurish Korean skills. So for the future, I will definitely have a more critical eye for subtitles.
Was this project fun? Sure. Will I do it again? Probably not.