I think even a bad translation is better than no translation at all, but for some reason the majority of books don’t seem to get translated. Why is that?
I think even a bad translation is better than no translation at all, but for some reason the majority of books don’t seem to get translated. Why is that?
To translate from one language to another, you need to know both languages very well, including puns, idioms, etc., and have a deep understanding of both cultures involved. A word for word translation will rarely do; you may even have to come up with new jokes / references to replace ones that don’t work in the target language.
If you have read translations of manga by, say, Rumiko Takahashi, you might have seen footnotes explaining all the puns and references. And even this is not ideal, since it breaks the reader’s flow.