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Oblivion: Wasted Edition (prelude)
May. 7th, 2016 09:02 pmI have finally got my hands on a shit-translated russian version of Oblivion, the one I remember playing when I was still, like, ten or something, so over a decade ago. This can only mean one thing: that I have to liveblog it here while providing confusing linguistic commentary and yelling how I can't re-translate it back into English so it stays hilarious.
Anyway, my first point: a bit of history. Russia has a tradition of terrible automated and regular terrible translation that dates back to the 90s-00s if I'm not mistaken. Originally, the phenomenon was called "abovebrain" - from a shitty translation of "overmind" from some game, I can't remember right now which. There have been many fine examples of "abovebrain" translation, some I still see every day. Recently I had to deal with "date of treatment" on a library site (instead of "date of access").
The most infamous shitty translation, though, is the first translation of GTA San Andreas. God DAMN that thing was something. Because GTA games generally use a lot of slang and such, automated translation makes it even worse than it usually is, and to add to THAT, the autotranslators of that time couldn't distinguish between languages. So the result was utter and total chaos, and it was beautiful. "Chill the fuck out" became "cool the fucking", "we need to get the fuck out of here" became "we must receive the sex from this place", "cabron" (Spanish for pimp iirc) became "carbon-fiber". And so on. It was honestly amazing and I don't think I could ever do it justice.
Anyway, it gave rise to the new name of "wasted" translation. I can't really translate the pun/funny side here, but GTA SA gave you the message of WASTED if you died or failed a mission iirc. This was translated literally into Russian, without the additional meaning of failed/dead. "Depleted" or "consumed" might be a good re-translation. Anyway, this has been gaining momentum lately and is almost considered its own branch of translation on the Russian internet. It's most prominent in GTA game series, obviously, but things like wasted Oblivion are considered a rarity and a treasure in their own right.
The important difference here is that "abovebrain" translation is produced by actual people, who have limited knowledge of a language and the slang/cultural/etc quirks of said language. For example, Duwang would be considered abovebrain, not wasted. Wasted translation meanwhile is automated translation, without much participation from the person who's trying to translate things.
This was your brief lesson on shitty Russian translation, tune in for some actual Content in the next entry.
Anyway, my first point: a bit of history. Russia has a tradition of terrible automated and regular terrible translation that dates back to the 90s-00s if I'm not mistaken. Originally, the phenomenon was called "abovebrain" - from a shitty translation of "overmind" from some game, I can't remember right now which. There have been many fine examples of "abovebrain" translation, some I still see every day. Recently I had to deal with "date of treatment" on a library site (instead of "date of access").
The most infamous shitty translation, though, is the first translation of GTA San Andreas. God DAMN that thing was something. Because GTA games generally use a lot of slang and such, automated translation makes it even worse than it usually is, and to add to THAT, the autotranslators of that time couldn't distinguish between languages. So the result was utter and total chaos, and it was beautiful. "Chill the fuck out" became "cool the fucking", "we need to get the fuck out of here" became "we must receive the sex from this place", "cabron" (Spanish for pimp iirc) became "carbon-fiber". And so on. It was honestly amazing and I don't think I could ever do it justice.
Anyway, it gave rise to the new name of "wasted" translation. I can't really translate the pun/funny side here, but GTA SA gave you the message of WASTED if you died or failed a mission iirc. This was translated literally into Russian, without the additional meaning of failed/dead. "Depleted" or "consumed" might be a good re-translation. Anyway, this has been gaining momentum lately and is almost considered its own branch of translation on the Russian internet. It's most prominent in GTA game series, obviously, but things like wasted Oblivion are considered a rarity and a treasure in their own right.
The important difference here is that "abovebrain" translation is produced by actual people, who have limited knowledge of a language and the slang/cultural/etc quirks of said language. For example, Duwang would be considered abovebrain, not wasted. Wasted translation meanwhile is automated translation, without much participation from the person who's trying to translate things.
This was your brief lesson on shitty Russian translation, tune in for some actual Content in the next entry.
