Anonymous Head · 27d
Hey Jakkal! This is a random question, but if you want to share it, I'm interested in what your TL process for Kenta's "I'm going to rot in this fucking cage for the rest of my life." It has been irreparably RUINING me since you put the TL up 😭😭✊You speak a lot about the process of TL and how you often change the wording of things to pass better in English, or completely rewrite the line to get the point across. Did you do any of this for Kenta's line here? Or is it a direct translation? I'd love to hear the thoughts behind it, and by extension any of Kenta's breakdown in that VD - especially since the way you write Kenta is so funny and accurate to me. Thank you! 🙇🙏
So the literal line in question is:
一生檻の中で飼い殺した
The first part is pretty simple (一生檻の中で -> "My entire life, I'm going to be in a cage[...]") but the 飼い殺し is where I had to make some choices.
So 飼い殺し means, very literally, "to keep something while killing it"; it quite literally means, like, to keep a domestic animal alive past the point of its usefulness, or past the point that its quality of life is declining. It also metaphorically means to like, be keeping someone locked into a pointless job doing menial labor.
Basically, what's being conveyed is idea that he's basically just being left to waste away.
This is a very evocative image, but I think any way of putting it extremely directly in English doesn't have the same impact, especially considering the voice I tend to use for Kenta; he's pretty vulgar and he generally doesn't use five tactful words when two rude ones will do, so "left to waste away" or the like felt way too soft for him and for the way he's speaking in that line.
So that's why I chose to put it as "rotting", because that kind of has some of the same connotations-- of something that's dead or dying, and of just sitting around incapable of doing anything but waste away.
