Misused: Blind Idiot Translation

"Blind Idiot" Translation is a trope infamous for it's misleading name, which seems to be calling the translators blind idiots, but is actually just about overly literalist translations that end up not matching the actual context and grammar. This misleading title often gets it confused with Translation Trainwreck.

In the "Blind Idiot" Wick Check, I looked at 50 wicks. The results were:

• Correct, Noncomplaining: 10/50, or 20%
• Correct, Complaining: 2/50, or 4%
• General Bad Translation: 15/50, or 30%
• ZCE: 13/50, or 26%
• Other: 10/50, or 20%

So, while there is some correct usage to be had, a bigger percentage of the examples are misuse or ZCE. It's used for complaining about translation errors and bad translations of all kinds, and again, I think the title is a major player here.

I suppose we can try to rename it, but I'm not sure to what.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Opening

Macron's notes

I had originally asked to be pinged to this thread because, over in the Trope names with outdated or offensive names thread, No Username suggested Mistranslation Mishap as a rename, so I figured I would mention that.

Note that I’m not really in favor of that name, as I don’t think it is indicative enough of the concept.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 30th 2022 at 9:29:00 AM

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

It's catchy, but yeah, it doesn't cover the "incorrectly overly literal" part. And sorry for not paging you; I meant to if I got to the thread before you, but you happened to see that this thread was made before I did, and I prefer to page people within the threads instead of when paging the thread creator to the meta thread.

Anyway, with that out of the way, maybe Improperly Literal Translation or Improperly Literal Mistranslation would work; leaning toward using "mistranslation" instead of "translation". Maybe we can come up with something that's catchier while still covering the meaning better than Mistranslation Mishap, though. Either way, I think this suffers from Trope-Namer Syndrome due to the "blind idiot" part coming from an urban legend about the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" being subject to a Recursive Translation that changed it to either "blind idiot" or "invisible idiot" (depending on the version of the story)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 30th 2022 at 9:01:52 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Overly Literal Translation?

Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail

Maybe that would work.

Neglected to mention that if we rename, the old name will have to be kept at least as a redirect due to the five-digit inbound count, though we might want to disambiguate it instead due to confusion with other mistranslation tropes.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Disambiguate between the proposed trope, Translation Trainwreck, and whatever other tropes we throw in there.

Also to Overly Literal Translation.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Dec 30th 2022 at 12:53:42 PM

Mistranslation By Literalism

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

That sounds pretty good.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

This is the best one so far.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I still prefer Overly Literal Tranation, but otherwise they're good.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Regardless, rename. Concerned about potential confusion with Lost in Translation if renamed though.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 31st 2022 at 11:47:45 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Literal Mistranslation on its own could work, I think, since 'literal translation' is a pre-existing phrase.

How different is this from Lost in Translation? This is when information/context is lost because the idiomatic information was expressed literally, which means cultural information (part of the translator's job) was skipped over.

It seems to me that the LIT description is currently about how this trope is avoided by providing the information in another way.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Throwing my hat in for Overly Literal Translation since it's the most clear and is a phrase that's been used before. I don't think we need to be too fancy here considering the name is causing problems.

Edited by Karxrida on Dec 31st 2022 at 6:14:37 AM

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I agree with renaming "Blind Idiot" Translation, though I'm honestly not completely sure what its new name should be.

Looks like Lost in Translation isn't exclusively for literal translations, and just refers to the meaning being, well, lost in translation even if the words used in the translation differ in meaning, as opposed to how "Blind Idiot" Translation refers to overly and inappropriately literal translations conveying the wrong meaning in the target language.

Not sure if this would make "Blind Idiot" Translation a subtrope of Lost in Translation or just a sister trope, but I skimmed some examples of Lost in Translation and not all examples are blatantly mistranslations, while I'm under the impression that "Blind Idiot" Translation does imply awkward-sounding translations due to literal translations often sounding odd in the target language.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 1st 2023 at 2:59:16 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I'd like to think that

• Lost in Translation: Grammatically correct translation but some puns could not be Woolseyism'ed or has cultural significance only in the country of origin.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Adaptation that keeps the meaning but is grammatically incorrect.
• Translation Train Wreck: Neither and is incomprehensible.

If it's wrong we may merge something.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

"keeps the meaning but is grammatically incorrect" doesn't really capture the essence. It's more that a "Blind Idiot" Translation mangles the intended sense, usually by selecting the wrong meaning of individual words. "Out of" can mean "no longer having", as when a shop is out of your favourite chocolate, but "out of sight" does not mean "blind".

Options so far are:

• Rename the trope to Overly Literal Translation.
• Rename to Mistranslation By Literalism.

I think Overly Literal Translation is easier to spell.