Misused: Blind Idiot Translation

I feel like that "if" needed more discussion before going to a crowner, though. I saw this linked from ATT and honestly, my long-standing thought has been that it's sufficiently redundant that I'm not sure it's worth keeping as an independent trope. The heavy overlap with Translation Train Wreck is quite possibly down to the name, sure, but even the actual intended definition feels pretty uncommon, at least in a way that distinguishes it from TTW and Lost in Translation.

I'm not going to unhook the crowner unless you can point out whether anything was missed in this post listing the differences (or any previous post, for that matter).

Misuse of this trope overlaps with Translation Train Wreck (which is what a rename would solve), but overly literal ("Blind Idiot" Translation's proper definition) doesn't necessarily mean incomprehensible (Translation Train Wreck's proper definition), and Lost in Translation can result in translations that aren't clearly mistranslated unless compared with the source language (which would make it clear what the translation missed), and generally aren't incomprehensible.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 2nd 2023 at 7:15:34 AM

It's not so much that I think that post 'missed' something as that I think the niche "Blind Idiot" Translation is supposed to occupy between the two other tropes seems very ill-defined. At best it'd be a problem with Translation Train Wreck instead, as "obviously very bad but you can at least guess what they were trying to say" is what makes up most of the examples for that trope AFAIK - I've rarely seen any that were completely incomprehensible.

If the problem is with Translation Train Wreck and not "Blind Idiot" Translation, that's outside the scope of a thread that only covers the latter. As for the scope, I'm not seeing any indicators that it's ill-defined; just that it's badly named, since this trope is the one for bad translations that are still comprehensible (at least to an extent).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 2nd 2023 at 7:49:47 AM

I'm not sure there is a problem with Translation Train Wreck, exactly. The thing is that we've got (or at least the intent is) that there's tropes for "translation looks fine on the surface but misses things", "translation obviously doesn't look fine but is at least understandable", and "translation is literally incomprehensible", and I'm not sure whether the latter two are worth treating separately, especially when I'm not sure whether the last one even happens very often at all. The definition for "Blind Idiot" Translation looks like a "downplayed" version of TTW.

Edited by nrjxll on Jan 2nd 2023 at 8:09:25 AM

We'd need a Wick Check to see for sure. Until then, we're not touching Translation Train Wreck.

Edit: I'd prefer giving Translation Train Wreck its own thread even if it does get a wick check, due to "Blind Idiot" Translation's four-digit wick count making me hesitant to expand this thread's scope. Merging with "Blind Idiot" Translation (or whatever we end up calling it if it's renamed) would be on the table for such a thread if misuse does in fact greatly outnumber correct usage.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 2nd 2023 at 8:46:58 AM

As Vilui said, "grammatically incorrect" isn't a match for BIT. The tropenamer ("blind idiot") is grammatically correct, yet has cultural significance that wasn't correctly conveyed. The page image ("hand grenade") is also grammatically correct.

The wick check doesn't match up with that claim, either.

1. Anime.Dragon Pilots Hisone And Masotan: The introductory statement lays blame at a general lack of military context, the first example is specifically forgetting to localize when adjusting one Spanish translation to another. The second is grammatically incorrect, so 50:50.
2. Anime.Re Main: Not grammatically incorrect; characters choose the wrong meaning when translating back into English.
3. Film.Dog Day Afternoon: Grammatically correct, missing cultural context. (Confuses "coat closet" with "water closet")
4. Film.Smokin Aces: Still grammatically correct, but sorta using Translate the Loanwords, Too since "Inn" is apparently part of the proper name rather than a separate word.
5. LetsPlay.Spike And Barley Play: Grammatically incorrect
6. VideoGame.Dot Hack GU: The first is grammatical errors, the second is inconsistencies in translating the names.
7. VideoGame.Magic Pengel: Grammatically correct, with culturally incorrect meanings chosen.
8. VorkosiganSaga.Tropes A To I: Grammatically correct, but missing context so badly that it reverses the meaning.
9. WarriorCats.Tropes 0 To G: Grammatically correct, but errors in meaning.
10. WesternAnimation.Speedy Gonzales: Grammatically incorrect

Only some of the "correct, not complaining" wicks show grammatical errors. On the other hand, a scroll through Lost in Translation doesn't have many grammatical mistakes (despite the description saying "Subtleties get dropped and grammatical correctness slides when things get complex."). So while I'm still thinking that the two have overlap, I'm not yet convinced either way.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jan 2nd 2023 at 3:54:58 PM

I’d help with wick checking, but I am currently at Epcot at Disney World so I’m not easily able to do it.

Please enjoy the rides there in the meantime.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 2nd 2023 at 8:10:32 AM

So, the question we have to answer, I guess, is if the definition is distinct enough to be worth salvaging the trope.

Had the idea to use "I am your father." to show the difference between the tropes, but it might be easier just to explain things?

Lost in Translation might overlap with "Blind Idiot" Translation, but only when all information is lost is it a Translation Train Wreck?

• "Blind Idiot" Translation: "We be youses Father", still is a basically valid sentence, but the registers are all over the place.

• "Blind Idiot" Translation + Lost in Translation: "We be youses Mother"
• Translation Train Wreck, a.k.a Lost in Translation completely: "Persona Possess Use Farther"

Edited by Malady on Jan 4th 2023 at 10:38:47 AM

Almost the other way around, really.

• Lost in Translation: the translated sentence has the intended meaning but is missing nuances of the original ("out of sight, out of mind" to "they immediately forgot about it"). The broadest term.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: the translated sentence is more or less grammatically coherent, but means something different because each word took a few wrong turns through a thesaurus to get there ("out of sight, out of mind" to "sightless, mindless" to "blind idiot").
• Translation Trainwreck: no native speaker would say this, the translated sentence isn't even grammatically coherent and each word may have been looked up in a translation dictionary individually, sometimes to the point that it's still baffling even after knowing the intended meaning ("out of sight, out of mind" to "after from location after from dug"). ^note Someone with a phonetic alphabet looking up "site" and "mined" by mistake. I think it also suggests the entire translation is a mess, whereas "Blind Idiot" Translation might only be occasionally "glitchy".

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Jan 5th 2023 at 4:13:11 PM

What about "I your father am."? Not all languages use the subject-verb-object order.

Speaking of Star Wars, Yoda speaks using the object-subject-verb order: "Your father I am."

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 5th 2023 at 3:34:09 PM

That has nothing to do with the trope Malady was trying to demonstrate, though.

A couple of questions since it's been a while:

• Do we have any options yet?
• Was anyone planning to do a wick check for either of the other tropes mentioned here (Translation Train Wreck and Lost in Translation), or are we leaving those two out of this?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 8th 2023 at 8:39:00 AM

Do you mean options for the definition or what to do? If we have a definition, then I say we sort the current examples between Lost in Translation, this, and Translation Train Wreck?

I'm asking if anyone has any ideas for what to put on a crowner, if there are any, definition-related or otherwise.

Since the issue here is misuse and possible overlap with two other tropes, maybe another check is in order to determine if there are enough standalone examples or "Blind Idiot" Translation (whatever it's called) to be a thing?

If someone wants to do a check with the categories from my other check, they can; IDK if it's smart for me to do both just because I don't want to accidentally skew things.

Appending the existing wick check...

And five examples in, question: are transliterations where a pun or Meaningful Name is lost permitted under BIT's definition?

Probably not, because most of the time, it's hard to keep the same feel in a different language.

No, that's the most trivial kind of Lost in Translation.