Matt Alt Goes into Sound Effects in Anime
Dokan! Kira-kira! Shiiin. Sound effects represent some of the most fun parts of manga; they’re essentially transcriptions of the “audio information” playing out across the page. But while humans all hear the same things, it turns out different cultures transcribe the things they hear in different ways. Thus although, for example, cats sound pretty much the same all over the world, an English-language “meow” becomes a Japanese-language “nyan!”
For many types of sound effects, there’s a simple analog between languages. A Japanese “dokan!” translates pretty smoothly into a “bang!” or “ka-boom!” if you’re feeling a little fancy. And a short-winded “hahh hahh” after a sprint is pretty much the same no matter what language you’re writing in. But what about sound effects that don’t easily transpose between languages? There’s a surprising number of them in Japanese, and they represent some of the absolute hardest things to translate.
Japanese manga are comparatively richer in sound effects in comparison to foreign comics. Part of this is due to a long history of experimentation and development of the medium. But a bigger part is due to the Japanese language’s abundance of giseigo: onomatopoeia.
Even people who have never picked up a manga before use them in daily conversation. Doki-doki, excitement, taken from the sound of a beating heart, is a perfect example. Zaa is another, used to describe a heavy rain via the sound it makes on roofs and roads. Although they’re used as turns of phrase in spoken Japanese, they’re often deployed as sound effects on paper. While the concepts are instantly understandable if explained, they can present problems for languages that don’t have a set way of expressing the sound of an excited heart or heavy rain.
Even more perplexing are a type of onomatopoeia called gitaigo, which evoke sounds of things that don’t exist in real life. The classic example, and perhaps single most difficult to translate in any context, is shiiiiin – the “sound” of silence. Another classic is kira-kira – the “sound” of sparkling sunshine on a hot summer day.
It’s up to each and every translator to come up with ways of handling sounds on the page. I apologize to those who’ve read this far hoping for concrete solutions, but the truth is here’s no one right way to do it. Sometimes they can be translated (wan! into woof!); sometimes transliterating them into English letters is best; and sometimes, rarely, even suggesting leaving them off the page entirely is the best option (though I do not recommend this option to novices.)
I encourage you to come up with your own unique ways of dealing with sound effects, because the way a translator handles them can be seen as mark of their skill, and even a sort of signature.
A native of Washington, D.C., Matthew has been working as a professional translator since the early 1990s. Together with Hiroko Yoda he is the co-founder of AltJapan Co., Ltd., a dedicated entertainment localization company that has produced the English versions of many top video games, toys, and manga, including the Gundam series and the Doraemon series. He is the co-author of numerous books about Japan, including "Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide."
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