This shows a lack of imagination on the part of Toni Pollard:
Clara Ng’s “Meteors” is a deceptively simple tale of a sweet relationship between an alien and an earthling. Set in a distant galaxy, it plays with the dimensions of space and time. However, reading it in Indonesian likely provides a different experience than reading its English translation. This difference is due to another element that the author is consciously toying with—that of gender. The gender fluidity that exists in the Indonesian is almost impossible to translate satisfactorily for English readers.
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For example, in a story I translated a few years ago, “The Lighthouse” by Linda Christanty, it is not until near the end that a relationship that began during a chance meeting on a beach is revealed to be a lesbian relationship—prior to the end, only the main character is identified as “she.” In the English translation, because of the pronoun “she,” this aspect of the story had to be revealed much earlier.
In the end Toni Pollard decides it’s all too difficult and just assigns (rather, makes up) genders for the characters rather than attempt to keep the gender ambiguity or fluidity of the original story. There are always challenges when translating a story, but really keeping the characters gender consistent in translation shouldn’t be one of them. English offers plenty of ways to be gender ambiguous, but the simple singular they is usually sufficient. That this person rejected it over the expressed wishes of the original author, even if the latter according to them was pleased with the end result, speaks of a lack of imagination and too much ego. Even if they themselves couldn’t have found decent alternatives, why not ask gender fluid people for solutions? Plenty of people on e.g. Twitter who’d be eager to help.
On another level it also seems a bit, how to say it, cultural imperialist to smooth out the gender fluidity of the original Indonesian this way? One of the minor things that annoys me about watching anime is when subtitles either straight up ignore things like honorifics and/or try to find English language equivalents for them. In the first case you lose a layer of meaning, in the second you’re trying to force a round peg into a square hole and you get aberrations like translating “onee-sama” as “missy”. In either case the end result is that something distinctively Japanese is lost in translation to adhere to outdated notions of what good English is like. Here too, with this refusal to keep the gender fluidity of the original, something irreplaceable is lost.
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