Anonymous asked:

Do you ever consider the sexiness of the translation? For example, I notice some other translations talk about "he crumpled her breasts" which I assume is the closest translation of the japanese original. But I think squeeze works far better than crumple. Crumple just sounds like he's squeezing a paper ball.

I've been leaning into naturalistic language more and more over time (in contrast with the very beginning, when I was paranoid about ever using any phrasing I couldn't find a J-E source for, in case I screwed up). The reason you would get something like "crumple" is that a word might have a limited number of English equivalents that you can find or think up, and either the most natural phrasing isn't the primary meaning, or it's somehow misleading, or it lacks nuance. For example, squeeze might be perfectly acceptable in certain cases, but in others, you'll want crumple's nuance of the breast flesh being deformed by that action. In that case, it gives you a phrasing problem to consider, because words like deform might be too "ugly".

Sometimes there's genuinely no good way to phrase something in English. One of the worst is when they keep referring to membranes. At this point, I mostly just translate that as "lining" (i.e. the lining of one's mouth, vagina, etc.), but that's not always what's being talked about. Another is use of the word "undulate" when referring to the involuntary, wave-like swallowing/milking motion of an orifice, which, even after ten years, I have not been able to think of a good replacement for.