As someone who understands Japanese, the blog is a treasure trove of things in Japanese that well, don't carry over as nicely, hence those TL notes. So many "Yeahhh I know that feel" moments there! Especially amaeru, which I struggle to carry the meaning across in English as well...!
I highly recommend reading it even if you don't watch anime; it's a treasure trove of daily Japanese life references that don't usually turn up on mainstream media. It's also due to Kobayashi's Maid Dragon being set in modern day Japan with several slice-of-life elements, and Kyoto Animation tends to do an extremely good job of portraying those small moments of happiness.
Thanks for sharing this, didn't know it existed. :)
(R.I.P Mr. Takemoto, Director of Season 1. We lost so many great minds...)
Nowadays it's less of an issue, but back in the days windows, mac and linux all used different default encodings. This meant that opening and saving the source file in one of the system could mess it all depending on the editor and how careful the devs are.
Also, there is the canonical writing issue, where you can write different utf-8 strings that all end up displayed the same. It's not an issue if it's just display text, it's a different story if you have a method that doesn't get called because the byte sequence was different, or more subtly hash indexes that seem to match but actually don't.
BTW there are companies that write some of the UT methods right in Japanese, as it matters less, and it's quite fun as there is less restrictions on what can be put in the identifier (full-width parenthesis, spaces, comma etc, are allowed in that context)
Just for the record, in Russia, we write all identifiers in English and practically all comments in (sometimes broken) English as well. Russian comments seem heavily discouraged, but hey, it's possible there're places where there're not.
I am not from Japan, but do work in two languages other than English (both official here). This is pretty typical actually. English names for identifiers (sometimes badly translated or simply transliterated), local languages for comments.
I always like pausing code stuff I see in shows to see if it's legit or random garbage. For example recently in the Netflix Cowboy Bebop they had this bootloader that appeared to be a mix of JavaScript, PHP and Python.
i could've sworn i saw kobayashi using a kana keyboard in one episode and thought that would be difficult to program with. does anyone here know if kana keyboards just have hiragana overlaid over the qwerty layout?
Wow. This is really good. Manga/anime fans who want to improve their Japanese can learn a lot from this.
I worked as a Japanese-to-English translator for twenty years (until 2005) and wrote and translated some Japanese-language textbooks, but I was never into otaku stuff and never would have thought of producing something like this. Hats off to the author.
Season 2 should really be part of the title, I thought these might have just been the old season 1 notes which I liked when I stumbled on them years ago. But I'm glad I clicked through, the little details the author goes through are always interesting.
These are great notes. I particularly enjoyed the notes about massages. My grandparents frequently asked me to pound their shoulders, and I even made massage tickets (though I was in my twenties when I made those, so wasn't as cute haha...)
The writer demonstrates some talent, but I’ve always wondered what it is that possesses these translators to devote their energies to translating sapphic boob anime instead of the untranslated works of Japan’s literary greats. The latter might earn you some distinction and even a small place in history. The former is just wasted effort, especially given that there is no shortage of fan translators willing to do it in your place.
I may lack his eloquence, but... I mean, have you read Shakespeare's plays? They're like two thirds dick jokes. "Much ado about nothing" is literally a double entendre.
Today's sapphic boob anime is a generation gap or two away from being highbrow classic culture. Indeed, you can see the transition happening in real time as 80s/90s kids become old enough to decide what culture is. You can't predict what will stand the test of time in the moment, the same way that you can't predict which of a dozen similar games with no apparent redeeming features will go viral and which won't; but history amply demonstrates that some inevitably will.
The time is now - this is your chance to become part of the highbrow cultural history of the future: help translate some sapphic boob anime today!
I think another factor that a lot of the great classics cannot really be translated, because a lot of them are as much poetry as anything else. Shakespear is of course an easy example, much of his work is actually rhyming verse. But I came across the same thing with Nietzsche, listening to his work and imagining how I would translate it into English. His concepts and ideas would be easy to bring across, many are quite simple - but in his own words he also plays with the relationships between ideas and concepts using puns and wordplay that simply do not work in any other language. I imagine many Japanese classics would have a similarly high bar. If a work is perennially beloved for its prose, anyone with the skill to write that kind of prose in another language could probably write an original work that would also become a classic.
Though apparently, whoever translates the Name of the Wind into Spanish is an exception...
This is a problem even with classics that are merely sufficiently old, rather than being entirely in a foreign language. "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote..." is inaccessible for the modern English speaker without considerable investment, but translations, while still being enjoyable, inevitably lose the original's poetry, and even after translation - unless the translation is so loose as to essentially become a rewrite - one still needs to do yet more work to correctly understand meanings of references in the text that have no instantly accessible equivalent in modern culture.
This causes an issue with intuitions about a text: relative inaccessibility and the need for extensive study is common for works that have stood the test of time simply because of their age, and as we encounter this over and over, the very presence of these properties causes us to lean towards mentally filing a work in the "highbrow" category, and the lack of them otherwise accordingly - and thus "this is pop culture" or even "this is popular" become shortcuts for "this is worthless", without one actually needing to do the work to demonstrate the worth or its lack.
However, inaccessibility is neither sufficient nor necessary nor even particularly desirable for a work to be worthwhile; many classics of today were popular culture in their time, and so we must fight the instinct that causes us to think of the two categories as being mutually exclusive.
Although the GP smacks of snobbery, I think it's mistaken to credit the enduring reputation of Shakespeare to his smutty innuendos alone. Surely the reason that Much ado about nothing is still being read today is the sophisticated battle of wits between the protagonists who are lovers, helped along by Shakespeare's uncanny ability to characterise. It is true that some of his early plays such as Titus, Henry VI and Comedy of errors rely on simpler means of entertainment, but hardly anyone consider those to be his best works. (Incidentally the also early Love's Labour's lost ranks among the most complex utilisation of the English language before Joyce, a play that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered 'popular'.) The hermeneutical problems of Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth are legendary, that's not to mention the even more mysterious late plays. Even Shakespeare's contemporaries recognised his difficulty and extorted people to "Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe" in the preface to the First Folio. I think it's an error to over emphasise the more mundane aspects of his art when the more extraordinary aspects are what attracted people in the first place.
Oh, absolutely it's not due to his smutty innuendos alone - indeed, it is rather despite them. My entire point, though, is that (at least some of) today's classic literature is the smut-ridden pop culture of past generations, and it is a mistake to sneer at present day works merely because they are pop culture and contain boobs. If OP has a stronger case to make for some particular work's artistic merit or lack thereof, they should take the trouble to actually do so (I do note others have in fact responded to defend the show's merits, despite OP not even trying to make a case for it lacking any, so certainly there is debate to be had), as that is what separates an opening for debate from a sneer. As it stands, however, the original question boils down to "why do talented people devote effort to smutty pop culture?", which, well, my post.
Pop culture properties like seasonal anime are more popular than great works of high literature, especially ones so obscure they haven't been translated before. Translating an episode is also likely to be less work than a full novel or probably even short story.
I presume a typical sapphic boob anime is also easier to translate. Literary greats tend to use more complex language or at the very least, very meticulously crafted language. That is, after all, what usually makes a work of literature a "great". From TFA you can see how much nuance and careful consideration can even go into the translation of a simple piece of pop media. The level of literacy (in multiple languages!) it takes to do justice to a more high-brow work is usually much higher.
I have to concede that you calling Maidragon a "sapphic boob anime", while a little dismissive, is accurate and amused me.
I'm responding to this because I think this comment misses the point of the exercise. Why give so great emphasis in translating this work? Because it is current. The subtlety of Japanese culture and importance in the language can often be hidden in the more modern culture. Should the works of Locke be looked to to understand the intricacies of the modern British dialect? Or should something like The Crown be a better work for foreigners to study?
The writer is specifically showing subtleties in the language used today which has nuance beyond a direct translation and why it works. I think that is highly important and commendable. And if we are to speak to something which would immortalize someone in history I believe if someone would write a companion guide to the brilliance of word play in the Monogatari series, that it would put them among the most famous translators of other foreign works. (Or even more impressively just managed to translate the word play directly.)
Anime translators do receive distinction and a place in history. Why translate something few will read when you can translate something many will read and enjoy together. Most great literary work cannot be properly translated because of unique cultural traits that do not exist elsewhere. Even translating anime is not 1:1, you can see the number of things that had to be changed in the FL:CL dub to tell the story similarly.
I dunno, personally I enjoy the representation. It's a pretty important LGBT anime even if it's mostly allegorical. I'm sure there are many many amazing untranslated works, but I imagine there's an even larger audience who can relate to a story about defining your own path through life despite family who refuse to accept that autonomy. (No spoilers!)
It's worth mentioning that the animation studio that made Kobayashi, Kyoto Animation, is arguably one of the best 2d animation studios in the world, and one of the very few to do everything in house. This makes Kobayashi a lot more notable than other random comedy anime.
Fan translators are ... well, fans. That, and the average anime does not reach the deep and complex depths of literary Japanese, which works on a language level, but adds strata of common cultural understanding that's quite difficult to get right when you aren't intimately entangled in both cultures.
Imagine trying to translate even mundane idioms like "Boris Johnson is like a well-greased pig", meaning "offers no angle of attack" to German, which is a related language, but whose people have no concepts of greasing up live pigs and making people hunt them for fun or as a prank - it's just not something we do. (I'm bringing that example here because some English journalist tried to use the direct translation in a recent interview).
Now imagine doing for complete literary works from cultures which developed completely separate from each other for aeons.
Translating high culture badly is not something we should encourage.
> instead of the untranslated works of Japan’s literary greats.
"Classic" literature often has a very high comprehension level and often relies on a shared history/culture for many things. Translation doesn't always really work.
In English, for example, let's take "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton.
I don't know how to describe it, but that novel has a "rhythm". How on Earth would you translate that to Japanese and not lose that?
Part of the reason I wanted to learn Japanese is so that I can actually "read" people like Sōseki.
> Part of the reason I wanted to learn Japanese is so that I can actually "read" people like Sōseki.
More people should give it a try! Learning Japanese—or any language—requires a lot of time and commitment, but being able to read literature in the original is one of the great rewards.
As I noted in another thread, I was a translator of Japanese for many years. I did it mainly to support myself and my family, so almost all of the work I did was business- or government-related, that is, work that paid decently. At that time, few J-to-E translators were able to support themselves translating literature, anime, manga, or other interesting or fun content. The work just didn’t pay well enough to justify the time required to do it.
Things might be different now with anime and manga because of their worldwide popularity, but I doubt if many translators can support themselves translating Japanese literature into English—the books just don’t sell well enough. Most prolific translators of Japanese literature seem to be academics or to have other sources of income.
As a result, only a tiny percentage of Japanese literature is translated into English, and the works that are translated tend to be chosen because a publisher hopes that their themes will appeal to people outside Japan. There’s a huge amount and variety of interesting, quirky, and enjoyable literature published regularly in Japan, and the only way to access it is to learn Japanese.
First of all, few "literary great" are untranslated, the existing translations may not be perfect, as an amateur I would not presume that I can do any better.
In addition, I think there's a different mind set when people consume translated literature versus pop culture works (games, anime, manga, light novel, pop music etc). With literature, the reader expect that the translated work should stand on its own - when you read All Quiet on the Western Front, you don't constantly remember that it was originally written in German, when you listen to Les Miserables, you probably don't think how the French version sounded. So you'd have to think of how to work around the clever rhymes, the double meanings, the local idioms, so you don't take too much liberty with the words but also don't take away the intended meaning.
Whereas with people who consume fan translation understand that it's there to help the viewer enjoy something both the viewer and translator like, it is not meant to be a stand-alone piece of art. So when needed, you can stick in a translator notes to explain the rhyme that got lost in translation, or put a full essay on how a throw away line is actually a historical reference that imply something different to what was said. It's much headache inducing and more fun to do.
Besides, let's be honest, do you really think a modern translation of Ulysses will get more views than even the most obscure "NY Times best seller" from the last 5 years? In terms of effort : enjoyment people get, I'd argue it's more worth your time to translate pop works.
I more or less agree with you, but I would note there are some fairly well known Japanese Novels (maybe not literary great) that remain untranslated. I mainly know them from sites like this one, where some fully translated popular anime will reference some novel that remains completed untranslated, and good translation notes will note that then say, well, you're on your own on actually reading this lol.
At the moment I am thinking of Dogra Magra, which has a fan translation on a blogspot somewhere that only covered the first few pages IIRC, and a Machine translation bootleg being sold on amazon. No other translation I am aware of, though I have not searched exhaustively.
Dogra Magra is a tough one, it is known to be hard to get through even for native speakers. From what I've heard (I have not attempted to read it), it's both dense in information, but very sparse in progression, so it's can be simultaneously boring to read while being extremely confusing, even famous mystery writers like Edogawa Ranpo and Yokomizo Seishi have commented that they were confused and didn't understand the story (they mean it in a good way, I think).
I've polled the 3 Japanese colleagues in my team and none of them have finished it, so I doubt it's something a lone translator would be able to tackle without spending years on it. The blogspot translator probably got into it and hit wall once the story starts going. That said, it sounds like a fun team project if someone were to organize it and keep everybody on track for at least a few months.
Yes, makes sense to me. I think translation of novels (maybe particularly modernist novels, which I think Dogra Magra is considered) is not just harder than anime or other pop culture, but more, uh, conceptually strange? I was just thinking of Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse", like, what would it mean to translate that novel, which for me is very much about the words themselves. I liked it because of how much I struggled with its particular sentences (Some people can read it fluidly, certain portions really baffled me for a while).
So I searched for To The Lighthouse translations, and of course it has been translated to several languages, but also among the first results were academic papers discussing the implications of how it was translated, which makes sense to me, it's interesting.
The writer also demonstrates that even for something like "sapphic boob anime", professionals make a lots of mistakes. That would imply that the level of Japanese and English needed to translate properly the works of Japan's literary greats is way higher than that.
Your comment comes off as quite snobbish tbh, but I'm sure you're aware of that.
There's a lot more people that watch anime than read translated Japanese literature. I mean, I tried Murakami but it's just not my cup of tea (and just like a lot of anime, problematic).
The same could be said of most of the work that translators do. Why translate the text of the temporary exhibition of this museum, why translate an advertisement, why translate the instructions for a children's toy that will only be popular for a few months?
If we only worked on things that have the potential to make us famous, we wouldn't do much work. That is true for most industries - even writers.
The birthrate started crashing long before Japanese animation became "anime," let alone the sort you're worrying about: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/birth-rate (although Go Nagai isn't exactly a model of rectitude).
As for the history of anime and what you're worried about Dragon Maid normalizing, let me just point out as an extreme example that Kodomo no Jikan was aired in 2007 a full decade before Dragon Maid.
And I find it curious that you don't seriously consider the arsonist's claim it was for revenge from his perception that the studio had ripped off material in a novel he submitted to them in the light novel competitions they'd started running (no good deed goes unpunished).
I highly recommend reading it even if you don't watch anime; it's a treasure trove of daily Japanese life references that don't usually turn up on mainstream media. It's also due to Kobayashi's Maid Dragon being set in modern day Japan with several slice-of-life elements, and Kyoto Animation tends to do an extremely good job of portraying those small moments of happiness.
Thanks for sharing this, didn't know it existed. :)
(R.I.P Mr. Takemoto, Director of Season 1. We lost so many great minds...)