On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 09:56:01AM -0800, Vincent Seifert wrote:
Right. This also comes up with Shampoo and Chinese (with Nabiki there to
provide more-or-less-superfluous interpretation) and, in a very tricky
case, with Principal Kuno. Kuno is throwing words and phrases in English
into a Japanese-language situation, so we're left with a predicament when
we want to use Kuno in an English-language fanfic. Fortunately,
translating Kuno's English into Hawaiian pidgin works pretty well. :)
For some reason -- perhaps it's the Hawaii connection -- I'm reminded of the
KOR OAV where Hikaru gets mistaken for an heiress and kidnapped. At one
point, Madoka, in very awkward English, says, "But we're only high school
students. We don't get that much allowance!" Now in it's proper context,
it was a rather wiggy line anyway, but in combination with the awkwardness
of the accent, it was really a priceless moment.
Since KOR is only available subbed, one wonders what they would have done
with this if they tried to dub it. Somehow, I don't think the line would be
as funny to a native Japanese speaker as it is to a native English speaker,
though, so a dubbed version might reflect that.
GJ, on the other hand, is where Japanese characters are speaking
Japanese with other Japanese characters, and the Japanese in the scene
is rendered into English, but the writer leaves some words untranslated
just because he or she thinks those words are really neato-keen.
Well, they're "neato-keen" because they add cultural flavoring, I think;
it's part of "anime-style" as applied to the written medium. It's pretty
hard to do "big eyes, small mouth" in words...
It might also fit under 'local colour', that is, the use of language and
terminology appropriate to the setting. You have to be careful with this
one, though, because not all anime/manga are set in Japan. If you wanted to
use local colour in a Noir fic, for example, you'd have to throw in a few
words en francais. (and no comments about what colour that might be, thank
you very much. :)
- Vince, working on trilingual puns :)
"Hey, look, it's the Water King!"
"Oh?"