A bloody and a sudden end/ Gunshot or a noose

[flemmings]

Arghities.

Yanno. Yanno. There are mangaka who devote their time (or possibly their assistants' time, if they have assistants) to drawing flowers all through their backgrounds, or the detailed patterning of a kimono, or even, in the good old days, scenes filled with buildings and people. Hirano Kohta devotes his time (or his assistants', which in his case he hasn't got because the English manga includes his desperate advert for same) to drawing piles 'n' piles 'n' piles of BODIES. Mutilated, stabbed, shot, bayoneted, garrotted, casually dismembered and above all BLEEDING bodies.

And a few corpses as well.

You'd think it'd get to him, yanno?

Bubble 1: 'The new head of Integra?'
Bubble 2: 'You are?'
Bubble 3: 'A little girl like you?'

Japanese word order is different from English word order. It is. It really really is. You can *say* that in Japanese. In English-- just rephrase. Truly, you won't be losing anything except a lot of WTFery from your readers.

I won't complain too much about the regional accents, though I'm wondering if they exist in the Japanese, and am not going to pull deepfirefryer's manga out to check. Though I probably *would* complain if I was reading several volumes at a time.

But. But.

'We art Iscariot. We shalt conquer.' No you bloody art not and you shalt not either. God. I shall assume a translator *and* an editor *and* a rewriter were involved in this, and none of them, not one, remembers a thing from Shakespeare. King James is too much to hope for in these latter evangelical Good News Bible days, but you're supposed to study Will in school. Did, and forgot, and dredged up some shadowy memory of archaic usage and didn't even bother to check if it was accurate.

Argh, I say, argh again.

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's the reason he has no assistants.

The Chinese translation has its problems as well, the main one being the names the naaaaames Chinese phonetics is a terrible fit for the Romance languages but you know that already. I don't even know what the non-anime characters are called.

We art Iscariot. We shalt conquer.

Hahahahahahaha. 8D Hirano's own occasional bits of English/German are slightly wtf too.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Does Chinese have that problem with all western lit in translation? German is the thing that gives katakana fits, with French a close second. Does any western language fit Chinese? (mandarin, I'm assuming. I always found Cantonese more western-phonics friendly.)

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

IME yes, German and French are usually the ones that don't fit, as well as fancy English names. Could be because I don't know German or French. Common and/or simple English words and names are usually okay, Peter = bi de, Walter = wa te, Victoria = wei duo li ya, things like that. It's the uncommon given names and the surnames that give me problems, and apparently Hirano gives his characters some funny names. Also half the characters appear to be German.

[incandescens]

I am reminded of the pseudo-archaic bits in David Eddings (he has only three dialects for his characters -- "normal", "archaic", and "cutesy criminal" -- and I will admit to reading some of his earlier stuff, but his more recent stuff is truly beyond the pale and heading further out all steam ahead) where annoyed pseudo-archaic female characters stamp their little feet and say, "Thou shalt not!"

Always makes me want to say, "Yes, dear," and go and read something else.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Aaaaghh aaargh *yes*- cutesy criminal.

I read very early Eddings but as between, say, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and anything Eddings in the last fifteen years-- life is short. I'd take Gibbons.

[grendelity.livejournal.com]

Re: "We art Iscariot," I've been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I know it's because I've been blindsided by reading that phrase, but I can't for the life of me think of a correct phrase. That's so dumb, considering how much Shakespeare I've read, but I just can't. What, in your opinion, is the better phrasing?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Basically, the 't' forms like art, wilt & shalt, as well as the 'st' ones (hast, goest) belong to the 2nd person singular 'thou'- and to thou only. Plural pronouns of any person are the same as modern English: "When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble."

So archaic or modern, the phrase is We are Iscariot. Sorry, editor guys who want the thing to sound translated from Latin, but. 'Iscariot sumus' is 'we are Iscariot'.

Useful table of archaicism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:@pple/List_of_archaic_English_words_and_their_modern_equivalents) I got my example from.