"An emotionally unstable dish who's on the skids"
I have been practicing my reading on a copy of the manga Saiyuki number five, which is not yet available in English. Most of it is an extended flashback to the first meeting of Hakkai and Gojyo, and how the two of them met Sanzo and Goku.
This entry http://www.livejournal.com/users/coffee_and_ink/382363.html?mode=reply from Mely's journal prompted me to write this entry, which may be thoroughly boring for anyone not interested in the Japanese language and/or my current obsession, the manga and anime Saiyuki. But I came across a certain bit that I thought was an interesting example of how translations are made, as it's obviously quite colloquial and funny, and it so happens that I have two different translations of it in addition to the original.
All the same...
Unfortunately, I can't find a scan of the original page on the net which would show the kanji, but if anyone wants to see it, I do have it on my hard drive and could email it.
Now, I know that there are some people reading this who can read and speak Japanese much better than I can, since I am about at a kindergarten level. Or at least can read kanji, although they'll only be able to see the kanji if they ask for the email. So please feel free to jump in and correct me.
For those unfamiliar with the story, the context is that Gojyo, a ladykilling bachelor, found another man, Hakkai, badly wounded in the middle of the road. Gojyo brought him home and took care of him until two strangers came in search of him: Sanzo, a bad-tempered blonde priest and his companion Goku, who looks like a kid but is actually the Monkey King, tremendously strong but always hungry and not terribly bright. The first three men are strikingly handsome. (This is relevant.) After a series of adventures which reveal that Hakkai is probably even more emotionally damaged than he was physically when Gojyo found him half-dead, Gojyo returns home alone. Some of the townspeople ask him what he was doing-- had he been off with some woman? No, he says, but...
Translation number one: "I did get close to this hard-living blond bombshell... This little kid who's a bit light in the grey matter department... and this emotionally unstable dish who's on the skids."
I got that one here http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:7piX9y9ss4AJ:bane-huntress.co.uk/OffLicence/Yaoi-Facter.html+%22emotionally+unstable%22+saiyuki&hl=en and I have no idea where it came from.
Translation number two: "I got close to a beautiful blonde with a sucky personality... A shrimp that has a small and light brain size... And an emotionally unstable, unluckily good-looking person."
I got that one from a scanslation from mangacity.net translated by Ukii.
Original in romaji (probably totally mangled, this is mine via the manga's furigana. One of the fiendishly complicated things is that words aren't separated-- you're just supposed to know when one stops and another begins. A lot of this is just me guessing. Plus I can't replicate the kanji. Unless I know a word is supposed to be one word, I'm separating all the hiragana and kanji individually. Which is going to make most of this gibberish.):
"Seikaku (personality) wa ten no kinpatsu (blonde) bijin (beauty (noun-- usually translated as "beautiful woman") to (and) (*now he's stopped talking about Sanzo and starts on Goku) noo mi so (last two in katakana) keii ryoo gata no chibikko (little one (?), in katakana) (*here's the point where he starts describing Hakkai, and I lose all grasp on what he might mean) to (and) joo cho fu an teii na hatsu koo bijin (see above) to wa a chika zu ki ni na re ta ke do na."
Hmmm. ;)
Obviously the first translation is more colloquial and less clunky, though "A beautiful blonde with a sucky personality" is not bad. I'm losing the key phrase in the description of Sanzo-- "hard-living" and "sucky personality" are not the same things. I'd like to know if the description of Goku has the same joke that the ones of Sanzo and Hakkai do, that he's making them sound like romantic encounters. My guess is not, but if so, I'd probably say something like, "A petite young thing without much going on upstairs."
"Emotionally unstable dish who's on the skids" sounds a lot better than "unluckily good-looking person," but loses the way the writer used "bijin" to describe both Sanzo and Hakkai. Maybe that's not so important, but if you're really going for accuracy you'd preserve that and refer to them both with the same term, which in context would probably be something like "babe." Though "dish" is pretty funny, and "blonde bombshell" is too, so maybe strict accuracy is not best in this case.
Anyway, this gives me a lot of respect for translators.
This entry http://www.livejournal.com/users/coffee_and_ink/382363.html?mode=reply from Mely's journal prompted me to write this entry, which may be thoroughly boring for anyone not interested in the Japanese language and/or my current obsession, the manga and anime Saiyuki. But I came across a certain bit that I thought was an interesting example of how translations are made, as it's obviously quite colloquial and funny, and it so happens that I have two different translations of it in addition to the original.
All the same...
Unfortunately, I can't find a scan of the original page on the net which would show the kanji, but if anyone wants to see it, I do have it on my hard drive and could email it.
Now, I know that there are some people reading this who can read and speak Japanese much better than I can, since I am about at a kindergarten level. Or at least can read kanji, although they'll only be able to see the kanji if they ask for the email. So please feel free to jump in and correct me.
For those unfamiliar with the story, the context is that Gojyo, a ladykilling bachelor, found another man, Hakkai, badly wounded in the middle of the road. Gojyo brought him home and took care of him until two strangers came in search of him: Sanzo, a bad-tempered blonde priest and his companion Goku, who looks like a kid but is actually the Monkey King, tremendously strong but always hungry and not terribly bright. The first three men are strikingly handsome. (This is relevant.) After a series of adventures which reveal that Hakkai is probably even more emotionally damaged than he was physically when Gojyo found him half-dead, Gojyo returns home alone. Some of the townspeople ask him what he was doing-- had he been off with some woman? No, he says, but...
Translation number one: "I did get close to this hard-living blond bombshell... This little kid who's a bit light in the grey matter department... and this emotionally unstable dish who's on the skids."
I got that one here http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:7piX9y9ss4AJ:bane-huntress.co.uk/OffLicence/Yaoi-Facter.html+%22emotionally+unstable%22+saiyuki&hl=en and I have no idea where it came from.
Translation number two: "I got close to a beautiful blonde with a sucky personality... A shrimp that has a small and light brain size... And an emotionally unstable, unluckily good-looking person."
I got that one from a scanslation from mangacity.net translated by Ukii.
Original in romaji (probably totally mangled, this is mine via the manga's furigana. One of the fiendishly complicated things is that words aren't separated-- you're just supposed to know when one stops and another begins. A lot of this is just me guessing. Plus I can't replicate the kanji. Unless I know a word is supposed to be one word, I'm separating all the hiragana and kanji individually. Which is going to make most of this gibberish.):
"Seikaku (personality) wa ten no kinpatsu (blonde) bijin (beauty (noun-- usually translated as "beautiful woman") to (and) (*now he's stopped talking about Sanzo and starts on Goku) noo mi so (last two in katakana) keii ryoo gata no chibikko (little one (?), in katakana) (*here's the point where he starts describing Hakkai, and I lose all grasp on what he might mean) to (and) joo cho fu an teii na hatsu koo bijin (see above) to wa a chika zu ki ni na re ta ke do na."
Hmmm. ;)
Obviously the first translation is more colloquial and less clunky, though "A beautiful blonde with a sucky personality" is not bad. I'm losing the key phrase in the description of Sanzo-- "hard-living" and "sucky personality" are not the same things. I'd like to know if the description of Goku has the same joke that the ones of Sanzo and Hakkai do, that he's making them sound like romantic encounters. My guess is not, but if so, I'd probably say something like, "A petite young thing without much going on upstairs."
"Emotionally unstable dish who's on the skids" sounds a lot better than "unluckily good-looking person," but loses the way the writer used "bijin" to describe both Sanzo and Hakkai. Maybe that's not so important, but if you're really going for accuracy you'd preserve that and refer to them both with the same term, which in context would probably be something like "babe." Though "dish" is pretty funny, and "blonde bombshell" is too, so maybe strict accuracy is not best in this case.
Anyway, this gives me a lot of respect for translators.