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Post by dreamingfifi on May 11, 2016 0:59:07 GMT
Yeah, most often as a misquote of one of Shinichi's lines: "Edogawa Conan, tantei sa." (I'm the detective Edogawa Conan.) They hear the "sa" at the end and think that it's "san", so they'll write things like "I'm Edogawa Conan, Tantei-san." Oh my, haha. Always thought he said 'Tantei-san'. I'm not familiar with the Japanese language and how it work however, so I'm not surprised there are a lot of cultural and language rules I'm missing out on. Though, I've never personally used that phrase in a fic before. I'd go for 'Detective' instead. Tantei-kun feels more like a honorary nickname than a proper title. Thinking about it, would be sort of weird for Conan to call himself -san. Huh. The more you know! Yeah, "sa" is a just a colloquial version of "da/desu" (to be). In that context, "sa" means "I am."
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Cesela
Senior Member
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Post by Cesela on May 11, 2016 9:05:36 GMT
Ah. I see. That makes sense. Strange of the translation ignores that part and just writes "Edogawa Conan, Detective" then. Oh well, not too strange that there are misconceptions.
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Post by midnight on May 11, 2016 18:15:02 GMT
This is really helpful, thanks!
I can't help but feel however some translations are simply not the same: for instance I find it difficult to imagine Aoko refering to her father as, well, 'dad' and have sticked to otousan, probably due to all the times I've heard it from the anime. But I guess I should rectify that, yeah, in order to improve
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Post by dreamingfifi on May 11, 2016 18:40:11 GMT
Ah. I see. That makes sense. Strange of the translation ignores that part and just writes "Edogawa Conan, Detective" then. Oh well, not too strange that there are misconceptions. As a translator, I say that it's not actually strange. Literal translations may be close grammatically, but they often miss the nuance of the intended emotions. Shinichi was trying to be all cool and kickass, and "Edogawa Conan, Detective" captures that better than "I'm the detective Edogawa Conan." Unfortunately, it meant that a lot of people who know only a little Japanese were confused. Which, is even more of a reason to avoid confusing people and spreading misconceptions about Japanese in fanfics. A lot of the clumsy, inappropriate uses of Japanese in fanfics actually comes from people picking it up from other fanfics and assuming it is right. Linguistically, it's fascinating to watch this Japanese-English pidgin spread, but for the craft of writing and being part of a community of writers, it's destructive and makes the community less inviting to people who don't speak the pidgin yet. Even if you speak both Japanese and English, the Japanese-English pidgin will leave you confused because the words aren't used in the same ways as you'd expect.
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Cesela
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Post by Cesela on May 11, 2016 20:30:55 GMT
Thats very true. Misconceptions are horrifying. Im not familiar with the language, so Ive opt for not using any, ceot for honorific. I do make Ran say 'dad' because I watched the dub first, and in german. But Im wondering, how should we translate Conans 'Ojisan' or 'occhan?' Uncle seems a little odd in english when they are not related.
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Post by boogum on May 11, 2016 20:45:33 GMT
I just stick "Uncle", though I have noticed re-reading my stuff that I've slipped up with the odd "Ojisan" here and there because, as mentioned, my brain likes to default to Japanese sometimes while I'm writing - especially for terms that don't translate well into English. It's a pain.
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Post by dreamingfifi on May 12, 2016 9:31:43 GMT
Yeah, for "Occhan" I use "Uncle", for "Jiichan" = "Gramps/Grampa", "Obachan" = "Aunty", "Obaachan" = "Granny/Gramma", "Oniisan" (if it's about a teenage boy or man in his twenties, not actual older brother) "Mister", for "Oneesan" (teenaged or women in their twenties, not actual older siser) "Miss", "Ma'am", or "Lady".
One useful way to figure out how these things would be said in English is to imagine you're working as a cashier. How would you greet the person before you? For example, if it was Amuro, I'd say "Sir".
If you need a slightly less formal way, think of greeting a stranger at a party or some kind of relaxed social event. What do you call them before you know their name? This time, if meeting Amuro, I'd say "Mister" or "Dude".
There's also a name suffix that I've heard used that means something similar to "-chan" and "-kun" and takes a similar form. That's "-dear". Like saying "Fiona-dear, go get the mail for me!" Though, in my family we used "-bear" instead, and I'm not sure how widespread that is.
If you think about it, we actually do have ways of communicating all of the same information in English, we just do it slightly differently.
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Cesela
Senior Member
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Post by Cesela on May 12, 2016 10:31:45 GMT
That's just seems awkward to me in English. but that might be because we don't use honorifics in my language. Specially not working as a cashier, haha. I just really can't stand being called 'Ma'am' or 'miss'. Seems awkward to me. I like the british who calls you 'darling' or 'love' instead.
However, that's just my own opinions. You got a lot of great points, just culturally feels different then it does to, for example, Japanese.
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Post by dreamingfifi on May 12, 2016 17:06:57 GMT
There is a lot of local variance when it comes to honorifics. I just posted what feels right to me coming from my Montana-English dialect. You should just use what feels most natural in your own dialect.
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doublexxcross
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Yes, and on this night I will again visit a most resplendent gem...
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Post by doublexxcross on May 13, 2016 6:42:17 GMT
Ah. I see. That makes sense. Strange of the translation ignores that part and just writes "Edogawa Conan, Detective" then. Oh well, not too strange that there are misconceptions. As a translator, I say that it's not actually strange. Literal translations may be close grammatically, but they often miss the nuance of the intended emotions. Shinichi was trying to be all cool and kickass, and "Edogawa Conan, Detective" captures that better than "I'm the detective Edogawa Conan." Unfortunately, it meant that a lot of people who know only a little Japanese were confused. Which, is even more of a reason to avoid confusing people and spreading misconceptions about Japanese in fanfics. A lot of the clumsy, inappropriate uses of Japanese in fanfics actually comes from people picking it up from other fanfics and assuming it is right. Linguistically, it's fascinating to watch this Japanese-English pidgin spread, but for the craft of writing and being part of a community of writers, it's destructive and makes the community less inviting to people who don't speak the pidgin yet. Even if you speak both Japanese and English, the Japanese-English pidgin will leave you confused because the words aren't used in the same ways as you'd expect. I would offer that "Edogawa Conan. Detective" isn't really ignoring "sa"; most of us recognise the pattern "[name], [occupation]" (or "[name]. [occupation]") as implying an unspoken "I am..." rather than just being a disconnected "[name], [occupation]", in the same way that "sa" implies the full "...desu" structure without actually saying a single part of it. Also, just in general, it's a lucky translation - "detective" and "tantei sa" have the exact same syllable count, so it's even easier to read Conan as saying.
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neonquincy1217
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Post by neonquincy1217 on May 14, 2016 15:23:25 GMT
As for me, aside from honorifics, I sometimes use Japanese to convey strong emotions... Like, when someone's really angry or annoyed, I leave the language as it is and don't bother translating them to English (same with when I write in my native language). The danger to that, I think, is sometimes readers may get confused with the sudden switching of languages. I leave translations though, but... so...
I can't be 100% sure I'm not guilty for doing some things mentioned on the list *hides in embarrassment*
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Post by stelraetnae on May 18, 2016 13:30:47 GMT
There are a lot of good points here, so kudos to you for writing this post! A lot of fanfic writers do go through that phase where they try to throw Japanese in wherever they can (I know I did, in my early fanfic-writing days - I can't reread my old fanfics without cringing).
Honorifics, however, is something I firmly maintain in using, especially in cases where the characters are Japanese. True, there are some alternatives in English, but they don't always present the same nuance. One clear example of this would be the way Sonoko and Ran started out calling Masumi "Sera-san" and then eventually changed to "Sera-chan". "Miss Sera" in replacement of "Sera-san" would sound overly-formal, I believe, because while in Japanese it is common to use a honorific with a classmate that one isn't all that close to yet, in English it's rare to address a classmate as "Miss - " even at the first meeting. The second is something like "Sera-dear" in replacement of "Sera-chan", which I feel sounds very awkward. I mean I suppose that "-dear" may have different usages in various varieties of English, but in the variety I'm familiar with "-dear" is generally only used by much older women (like grandmas), or towards a young child.
In some extreme cases the LACK of honorifics can actually turn me off from a story. Things like having Conan simply call Ran as "Ran" rather than "Ran-nee-chan", for me it changes the tone of the dialogue completely into something that can sound very out of character. Because Japan is a strongly elder-respecting society, the way Conan addresses the "older" characters as "Ran-nee-chan" and "Heiji-nii-chan" is ingrained in his childish fake persona, compared to how he would refer to them as "Ran" and "Hattori" when being Shinichi. But that is just a pet peeve of mine that not everyone may share.
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On a different but still somewhat related note, what are your thoughts about writing accents? Like Heiji's Osakan dialect, would you simply ignore it and have him speak like everyone else, or would you work to apply a corresponding English accent? Personally I generally go with small modifications to his speech like "ya" instead of "you" (like "What did ya mean?"), but nothing much beyond that. I'm curious about what other people prefer.
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Addy01
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When you can't write angst to save your life but all your plunnies are angsty
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Post by Addy01 on May 18, 2016 13:51:17 GMT
totally agree with this points...and i reckon with enough warning and translations, it should be fine. after a while the new readers would have gotten used to it and would appreciate the effort the authors put in to make the characters as legit as possible.
As for translations, i reckon if you're confident enough with accents, just go for it. though i have to say that sometimes there are those who gets too carried away and i could never understand a single word they (usually Heiji) says.
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Post by dreamingfifi on May 18, 2016 17:53:19 GMT
The question of accents is a difficult one. You want to reflect the difficulty your POV characters have understanding it, but you don't want it to sound stupid either.
One way is to choose a dialect with a similar status from the default (the default being the standardized language that you use for your main characters). So, if the main character is Heiji and the story is through his eyes, you'd write the Tokyo characters with accents and Heiji with the standardized dialect.
People like to use the Southern USA dialects for Heiji... But I am not sure that really fits. According to my Japanese friends, the Osaka-dialect doesn't sound uneducated and rural, it actually sounds archaic and uses more Chinese words, so a better choice might actually be Scottish-English or a north-England dialect. On the other hand, the southern ya/you is a really handy way to make it sound like the Osakan ya/da (the ya is a colloquial "to be").
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Post by dreamingfifi on May 18, 2016 18:07:06 GMT
I just had a thought - the POV you use, like 1st person or 3rd person also matters. If you are writing in 1st person, treat the reader as the default, because your POV character is in a conversation with your reader. That would make your POV character's speech the dialect having one.
When you are doing 3rd person limited (only through the eyes of one character at a time) then your POV character is the default and the other characters can have accents.
If you're doing 3rd person omnipotent (you know the thoughts and actions of everyone) then everyone is the default because there is no "other".
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