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Well, I've embarked on a project of translating the visual novel Arcana, and I'm probably making many mistakes, as I seem to know only enough Japanese to be dangerous. :wafuu:  Anyhow, the passage of the prologue which gave me the most difficulty is this:

法王の姫・ハープ様の花婿を広く公募!このたび法王庁では、見目麗しいハープ姫の花婿を広く一般に公募する と発表した。応募資格は法王領下の未婚男子のみなお、応募者は厳正な審査の上、適格者のみが花婿候補として 迎えられる!詳しくは法王庁か、各地の法王庁連絡所まで!

My tentative rendering of the passage (which is a road sign that the game's protagonist reads):

'An Appeal to the General Public for a Bridegroom for the Hierophant Princess Harp-sama! The Hierophant's Church is pleased to announce to the general public an appeal for a suitable bridegroom for the beautiful Princess Harp-sama. Applications are open to all unmarried male subjects of the Hierophant, all applications will be examined most strictly, and only the most qualified will be welcomed as candidate bridegrooms. For more details, please see the nearest Hierophant's information office.'

Can anyone help me make a better translation? 法王 I know normally means 'Pope', but given that the game is set in a medieval fantasy world and the 'Arcana' of the title are the Tarot Arcana, I think I am justified in rendering it as 'Hierophant' as in the tarot card. So derived terms like 法王庁 (normally meaning the Vatican), might be Hierophant's Church. The second sentence has the term: 領下 which I can find in no dictionary I have as a word, and in the context it obviously can't be a Japanese name (the Hierophant's name in the game is Hymnus). Going from the kanji (which mean jurisdiction and under respectively), I infer that it might mean 'subject of', so 法王領下 might mean subjects of the Hierophant.

Any suggestions for a more accurate rendering are welcome.

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Well, given that 法王イムヌス looks like this:

107nxfk.png

bearing a similar sort of three-pronged staff of office as with the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Hierophant card:

RWS_Tarot_05_Hierophant.jpg

and the religion he is head of in the game seems to be a sort of Mithraism (probably the religion that might have become dominant in the world if we did not have the various accidents of history that resulted in Christianity), I think 'Hierophant' should be good.

 

But what is 領下? Further searching turns up a related word: 占領下 meaning occupied (by an army or military force), so it seems to have the meaning of a territory under, so __領下 might mean territory of __. Hence 法王領下 might mean the Hierophant's feudal territory (analogous to the Papal States of old perhaps), so 法王領下の未婚男子 might be 'unmarried men of the Hierophant's domain'?

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Why not just Pope or Patriarch? I would personally use Archon. (He looks like generic religious leader in some Mediaeval European style fantasy.)

I'm not sure why they don't use 領内. But I suspect 下 is used so the person doesn't have to be physically within the realm but anyone under the Archon's chain of command counts.

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'Pope' is too loaded by Roman Catholicism to be suitable I think. 'Patriarch' seems less so, but it is also used by major Orthodox Christian leaders too. But then again, the highest initiates of the Mithraic mystery cults of ancient Rome were also called 'Pater', so perhaps it something to consider. 'Archon' was used more as a secular title, e.g. the highest magistrates in the ancient Greek city-states used it, and the Byzantine Archons were secular princes, not religious leaders. 'Hierophant' was the title used by the high priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries which the Mithraic cults superseded, but its use in the Tarot Major Arcana is a big point in its favour.

 

So I take it that 領下 might well be rendered 'a subject/vassal of' then.

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Don't worry about 領下. I think you got that covered as well as you could.

領 is Territory. 領下 is "under the territory of". 法王領下is then "Under the territory of the Hierophant".

On the other hand, 占領 is "occupy", and thus 占領下 is "under the occupation of"

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No. The Archon title was semi-religious in nature. The secular ruler was the strategos/polemarch/king/emperor.

Oh top of that, many gnostic Christian sects use the label Archon for semi-supernatural figures.

 

In another translanslation consideration, the word Archon is much more likely to be familiar to your readers than Hierophant.

 

領下 I suspect is either archaic or the two words should be taken separately. But it's (most likely) subject.

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こんにちわ, みんなさん.

I would like to ask something which has bothered me for some time. That is,

 

how to differentiate the translation of formal japanese and casual japanese to english? For example, how to differentiate the translation between these two:

  1. 貴方が其れ をやったんですか?
  2. お前がそれ をやったのか?

Also, how to translate different pronouns of I (俺, 僕, 私 [わたし; わたくし; わし ], 我, etc.) and you ( 貴方 [あなた; あんた], 君, お前, etc.) to english?

Thanks in advance.

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For formality, you... well, you go more formal or more casual. For the two sentences you gave, you could potentially go:

 

1. You were responsible for that?

2: You did that?

 

As for pronouns: if the plot doesn't particularly care, don't worry about it. If it sort of matters (like, if a girl's insulted for saying 僕), work around it (generic tomboy insult GO). If there is actual information being conveyed through the pronoun (e.g., if there's a crossdresser who gives away their actual gender by using the wrong pronoun), cry for a little bit and then make something up.

 

It is... very rare for the plot to care about second-person pronouns (was going to say never, but then I thought of an example so >_>), so you don't have to worry about those as much.

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For 分かる, consider "understood" vs. "got it." For 断る, consider "turn down" vs. "rejected."

But it's also lots of little things, like using some slang or words associated with informal speech (gotta, 'cause, like/totally, Chris'll, etc.)... Basically, when you're reading things in English (by which I mean real novels, not VN translations, 'cause a lot of translations do a bad job of this), pay attention to when things sound formal and when they don't. You have to develop that ear before you can write it.

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Hmmm, I see, it's rather difficult and complicated to translate language with a fixed degree of formality to another which has no fixed one. All the more difficult because I'm not a native speaker. Also, those slangs like gotta, wanna, 'cause or 'cuz are originated from AmE, right? It's troubling because mainly I use BE (or something BE-ish, but still keeping the Japanese atmosphere as much as I can). About the translation, does this sound formal?

 

  1. 分かっちゃったんですか? => You're able to understand that?
  2. あなたが断るんですかっ!? => So you're the one who turns it down?

For the second sentence, it's rather troubling because the context is that the main protagonist asked (rather forcefully) his club president to "reject" (he used informal speech) the request from the student council president, "すぐに断ってこい!". Before the club president could say a thing, the student council president suddenly barged in and said, "お断りだ!". The main protagonist immediately replied with the sentence above (this time, a formal speech). Two things I found troubling are,

  • If I use "reject" for his informal speech then "turn down" for his formal speech, won't this sound rather inconsistent?
  • あなた which is emphasized in the Japanese sentence, does my translation still keep this emphasis?

Once again, thanks in advance.

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Hmmm, I see, it's rather difficult and complicated to translate language with a fixed degree of formality to another which has no fixed one. All the more difficult because I'm not a native speaker. Also, those slangs like gotta, wanna, 'cause or 'cuz are originated from AmE, right? It's troubling because mainly I use BE (or something BE-ish, but still keeping the Japanese atmosphere as much as I can). 

 

They originated in american english but apparently have sort of spread to british english as well. 

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I'm an American, so I can't speak much w.r.t. B.E. stuff. Writing in Scottish and cockney accents is fun, though.

 

 


  1. 分かっちゃったんですか? => You're able to understand that?
  2. あなたが断るんですかっ!? => So you're the one who turns it down?

 

These sound very stilted to my ears (also, the d.o. of "turn down" is the person being turned down, not their idea, so it's "us" there). For 1, simply "You understood that? or "You managed to understand that?" would be better ("You're able to understand that?" sort've implies to me that the speaker thought the second person wasn't intelligent enough to understand something (or, alternatively, that the speaker isn't intelligent enough to understand it); "managed to understand" has the implication that it's something really convoluted (or that someone was explaining something poorly); "you understood that?" is nice and generic.) For the other, either "You're the one turning us down?!" or "You're turning us down?!" depending on how much you want to emphasize the "you." In this particular instance, though, it really doesn't work--"you're the one turning us down" implies you were expecting to be turned down by some party, just not necessarily the person in question.

As for the whole conversation: "Go tell her no!" / "We refuse!" / "Wait--you're turning us down?!" might work. (Also, "reject" was intended as the more formal one, but "reject" doesn't really sound right in this context, and "turn down" isn't super-informal or anything.) It uses different words, but that's not really that much of a problem; the passage still makes sense.

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Request translation help:

This all buttons looks like somehow connected to camera or camera mode:

(Images not high quality, trying to understand what writing on them)

Am i correct or understand something wrong?

Here:

20454fe0645755c435af97264d78005f.jpg- そのまま (そ- ?) - Normal pose

7008609de4e0e2df8000691f0c04adfa.jpg- こっち向いて - Another angle pose (or something like that)

979dfa74eb374f8bdfc67b74a8a7e466.jpg- ポーズ変えて - Change pose

54190e31e3068f67ff1a756a9cf0647b.jpg- 立つて - Stand

87364c29fd8c8f88234dea5f6fb4a0fc.jpg- 座つて - Seat

fa31af85a17ff268eead055e2a293efc.jpg- いいね - Nice

Need help to be done:

3dc3ed6d70a8565b00a06bb1b098f73d.jpg -
26aeb7219c7c3c4e6bf623156390e4a0.jpg -
808c305a6e6e8fbf41626716310b82eb.jpg -
89edfe5250c28f5f0e3bb9ac12cc62d0.jpg -
320757407f198fec28a8795d90837351.jpg -
f55a87b14d0ac4852a817512eb755d5a.jpg -
b2bdebacc2c7a2a00c0cbdcef9399cd8.jpg -
e30ddd0b7092fe69f68ced1aece17569.jpg -
6aba3903f99919e25def0e64dbaea06c.jpg -
a4da4c755e3f40a23276c8a6d2f3b4fc.jpg -
ddd6dc32b0527899f43c742180d1d238.jpg -
060bbe0c0ea12f3ab038f46ab2ed6fcb.jpg -

e838e7feffd8cb9581552986a5fb1a2c.jpg -
110dbb7999398c46f6eda215e01230ec.jpg -
cf1399329434656dd84924bd87ddc5ac.jpg -
6e804cd267f746af0d6f70cac9f8cc9c.jpg -
611a4cc1ad53ce18eb5cff9639859b3c.jpg -
12efd46ac7f26b8fe4fc43dd6536797f.jpg -
461332301a77ed75cca7da3c3aacf2e2.jpg -
2164d45e13e19d5592f740aac5856744.jpg -

 

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You're trying to jump through hoops to use one word to match one Japanese word, and I understand the impulse, but you need to let it go. It's a terrible habit to get into, especially when there's no poetic value to keeping the same word.

 

The first sentence is a bit awkward (drop the "and"). The voice in the last sentence sounds more like that of a curious onlooker than someone who's genuinely surprised. This is largely because you keep trying to put "so" in there, but also because you keep trying to use the "the one who" construction, which is really, really passive. Also, the verb there cannot be in present tense in English--future, past, and present progressive all work (albeit with slightly different meanings), but the simple present simply does not. (Yes, the Japanese is in the simple nonpast tense. That doesn't mean the output should be. Welcome to translating :))

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Hmm, I see, well, I'll let the impulse go if I have to. But I still can see that "refuse" is usable for these three sentences:

"Go refuse it immediately!"
"I refuse!"
"YOU are the one refused?" 

 

I think those words conveys the VN's message pretty nicely, don't you think so? (surely I wouldn't be able to came up with those without your help, thank you!)

I want to add some more questions, but may I? Oh, I may? I knew you guys are good people. Then, let me ask these:

 

1) 【副会長】

「また……華宮会なる独自の情報部隊を駆使し、
 校内では不動の地位を築いています」
【奏】
「あの……先輩、何を築いちゃってるんですか!」
【凪沙】
「ふふっ、可愛い子たちよ」
【ケニー】
「ファン倶楽部じゃないのか?」
【副会長】
「当初はその目的だったようですが、
 現在は彼女の意のままに動く、特殊情報部隊です」
That's for the context, what I want to ask is what should I translate 築いています and 築いちゃってるんですか into? I searched up some dictionaries but either one of "fabricate;build;construct" or "build; to pile up; to amass" doesn't sound right for the conversation above.
 
2) 『色々な所に突っ込んで回る』って噂を流せば、
 『ツッコミの奏』としてすぐに定着するわね
【愛理】
「そうね、ヤンキー漫画みたいで格好いいじゃない」
【奏】
「待てっ、そこの二人……そんな噂を流しやがったら、
 その口にとんでもないものを突っ込むぞ!」
 
The point is that they're being ambiguous about the term tsukkomi (突っ込み; ツッコミ). What is the best way to translate tsukkomi? Should I add a TL note?

 

Thanks in advance.

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The point is that they're being ambiguous about the term tsukkomi (突っ込み; ツッコミ). What is the best way to translate tsukkomi? Should I add a TL note?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Tsukkomi can be directly translated as 'straight man' which is it's English counterpart. 

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"YOU are the one refused?" doesn't mean what you think it means >_>

First one: "establishing" or "building up" seems fine. As for the second, consider "jab" (edit: or maybe "poke" would be better? Something along those lines, anyways). Never ever ever add a translation note to explain a joke.

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20454fe0645755c435af97264d78005f.jpg- Stay in that pose

7008609de4e0e2df8000691f0c04adfa.jpg- Look this way

979dfa74eb374f8bdfc67b74a8a7e466.jpg- Change pose

54190e31e3068f67ff1a756a9cf0647b.jpg- Stand up

87364c29fd8c8f88234dea5f6fb4a0fc.jpg- Sit down

fa31af85a17ff268eead055e2a293efc.jpg- Looks nice

3dc3ed6d70a8565b00a06bb1b098f73d.jpg - Buy (consumer)

26aeb7219c7c3c4e6bf623156390e4a0.jpg - Buying (store buying from customers. You know, like "We buy gold" and stuff)

808c305a6e6e8fbf41626716310b82eb.jpg - Inspection? Request (Usually checking for authenticity of something potentially valuable)

89edfe5250c28f5f0e3bb9ac12cc62d0.jpg - Change hairstyle

320757407f198fec28a8795d90837351.jpg - Dye hair

f55a87b14d0ac4852a817512eb755d5a.jpg - Leave it up to (whoever, in this case the store clerk or whatever?)

e838e7feffd8cb9581552986a5fb1a2c.jpg - Number sold

110dbb7999398c46f6eda215e01230ec.jpg - Depends on context, but probably the bill here.

cf1399329434656dd84924bd87ddc5ac.jpg -  Hairstyle

6e804cd267f746af0d6f70cac9f8cc9c.jpg - Hair color

611a4cc1ad53ce18eb5cff9639859b3c.jpg - The price

12efd46ac7f26b8fe4fc43dd6536797f.jpg - Number bought

461332301a77ed75cca7da3c3aacf2e2.jpg - Name (of item)

2164d45e13e19d5592f740aac5856744.jpg - Number in stock

 

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"YOU are the one refused?" doesn't mean what you think it means >_>

First one: "establishing" or "building up" seems fine. As for the second, consider "jab" (edit: or maybe "poke" would be better? Something along those lines, anyways). Never ever ever add a translation note to explain a joke.

I would wait for the context of the fanclub/organisation for the first one.

And the context of the first 突っ込む for the second one.

Especially the second one there might be a way to partially preserve the play on words.

Just a note for GLM. "You are the one refused" would mean someone refused "you", not you refused someone.

I would start from the original meaning of implying that "You're not the one (who should decide) to refuse me/it."

And change the wording to suit the personality and tone.

Edit: Also note here that, though unlikely in this case, 断る can mean to ask for permission.

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Based on what was stated, Nagisa's establishing a collection of cute girls...? The fan club appears to be referring back to the 華宮会(hananomi-kai? not 100% sure how to pronounce this), though it is a bit unclear from this little snippet.

 

jab/poke was intended to preserve the play on words (making jabs/jab things down your throat), but looking at it again--is 突っ込んで回る here going for "meddling" / "barging in" instead? You are right, we do need more context there. (poke could still work there --"poking your nose into things" -- "poke my hand down your throat." Or something. I dunno.)

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If it was meddling and straight man I was thinking of like

 

Stick our noises in other people's business.

Sou the Straight man.

I'll stick something straight down your throats.

 

But really need some context to be sure. Especially I don't see how this will be like a gangster manga.

In all likelihood it's *not* straight man here, but "Meddling Sou".

Or if they're going around doujouyaburi or something "Charging Sou".

 

 

For the former I guess yeah just using the Hanamiya Club (her surname) to "build an unassailable position within the school" or something.

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