Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2015-12-25 12:23 am
sinnesspiel) wrote2015-12-25 12:23 am
Merry Christmas! It's a small haul this year. Santa hates poor people.
Mostly a Christmas Present to let all the Shiki folk know I'm still about, still panning to do Shiki. 2015 turned into a really shitty year for me, and my set-up for translating Shiki took a bit of a hit. I do plan to resume come the start of the New Year. It's my resolution.
In the mean time, have some quicky seasonal Shiki goodness. I don't own anymore ToshioxSeishin doujinshi to do, alas.
First up is Ozaki and Seishin's seiyuu chatting about the Christmas season and who or what it reminds them of in Shiki.
Then the longer piece recorded closer to the start of the anime has both of them talking a bit about the actual novel.
Also this year, I've gotten permission from linguistic research Kinsui Satoshi to translate and summarize/share some of his work on Japanese fictional speech styles (role language). I'll be pulling examples from various series, including of course, Shiki. Sadly, no luck finding any contact information for anyone regarding Shiki itself. That seems like quite the complicated process and it's been a terrible year for complexities for your translator here. Here's to 2016 being better. It wouldn't take much, tohoho...
If I'm able to, I'll try to create a post that focuses on the speech styles of Shiki characters in order to help everyone appreciate the original speech styles and see what's lost in translation as well as how I try to keep what I can. With any luck, spreading an understanding of these speech styles may lead to you readers making suggestions too, so I can best convey everything the original writers were trying to convey.
Merry Christmas and thanks, as always, for reading!
In the mean time, have some quicky seasonal Shiki goodness. I don't own anymore ToshioxSeishin doujinshi to do, alas.
First up is Ozaki and Seishin's seiyuu chatting about the Christmas season and who or what it reminds them of in Shiki.
Then the longer piece recorded closer to the start of the anime has both of them talking a bit about the actual novel.
Also this year, I've gotten permission from linguistic research Kinsui Satoshi to translate and summarize/share some of his work on Japanese fictional speech styles (role language). I'll be pulling examples from various series, including of course, Shiki. Sadly, no luck finding any contact information for anyone regarding Shiki itself. That seems like quite the complicated process and it's been a terrible year for complexities for your translator here. Here's to 2016 being better. It wouldn't take much, tohoho...
If I'm able to, I'll try to create a post that focuses on the speech styles of Shiki characters in order to help everyone appreciate the original speech styles and see what's lost in translation as well as how I try to keep what I can. With any luck, spreading an understanding of these speech styles may lead to you readers making suggestions too, so I can best convey everything the original writers were trying to convey.
Merry Christmas and thanks, as always, for reading!
Merry Christmas!
I'm very glad that you are going to continue Shiki translation. And thank you for all the hard work you've already done.
It seems 2015 was shitty for everyone, so let's hope for the best in 2016! :)
Death note the musical
(Anonymous) 2015-12-25 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)P.S Merry Christmas and a happy new year
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I'll definitely be looking forward to your post on Shiki characters' speech styles if you decided to make one! Not long ago I also looked a bit into Japanese version of book 1 to gauge a bit the speech styles Toshio and Seishin use. I was specifically looking for what pronouns they use to refer to one another (my topic of interest; also because with my limited knowledge in Japanese it's a topic fairly easy to find out). Toshio is an ore guy; no surprise there. He refers to Seishin as 'omae', which is also no surprise.
Is 'anta' less intimate than 'omae'? I know from this anime where an (ore) guy uses it to refer to his female colleague whom he's not very close to (also the woman is his superior). Natsuno uses it to refer to Tohru even if I'm not mistaken, so if my question turns out correct I figure they're not that close, but this is a guy who refuses to be too attached to anyone from the village, so probably no surprise there.
What's interesting to me is Seishin: he's boku, and I take it that boku guys are generally more polite than ore guys (if an ore guy's dictionary goes as far as temee and kisama, I noticed that usually boku guys' dictionary only goes as far as omae, but I've only paid attention to a few male characters' speech pattern so I could be wrong) it's just... when he's being his usual calm, mild mannered self I didn't catch even once throughout book 1 what pronoun he uses to refer to Toshio. If not that, he refers to Toshio as 'Toshio' (more rarely) It's come to mind that Japanese is probably rather unique in that you can avoid using personal pronouns and still get your point across, but I think Seishin takes it to the next level. I know a boku character who's more liberal with second-person pronouns. (A lot of kimi and omae from him) I don't know how it sounds to you who understand Japanese much more than I do, but to me it feels strangely distant. Probably because he's being his reserved self. This could probably be nothing weird, though.
Then, suddenly, when he's angry that omae bullet comes through, like in Seishin-seme chapter where he spews out 'omae' towards Toshio as many as nine times. From zero to nine and from nothing to omae in rapid succession, to my surprise. Also my amusement. I mean, I even counted those omae multiple times to make sure. Well, he does let go of his walls in this chapter, so that's probably why.
I probably missed something though, given that looking at Japanese-only texts is tiring. Besides, this is only book 1. You've probably noticed something from book 2 that I haven't known of.
Also, I want to share something (you've possibly known about this though): so I tried to look up where Sotoba is supposedly located at in Japan, for data/fanfiction purpose (I'm a sucker for details like this). Sotoba is most likely fictional, but there really used to exist a town called Mizobe (exact same kanji) in Kagoshima Prefecture. The town was also partly mountainous with expressways/national highways. There are still a bit of differences between Shiki's Mizobe and this Mizobe I think, but Ono possibly wrote descriptions of Mizobe with this town in mind. Just putting it up here in case anyone finds it useful, because I think this particular topic hadn't come up before.
The town doesn't exist anymore, though. As of 2005, it got merged with other nearby towns to form a city called Kirishima. Boy do I have mixed feelings about it when I first found out, even if I knew it was ridiculous because Sotoba is fictional. But anyway...
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...Ah, and I just realize I got too caught up in exploring the Google Maps town link the other reader provided to respond to them properly then. Gaaah.
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As for your language questions, Ozaki and Seishin both "omae" each other. Ozaki doesn't omae his patients or such of course. I don't remember if he antas or omaes his wife Kyoko. I'll do a media survey of it and an official post some time soon here.
Omae is generally more rude than "anta," but I don't think there's any aggressive meaning to Seishin omae-ing Ozaki; it's common between male friends (at least particularly so in fiction--I suspect it's so in real life but perhaps not quite as much as in fiction; none of my friends said anything about me omae-ing them, though I found myself reflexively anta-ing some girls, though I don't know why myself).
I think it's more of a reflection of the general nature of their relationship than Seishin's mood at the time. I think he omaes him when not angry at times but I'll need to do a scan over again to get you any good data. Definitely tell me any things you have interest in so I can do such a scan! Let's work together to get something everyone can get some good info on!
Due to way too much fictional exposure, in Japan I had the habit of omae-ing everyone if I wasn't consciously thinking about watching myself and casually asked a group of girls in a class what they thought with "Omaera wa dou da?" and got a hilariously scared reaction from them, as if I'd just went: "What about youse bitches?"
I got the "gaijin pass" a lot on my rudeness.
At any rate, here's a rough order of common second person pronouns:
Most Polite
Name
Anata
Kimi
Anta
Omae
Temee
Kisama
Least Polite
Omae is still extremely rude, but it's the last one on the list that could also be "intimate" rather than rude. I can't think of any girl characters off the top of my head who use it fondly/intimately, it's a pretty male thing, but I'm sure they exist. I've heard girls use it, but as an insulting thing. The last two I've only heard as explicitly insulting or hateful/rude. For some reason I have the impression of males using "kimi" more than women, but I have no formal support for that yet. Again, I'd need to do a media survey. Kimi is generally used towards those of lower social status or ones you have some protective obligation or tendency to--children (when I do hear women use it, it seems to be towards children), men to women (it's a pretty common one for men to use towards their girlfriends, though I hear omae a lot too from the rougher types), towards one's subordinates, towards one's equals.
For an example of Omae as an intimate thing, consider Roy Mustang from FMA; he kimis almost all of his subordinates (Hawkeye, Ed, Al (technically not a subordinate). In general, he's quite formal and general proper if militarty-style brusque (watashi, no da). But with his somewhat vitrolic old buddy Hughes, also a subordinate in a sense, they mutually omae each other. Hughes omaes more people in general including Ed, being a rougher talking, but ultimately much friendlier, "warmer" and thus more habitually intimate character.
I could be wrong on some this impression stuff and it's a largely informal summary of what my feeling is on it from watching/reading a lot of stuff. I'll be sure to translate Kinsui's in the future for a better sourced take on it, and I'll look to provide lots of references from various series.
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Yeah, there is high possibility I just missed other omaes when looking through book 1. Because as far as I know he only uses omae in that chapter, it looks to me he uses it in a rather condescending manner ("YOU did x, YOU did y"). Because of my limited knowledge on Japanese, I currently have the impression that somehow Seishin is too polite to use omae (when not angry), but I'll be surprised if he ends up anta-ing Toshio because their relationship is definitely on 'omae' level. (I think it would be weird if Toshio omaes him but he antas Toshio) I'll also do some survey on book 2; after all it's holiday!
So it's not weird when guys who use boku also use omae frequently? The impression I have is boku guys tend to use kimi more than omae. The boku character I told you about kimis just about everyone who's the same age or younger, and only uses omae when he's cornered, stressed or wants to be a bit insulting I think. He refers to his enemy (the ore guy who refers his superior woman as anta) as kimi a lot but sometimes omae when they're fighting. I'm thinking that probably this character uses kimi a lot because he likes to mobilize people by being persuasive/appealing to their desires (he provides ways for them to achieve their aim), so he uses kimi a lot to appeal to them. If not, it's then just part of his nature.
But then again Seishin might only use omae to refer to Toshio, so it's probably nothing weird. I think it would be much weirder if he omaes other people. So it's probably not really the matter of ore-omae or boku-kimi pairing, but more the matter of how close the people one is talking to to them.
When Seishin learns that Sunako is basically older than he is, will he retain that kimi tho? I'm curious.
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