Akuyaku Reijou Tensei Ojisan - Vol. 8 Ch. 51 - New Term

[Tenkei]

Thanks for the chapter! A pet peeve of mine is seeing "semester" used to refer to a school term if the school year is divided into trimesters (three terms).

 

[Manko-sensei]

Dun-dun-duuuun!!!

(Every time I see 'third semester' somewhere my brain spasms a bit - I get why it's used, but it still sounds wrong....)

Thanks for the chapter!

Well, it is incorrect as semesters last six natural months, so you can only have TWO of them. The appropiated term in school-life terms is trimester, because what defines one period from another is the break in between.

 

[Fushiginiku]

Maybe "cover more ground" vs. "training ground"? Just a thought.

 

[Fushiginiku]

I would think English with German, so it would be a different language with similar origins, rather than two entirely different types of languages.

Except Chinese and Japanese are not related at all, except for Chinese loan words being brought into Japanese. There's no common origin between the languages.

 

[Fushiginiku]

Thanks for the chapter! A pet peeve of mine is seeing "semester" used to refer to a school term if the school year is divided into trimesters (three terms).

Well, "Semester" means "Six Months" and "Trimester" means "Three Months", so neither are actually appropriate in either two term or three term school years. Probably for both we should just be using "term", except in some places, that's used for "school year".

 

[arcosapphire]

I feel like just using archaic Chinese is fine if they're using archaic Chinese.

Sociolinguistically, readers may have all kinds of associations with French which don't apply in this circumstance. The author used Chinese because they wanted to convey ideas readers would associate with that. (Even though, honestly, I think it's such a weird thing for isekai to involve a wildly different world that still has all the same cultures by coincidence.)

I understand the desire to try to find a similar relationship to English as the archaic Chinese has to Japanese, but it's bound to cause friction. What about if we start seeing traditional Chinese food? Are we going to pretend it's baguettes? As readers, we already understand that Japanese is being spoken and we're reading it in English. We don't assume they actually are speaking English. So if something is going to be untranslated, it might as well be in the originally written language. The only obvious exception to this is if a character starts speaking actual English in the source--then you run into a conflict between the translated and untranslated English, because they need to be distinguished. (Even then, I think a typographic approach is sufficient so the reader knows what's actually in English and what's translated for their sake.)

 

[arcosapphire]

Except Chinese and Japanese are not related at all, except for Chinese loan words being brought into Japanese. There's no common origin between the languages.

French and English do have a common origin on the other hand, so not an ideal parallel there either.

 

[namingwrongs]

Except Chinese and Japanese are not related at all, except for Chinese loan words being brought into Japanese. There's no common origin between the languages.

That may be true of the spoken language, but the Japanese originally just tried to adopt the Chinese written language wholesale. Eventually some women came up with and started using kana, and after the men tried to hold it in contempt for being a woman thing for a while it was adopted in general because it fixed all the holes between the Chinese characters and the Japanese language, but they do still use a bunch of Chinese sourced kanji.

 

[Monstrengo]

Thanks for chapter!

if they reaching the end game would then appear a sequel of the game with new characters trope, since most target 3rd year will be leaving as well.

I wonder if those of us who have read some of the spanish translations on this site should do some spoilers.

 

[EmiYusa]

Thanks for the chapter!
Translation looked strange for me at first because they look too asiatic to talk in french, I though it was a case Luke in pokémon where characters that talked english/ where from US got changed to France lol
As the logic behind, sound interesting, but don't feel a good fit for their visual... But idk what to suggest....

For punlastion it was good, well done xD

 

[TesutoLTSF]

Heya!

Thanks for the chapter! A pet peeve of mine is seeing "semester" used to refer to a school term if the school year is divided into trimesters (three terms).

You're right. I automatically translate 学期 (gakki) to "semester," somehow dissociating the "third" from my mind, since my focus was on following the translation I used in the Table of Contents I made weeks ago.

Well, it is incorrect as semesters last six natural months, so you can only have TWO of them. The appropiated term in school-life terms is trimester, because what defines one period from another is the break in between.

though "trimester" isn't exactly correct because...

Well, "Semester" means "Six Months" and "Trimester" means "Three Months", so neither are actually appropriate in either two term or three term school years. Probably for both we should just be using "term", except in some places, that's used for "school year".

of this, but we're being a little pedantic here. After some quick research [1], it's divided almost neatly into periods of three months, except the last one, which is a bit short of three months in the final term.

I think I will change 'semester' to 'term'.

---

Maybe "cover more ground" vs. "training ground"? Just a thought.

I thought of this quite early on, but I can't just shoehorn it smoothly into the dialogue. "Sorry to make you cover more ground" feels incorrect in our case at hand.

---

I feel like just using archaic Chinese is fine if they're using archaic Chinese.

Sociolinguistically, readers may have all kinds of associations with French which don't apply in this circumstance. The author used Chinese because they wanted to convey ideas readers would associate with that. (Even though, honestly, I think it's such a weird thing for isekai to involve a wildly different world that still has all the same cultures by coincidence.)

I understand the desire to try to find a similar relationship to English as the archaic Chinese has to Japanese, but it's bound to cause friction. What about if we start seeing traditional Chinese food? Are we going to pretend it's baguettes? As readers, we already understand that Japanese is being spoken and we're reading it in English. We don't assume they actually are speaking English. So if something is going to be untranslated, it might as well be in the originally written language. The only obvious exception to this is if a character starts speaking actual English in the source--then you run into a conflict between the translated and untranslated English, because they need to be distinguished. (Even then, I think a typographic approach is sufficient so the reader knows what's actually in English and what's translated for their sake.)

I did consider this, but my concern is more about readability. Even if I add pronunciation help, it is quite difficult for English-only speakers. Though, after a second thought, that should be irrelevant if I add the translation just like I did now.

I would think English with German, so it would be a different language with similar origins, rather than two entirely different types of languages.

I also considered German, but I can't find any German phrase that fits and sounds somewhat natural when mentioned or used conversationally by an English speaker. (And I should add that my knowledge of both French and German is little to none.)

After some additional input from other comments, I think I'll just use the archaic Chinese text as it is to establish the link to their portrayed background (of Japanese samurai, ironically) and add the meaning right below the text. I just hope it won’t appear too often.

I'll make the changes sometime this week, no later than the weekend. Thank you all for your input! Also, let me know if you have any other thoughts or suggestions.


[1] https://dokidokijapan.com/en/blog/japanese-school-calendar-when-do-classes-start/

 

[Kaim6]

Fuq I caught up

 

[Camillionaire]

Thank you for the translation!

 

[Fushiginiku]

French and English do have a common origin on the other hand, so not an ideal parallel there either.

Yes. If you were going to do anything having a parallel, maybe English v. Arabic or English v. Hebrew. But neither has quite the abundance of loanwords into English that Chinese has loanwords into Japanese, even though both have a fairly long list of contributions to English.

 

[Fushiginiku]

That may be true of the spoken language, but the Japanese originally just tried to adopt the Chinese written language wholesale. Eventually some women came up with and started using kana, and after the men tried to hold it in contempt for being a woman thing for a while it was adopted in general because it fixed all the holes between the Chinese characters and the Japanese language, but they do still use a bunch of Chinese sourced kanji.

Although early Japanese written documents were indeed in Chinese, that actually ended very early. The next development was writing Japanese using Man'yogana, which is using Chinese characters to write Japanese sounds, ignoring the meaning of the characters. The great majority of early Japanese writing, pre kana, is this, not the Chinese language. This was not proper Kanji (in which the character must match the meaning, or be an accepted Chinese phonetic), nor either of the modern Kanas, but it was their predecessor. In more modern terms, the kanas are simplifications of Chinese characters (hiragana being derived from grass script and katakana being derived from seal script.)
TLDR, the Japanese abandoned writing the Chinese language extremely early and were instead writing Japanese language by borrowing Chinese characters.

 

[namingwrongs]

Although early Japanese written documents were indeed in Chinese, that actually ended very early. The next development was writing Japanese using Man'yogana, which is using Chinese characters to write Japanese sounds, ignoring the meaning of the characters. The great majority of early Japanese writing, pre kana, is this, not the Chinese language. This was not proper Kanji (in which the character must match the meaning, or be an accepted Chinese phonetic), nor either of the modern Kanas, but it was their predecessor. In more modern terms, the kanas are simplifications of Chinese characters (hiragana being derived from grass script and katakana being derived from seal script.)
TLDR, the Japanese abandoned writing the Chinese language extremely early and were instead writing Japanese language by borrowing Chinese characters.

Yes, but this is the equivalent of some isolated islanders meeting the English and making their own written language out of writing English words in their own grammar and sentence structure and filling the gaps with some new symbols they made up. The written language will still bare striking similarities with English even if the spoken language bears none. That's the point I'm trying to make.

 

[vedrit]

Love Richard and his puns. Thank you for trying your best to translate them, despite the inherent difficulties