Alice, Dokomademo - Vol. 1 Ch. 3 - The First Colors

[MangaDex]

 

[undeed]

I was hoping that the other scanlators would still continue translating this so that they could also give different perspectives on the translations.

Because I did have different opinion about that "don't fucking talk about parents" last chapter.
Which -to me- implies that Inuboshi either doesn't like his (foster) parents or he doesn't even want to talk about anything related to parents in general.
(at least that's what it sounds like to me)

But that's not the case, as shown in this chapter. He loves his foster parents.
He just doesn't like the idea of blaming your misery as if it was caused by whichever parent you ended up having. (parent gacha)

 

[Hyujm]

The phrase that Homer used to describe the sea is typically translated into English as "wine-dark". I don't speak Japanese, but would be curious to know if the author here is translating the phrase from English or the original Greek.

 

[mrboxeater]

so...is the dress blue or gold? lol

 

[someone2795]

so...is the dress blue or gold? lol

That shit had the whole internet fooled. 😂 Wasn't it like black and blue or something?

 

[halcer]

thanks for the chapter and notes!

 

[sssr]

The phrase that Homer used to describe the sea is typically translated into English as "wine-dark". I don't speak Japanese, but would be curious to know if the author here is translating the phrase from English or the original Greek.

It's actually oinops (oinos = wine + ops = eye/face), which makes no sense in modern languages. The translation wine-red was adopted by interpreters because there are two places in Homer where the word oinops is used directly to refer to color, and both refer to reddish-brown color (and Greek wine IS red). The translation wine-dark is a "solution" made by interpreters who want to make it make sense. However, there are actually many other places in Homer where color weirdness happens.

The most likely explanation is what is given in this manga. The ancient Greeks probably had a looser understanding of the concept of "colors". We have to remember that the idea of colors as we understand it in the modern world was invented arbitrarily by Isaac Newton in his description of light spectra. Ancient people understood "color", "hue", "gradation", and "contrast" as the same thing. It's likely that the original reason oinops is used to describe the sea is because Homer was using the term to describe color, hue, and contrast at the same time and ignored the color part for his description of the sea. We can't do this because of the way our modern conception of color works. This is why the translation wine-dark is most commonly used and is probably the closest to the original intent of the author.

Edit: After looking through this a bit, I found out that the classical Japanese translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey was done by Doi Bansui in the 1940s and he followed the "poetic explanation" given at the time that Homer was making allusions to the sea being violent and bloody. That's why he used "wine-red" in his version.

 

[Kushikime]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[Septazia]

Interesting, this reminds me of reading how when in a culture a type of color has no other names to distinguish its shades people tend to see them as all the same
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240724123040.htm

For example, there are two words for blue in Russian: 'siniy' for dark blue and 'goluboy' for light blue, while English only has only one word: 'blue'. Previous studies have shown that Russian speakers can distinguish between light and dark blue faster than English speakers.

This study was focused mostly on seeing if people who are bilingual would see more colors

Bilingual participants: The Lithuanian-Norwegian bilinguals showed a clear colour category effect when performing the task in Lithuanian, but not when using Norwegian.
This means that they distinguished between light and dark blue faster when they were thinking in Lithuanian, whereas this advantage disappeared when they were thinking in Norwegian.

 

[fieldbythesea]

thank you for the scans!! the color conversation was really cool (gotta love edutainment slice of lifes) and i'm glad we got a bit more insight on inuboshi's intentions. he has a worldview and dream he himself strongly believes in and he wants to prove it right, which i find to be a great purpose. i also really enjoy how the author is balancing alice's passion and lack of ways to express herself in a way that doesn't feel too infantilizing- i've only read internet love from this mangaka, but the casual humanization? nuance? of their characters is so nice!!

 

[totallytotally]

Yeah, this is the all too rare good shit. Thanks for the chapter, enjoying the though provoking questions it brings.