Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san - Vol. 17 Ch. 130 - Let’s see what Senpai is like over here.

[currypan2005]

Addressing people by their name instead of just "you" is very common in English when you're not having a one-on-one conversation, even if you're only addressing one person.

Perhaps it's normal when greeting someone (e.g. "Hi, Mark!") but it's really not when that other person is the object of the sentence and it's extremely uncommon when it's a one-on-one conversation. If you tell your girlfriend "I love Taylor!" she won't think you're talking to her and may react like "Who are you talking to?", "So who's this Taylor you're in love with?" or "OMG I love Taylor Swift too!". Japanese don't need pronouns, us English speakers do.

"you" could be the entire group and thus also earn him the ire of the other two, and if Nagatoro catches that rewording after he was just talking to her, she might take it as a personal challenge too.

That misunderstanding wouldn't happen. You know why? Context. We have two chapters of this primary dialogue going on between Machida and Senpai. Nobody else in the room witnessing that conversation would interpret Senpai as personally aiming to beat them in the mock exam, especially not Nagatoro, who isn't even a student there.

Japanese is not afraid of dropping the subject when it isn't absolutely necessary, so when a name comes up in a place where it isn't needed, it aught to be kept because it's there for a reason.

It's not a matter of being afraid or not. It's just how the Japanese language functions. Japanese will use names in place of pronouns or objects because that's how the language has evolved over thousands of years. English speakers, on the other hand, rely on pronouns like "you" in order to understand who the speaker is addressing. Otherwise everything will sound like some Shakespearean prose that is aimed towards an audience of spectators at all times. If we really had to go gung-ho on the literal Japanese translation, Senpai's opening remark of this chapter would sound something like: "In the next mock exam will defeat Machida-san!" and when he repeats himself on p.4 it'd sound like "Will beat Machida-san is what is said." You need to keep your audience in mind when translating, and the audience are not Japanese speakers. It's that simple.

Even the "stretched back" line makes sense when you actually think about the characters, they're talking about Nagatoro, the Toro-cat herself.

Hoookay this one is quite a bit of a stretch. The instructor literally just met Nagatoro. He clearly doesn't know Nagatoro's cat-like reactions, her demeanor, how she acts when she's in front of everyone vs. Senpai, etc. He is going purely based off of looks, off of his pre-existing ideas of what qualities are desirable in a model. An art instructor wouldn't dole out "Hey what a nice stretched back" as a compliment.

 

[Spoopa]

I can already talk she's just gonna be a Tsundere "u-u-ummmm I actualy liked you all this time despite belittling you >//////<" Kawaii from Komi-San style, how incredibly boring

 

[StealthAria]

Perhaps it's normal when greeting someone (e.g. "Hi, Mark!") but it's really not when that other person is the object of the sentence and it's extremely uncommon when it's a one-on-one conversation. If you tell your girlfriend "I love Taylor!" she won't think you're talking to her and may react like "Who are you talking to?", "So who's this Taylor you're in love with?" or "OMG I love Taylor Swift too!". Japanese don't need pronouns, us English speakers do.


That misunderstanding wouldn't happen. You know why? Context. We have two chapters of this primary dialogue going on between Machida and Senpai. Nobody else in the room witnessing that conversation would interpret Senpai as personally aiming to beat them in the mock exam, especially not Nagatoro, who isn't even a student there.


It's not a matter of being afraid or not. It's just how the Japanese language functions. Japanese will use names in place of pronouns or objects because that's how the language has evolved over thousands of years. English speakers, on the other hand, rely on pronouns like "you" in order to understand who the speaker is addressing. Otherwise everything will sound like some Shakespearean prose that is aimed towards an audience of spectators at all times. If we really had to go gung-ho on the literal Japanese translation, Senpai's opening remark of this chapter would sound something like: "In the next mock exam will defeat Machida-san!" and when he repeats himself on p.4 it'd sound like "Will beat Machida-san is what is said." You need to keep your audience in mind when translating, and the audience are not Japanese speakers. It's that simple.


Hoookay this one is quite a bit of a stretch. The instructor literally just met Nagatoro. He clearly doesn't know Nagatoro's cat-like reactions, her demeanor, how she acts when she's in front of everyone vs. Senpai, etc. He is going purely based off of looks, off of his pre-existing ideas of what qualities are desirable in a model. An art instructor wouldn't dole out "Hey what a nice stretched back" as a compliment.

Lets throw this right back at you, Japanese does not need the subject in the sentence to make it clear who is being spoken to, so " 町田さんに勝つつもりだって。。。" works just fine as "勝つつもりだって。。。" because the target of the challenge is already established but that isn't what he said. If that was what he said, then I wouldn't have any complaints, but he specifically used her name when he could have used 君に or 貴方に, or even dropped the subject entirely instead. You said it yourself, English needs the subject, Japanese does not.

The conversation is only between those two, but the other 3 are still listening in, and two of them are just as involved in the challenge as Machida is. It isn't exactly clear that she's the only one that he's challenging either, she was on the way out until he called out to her. With her having been on the way out, it can be misunderstood that he only called out to her so that she stayed to listen to the challenge.


As far as "stretched back" goes, while you find it outlandish that they might already know about her because they're just meeting her, they do already know her name even though she never gave it to them. They've clearly heard about her from somewhere without actually seeing her, so it isn't impossible that they've heard about some of her behavior and one-sidedly decided she was a cat until they actually saw her.

 

[ItsThatBriGuy]

If Naoto's personal muse is the model, he could put literally anything on the line here and be confident.

 

[currypan2005]

Lets throw this right back at you, Japanese does not need the subject in the sentence to make it clear who is being spoken to, so " 町田さんに勝つつもりだって。。。" works just fine as "勝つつもりだって。。。" because the target of the challenge is already established but that isn't what he said. If that was what he said, then I wouldn't have any complaints, but he specifically used her name when he could have used 君に or 貴方に, or even dropped the subject entirely instead. You said it yourself, English needs the subject, Japanese does not.

The conversation is only between those two, but the other 3 are still listening in, and two of them are just as involved in the challenge as Machida is. It isn't exactly clear that she's the only one that he's challenging either, she was on the way out until he called out to her. With her having been on the way out, it can be misunderstood that he only called out to her so that she stayed to listen to the challenge.


As far as "stretched back" goes, while you find it outlandish that they might already know about her because they're just meeting her, they do already know her name even though she never gave it to them. They've clearly heard about her from somewhere without actually seeing her, so it isn't impossible that they've heard about some of her behavior and one-sidedly decided she was a cat until they actually saw her.

Let's reiterate once again who exactly an English translation is for; English speakers. You're performing all of these mental gymnastics to try to explain how a sloppy J>E translation is actually perfectly fine because the grammatical errors mirror what was said in Japanese. I'm not saying Machida's name has to be omitted completely; it's that in English using the direct name as a replacement for "you" doesn't work. It works in Japanese, but in English it makes the target of a sentence completely ambiguous. "I'm going to beat you, Machida-san" flows way better than "I'm going to beat Machida-san", which again, obscures who he's talking to. He's clearly responding to what Machida said in the previous page and directly rebuts her previous arguments. It's clear he's speaking to her and her alone. Obfuscating that by saying he could've been making a nondescript declaration to anybody in the room who could hear it downplays his intent and cheapens his response.

The argument you seem to be repeating is that if it works in Japanese it'll work in English, which is innacurate on so many levels. Both languages have certain things that are implicit and things that need to be explicitly defined, the direct pronouns of English being one of those things, even if it wasn't present in the original Japanese text. These additions are unavoidable when translating into English unless you want the end product to sound like a hacky, non-specific machine-translated mess. (And that's all the energy I have left defending direct pronouns.)

As for your other points on who he's actually talking to and the stretched back, you're clearly grasping for straws by theorizing what could've happened off screen as a way to justify sloppy english translations (which is an insane argument to make), and when the conversation descends into headcanon there isn't much else that can really be said in terms of arguments. Cheers.

 

[knthomsen]

Fuck it! Let's all get naked and paint!

 

[telefonevoador]

This escalated rocketshipped immediately

 

[profroche]

Feeling more secure in my "Senpai wins his contest, Nagatoro loses hers but feels ok about it and uses her ticket" prediction more and more.

Remember- the best artist in the series so far is the Pres; and she says the secret ingredient to art is love. And Senpai loves Toro like 774 loves pigs

 

[kawaiitohruchan]

it's a lose lose situation for nagatoro

 

[spelunker_]

a dignified standing figure with a stretched back!!

bruh.. please use "posture"