Isekai Izakaya "Nobu" - Ch. 88 - The Man Who Came From Across a Distant Sea

[OmegaDragon]

Tamago kake gohan is life!
I might be gambling with my not-japanese-egg but that's how i grow up, eating egg raw. So i might be immune to them salmonella. But not so much for cholesterol from the egg yolk 😭

 

[unknown081]

Echoing everyone else, wow I can't believe this is back! I'm so glad!

 

[dowacco]

Oh my god it's revived. Thank you Cuddlebuns and Slazer!

 

[HaikenEdge]

Not really gonna defend their choice of using "whatsontap", but in this case it works because of the context. That's just about how they could imply that the person saying it is a local, or someone from Japan.

Any Japanese knows that "toriaezu nama" is a phrase that would roughly mean "i'll have draft beer", and not a type of drink that one orders specifically. The locals just kept using the phrase thinking it meant as such, that it became a noun. The two recognized right away when the man used "toriaezu nama" in the right context, while it took the others a while until he mentioned "beer".

My problem with using "whatsontap" is that it implies everybody saying it is stupid.

The Japanese staff can communicate with the people of the world without needing to learn their language; that means there's some sort of translation ability in play for spoken language, where the people of the other world can speak their language and the Japanese Nobu staff will understand them, and vice versa.

Using "whatsontap" implies that nobody saying "whatsontap" is able to realize "whatsontap" is just "what's on tap" said together. It makes everybody seem dumber for doing it.

"Toriaezu nama" untranslated, on the other hand, can be used as a proper noun the way the patrons of the izekaya do without them coming across as stupid; of course they don't know what it means, it's not even in their language, so of course they think it's a brand because it's a proper noun for them.

 

[chinchiro_addict]

I man up and just say "draft (beers)" for my series. In a European setting I'd use "ale" instead.
You can also switch things around and have different people use different terms like "starters" or "i'll have whatever beer they've got inhouse" in addition to "whatever's on tap"

because toriaezu biru is essentially a cheaper beer with low or no alc. volume to get everyone started and allows them to "kanpai" to set the mood. After that, and maybe some food and snacks they can move onto the heavier or more expensive stuff like high balls, shochu, chuhai, whiskey, sake, etc.

there's also the idea that the natives are copying "whatsontap" because they saw him say it first. This depends on whether the mangaka intended for this to happen or not, otherwise it's another case of a translator adding meaning to something which may not have been there

 

[shinya78]

My problem with using "whatsontap" is that it implies everybody saying it is stupid.

The Japanese staff can communicate with the people of the world without needing to learn their language; that means there's some sort of translation ability in play for spoken language, where the people of the other world can speak their language and the Japanese Nobu staff will understand them, and vice versa.

Using "whatsontap" implies that nobody saying "whatsontap" is able to realize "whatsontap" is just "what's on tap" said together. It makes everybody seem dumber for doing it.

"Toriaezu nama" untranslated, on the other hand, can be used as a proper noun the way the patrons of the izekaya do without them coming across as stupid; of course they don't know what it means, it's not even in their language, so of course they think it's a brand because it's a proper noun for them.

You'd be surprised, that's how some places and words got their origins, people mishearing others and keeping it.

Yes they would understand, but the natives said that the Japanese staff have an accent. Meaning to them, the Japanese are speaking their language. There are also Japanese words that seemingly didn't get translated to the other world's language, examples like 大将(Taishou) became katakana タイショー, おでん(Oden) became オデン, and such. Practically the whole menu was written using katakana when spoken by the natives. As such, one could assume that whenever a Japanese word was written in Katakana in the raws, it stayed Japanese for the Aitheria natives.

Like I said, I wasn't really defending it. It was only due to the context that when another Japanese person used it as a phrase, using "whatsontap" worked. To the Aitheria natives, the Japanese were speaking their language with an accent, and yet the phrase "toriaezu nama" remained Japanese. We could then assume that to the Japanese staff, the natives would be speaking in Japanese. To them, the natives are saying "what's on tap" with an accent.

The whole point in this case was that the usage of "whatsontap" was more for the readers. I mean yeah, they could've just slapped a TL note on the same page but they went against using "toriaezu nama" because apparently the official translations used "whatsontap", so that's that.

 

[HaikenEdge]

apparently the official translations used "whatsontap", so that's that.

Counterpoint: If I wanted the official translation, I'd read the official translation.

 

[shinya78]

Counterpoint: If I wanted the official translation, I'd read the official translation.

Assuming the magic auto-translation works the way they're seemingly portraying it:

• Natives are hearing the Japanese speak their language with an accent.
• Japanese words/concepts that doesn't exist, or does not have a direct equivalent in the native language, would remain Japanese.
• Japanese are hearing the natives speak Japanese with an accent.
• The "untranslated" Japanese words come to them as "Japanese word but with a funny foreign accent"
• It was conveyed to the Japanese READERS with the usage of katakana instead of the usual kanji and hiragana.

Then maybe the official translation/localization did get the nuance right, but with English instead of Japanese, and was just trying to convey it to the English readers, any way they could.

But hey, whatever seas you sail, brother. I wouldn't mind whichever the group used tbh, we're all sailing the same sea here.

 

[d_a_renoir]

Thanks for the update.
So Whatsontapp was the official English translation for "toriaezu nama"?
The previous translator had left the Japanese name for the beer, this one having a different name kind of surprised me a little.