I came to ask if the pronouns where something the TL changed by themselves or if the og dialogue is like that.
And after seeing the shit show in the comments no i know, stop crying god damn it's just a japanese thing who cares
@krisdreemurr how is reading complaints about using a wrong word self care? bringing up an issue you see with something is perfectly normal. @aniki_pepehands its not a Japanese thing to use they as a genderless pronoun when they have specific phrased/words to use in these cases. no one is crying as much as you leaving your comment is. we care because we want the translation to be right and not self insert like this has come off as.
the way @Starlessnightscans is using they is half a miss use of the word itself and not wanting to put the work of just adding a annotation to we the ones who cant read the native language to understand it better. for example if said language uses genderless pronouns then leaving the phrase in, in this case in romaji, then adding an footnote explaining the word/phrase. that would keep the translation true to the original language with out this issue.
kou-kun has shown literally 0 signs of being offended by female pronouns, and is openly female. not to mention there was an entire conflict where kou-kun was scared to wear "feminine clothes", although she wanted to, because she was afraid they wouldn't suit her... so, i don't really get why the translators are using they/them, but i guess it doesn't matter. it doesn't change the story too much.
Made an account just to say that starlessnightscans should drop this series if they can't respect the author's original intent. Nowhere in the story does Kou ask to be referred to as they/them, and at no point has she come out as transgender or asexual. You're insulting both the character and the author by doing what you're doing.
And to those saying "it's an accurate translation," no, it's not. If they were being true to the Japanese as many of you are claiming, they would be using "they/them" for everyone, not just Kou, the Japanese use gender neutral pronouns all the time. Aitsu, or "that person/those guys", for example, refers to any one person, or even a group of people that are not at the speakers present location. And yes, it can be rude to use depending on the context. That said, it's used all the time, but it in no way implies that the person they are referring to is asexual. This is the translators being disrespectful to the character by shoving their own politics where it doesn't belong. It's a blatant misgendering on the part of the translators.
Hum ... Let me chime on the whole pronoums thing, having myself had done some ( non-Japanese ) TL work in other times.
Yup, Japanese has gendered pronoums and agendered ones. Yup, the char in question uses them at times as the ones around ( atleast until a certain time in the narrative ). Yup, English also has gendered pronoums and agendered ones.
But, and one step that seems to be somewhat missed, is that the use of agendered pronoums in Japanese and English is strinkingly diferent. While in some English currents nowadays, using agendered pronoums is a mark of showing sexual tendencies ( will not discuss if that use is correct or desirable ), the use of agendered pronoums in Japanese has very little to do with it most of the times. To add, in the case in question, the char obviously sees herself ( yup, I'm using the feminine form. It is justified by what comes next ) as female, all around see her as female after the initial misunderstanding and there is even a plot point that she wants to look and act more feminine, but feels too clumsy and tomboy to do so.
Given the above, and while I reckon that the translators are not completely wrong in using ungendered pronoums for the char in question, using them will distort what the author meant by using ungendered pronoums in the original and would be misunderstood by readers as a statement of the char's sexual inclination. That alone IMHO would be enough to not use them, because while a translator is always an interpreter in some way, it should avoid clouding what the author meant to say if that is possible.
P.S. Now that I was PC enough ...
The translator group knew all of the above and decided to use the pronoums in question anyway. More, they even added a starting page stating that outright and demanding to people to basically shut up and eat their choice ( or there is ANY way to interpret diferently what they say there? ), knowing full well that those pronoums would be misundertood ( like they were ).
So, in resume, they were making a statement of rightness of their part and a proclamation of goodness of some cause they clearly think is worth defending ... so much they even had to invent a flame war to do so. That is supremely idiotic and a shame for a self-styled translator group ... it just makes you a bad translator, period. If you want to spread your ideas, write your own stuff, don't co-opt and torture other people's stuff to conform your ideas.
It really doesn’t help that they/them is plural. It means that whenever someone refers to Kou it sounds like they’re referring to a group. Really irritating.
Also Kou is female, and she/her are female pronouns. I really don’t understand why you would use anything else once the other characters realise what her sex is.
Edit: the neuter singular pronouns in English is “it”. If you really insist on odd pronouns, I think “it” would be less confusing, although then again we might start looking for inanimate objects. Maybe using the language the way it was designed makes the most sense after all...
@Tkipani I know that lol and you know what, the translators don’t use « they » for any other character of the story, even though their pronouns aren’t gendered in Japanese either. You can disagree with me on this but use another argument, this is a dumb one.
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