A Black Shadow In The Blue Sea
The Queen Cosmos has landed on a calm sea planet so princess Aurora can rest. Kugo and his friends are in front of the sea for the first time in a while but the princess, whose painful memories of the sea from her childhood have relived, is completely depressed.
Hakka, remorseful that he has hurt the princess’ feelings, refuses her invitation to swim and takes off looking for a gift to recover her honor. In the meantime, a moth monster called Vulture (Bageba – バゲバ ) appears! Envious of the princess’ beauty, Vulture sends her space monster and kidnaps her!
You can download the torrent file or get direct links from AnimeTosho.
Also you can get the revised version 2 of the subs:
SF Saiyuki Starzinger – Episode 17v2 – English Subs
Translation Thoughts
In every episode I struggle a lot with some lines. Every time Kugo or Hakka speaks I get shivers, especially if they are yelling while fighting with a lot of sound effects and a background music that’s always too loud. Sometimes even when it’s quieter I lose focus and I just translate without thinking or paying attention at the context, something I hope to stop doing at the future.
So I made a mistake at 12:23 when Kugo says:
あいつもう一度迎えに来ると思って甘えちゃうんだ
aitsu mou ichidou mukae ni kuru to omotte amaechau nda
Without context you don’t know who’s doing what: who’s going to come and pick the other up, and who’s being spoiled (甘え – amae means spoil, 甘えちゃう – amaechau being an informal way to say 甘えてしまう – amaete shimau, something like “so spoiled”). The phrase 度迎えに来る – mukae ni kuru means “go and pick you up” or “come and get you”, things like that.
So after watching the episode again, definitely a better translation of that line is:
“He’s so spoiled if he thinks I’m going to go back and get him”
And even that sounds weird to me. What about:
“He’s so stubborn he surely thinks I’m going to go back and get him”
“He’s so spoiled he’s probably waiting for me to go back and get him”
Literal translations almost never work, you have to change them a little bit to make some sense of it in English.
So basically after getting some help from reddit I think I should use:
“He presumes someone will go and get him again, he’s so spoiled”
How would you translate it?
Same thing happened at 14:23 when Kugo says to Vulture:
自分で見にくいからって勝手なこと言うんじゃねえよ
jibun de minikuikaratte kattena koto iu n ja nee yo
That means something like “you shouldn’t say selfish things because you’re hard to see”, meaning she’s very ugly. I would translate it to “Don’t be selfish just because you’re ugly”, I guess.
Another one, maybe:
この星もギャラクシエネルギーが弱まっていた
kono hoshi mo Galaxy Energy ga yowamatte ita
That can be translated literally: “This planet was also affected by the weakening of the galaxy’s energy”. I don’t know what I was thinking…
I also fixed several typos, you can get the new subtitle script here.
Hola, cómo estás?
Al fin llegué a este capítulo y tus traducciones! Y ya lo tengo listo! 😀
De acuerdo a lo que comentas, yo le puse:
Kugo: “Él cree que alguien irá a buscarlo de nuevo ¡Es tan consentido!”
Princesa: “Iré a buscarlo”
Es como que la Princesa no estaba tan preocupada por Hakka que no estaba escuchando lo que Kugo decía, entonces quedó divertido. Creo que el diálogo es simplemente perfecto así con tu última traducción.
P.D.: Esta semana comencé un curso de japonés. Después de algunos años, al fin encontré uno que no topa con mi horario de trabajo. Mi cerebro va a explotar, jaja! Pero es entretenido!
Saludos!
¡Vas demasiado rápido! Me vas a alcanzar en pocos días. Apenas llevo la mitad del 33.
En estos primeros episodios que hice traducía “como salía” y no hacía un proceso serio de control de calidad que ahora hago. Me tardo más, pero pienso que ahora me quedan más bonitos. Ahora los veo luego de terminados desde el principio a fin para estar seguro que todo esté bien. Ni el opening ni el ending me salto.
Este episodio es un desastre lleno de errores gramaticales.
Supongo que quisiste decir “Es como que la Princesa estaba tan preocupada por Hakka que no estaba escuchando lo que Kugo decía”. Consentido está bien. También sirve mimado. Yo creo que hubiese puesto “malcriado”. Todas sirven.
Ay, sí! Eso mismo quise decir, jaja! Me sobró un “no”.
Mmm, creo que ya le agarré el ritmo y por eso me han salido rápido, sin dejar de ser minuciosa y revisar todo 20 veces si es necesario. En todo caso, creo que lo que yo estoy haciendo no se compara a tu trabajo, porque tú estás escuchando y traduciendo. Uf!, eso sí que es un tremendo trabajo. Todo mi respeto y admiración para ti. Yo tengo los textos escritos y es más fácil así, aunque no te miento que siempre pongo oreja a lo que escucho aunque sólo entienda palabras sueltas, jaja! porque quiero aprender también.
Y no te preocupes, que sí te están quedando bonitos 😀
Hey there!
Now that I’ve finally started watching, I have some extremely unimportant question to the best Saiyuki Starzinger English translator in the world.
First of all, well well well, so this is Journey To The West. In Space! They just replaced the stupid monk by a stupid princess, the monkey, the pig and whatever the heck the last disciple is by Cyborgs, the dragon by a spaceship, the
past by the future, the… yeah, basically the same.
Well, anyway, it’s kind of sad to see what they did to Kugo in this one. In the book he is nerfed when the actual journey starts but here they went way beyond that. Not only he got nerfed to the point of Hakka being just as strong as him, but they also made him not very smart. In the book he is the smartest of them all. By far.
Rant and profoundly intellectual review done. Time for the actual questions
WARNING: please understand that I have a very limited knowledge of Japanese and I am not trying to challenge or force you to change your choices in any way. You are waaaaay beyond my level. If I knew what I was doing I wouldn’t have had to wait until you finished subtitling every single episode to only then finally start watching this. I’m just posting these questions so maybe you can elaborate on why some choices were made and, in the process, help me to improve my Japanese.
QUESTION #1
Speaking of Kugo, it took me a whole episode to realize his name is simply Goku inverted. They did the same to Jogo, which the Japanese usually call Gojou. But do you have any idea why Hakka remained the same? Well, almost the same. They usually go with Hakkai. Could it be that that missing ‘i’ is responsible for some sort of pun or whatever that my very limited Japanese knowledge isn’t able to grasp? Could it be that “kaiha” means something dirty and, because of that, they couldn’t use it? I need answers!
You’re right about the names. No special meaning with Cho Hakkai to Hakka, they removed the last i just to make it different, that’s all. Anyway the original names are actually Chinese, so I think the Japanese invented the Japanese names and they were changed a little bit for this anime. Kaiha (会派) means communion, so probably they decided that just Hakka without the i was okay.
thanks!
QUESTION #2
And while we are on this subject, I noticed that, sometimes, they call Jogo “Sir.” I believe this happens in both yours and the previous group version. But if we take the book into account, “Sha” is simply his name. And the Japanese versions of Journey To The West I’ve seen usually go with Sha Gojou, or even Sa Gojou. So, could that “Sa” part of his name simply be the “Sha” or “Sa” of the original character name instead of “Sir?” Very hard to tell. All we got is him saying it and the katakana in the opening song.
And to make things even more complicated, Hakka does call himself “don”, which can either mean that he thought Jogo was calling himself “sir” and decided to one-up him with “don”, or that Jogo was really giving himself the “sir” title. I’d go with the first choice – Hakka is supposed to be stupid and always tries to make himself look good in front of the princess. So I assume he mistakes “Sa” for “sir” and decided to call himself “don”. Specially considering that, if I’m not mistaken, Hakka only starts doing that around ep 43 or so.
It would be awesome if we had some sort of director commentary track that could
answer this.
His name is “Sir Jogo”. As stupid as it sounds, his first name is Sir, and his last name is Jogo. That’s his real name! His name is written as サー・ジョーゴ (Saa Jougo), Sir is usually written as Saa in katakana. I think it’s a double-pun since Hakka once said “you’re not a real Sir” meaning he wasn’t knighted by anyone, and also that his name comes from Sha Gojou.
The “Don” in Hakka is just his first name that was given to him at birth, no special meaning. Same for “Jan” in Jan Kugo.
not sure about the “Don” part. If I had to bet, I’d say he only started using that as an answer to Jogo’s “sir” – Don Hakka, as is Don Corleone. I could be wrong though.
I do wonder what the creators would think if they knew a couple of stupid Westerners are writing essays talking about deep hidden meaning in names they created by simply letting their cat walk on top of their typewriter.
You can check in the Wikipedia page those are the official names since birth: Jan Kugo, Don Hakka and Sir Jogo. At the beginning they don’t reveal the full names though, something that’s normal between the Japanese. Since they address each other using the last name, sometimes they never know the first name of many people they interact everyday with.
Just like you probably don’t know the last name of all your neighbours, just their first name.
QUESTION #3
I also noticed that you went with Big Planet instead of King Planet, like the group that did the previous episodes. Later on, around ep35 you changed it to Great Planet. I think that is better. At least better than Big Planet. But if we go by the kanji, I believe maybe King Planet, Great King Planet would be closer to what the creators intended. And it all fits together – the queen is going to put a princess inside the king. Kind of backwards, but wouldn’t be the first time a king gestated a princess. Ask Zeus.
In the notes of Episode 33 I explained that the real name is Great King Planet but it’s too long for subtitles, and I decided to shorten it to “Great Planet” like ILA did first (and TSHS after). King Planet is also okay, but it was shortened just to reduce reading time.
Where did I use “Big Planet”? That was a mistake 🙂
Aha! I knew I should have first read all your notes before posting these stupid questions. In fact, I’m pretty sure that was my plan, I just ended up forgetting to do it. Stupid me.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure the subtitle said “Big Planet” in the first couple of episodes you did. Unfortunately it was only about ep 25 or so that I started putting the episode number together with what I wanted to ask, and I did it precisely to avoid this kind of issue 🙂
Could it be I was still watching one of the episodes done by ILA or TSHS? Hum… not sure right now and also have no way to check. There is no way to download anything where I am and will be for the next couple of days. I’ll go with “it WAS there and if it isn’t anymore it is because you’ve uploaded a newer version and is trying to make me think I’m going crazy.” You tricky bastard!
QUESTION #4
For the same reason as #3, for the sake of purity, maybe you should have left “machine” instead of changing it to “ship.” Same as Saint Seya with saints becoming knights and cloths armor. Whether it was a mistake from the creators or some sort of stylist choice, I’m always in favor of going for a more literal translation. I’m not really a fan of localization. The only thing good about localizations is that they usually show the translator has the proper cultural knowledge of both cultures, which makes him an awesome translator.
I think people should leave localization to notes, or maybe a secondary subtitle track and focus on just translating the lines. Specially when dealing with something that is not going to be aired on some network station that might be sued by some stupid parent or teacher. That is the reason I kept bothering you so much about appending the translation notes to the torrents – they show how awesome you are without “ruining” the episode 🙂
Alright, this one wasn’t really a question. It was more like a rant. And I totally understand why a translator would choose to go with “ship” instead of “machine.” They are clearly talking about ships and, specially considering yours is the only translation ever made, uninformed people would say you suck. And you do not suck. You are awesome!
They call their spaceships machines but it sounds extremely weird in English. A machine doesn’t necessarily flies, but a spaceship definitely does. Keep in mind they say “machine” IN ENGLISH because maybe they thought it was a synonym of spaceship or something and it sounded cool; but whenever they use the real Japanese term, it’s spaceship.
Jogo says “barrow” instead of arrow…
ah, but it is exactly why they say it in English that I was being annoying about it 🙂
That is why I gave Saint Seiya as an example. We can clearly hear they saying “cloth.” My brain gets ready to see “cloth” somewhere in there. And then there is not “cloth”, but “armor.” My brain is not smart enough to let it go.
I do get your point though – if you wanted to be precise, you’d have to “translate” it as machine in Japanese, since the idea clearly was to use a term that would sound cool and foreign to the target audience 🙂
But then you’d be entering in the realm of localization. And it was exactly because of something like that that I started having paradoxical feelings about localizations. On one hand, it shows how awesome the translator is and how deep is his understanding of both cultures. In the other hand, it completely messes up any attempt at having a conversation with people from other countries. “Son Goku? Who da heck is Goku? There is only Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, and…”
Point in case. A character from a legendary RPG that was named “Tina” became “Terra”
http://web.archive.org/web/20140613064048/www.hardcoregaming101.net/localization/localization.htm
“Ah, but you see, Tina for the Japanese sounds exotic and foreign, so we couldn’t simply use Tina in the US version. We had to find something else that would convey the same feeling to US gamers…”
Awesome. Except now we can no longer talk to people from Japan without having to explain that when we talk about Terra we are actually talking about Tina. And it gets worse – if I’m not mistaken, for both you and I, “Terra” is anything but something that sounds exotic and foreign 🙂
Very long rant short – I get the intent, but I think things should be left as they are. People will notice the difference when one guy is named Takeshi, the other Suziki and then one named Terra appears 🙂
And then, thanks to the power of the internet and awesome people like you, any clearly deranged nutjob like yours truly can always go to the “translator notes” and read things like that.
QUESTION #5
What the heck is a “bood” 🙂
You, ILA, TSHS and even the people that translated the “movie” went with bood. To make things worse, I don’t believe we ever see it written anywhere, but it is pretty clear Hakka says something that sounds like “budo”, so “bood” it is 🙂
Ever wondered if the intent was to say “board?” Jogo has his “copper” (which looks more like a submarine) and Kugo has his… see question #6
We all went to the official sources like Wikipedia and the TOEI Animation Website and took the official names from there. The official name is スターブード SUTAABUUDO, so that’s the name. It’s totally made up. The official website even gives more information like a total length of 4.5 meters, a weight of 950 kg, and a max speed of 100… 100 what? We don’t know. They never said the unit.
I also mentioned once in the notes that maybe the Starcrow is Starclaw, since it’s kind of ambiguous in Japanese, but since ILA already used Starcrow, and it kinda looks like a crow with the colors and stuff, I decided to use that too.