Japanese in English-language fic
Apr. 27th, 2010 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootAnother Three Weeks post.
This is an interesting topic, for me, because I tend to watch the debates over it from more than one viewpoint at once. On the one hand, I'll enter cheerfully into the vociferous debates over what effect different types and amounts of other languages in English fic has. On the other, I have observed that the amount and type are both, functionally, beside the fandom point.
In fandom function terms, Japanese in an English language fic serves as a shibboleth and a sign-post. It says "this is a fic from the anime/manga fandom family" and gives notice thereby what the author's likely target audience is--and also what tropes may be showing up in the story. To be sure, those tropes are often very unexpected to fans from the domestic fandom family, so the marker function is actually a pretty important one.
In marker terms, what I think of as first generation fan usage may actually serve the purpose best. This type of usage is characterized by using such Japanese as can be easily parsed out of a subtitled show by those with no previous knowledge of the language: demo, hai, nani, etc. There's no pressing translational quandary attached to these; indeed, they're some of the simplest words to translate directly. By that token, they are easily understood from the context of the English sentence they're embedded in and don't require any linguistic acumen at all. They serve the shibboleth function purely and without impeding reading comprehension.
I can't actually stand reading stories written with this in them, but I nevertheless recognize that it has a valid function and serves it very well.
Second generation usage is what most of us argue over these days. Each English language writer strives to find a balance of Japanese language signals she is comfortable using, and the balance is individual and idiosyncratic. (And, really, isn't it well past time we acknowledged that there's no actual objective standard involved? Because there isn't, despite the way the arguments attempt to claim or construct one.) One writer will abjure any use of familial titles (niisan, hahaue, etc.) while retaining the essential social titles (-san, -kun, etc.) at least sometimes and perhaps a selection of nouns (shikigami, youkai)--but only some. Another writer will translate everything except the proper names themselves, rendering jogress into dna and taisa into colonel, and will denounce any retention of Japanese outside the names as fangirl. Yet a third will retain all titles, including vocational ones like buchou and obscure ones like kanri, but only in dialogue. And a fourth will use pretty much any Japanese term that is repeated with sufficient frequency and intensity (miko, shichiseishi, etc.). It's all about balancing understanding, including one's own, with the need to signal and, at least in some cases, with how easy a given term is to translate into smooth English.
This is invariably influenced by the choices made by the translator of one's source. The author who read a scanlation of X that uses Chi no Ryuu is likely to use that phrase in her fic, while the one who read the commercial translation that uses Dragon of Earth will probably use that instead. Similarly, a writer who watched the dubbed version seems more likely to use either no Japanese or else non-canonical formations (Hee-chan) than the one who watched the subtitled version, who will most likely follow the translator's choices as above.
I have observed that someone who is, if not fluent, at least conversant in Japanese is more likely to translate everything than someone who knows only a handful, but this is based on quite a small sample size and may or may not hold generally.
My personal choice is to use all titles; this is largely due to my grammatical brain piping up. Listening to subtitles, it is clear that titles and names function as a single unit, one frequently substituting wholesale for the other. Thus, I feel the same way about translating titles that I do about using Thaddeus in place of Tadeo. It doesn't help that I'm a sometimes unreasonable perfectionist and would feel an itch to translate Niisan as "casually respected elder brother" to differentiate it from Oniichan (cutely respected elder brother [who I am about to wrap around my little finger]). This choice relies on the fact that my target audience will already be familiar with these name-title units, having also watched the subs. When that familiarity becomes problematic, then I may wind up translating the title in question, but I'm just as likely to keep it and gloss it in the narrative text. I do not pretend that this is anything other than personal preference, based on my own mode of writing which is very audially specific.
This knowledge does not make me any less pissed off when someone accuses me of fangirl Japanese, given the weight of contempt that label carries. I am particularly incensed by the implication that "fangirl Japanese" is something used by people who don't actually understand the proper usage of the terms they're throwing into their English fic or, on the other end of the spectrum, who are doing this to show off in some way. Both implications are the residue, not of thoughtful sociolinguistic analysis, but of turf wars over who gets to be called a Real Fan. I find the smugness of the accusation deeply distasteful, and a fairly reliable signal that the person making it actually knows less than I do.
Bottom line: it isn't going away, and there exists no actual standard by which any of us can justifiably demand that everyone do it our way. Deal with it.
This is an interesting topic, for me, because I tend to watch the debates over it from more than one viewpoint at once. On the one hand, I'll enter cheerfully into the vociferous debates over what effect different types and amounts of other languages in English fic has. On the other, I have observed that the amount and type are both, functionally, beside the fandom point.
In fandom function terms, Japanese in an English language fic serves as a shibboleth and a sign-post. It says "this is a fic from the anime/manga fandom family" and gives notice thereby what the author's likely target audience is--and also what tropes may be showing up in the story. To be sure, those tropes are often very unexpected to fans from the domestic fandom family, so the marker function is actually a pretty important one.
In marker terms, what I think of as first generation fan usage may actually serve the purpose best. This type of usage is characterized by using such Japanese as can be easily parsed out of a subtitled show by those with no previous knowledge of the language: demo, hai, nani, etc. There's no pressing translational quandary attached to these; indeed, they're some of the simplest words to translate directly. By that token, they are easily understood from the context of the English sentence they're embedded in and don't require any linguistic acumen at all. They serve the shibboleth function purely and without impeding reading comprehension.
I can't actually stand reading stories written with this in them, but I nevertheless recognize that it has a valid function and serves it very well.
Second generation usage is what most of us argue over these days. Each English language writer strives to find a balance of Japanese language signals she is comfortable using, and the balance is individual and idiosyncratic. (And, really, isn't it well past time we acknowledged that there's no actual objective standard involved? Because there isn't, despite the way the arguments attempt to claim or construct one.) One writer will abjure any use of familial titles (niisan, hahaue, etc.) while retaining the essential social titles (-san, -kun, etc.) at least sometimes and perhaps a selection of nouns (shikigami, youkai)--but only some. Another writer will translate everything except the proper names themselves, rendering jogress into dna and taisa into colonel, and will denounce any retention of Japanese outside the names as fangirl. Yet a third will retain all titles, including vocational ones like buchou and obscure ones like kanri, but only in dialogue. And a fourth will use pretty much any Japanese term that is repeated with sufficient frequency and intensity (miko, shichiseishi, etc.). It's all about balancing understanding, including one's own, with the need to signal and, at least in some cases, with how easy a given term is to translate into smooth English.
This is invariably influenced by the choices made by the translator of one's source. The author who read a scanlation of X that uses Chi no Ryuu is likely to use that phrase in her fic, while the one who read the commercial translation that uses Dragon of Earth will probably use that instead. Similarly, a writer who watched the dubbed version seems more likely to use either no Japanese or else non-canonical formations (Hee-chan) than the one who watched the subtitled version, who will most likely follow the translator's choices as above.
I have observed that someone who is, if not fluent, at least conversant in Japanese is more likely to translate everything than someone who knows only a handful, but this is based on quite a small sample size and may or may not hold generally.
My personal choice is to use all titles; this is largely due to my grammatical brain piping up. Listening to subtitles, it is clear that titles and names function as a single unit, one frequently substituting wholesale for the other. Thus, I feel the same way about translating titles that I do about using Thaddeus in place of Tadeo. It doesn't help that I'm a sometimes unreasonable perfectionist and would feel an itch to translate Niisan as "casually respected elder brother" to differentiate it from Oniichan (cutely respected elder brother [who I am about to wrap around my little finger]). This choice relies on the fact that my target audience will already be familiar with these name-title units, having also watched the subs. When that familiarity becomes problematic, then I may wind up translating the title in question, but I'm just as likely to keep it and gloss it in the narrative text. I do not pretend that this is anything other than personal preference, based on my own mode of writing which is very audially specific.
This knowledge does not make me any less pissed off when someone accuses me of fangirl Japanese, given the weight of contempt that label carries. I am particularly incensed by the implication that "fangirl Japanese" is something used by people who don't actually understand the proper usage of the terms they're throwing into their English fic or, on the other end of the spectrum, who are doing this to show off in some way. Both implications are the residue, not of thoughtful sociolinguistic analysis, but of turf wars over who gets to be called a Real Fan. I find the smugness of the accusation deeply distasteful, and a fairly reliable signal that the person making it actually knows less than I do.
Bottom line: it isn't going away, and there exists no actual standard by which any of us can justifiably demand that everyone do it our way. Deal with it.
