language and history: -dono

[branchandroot]

Thoughts apropos Japanese titles.

If I've got all this straight, then the reason -dono is usually described as "less formal" than -sama is not that is is in any way less respectful. Rather, it is more intimate. Tracing back to its origin as the title form of "tono" (lord, specifically your own lord), addressing someone as Name-dono lays claim to a relationship with them. A feudal one, to be precise and, if I'm not mistaken, one with a certain amount of implied rank since only one of the warrior class would be entering into it.

So when, in Ouran, the twins call Tamaki "Tono", it's a play on the royalty motif and subtly reinforces the fact that all the kids at that school are upper class.

And when, in Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin addresses Kaoru as "Kaoru-dono" he is implicitly laying claim to a position as a retainer of her house. This one actually fascinates me, because that could be seen as very counter-revolutionary of him (the feudal forms being one of the things the winning Imperialists set about expurgating as too old-fashioned and, more critically, too likely to provide a power base outside of centralized government channels). And at the same time, it could also be seen as an interesting comment on his childhood. Kenshin was born a commoner, after all, not one of the warrior class; as such he isn't eligible to have a lord, not in that particular relationship-sense. So he could, at the same time, be being conservative and old fashioned and also very 'uppity' by claiming a retainer-relationship.

All this was actually occasioned by my frustration that there is no good way to translate the way Basil of KHR speaks into English.

Comments

[petronia]

English did and does - 21st century American doesn't, but that's not at all the same thing. XD (Says this Canadian.) There are chasms of difference between "Lady Beaumont", "Lady Clara", "my lady", and "m'lady".

[petronia]

Edit because I did read kaigou's comment above: 21st century Yankee American.

[annotated_em]

*contemplates* True enough, and an excellent point; I should have clarified that I meant US English. I wasn't precisely thinking in terms of titles/rank, exactly--more the general gradations of honorifics, and how it's difficult to convey those gradations in written English, unless one has a very deft hand with characterization. *wry* Not that any of that made it into my original comment.

[dragonwolf]

US English certainly doesn't spell it out like Japanese does, but I think there are a lot more implied relational contexts within US English than most people realize.

As others have mentioned, we have the more obvious titles (Miss Davison, Mr. James, Mrs. Ericson, Dr. Reed, etc), as well as the also obvious generic no-name titles (Miss, Ma'am, Sir), but also, we have more subtle levels of relational contexts through the use of things like nicknames. For example, my sister's name is Samantha. Most of her friends call her Sammy, which shows a certain level of familiarity. Acquaintances would be more likely to call her Samantha, or Sam (and she'd probably give them a death glare if they called her Sammy and wasn't her friend), because they don't have the same level of familiarity.

I think US English's use of relational contexts might actually be more complex and in-depth than the Japanese, primarily because it might not just be a regional thing (I've found the South and country and conservative/"old-fashioned" areas use more formalities, and the city and liberal/"modern" areas tend to be more "friendly," but that's my limited experience), but also a personal thing, depending on how generic we're talking about.

[branchandroot]

I tend to agree that the gradations are at least equally complex in both countries, each in its own way, but I also agree very much with Em: they aren't equivalent and attempting to translate one into the other when writing anime fic in English we can't use most of what might seem like the most direct translations of the Japanese terms/forms without sounding absolutely ridiculous in the English language context. To match the impact we have to fiddle around and try to find contextual or even emotional equivalents and the cultures are shaped differently enough that it rarely sounds "natural" in the setting. (For example, the thing I was wrestling with before I jotted this down, using "thee" and "thou" as a translation of archaic/old-fogey language just doesn't work because those are downright unnatural in most modern dialects of English and the character is definitely modern; the best compromise I could come up with was not having the kid use any contractions, but that doesn't really convey the same nuance. Gngh.)

[dragonwolf]

Oh indeed, there aren't any direct translations between the two. I think in cases like Japanese to English, it's best to just leave the suffixes in and either provide footnotes/explanations of the suffix or assume the reader knows the suffix. Worst case (assuming a half-way intelligent reader and a decent author that provides context), it's often pretty easy to at least get the idea of the meaning of the suffix from the context (as well as the meaning of and the relationship to other suffixes), even if the guessed meaning isn't perfect. That is one advantage to the straightforwardness of Japanese formalities. I've found this works especially well with characters that are either Japanese (either in Japan, or a Japanese in an English-speaking country), or heavily influenced by Japanese language/culture, as it would be natural for those formalities to be carried over in their speech.

I think it goes the same for just about any other language for which there isn't really a translation (hence the various words that cross from one language to another).