myriadleaves - Myriad of Leaves

Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1960 - 1980s

Thus we reach the final leg of our journey through the comparison of the various Japanese translations of Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes, wherewith we now are covering those translations occurring during the 1960s and 1980s - meeting a person who we covered in

Piano the Pterodactyl Yes-Man

This being the first of April and an international day of pulling the proverbial appendage, I thought that we, however, ought for a moment pause for elegiacal thought for the fate of a fictional Yes-man of Japanese comic history, Piano of Dragon Ball, of

Princess Tamaeda

Whilst researching for upcoming projects in relation to the next work to compare and analyse, I came across various Japanese translations of Andersen's De Vilde Svaner ("The Wild Swans") - which involves a young princess by the name of Elisa, who must save her

Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1930 - 1940s

We now enter the pen-ultimate chapter in our grand tour of the translations of the fairy-tale, as we now enter two decades that feature two translators, Taketomo Boufuu and Oohata Suekichi, both experienced and famed handlers of translating literary works into Japanese at this

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Honorifics in Outer Space

Science fiction and fictional royalty are no strangers, with various planets adorned by exotic and varying degrees of pompous monarchies. When one addresses royalty, especially in fictional settings, you run the risk of insulting the Majesty and ending your days being fed to mutant

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Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1924 - 1929

Thus we enter a new decade of translations and a new round of analyses that either have the Emperor of the story be demoted to mere king or have him keep his empire. We thus acquaint ourselves with three new translations, this time by

Quick update - 06/03/21

A quick word of update to quell any worries there might be. I am currently researching for a bigger comparison project, and also taking care of IRL problems that have been occurring. The most recent research has been on the characteristics of speech of

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'Bout the Word Bloke

The word bloke is one of the quintessential British and to a point Australian terms. Its origins are placed in the murky waters of the underworld slang of 1860s England. Here it according to Green's Dictionary of Slang, most likely derived from the Dutch

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Of Dukes of Thunder and Flesh

This article was originally going to be about the pronoun kikou (貴公), but research led me to a much deeper topic, namely that of how one translates and even conversely render other titles from one language to the other. Today we shall be looking

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Clash of the Pocket Clerks

Wherein we learn that the economical mechanisms of RPG worlds concerning the trading, breeding and fighting of mutant animals seldom makes for logical pondering and that some clerks are more humble than others - and that the good writer of this blog is probably

Update 02/02/2021

Greetings! Once more it is time for a semi-weekly update of sorts (though by the current standard of things it seems to hover between various definitions of exactly and hebdomadally that seven days ought to constitute a week and not 8 or 10.). Work

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Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1910 - 1911

Closing off the tenth decade of the 1900s, we deal with not just two, but three translations, those by Wadagaki Kenzou (1910), Ueda Kazutoshi (1911) and Kondou Toshisaburou (1911). Their Majesties - The King, the Son of Heaven and the Emperor: You shall note

Mokujin's Back

The Man-o'-Wood-and-War with his visible kanji-etched back and with his version of Yoshimitsu's sword.The wooden training dummy Mokujin ("Wooden Person"), debuted in the second Tekken game, a Japanese fighting game franchise created by Namco (now Bandai Namco) in the mid-nineties. The character Mokujin

Update 24/01/21

The latest post in the series analysing The Emperor's New Clothes, has been updated to now contain all of the pertinent information that has been covered in the previous ones, namely dialogue choices, translation of nuances of character and terms. I shall proceed with

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Philomena cries at night

The Nightingale is a tale written by Andersen concerning the contrast between natural and artificial beauty, in the aspects of music, splendour and above all else life. The titular bird that sings before the Emperor of the story has various connotations in not just

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Velvet Swans

In Ueda's translation of The Nightingale, which I am currently going through for a future analysis, I encountered this interesting paragraph: 長い天鵞絨の幕と、厚い金欄とを懸けた、美々しい御寝所の中で、硬張って、色蒼ざめ、横はって居らせられただけなのだ。 Nagai biroudo no maku to, atsui kinran to wo kaketa, bibishii onshinjo no naka de, shachikowatte, iroaozame,

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Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1907 - 1908

After having analysed Watanabe and Takahashi's translations we shall proceed a decade forward (or so), and tackle those of Nagura Jirou (1907) and Kimura Shoshuu (1908), whose versions differ quite significantly and continue in the vein of Takahashi when it comes to applying distinct

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Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1888 - Part III

Note: I have omitted Watanabe's translation due to the difficulty in translating/transcribing it, and the fact that it ditches in most cases the nuances of line individualism in favour of a more direct if flattening out style of translation. I may revisit this

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Particles of Emphasis

In Japanese you can express emotional nuance or stress via emphasis particles that may equate to a vocal exclamation mark or emoticon. We shall in this short explanation look at the most commonly used. Ne (ね), Na (な) and No (の): This one is

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Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1888 - Part II

The Swindlers The Swindlers ("bedrager, in Danish) who fool the Imperial Court into believing that their supposedly invisible clothes are actual delicate garbs and not purely fictitious are described as sagisha (詐僞者, "prevaricator") in Watanabe and katari (欺騙者) in Takahashi's version. The latter using

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Imperial Intermezzo - His Majesty

Whilst holding a break from the main Japanese translation comparisons, I thought it'd be interesting to take a glance at how European translators handle the title of the monarch himself. This shall be done in brief notes going through the various terms with a

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Emperor's New Clothes Comparison - 1888 - Part I

Chapter I - The Earliest Translations - Anno 1888 - Part I Hans Christian Andersen, one of the most widely read and translated authors of not just Denmark, but also the world has his works preponderate in terms of international versions to the point

Update 11/01/21

Greetings, readers! A short update from me thus to assuage any fears or my being buried in books or succumbing to the total consumption of reading ancient tomes, which - mind you - is a superfluous repetition. I am currently at work with a

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Dickensian Japanese - Stave 3 - Fred and Jacob

In order to speed things up, let us take a brief look at the other principal characters and their main traits, and how translators handle them: Fred: Frederick is an amiable fellow and also the young sister-son of Ebeneezer Scrooge himself, thus his language

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Dickensian Japanese - Stave 2 - Part 1 - Charity Workers - Pt. 2

Continuing where we left off,we will be dealing with the verbs - and having in another article described the fundamentals of keigo, in terms of the three categories and the concepts of in- and out-groups, there ought to be little in the way