myriadleaves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As mentioned in the Dickensian blog-posts, I will be presenting a short introduction to the basics of polite Japanese and more pertinently using quotes from the translations to illustrate this. In-group and out-group: When talking about Japanese politeness in general, one needs to approach

Prefatory remark: This post has received a revamped approach towards its analysis, rather than handling select quotes, I will be glancing at their vocabulary overall. This is in part due to Nakajima Kotou's version lacking pages in the photocopied book available through the Japanese

So, whilst writing I found out that one of the versions that I am using for the analysis of A Christmas Carol, is lacking most if not all of the fourth chapter, thus I have had to rethink and even rewrite some sections for

An analysis of this magnitude requires taking segments in sizeable chunks without it becoming all too unfathomable for either your senses or the connection through which you are currently accessing this site. I must admit that I initially planned for Scrooge to be one

As an addendum to the article that regard the Japanese translations of A Christmas Carol, here are some of the European translations of the famous utterance "Bah, humbug!" as expressed in versions readily available through WikiSource: Here they are in a picture format since

Dead as a Doornail: Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good

As promised, I shall in this post be going through four translations and how they more specifically handle the main characters and also key words of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol from 1843, whose role was instrumental not just in a literary regard,