english - Myriad of Leaves

Return of "Old Sport"

I wrote a while back about how a Japanese translator handled the adaptation of the term "old sport" in the seminal novel The Great Gatsby. This time around I have not just one, but three more translations of the term from their respective translations and the choices are

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Piece of my mind to feast upon

In a Christmas Carol’s third chapter, wherein the Ghost of Christmas Present, a towering incarnation of Yuletide jollity, guides Scrooge through the homes and streets of various people that the miser knows, but does not know his impact upon, he comes across the humble house of Robert Cratchit and

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Speech Patterns - Palpatine (Star Wars)

Palpatine (“Lego Star Wars – The Skywalker Saga”, 2022) The duplicitous Sith Lord turned chancellor turned emperor from Star Wars has to wildly varying modes of speech depending on which of the personas that he is using, Sith Lord or politician, the former speaks in Classical Japanese using regal language and

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Thor versus Thor versus Thor

With the advent of the new God of War Ragnarok game, and the appearance of another fresh interpretation of the Aesir, Vanir, Jotun and other members of Norse mythology, it behoves me to make a comparison with previous incarnations of one particular Aesir, Thor the Thunderer - the first being

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Robotto!

Word robot first appeared as early as in the 1920s science fiction play, R. U. R (Rustrom’s Universal Robots), by Czech playwright Karel Čapek (1890 – 1938), wherein the automatons featured within the story are not mechanical humans, but synthetic ones created from various organic materials to then serve as

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Final Fantasy Royal Titles

Final Fantasy is no stranger to royalty. In fact, in most cases the main playable cast will contain a prince, princess, king and queen either secretly or quite obvious - such as in the cases of the most recent numbered Final Fantasy game. Previous games in the series also featured

robots

AI in Fiction

Computers are machines, governed by calculations, i.e. numbers, the language of “logic”, thus the majority of AIs in fiction are represented as superficially polite, but wholly uncaring and calculating. Humans are, conversely, beings of pure emotion – perceived as floundering and fragile – incapable of rationality in the face of things

politeness

Morbid honorifics

When a person succumbs to the mortal coil and passes away, we have in all cultures words of varying degrees of formality and respect to refer to this posthumous state. Japanese being the focal point of this blog and seeing as Elizabeth II just recently passed away, it may be

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Carolean or Caroline?

So, with the recent passing of Elizabeth II and the her period of regency dubbed the "second Elizabethan age", it isn't too far for some people in politics to proclaim the new era to be called the "Carolean" derived from Carolus the Latin version

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Poem - Breathe

Breathe Written 2018. Fresh air Fill my lungs Heal me Remove this corrosion within That festers like a black bale Let my being be anew Pure Clear Reborn For a new morn

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Update - 14-08-22

Greetings! A long time has passed since the last time I posted anything on this blog, but IRL has been rather difficult as of late. Nevertheless, I have been working on various projects, an e-book version of the translation-comparison articles of the Emperors New Clothes that I covered some time

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Mimesis and Martians

Quick blog post here, thought it would be worth mentioning No-Sword's excellent post on H. G. Wells' haunting and sonorous opening of War of the Worlds. Mimesis is essentially a case of where words or an expression's pronunciation matches the meaning, i.e. "vast&

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Quick Post - Fell Omen

In Elden Ring, one of the bosses that you can encounter is a ogreish warrior known as Margit the Fell Omen, which in Japanese corresponds to: 忌み鬼マルギット (Imi Oni Marugitto, "Shunned Oni Margit"). Oni here doesn't literally refer to the mythical creature itself, but moreover to

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Lord of Dragons

SPOILERS ARE APLENTY We shall be looking into perhaps one of the most enigmatic characters of Elden Ring. Before proceeding know that this article delves into possibly one of the most impressive secrets of the game. Popular Youtuber and expert on Elden Ring information as well as data, Zullie the

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Line Individualism - Yura

SPOILERS ARE AHEAD! Yura in Elden Ring takes the role of a wizened veteran hunter of “bloody fingers”, i.e. people having gone deranged with bloodlust, thus he effeche ctively is a bounty-hunter of sorts – he is also along with a few other characters, representing the samurai class arch-type. Voiced

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Line Individualism - Boc

Heed the Spoiler Warning! Boc is the demi-human (read: goblin) seamer and manservant of the player, should they chose to save him during the game. He speaks like the greater half of the game’s cast in a Cornish English accent, and moreover he is the only demi-human that actually

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Bernahl's Line

SPOILERS ARE WITHIN THE POST In Elden Ring, during the last stages of Bernahl, a knight clad in ferocious armour and member of a secret order of assassins of the clandestine Volcano Manor, makes a solemn pledge against the omniscient presence known as the Great Will, the English lines are:

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Silvered Ones

SPOILERS MAY OCCUR FOR ELDEN RING. In Elden Ring there is a race of amphibian like humanoids along with slightly more elfin ones much further off, apparently an older variety of them, whose name in the English translation is albanaurics. Later on in the game they are revealed to effectively

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Thyselves

SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED WITHIN REGARDIN ELDEN RING. So a long-lived and stubborn pseudo-archaic typo is thyselves, itself an erroneous plural form of thyself, where the proper would be the yourselves, since it is literally the second person plural that is supposedly being used. Case in point, a quote from Elden

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Update post 30-03-22

Hello! Things have been going rather slowly if surely if terms of the progress of researching for various articles, mainly the ones concerning the speech patterns of various character arch-types in fiction. On the personal side of things that has been quite a few changes, mainly in terms of getting

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Elden Ring Spoilers - Name Allusions

From Software has a tradition of putting especial significance in their world building when it comes to structuring their role playing games, moreover, the latest instalment, Elden Ring only proves this. SPOILERS ARE BELOW, DO NOT PROCEED WITH READING IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED THE GAME, OR CARE FOR STORY

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Quick Post - Old Sport

In the seminal novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the titular character of Jay Gatsby is a showman and playboy whose ostentatious lifestyle draws the attention of the protagonist and narrator of the story, a young journalist called Nick Carraway, whose enquiries into the life and secrets of

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Update - 24/01/2022

Greetings! Once more a quick update on how things are going and to keep you knowing what I have been up to. First and foremost, I am working on a rather massive comparison on how some 140 ninja speak from across all manner of media, mostly comics, cartoons, games, films

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New Year Post - Back to the Future

The year is drawing to a close and I thought I would include one last short translation comparison to round off the old year and herald the new year. What more fitting to do that than taking a look at two instrumental phrases from the science fiction trilogy Back to

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Yule Post the 2nd - Food

Preface: At last we come to the crown-jewels of any seasonal celebration, namely the food that populate the feast. The perfect way to investigate how Japanese translators would render specific Christmas dishes perhaps not known to them would be through the Dickensian lens of voluminous and opulent descriptions, where there