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A collection of 58 posts

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Update - 17/11/2021

A lot has happened since I last published my larger-than-usual translation comparison of the SoulsBorne series, in regards to the archaic language in those games. Namely, one of my older articles got linked by the excellent blog Mad SNK Project, whose work I have in the past mentioned in this

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Archaic language in SoulsBorne

The popular action RPGs by From Soft are famed for their fair if fierce difficulty and a minimalist approach to tutorials, rather wanting players to learn by experience rather than by obsequious text-boxes. Text is indeed the very bread and butter of this blog, though more specifically the dialogue. If

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Possible Oldest Dialect

Simon Roper, a linguistics enthusiast and knowledgeable gentleman on Youtube , posted a video not too long ago regarding whether or not there such a thing as an “oldest English dialect”, that is, one that retains the most archaic phonetic, syntactical, grammatical and/or vocabulary-wise features in contrast to other varieties

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Obi-Wan Too Many

Star Wars was released to massive acclaim in term of it bringing the space opera genre to a modern audience and introducing a viewing public to the world of Jedi and Droids. It received international release and would later be renamed Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope to fit

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Update - 15/08/2021

So, I have not published any articles on this blog for a while, and for the sake of giving news in regards to where things are heading. I am working on research for several projects, and one blog post regarding SNK's bizarre localisation/translation of Samurai Shodown into

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Ducal Difficulty in 3D

Duke Nukem 3D, a FPS game featuring the titular pastiche of action heroes of the 80s and 90s, with all the corny lines and questionable macho-attitude, received a Japanese release for the PC, and in that vein it came with a manual. The translation work for this manual is the

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The Foul-Mouthed Miller

Geoffrey Chaucer, factotum of Plantagenet England and author of countless inimitable works of poetry, wrote towards the end of the 1400s his magnum opus The Canterbury Tales, wherein we follow a wide assortment and slice of society as they make pilgrimage towards Canterbury. Chaucer was a man whom had interacted

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Poems - The Moon

Here is another poem which was originally written a few years ago, but has since become part of a poem collection that I am working on. This was one was written in one go, I do not exactly recall the inspiration for it, but judging from the alliteration and seeming

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Poems - Coffee & Swing

Here are some short poems from my upcoming poem collection that I am working on, said poems were written between 2020 and 2021, and is still being written on. These in particular was after listening to some Billy Joel as well as reading Ginsberg, though not having the solemn gravitas

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DB in DK - Addendum - Shukan Idou

Son Gokuu's ability to instantly teleport from place to the other, provided that he can recognise a qi pattern that is there possess a rather simple if verbose name. 時間がなくてよ　教えてもらった技はひとつだけなんだ　そんでも　えれえ　苦労したんだけどさ 瞬間移動ってやつが　できるようになったぜ！ Jikan ga nakuteyo oshiete moratta waa wa hitotsu dake nan da sondemo

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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 wild-life, absorbed into cosmic matter or

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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 world for "fool,

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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 at the title of duke, namely

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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 Danish whence Andersen in part wrote

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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 short explanation or remark

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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 ought at least to convey nuances

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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 of explaining the intricacies of this.

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

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 website, and that there

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Dickensian Japanese - 2nd Stave - The Initial People - Part I

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 of the first characters to be

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Bah! Humbug!

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 tables aren't

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Dickensian Christmas - 1st Stave - Phrases and Terms

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 upon ’Change, for anything he chose

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Dickensian Japanese -Introduction

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, but also culturally in taking

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Regarding Stardust from a Film

Potash of Carboniloroxy amilocitrate This line stuck out for me whilst watching Arthur Christmas, an animated Christmas fantasy-comedy that features the hapless yet enthusiastic Arthur Claus, youngest son of a long line of inheritors of the position of Santa Claus, he is however ineligible due to being the youngest hence

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Grand Kurisumasu Ojisan Post

In a seasonal extension of the "Senior Dialect" post of a few months back, I shall here give a short description of how various Japanese dubs of Christmas related media adapt the linguistic traits of the (bloke in red). It is etched in stone (according to my personal

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The many terms for JRPG heroes

Begin any JRPG, at least in terms of the early ones that was set during the Tolkien-esque fantasy golden age of the 80s and you will inevitably encounter terms such as eiyuu and yuusha. These two terms differ wildly for the most part in describing the hero of the story