Japanese help?

[kingdark]

I was working on my current fanfiction when I came into a problem.
i wanted to say younger sister in Japanese imouto but then I thought how do i say it?
do i say
imouto-garnet-chan?

or is it imouto-chan?
or garnet-imouto?

Since a lot of people use this for fanfiction I thought this might be a good new topic/thread.

I still don't know how to say it, but I think its like this:

imouto-chan. little sister and then the chan is for family and such right?

but why do i have the feeling i am missing something?
Anyway,
I suggest that people could post links here to sites where you can find information about the Japanese language and how to use it in English stories.

Thoughts?

oh before i forget:
Family stuff
Greetings
Expressions
Common sayings
Greetings
How to say sorry

These are very useful sites, but stuff like the problem above is beyond them.

Kingdark

 

[Aleh]

You don't use "imouto" in a form of address or attach it to a name as a general rule. A typical use of it would be something like this:

"Garnet-chan wa watashi no imouto desu."

Or, in other words, "Garnet is my little sister."

Also, the about.com sites list information that's... well, greatly oversimplified.

 

[Fatuous One]

...

Well, Larry complied a fairly good list of such things over at The Lost Library of Florestica.

Link

And as Aleh noted, things like "Imotou" (and the others Larry listed in the third post) are not honorifics. As in, you don't attach them to words like that.


Generally, (with some exceptions) I'd encourage people NOT to use Japanese words in English fanfiction. Honorifics, yeah, but when you get to the point where you start replacing words that are easily translatable...

*sigh*

It can get annoying... although, as I said, there are exceptions (e.g., I prefer 'Imotou-chan' over 'Little sis(ter)' when referring to Kyon's sibling in Haruhi). <s>However, it's NEVER okay to do complete sentences in Japanese when writing English fanfiction. That's just absurd.</s> Actually, I take that back, there are exceptions. Although I rarely like them, songfics, and some such bits of fiction do require them at times.

Eh, just something to note.

 

[kingdark]

well, I do realize that using Japenese sentences is annoying, and i wont do it because i would have to find a site where you could type in sentences with a correct translation option.
Besides, only using words is much better

kingdark

 

[Aleh]

Actually, there's a few other exceptions to that sentence rule that I'll agree to:

One: The story is being told, first-person, from the perspective of someone who doesn't understand Japanese, and the sentence is within quotes.

Two: Things like spell-chants, poems, and the like. I'll use the original spell-chants from Slayers, for instance, and I don't bother trying to translate haiku.

Three: The sentence is embedded within a discussion of linguistic differences. For instance, if a character says, "'Ore wa muteki da!' means 'I am invincible!'", I don't translate the first part.

 

[foesjoe]

If you're writing your fanfiction in English, keep it in English. Most people reading your stories don't have a clue about the Japanes language except for "fanfic Japanese." I think the only thing which warrants not being translated are honorifics because there aren't any with similar meaning in English.

When I read stories where authors feel they just have to show off their 1337 Japanese skillz I get annoyed pretty quickly and stop reading. Especially if they don't bother to translate the Japanese part and keep most dialogue in that language. Why not write in Japanese right away if you want to impress with your language skills?

If you think you absolutely have to use Japanes, at least provide a translation for your readers who are not as proficient in the Japanese language.

I could just as easily write an Evangelion fic where I have Asuka speak mostly German and no one would read it, simply because they don't understand it. Now that I think about it, I'm tempted to do that anyway. Simply to take revenge on all the authors who try to use German and then do it so horribly wrong it makes my eyes burn.

 

[Aleh]

*Shrug* Note the limitation on characters speaking in other languages -- I qualified that by saying that it's only OK when the story is being told in first person from the perspective of someone who doesn't understand what's being said. In that case, the fact that it's written in Romanized Japanese would help convey the lack of understanding.

For the second, poetry simply doesn't translate. It's best to avoid such things, of course, but for some scenarios (e.g. a discussion of famous Japanese poets), it's unavoidable.

For the third, note that the translation was provided within the dialogue. If someone's talking about the differences in meaning between a Japanese word and its English 'equivalent', it's pretty darn hard to avoid using the Japanese word. If someone's teaching another person how to say something in Japanese, the same applies, etc. etc.

Oh, yes. Another exception -- proper names and certain titles. Tokyo, for instance, is a Japanese name. Calling it "Eastern Capitol" just sounds strange.

 

[OniGanon]

Y'know, most of these exceptions being pointed out here are pretty darn obvious and don't really need to be explicitly stated.

On spell chants and the like, I think it's a good thing to translate them in author's notes if possible. One of the things that irks me in Negima! is the lack of translations for the spells, especially those not said in latin.

 

[runestar]

A lot is lost in the translation when japanese is converted into say, english, so it is really useful if you want a very general idea of what the article is about. And it is not necessarily accurate, because quite a number of names may be converted directly into words.

For example, Motoko Aoyama literally means element child blue/green? hill/mountain? if converted into mandarin directly (which I suspect is how they translate the kanji).

Still, it can be either humorous or frustrating, depending on the scenario at hand.

 

[toraneko]

For example, Motoko Aoyama literally means element child blue/green? hill/mountain? if converted into mandarin directly (which I suspect is how they translate the kanji).

I'm not quite getting what you said there. Are you saying that they translate the Japanese kanji into Mandarin Chinese before retranslating it into English?

That would be awful, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it's done. Close similarities aside, Japanese kanji are not always the same as the equivalent Chinese symbols. There are available sources to translate Japanese directly (or at least logically) into English.

I know I've seen too many occasions where lazy scanlators will scan and retranslate the Korean translations of Japanese manga, but it always ends up with some serious errors. I'm not sure I'd enjoy seeing the kind of nightmarish loss a Japanese > Mandarin > English translation sequence could produce.

edit: "Aoyama" = "Blue Mountain", "Motoko" = "child of principles"
A name that does befit her character.

 

[OniGanon]

Although in this case, the translation of her name sounds about right. Not sure what 'Moto' is offhand, but 'Ko' is child, and 'Aoyama' means blue mountain.

 

[Paradigm Shifter]

I know I've seen too many occasions where lazy scanlators will scan and retranslate the Korean translations of Japanese manga, but it always ends up with some serious errors. I'm not sure I'd enjoy seeing the kind of nightmarish loss a Japanese > Mandarin > English translation sequence could produce.

I've got some scanlations of Hellsing that went from Japanese to English via Russian. Three different 'alphabets'... and none of them related? h43r: