"I Like It. The Look On People's Faces When They Decide To Stop Holding Back"

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I have responsibilities like self torment and isolation

Japanese Linguistic Observations in Spy x Family - part 5

Part 5 - Translating humor and wordplay

Translating jokes from one language to another can be difficult, especially when the humor revolves around wordplay that's only apparent in the original language. Luckily for a comedy series like SxF, most of the humor relies on concepts that are universal to all languages, but there are the occasional jokes that require creative translation in order to get the same effect in English. What I think is the most well-known example of this kind of joke in SxF is from chapter 26, where Yuri tells Anya that "knowledge is power" during their tutoring session.

The Japanese phrase for this is 知は力 ("chi wa chikara"). Anya mishears this as ちわわぢから ("chiwawa jikara"), which means "chihuahua power," which is why we see the image of a muscular chihuahua in her thoughts. This results in Yuri calling her チワワ娘 ("chihuahua girl") from then on. Obviously this joke would be lost if translated directly, so Casey Loe, the official English translator for the SxF manga, got creative with making it work in English. He cleverly utilizes the English expression, "the whole enchilada," which sounds enough like "swole chihuahua" for Anya to believably mistake the two. This translation also makes it so that Yuri calling Anya "chihuahua girl" later on makes sense.

But unfortunately, because a series can have different companies working on the localization of its anime versus its manga, inconsistencies between the two often come up. In this case, the anime team translated this joke completely differently, and less effectively in my opinion. You can see from the below screenshots that they had Yuri use the word "unleash," which then led to Anya associating a (muscular) dog without a leash as powerful (?) Again, this translation was a stretch in my opinion and not as good as the manga version. This also makes it so that translating Yuri's nickname for Anya as "chihuahua girl" won't make sense.

But what's interesting is that, many months and episodes later in season 2, they stayed consistent with that translation and had Yuri call Anya "stupid leash girl" in episode 28.

Despite my dislike for this translation, I have to give them kudos for remembering it all that time later and not just directly translating it as "chihuahua girl." Though it makes me wonder if they'll stay consistent in season 3 where Yuri will be referring to Anya as "chihuahua girl" once again.

A further complication is that, not only do these kinds of inconsistencies exist between the anime and manga translations, but they also exist between the different streaming services that stream SxF with English subtitles throughout the world. I only have access to the subtitled version from Hulu, which is where my screenshots are from, and I think other streaming services in the US like Crunchyroll, Amazon, Netflix, etc, use the exact same subtitles. So when I refer to "the Hulu subtitles" throughout this post, I mean other major US streaming services too. However, I'm not totally sure if they all do share the same subtitle script, so if anyone who has these services could confirm, that would be great! However, @tare-anime informed me that Muse Asia's English subtitles for SxF are completely different! For example, they translated the above joke more closely to the original, by using the phrase "puppy power" and keeping Yuri's nickname for Anya as "chihuahua girl."

There are further differences with Muse Asia's translation as well, for example, they directly translate Anya's names for Loid and Yor, "chichi" and "haha," as "Father" and "Mother" instead of "Papa" and "Mama."

(thanks again to Tare for the Muse Asia screenshots!) This is different, not only compared to the Hulu subtitles, but also the official English manga as well, both of which have Anya consistently use "Papa" and "Mama."

Tare also let me know that Disney Plus in Asia, another service that streams SxF, has yet another version of the English subtitles! And these are only the subtitled versions for the US and Asia - if SxF is streamed with English subtitles in other countries, I wonder if those are different as well. That means there's at least 3-4 different English subtitle scripts for SxF, with different ways of translating certain things, like what I described above. This could make things confusing for someone without any knowledge of Japanese who reads the English version of the manga and watches the subtitled version of the anime on one or more streaming services...if they read the first few volumes of the manga with the "swole chihuahua" translation, then watch season 2 of the anime, they're gonna be confused about why Yuri calls Anya "stupid leash girl." There's other more minor inconsistencies too, like how the Hulu subtitles have Yor call Anya "Miss Anya" all the time, but the manga doesn't.

I'm sure there's some licensing reasons why there isn't one official English subtitle script that all the streaming services can use, and why they don't consult the manga translations, especially for the more difficult-to-translate parts. It seems like wasted effort for so many official English translations to exist for the same thing.

But anyway, back to the translations of jokes in SxF, another one that stood out to me occurred in chapter 23. During the scene where Loid is asking Anya about a name for Bond, he explains how dogs have trouble discerning the sounds of consonants. The phrase he uses for this is 子音の聞き分け("shiin no kiki wake"), which means "distinguishing consonants," with "shiin" meaning "consonant." However, there's another word "shiin" with the kanji 死因 that means "cause of death." This is what Yor thinks he means - 死因の聞き分け ("shiin no kiki wake"), which means "determining the cause of death." So in her thoughts, she imagines asking Bond if he prefers death by blood loss (失血死) or by being crushed (圧死), and when he shakes his head at both, she says "you're not good at these distinctions, are you?"

This is a difficult joke to translate, so Casey got a bit loose by having Loid use the word "plosives" instead of "consonants," and then having Yor mishear it as "explosives." He then changed up Yor's dialogue by having her say that Bond prefers C-4 explosions over other methods of death.

While I don't think the translation of this joke worked as well as the previous one (I feel like Yor wouldn't know about C-4 explosions?) I couldn't come up with anything better myself, lol. It just goes to show how translating things as closely to the original as possible isn't always the best choice…but oddly, that's what the Hulu subtitles did! For some reason they opted not to even attempt to rework this joke for English, and kept both Loid and Yor's dialogue as exact translations. This results in an exchange that makes no sense and will leave people wondering how Yor could mistake Loid's "can't tell consonants apart" as "can't tell causes of death apart."

However, there are some cases where the wordplay works similar enough in both Japanese and English that the joke can be translated without too much modification. An example of this is in chapter 59 where Becky asks Yor how she was able to "get" Loid…"pierce his heart" as she puts it. Yor thinks she means this literally, to which she replies that she wouldn't hurt Loid.

The Japanese version is very similar, with Becky using the verb 射止める("itomeru") which means "to shoot down" (with an arrow). However, it has a figurative meaning too, which is "to win" as in "win someone's heart." Yor thinks Becky means the literal meaning of shooting down, so she says that she wouldn't shoot Loid and that she doesn't even use a bow and arrows.

The Hulu subtitles translate it more or less directly, having Becky say "shoot an arrow through his heart" and keeping Yor's "I don't use a bow and arrows" that the manga omitted. Rare case where I think the anime translation worked better than the manga!

In the case of this joke, the concept of "shooting someone's heart" to mean "winning someone's heart" is universal in both English and Japanese, so little reworking was needed. This also helped keep consistency with Yor's tendency to associate otherwise benign concepts with violence due to the nature of her work.

I'll wrap up this post with what I think is the most commendable translation of a joke so far in the manga: how Casey translated the names of the guest characters at the ski resort in chapter 94.

Their names are puns in Japanese as well, and Annie over on Twitter already did a great breakdown of how each of the wordplay in their names was translated, so definitely check out that thread here. Since this chapter has yet to be animated, I'm really curious how the anime translators will handle this…since it seems like they don't reference the manga, they'll probably either translate the names literally or come up with their own pun names, and either will unfortunately lead to the same kind of inconsistencies between the anime and manga translations that I touched on earlier.

To summarize, humor can be a very culture/language specific thing, so it's up to the translator to make sure the same feeling is conveyed in their translation even if they have to essentially make up their own jokes. With that said, it's a shame that there isn't collaboration between the translators of the anime and manga to ensure consistent translations across the franchise. So I hope this post helped shed light, not just on how some of the jokes in SxF were conveyed in Japanese, but also on why some things in the English version of SxF seem inconsistent between the anime and manga.

<- Return to Part 4

what if mori let dazai go at the end of dark era bc he wanted him to find something to protect? 

Dazai didn’t care about yokohama, but with the years apart from the mafia and surrounded by the ADA he has started to care and he likes to help people now. I think it’s said in one of the antologies, but also there’s this quote in DA that i love bc it shows this. I don’t know how it is in english, but in the spanish translation it says that dazai had a face full of determination and duty (is the moment just before shibusawa stabbed him.

So mori knowing he can’t make dazai care through manipulation bc he is /too/ smart, he used his betrayal for this. Dazai will find reasons to protect yokohama and now he can really be the asset always wanted him to be.

So Damian wins the carnival prizes for her and Anya kills the bugs for him when they’re dating?

thoughts on tbhk manga

just some days ago i read this series, so there are a lot of things that are on my mind especially after seeing other people theories and stuff, so here i'm gonna ramble a bit about them KDNDLDMF

1. so, i have seen a lot of theories of amane's injuries being bc of the clock. but i don't really think that makes sense timewise.

i assumed that the year amane is fixing the clock is 1968 and when we see him injured is 1969. in chapter 101 the announcement says that the first year middle school play and then comes this conversation,,,

so is their class that's doing the play. and since the festival is at the end of summer and they are in their first year (if they are from the class presenting the play) it must be 1968. and he had to have it moving before that years school festival ended,,, so it being the reason for his injuries is highly unlikely imo (well, except he is refering to the 1969 CF, that is an option, but isn't it weird?)

that takes us back to then who or what is actually harming him? i have 2 theories for that. the first one is that it was tsukasa, but it was to provoke amane..

we have seen tsukasa's reaction when he gets to know that his brother is going to kill him, so maybe since they both were close to 13, he has been trying to trigger amane to DO THE THING, trying to get to know that part of his brother, what would push his buttons enough for him to actually do that?

my other option is that it's the mother, afterall she was scared of tsukasa, maybe she started to take her fear on them and since amane is also suspicious, he would understand his mother and forgive her

i haven't seen this idea so idk what you guys think

2. what is it really that the clock-keepers changed? a lot of people speculate that they keep baby tsukasa in the house, but we are shown after n° 1 loops a clock with 1968 written on it, so is logical to assume that's the year they change something.

From that, if we take into account that's the year amane was fixing the clock, maybe he originally did change something when he traveled through time (even if tsukasa says that nothing came of it, implying he couldn't even fix the clock) and that's what n°1 changed, he made amane do something different in 1968 that made a change in the past, but then who told adult amane 4 y/o self about the change in time? his middle school self that traveled? the red house thing?

3. ALSO IN CHAPTER 101 there's this ghost? that talks to nene about an accident in the CF so WHAT ABOUT THAT? WHY NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THAT?

WHAT IF this accident is related to the time change somehow come on guyssss think with me

other thing that has been bothering me is that in the wikis (eng and esp) it says that the yugi twins birthday is in 1955, but in chapter 78 it says that in 1960 is their 4th birthday, so shouldn't they be born in 1956? i don't know if i'm just to dumb to fucking do math or what but wth

SO TRUE, it has to be someone else involved!! after all sigma exists bc they were written in the book, but they stole the page from taneda.

except DoA wrote sigmas existence like "3 years ago this person appeared..." and etc. but that doesn't make sense because fyodor found sigma¿

and i don't know if this makes any sense, srry

Does anyone else kind of feel like there might be a secret third person pulling strings within the decay of angels? Because I kind of get that feeling sometimes. I have absolutely no basis for this tho.

But like Fukuchi and Fyodor are the only members who seem invested in it. Nikolai and Sigma are essentially Fyodor’s plus ones. And does Bram literally even count as a member? I mean that seriously. Like, he doesn’t want to be there, and he’s literally being used as a weapon. A secret weapon up until this point. Why, if it was known that there were five members, would they count the vampire on a stick that Fukuchi enslaved and like keeps hidden in his office or something? What if someone else is the actual last member? Like maybe that’s how Agatha Christie will finally be plot relevant. But more likely it’ll be the guy who wrote the Decay of Angels.

I just feel like we’re missing something there, but I might just be imagining things.

It is 2024 I am once again asking for a tsubasa reservoir chronicle anime remake

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[ intro ]

hello! i'm myo (⁠=⁠^⁠･⁠ｪ⁠･⁠^⁠=) she/her, 21 y/o and chilean; i'm your resident vegan lesbian atheist etc etc i love mysteries, science and things that make me think

here i talk about series, animanga and maybe in the future books i like and mostly skk i love skk they are my soul or something like that

my favourite series are: one piece, bungou stray dogs, fullmetal alchemist, jibaku shonen hanako-kun, natsume's book of friends, the apothecary diaries, shoushimin, kageki shoujo, spyxfamily, tsubasa reservoir chronicles, xxxholic, the guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all, colette decides to die, sasaki and miyano, honey lemon soda, yona of the dawn, yume no hashibashi, frieren: journey's end, detective conan... gravity falls, steven universe, the owl house

thanks for reading ig...

watching link click and i gotta say again how i adore doomed siblings