Chapter 4: Phantom Storm Translation Notes

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NOTES

+The first freaking word was troublesome. 異空の海: literally, ‘ocean of different/strange space/sky/air’. My first impression was that it is describing whatever kind of ‘outer space’ that the gummi ship travels through. After some googling, it seems this line was used in Ansem Report 10, from Final Mix, and the guy who did the unofficial translation did it as ‘the ocean of other worlds’. I’m going to be boringly literal and use ‘ocean of strange space’ because it sounded better in this context, to me…

+’Gwah’, that sputtering quack noise Donald makes…

+’zongzi’ The first time I read this I misread it as ‘kimuchi’ (kimchi in English?) which confused me because that’s Korean and Mulan is Chinese. The second time I misread it as 'chimuki'. It's 'chimaki' o////o *fails* Thank you so much, eraserfaerie for letting me know! ♥

+’rice ball’ onigiri. A ball of rice, usually with some kind of filling like tuna or sour plum or fish eggs, and usually wrapped in seaweed, though there are many different types. I had a friend who just squirted tomato sauce into rice and made balls out of it and called that onigiri XD

+’let’s eat!”「 いっただきまーす」an etiquette thing you say before a meal, kind of like saying grace but without any religious implications. It is literally a very humble form of ‘to receive’, and I have been told it means ‘I humbly receive this food, paying respects to the living things from which it derives’, though explanation was from an old Japanese lady with weird opinions about sardines having feelings, so I don’t know whether it’s the standard interpretation.

+’plump and puffy’ もっちりむっちり. Sora-POV style cuteness. Mocchiri is like a plump, puffy pastry, and mucchiri is like a plump, chubby face or bum.

+’chew’ もぐもぐ、even more cuteness. You know how I said Sora’s POV narrations use cuter language? One way they do this is to use plenty of onomatopoeia. I remember this one time when I got teased as I ate chewy octopus, everyone saying ‘paku’ when I put it in my mouth, ‘mogumogumogu’ for as long as I chewed, and ‘gokun’ once I swallowed -_-;

+’ship’. For gummi ship, they use the English loan word ‘shippu’, but for this ship, they use the actual Japanese word for an ocean vessel-type ship, 船. The Japanese word for ‘space ship’ uses this kanji anyway.

+’Goofy…grinned’ にーっと笑う, which is just an elongatedにっと笑う. Say ‘niiii’ in the mirror and you’ll get how he is grinning. XD

+’a Ghost Ship’. More annoying jumping between English loan words and Japanese words. The word they used for ‘ghost ship’ when they first saw the ship used the Japanese word; this time, they say ‘gousuto shippu’. I think this is because heartless always have names that come directly from English loan words. So… they think they’re being clever. It falls flat post-translation XD

+‘canons’,　砲台、literally ‘battery (technical) a number of large guns that are used together’. However, I didn’t know what that was until I looked it up, and it seems a bit technical to put in a kids story.

+’wheels’, 車輪, as in ‘sharin-gan!!’ XDDD

+’lucky!’ (does anyone know that horrible sketch comedy show The Wedge? With those fat bogan sheilas at the pokies who always screeched ‘lu-ckyyyyy!!!’…? Yeah. That’s all I wanted to say XDDD)

+’aye-aye sir’ 「アイアイサー」XDDD

+’fists clenched in triumph’, in Japanese they use a word they created from English words, ‘guts pose’. Kids were very surprised when I told them we don’t use that in English XDD

+“Let’s finish this!” he literally says ‘finish!’ in borrowed English (finishu!)

Comments

[ruthyuki999.livejournal.com]

The first freaking word was troublesome

lol, isn't it grand when that happens? *mutters*...

XD And Sora is just so damn cute. Is it kinda like the language Roxas used in his Days' diary? (I vaguely seem to recall them being like that)

にっと笑う - I love that word. That way I remembered it was to imagine Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter walking around going にぃ～っこ to everyone XD

Once again, thanks for the notes, they are always a pleasure to read along with the translations!

[gold-panner.livejournal.com]

にぃ～! lol

Hm... not exactly. It's just the narration uses a heap of onomatopoea (spelling??) X3

Thank you for taking the time to comment ♥

[ruthyuki999.livejournal.com]

XD

The Japanese language = love of onomatopoeia XD There so much of it!

Although Sora likes to use onomatopoeia? ''orz I suck at it; this does not bode well.

You're most welcome ^-^

[gold-panner.livejournal.com]

He doesn't use it so much as... Ms. Kanemaki uses it when writing from his general perspective...? XD

I love onomatopoeia (*ganks your spelling*)!! Hard to translate, but so... awesome... somehow. XD