Quote:
Originally Posted by j4c06
Was the "ice cream" thing obvious to the Japanese speaking people from the beginning?
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I know this is probably TLDR, but here's my take: My Japanese isn't very good, but the "ice cream" thing wasn't obvious to the other four characters in that room either, only to Houtarou, so I don't think it's that obvious. Really, Jun Sekitani must have designed the whole thing to be not obvious, so that it can slip under the radar of the school authorities. Thus it's a forced pun, and a forced translation as well. Most Japanese call ice cream, "aisu kuriimu" 「アイスクリーム」 , taken directly from the English. I think it's been called that for at least 60 years, if not longer, so it certainly would have been the case in 1967. Even the word "cream," by itself, doesn't have a commonly-used, native Japanese equivalent. Everyone calls it "kuriimu" 「クリーム」.
My understanding is that if you wanted to translate "hyouka" 「氷菓」 from Japanese into English, you'd probably say "iced desserts" or "ice candy." But if you wanted to reverse things and translate "ice cream" from English into traditional, non-westernized Japanese, "hyouka" is probably the best option, since there really is no non-western Japanese equivalent. So if Jun Sekitani wanted a way of saying "ice cream" without saying "aisu kuriimu," "hyouka" seems to be as good a translation as any.