[Kikaifan]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

Oh no all them Del Ray translators are going to be out of a job!

Actually your stance intrigues me....

Out of context do you get annoyed when you go to restaurants and see dishes named "chow mein", "korma" and "sushi"

Just going back to the food example I could imagine going to an Indian restaurant and asking for a curry... The chicken one with which is kinda spicy and coconuty.... but wait curry that word isn't English, nor is beef or pork etc etc as they are adopted words form other countries, but they are in the dictionary... nooo my head hurts...

Yes, we absorb names for things that are not named in our language, because we need a way to refer to the named objects once they enter our cultural awareness (foods are common because they are likely to be exclusive to a culture). But as numerous people have pointed out in this thread, desu is a part-of-speech that doesn't even have a real meaning besides adding declarative emphasis, so including it in an English sentence is ridiculous. I think you're wrong about this te yo.

imho language of an anime/manga is suppose to convey over a story that the author wants to share with us (and make a buck too ), a characters little quirks are part of the story and if a translator takes that away then they are doing more then translating as they are changing a character and therefore changing the story.

Japanese have lots of quirks in their language which can't be translated via language or local understanding (girl nick names suffixes for example).

Suiseiseki has the (relatively minor) quirk of having idiosyncratic speech, so they gave her idiosyncratic speech in the translation. They didn't change anything, they translated it. And Suiseiseki emphasizing her 'desu's is not 'part of the story.'

That's why honorifics are often left in manga: it's a clear-cut expression of factors (familiarity and politeness) that in the equivalent English would just be expressed in tone. They're often important to understanding dialogue that would have to be changed considerably (to incorporate obvious levels of politeness and familiarity) to have the same impact in English, so they're left alone.

However, if you take away 'desu' every thing Suiseiseki says still has the exact same meaning.

For someone to believe that desu is unacceptable to the western market to me says that they believe that market is closed minded and stupid which it most defiently not. It would be even worse now if they decided to keep in unyuuu and nano, because even through they have kept my favorite character "in character", they would have just rubber stamped Sui as a "yesu" to a lot of the western readers.

I believe that the market for manga translated from Japanese to English probably doesn't read Japanese with great speed or comprehension and would like to read their manga in English. And yes, I think they want the characters to be every bit as enjoyable in translation, but I don't think that Suiseiseki is diminished by the translation of a verbal quirk that doesn't have a meaning in the first place.

The usage of yes on the end of a statement when I read it is like underlining and bolding, or just plain stupid. ie "The lack of desu is stupid yes?", [STUPID]"I am eating pizza yes"[/STUPID], desuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu is a quirky usage of desu

Well, since emphasizing 'desu' is just affirming what went before, 'yes' makes a little sense, but I agree that it doesn't sound that great. Adding the appropriate form of 'it is' would fit more types of statements, but...

Screw it, I spent all this time typing this, and now in the process of reasoning out the last sentence I come to agree with you. Even if it has no real meaning, it's the same as the honorifics, it allows you to explicitly emphasize something when in English you just depend on tone. Long live '~desu'.

*Sigh.*