Aug 23, 2023
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Animate Ikebukuro 📕
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you said that the “because I love you” fan translation was completely wrong but the OFFICIAL 15 English translation is out and says “that’s what makes me love you” 🤨 so that means the officials are wrong/don’t translate well too?
Dear Anon,
Considering your ask, you might be pretty confused. What is really important is to consider the whole passage of the translation and its context, not just the “because I love you”. I will quote my original post:
"[…] I am so fed up with the damn “It must be because I love you” thing still going around??? And that is not the only problem: the whole part is actually wrong.”
“It must be because I love you” does not really make sense”.
The “whole part” that you really need to pay attention to is actually what comes before the “because I love you”, not what comes after. The “It must be because I love you” is grammatically wrong (you can go back to Kani’s blog for additional grammar explanations), and the context in which it is said leads to a misunderstanding.
It might be easier to understand if you put the three translations next to each other, so here you go:
Dazai, sentence 1:
I got it, I’ll answer. / Fine, you win. / Got it, I’m going to answer.
=> I would say that YP is the less closer one to the original Japanese sentence, but since the meaning stay the same (=Dazai is going to answer), then it is fine.
Dazai, sentence 2:
If I answer, though, will you stay away from me? / But would you mind keeping your distance? / I’m going to answer so could you please don’t come near me?
=> In this one, YP decided to get rid of a part of the sentence (=Dazai saying once again that he is going to answer), but the meaning stays the same in the three translation.
Dazai, sentence 3:
I can’t think when I’m walking with you. / I don’t want anyone to think I know you. / I don’t want it to look as if we’re walking together.
=> While the “because I love you” fan TL and I kept the « walking with you/together » that could be found in the original sentence, YP went for something a bit different with « know ». But while YP’s and my translation have the same meaning (=Dazai does not want people to see them together), the “because I love you” fan TL got « I can’t think when… » (= Dazai cannot think when he is with Chuuya.).
We all agreed on Chuuya’s first sentence!
Chuuya, sentence 2:
I also can’t think when I’m around you. / I feel the same way. / Because I also don’t want it to look like that.
=> In every translation, Chuuya agrees with Dazai! But, while in the “because I love you” fan TL’s Chuuya agrees that he also cannot think around Dazai, in YP’s and my translation Chuuya agrees that he also do not want to be seen with Dazai.
Dazai, sentence 4:
Fufu, looks like we’ll get along. / Hee-hee. Look at us getting along so well. / Tee-hee, we’re getting along ~
=> A few variations, but the meaning stays the same in the three translations!
Dazai, sentence 5:
It must be because I love you. / That’s what makes me love you! / I’m very fond of that about you!
=> Considering your ask, you might be wondering if it is the word « love » in itself that is wrong. It is not! YP could have translated “That’s what makes like you very much!” or “That’s what makes me very fond of you”, and I could have say « I love that about you ». People need to get that there is not only one option to translate « 大好き » (I will put some examples of the use of 大好き at the end of this blog, and if you want to know more about how to say “I love you” in Japanese, here you go). ==> So as I already said, for me the “because I love you” fan TL’s sentence is grammatically wrong, and with Dazai’s 3rd sentence + Chuuya’s 2nd sentence which are mistranslated, you are so misled to think that they can’t think straight around each other and bam, here we have a love confession from Dazai?! ===> If you can see, there is something that YP’s translation and my translation have in common: the « that » and « ! ». The “that” is such an important word! The « ! » comes from the よ particle which is being used for emphasis (so you could even go “!!!”). « I love you » is a whole // « that » is a part. Dazai does not make a love confession here, he just says that he likes it when his dog/toy agrees with him.
Again, I agree with Tsubaki’s translation because the main focus here is 「そんな」 (son-na), which means ‘such’/‘that side’. When you use 「そんな」, you’re just referring to particular traits of that person/object, but not a whole entity. Thus Dazai is not blatantly saying ‘I love you’ if we investigate into the wording and context, but just like the way of how Chuuya AGREES with him
You may argue ‘but hey isn’t 君が大好き means I love/like you in Japanese?? I see it everywhere!!’ Yes you’re right.
Yet still, we have to focus on the whole sentence. The full line of Dazai is 「うふふ、気が合うねえ。そんな君が大好きだよ！」 so [そんな君が大好きだよ] is a complete full sentence, just to let you know that I didn’t play the words such to justify myself. Cool, let’s continue.
We can’t neglect 「そんな」 in this sentence and simply pick out 「君が大好きだよ」 just to justify Dazai ‘confessed’ to Chuuya, no, because it’s 「そんな君」 aka ‘that side of you’ as a whole is the subject of the sentence, so we can never directly interpret Dazai said ‘I like you’ as 「君」 ‘you’ is not the full version of the subject. Thus, we need to take care of the whole subject: ‘that side of you’ 「そんな君」.
Full post on Kani’s blog
Can you see the differences between the three different whole translations in this case? I think that the context is very different, but that some people will not want to see the difference because there is one common word: « love », and they are so insistent on making skk canon (even though the person who did the “because I love you” fan TL explained that it was sarcasm in the end). Using « love » does not make the translation wrong, so my answer to your question is: YP did translate quite well here*, since they at least kept the sentences’ meaning.
To sum-up, YP’s translation keeps the original meaning/context which is: - They both agree on not wanting to be seen together - Dazai says that they are getting along since they both agree on not wanting to be seen together - Dazai loves the part of Chuuya (=そんな君） which is agreeing with him
I guess it should be even more easier to understand how insufferable Dazai is being and how done Chuuya is in this part by watching the 15 stage play if you can!
On that note, here is a translation of a part of an interview between Ue-chan (playing Chuuya) and Rui-kun (playing Dazai) on the 15 stage play which can help understanding their relationship:
植田：[...] あと、僕は太宰 治を相棒と思わないことにしています。
――お！ それはなぜでしょう？
植田：相棒になったつもりが一度もないので（笑）。
一同：（笑）。
植田：たぶん、客観的に見たらどう見ても相棒に感じると思いますが、中原中也本人が太宰 治を相棒だという感覚を持ってしまうとバランスが変わってしまうの思うので、僕は相棒だと思わないことを大事にしています。
――それは今回の舞台からですか？ それとも最初から思っていたことなのでしょうか？
植田：『文ステ』が立ち上がった最初の頃から思っていました。
田淵：僕も相棒というより、太宰にとって中也はおもちゃに近いような感じがします。でも、中也には負の感情だとしても感情が動かされている部分があって、だからこそ作中でああいう態度や素ぶりを見せるのかな、と。
もしかしたら好きなのかもしれないですし嫌いかもしれない。同じ土台に立てるような遊び相手でもあるのかな、といろいろな面を感じます。
Full interview here.
Ueda : [...] Also, I (*boku is used, not ore, so “I” is used as Ueda, not Chuuya) am choosing not to think of Dazai Osamu as my partner.
―― Ah! Why is that so?
Ueda : Because I [never/not even once] had the intention to become [his] partner (laughs).
Everyone : (laughs).
Ueda : It is likely that, if you would look at it objectively, by all appearances I think it feels like they are partners but, if Nakahara Chuuya himself was thinking of Dazai Osamu as a partner the balance would change so, not considering him as a partner is important for me.
―― Since this stage? Or was it something you were thinking since the beginning?
Ueda : I have been thinking like this since around the beginning of “Bunsute”.
Tabuchi : More than a partner, I also feel that for Dazai, Chuuya is more something like a toy. Though, for Chuuya even if it is the feeling of defeat, there is a part that will make him move. I wonder if that is why within the play, he shows those kinds of attitudes and manners.
Maybe he likes it, maybe he hates it. I wonder if he could be a playmate standing on the same ground, those are different kinds of aspects I can feel.
Some examples of how to use 大好き（だ）daisuki (da) :
大好き（だ）：love 0 <0が>, like 0 very much <0が>, be very fond of 0 <0が>
(FR : aimer beaucoup qqn•qqch; adorer qqn•qqch; raffoler de qqn•qqch)
• 私は日本文学が大好きだ。(Watashi wa nihon bungaku ga daisuki da): I love Japanese Literature. ; I like Japanese Literature ‘very much [a lot]’. ; I am very fond of Japanese Literature.
• 太宰さんのことが大好きだ。(Dazai-san no koto ga daisuki da): I like Dazai-san very much. ; I’m very fond of Dazai-san.
・太宰さんはカニ料理が大好きだ。(Dazai-san wa kani ryōri ga daisuki da): Dazai-san loves crab dishes. ; Dazai-san has a strong liking for crab dishes.
・私の大好きな食べ物はカレーライスだ。(Watashi no daisuki na tabemono wa karē raisu da): My favorite food is curry rice.
*Does “that means the officials are wrong/don’t translate well too?”:
If I were to go farther than this one excerpt from the Fifteen novel, I would say that to be honest, I do not know because I only have the 1st BSD volume from YP, otherwise I only have the volumes in Japanese (novels, manga etc.). But I did saw people complaining about YP’s translation a while ago about those different panels:
If I remember well, I thought that the fan TL was actually better than the official TL for this one. (vol.20, p.134)
This one (vol.16, p.12) is still pretty fresh in my mind: people complaining about their “iconic wtf!” being lost in the official TL. Well... as you may know... in Japanese there is not really a way to say “wtf” anyway... And I remember trying to find a way to TL this exchange and being stuck even though the Japanese is really easy to understand. Because to be honest, YP’s TL is actually closer to the original meaning than the fan TL.
Dosu-kun’s 何です？＝ What? / What is it?
Dazoo’s 何が？＝ What is (what)? -> So I actually think that “What what?” is closer than “wtf”.
And finally, this one (vol.15, p.118-119)! I get it that everyone liked the fan TL, but I think it was a bit... exaggerated? But still in the spirit, so I would say that YP, even though I do not remember what they wrote, did not translate that badly..? But yeah... Chuuya is not saying that he is picking the ADA up for daycare (if I remember well, this is how the fan TL goes), it is more like translating a “vibe” instead of the actual meaning of the words? So it is not 100% wrong, and not 100% right! I just think people tends to see Chuuya in a particular way and wants to make him speak... in a certain way or something..?
Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen Years Old - p.53
Ok, I am not trying to be original with this post (I’m 100% sure a few persons already posted something on this matter so you are very welcome to answer below this post with a link to a similar post!!) - but I am so fed up with the damn “It must be because I love you” thing still going around??? And that is not the only problem: the whole part is actually wrong.
I actually rewatched the 1st episode (Season 3, ep 26 on Crunchyroll) while reading the novel so you could get the context.
Chuuya - Oi, tell me where we’re going, damnit. (20:20)
Dazai - Sorry, would you mind not talking to me? I’m busy breathing right now. (20:23-27)
Chuuya - I’m going to rip your head off[, you suicidal maniac.] (20:28) Tell me where we’re going! (20:30-32)
Dazai - [We’re going to investigate.] We’re interviewing people who were closest to the explosion. (20:38-41)
This is how it goes in the anime (I used Crunchyroll’s official English translation).
-> [...] parts are different from the novel. (Anime // novel):
• 自殺願望 (Jisatsu ganbō) // 包帯野郎 (Hōtai yarō)
• 調査に行くんだよ (Chōsa ni ikun da yo) // これから向かうのは調査だよ (Kore kara mukau no ha chōsa da yo)
So basically, Mori sent Dazai and Chuuya to investigate and they are NOT happy about it. Then, the part that interests us is this one:
Dazai - Wakatta, kotaeru. Kotaeru kara chikaku ni yoranaide kureru? Tsuredatte aruiteru to omowaretakunai
Chuuya - Shinpai sun’na. Ore mo omowaretakunē kara
Dazai - Ufufu, ki ga au nē. Sonna kimi ga daisuki da yo!
Chuuya - Uwa, yamero! Kishokuwarukute shinu!
Dazai - ......Un, boku mo kimochi warukute shinu ka to omotta
So this part is following Chuuya’s: “Tell me where we’re going!”
(*) -> “It must be because I love you” does not really make sense:
• There is no kara (から) in the Japanese sentence so there is NO CAUSE. There is nothing in the Japanese sentence that could make you translate “it must be” either.
• “I can’t think when I’m walking with you.” + “I also can’t think when I’m around you.” are mistranslations (grammar mistake) which probably led to the “It must be because I love you.”
• Sonna kimi (そんな君) would literally be translated as “such you”. It could have the same meaning as 君のそういうところが好き。(kimi no sō iu tokoro ga suki) -> That’s what I love about you... or it could be close to something like “I like the way you are”.
In the end, I think that for once, they are agreeing on something so Dazai likes it WHEN Chuuya AGREES with him, but Dazai does NOT say that he loves Chuuya.
「文豪ストレイドッグス 太宰を拾った日」Side-A • Side-B
What you can find on both covers will (probably) not help you to find any clue on the novels: the text comes from irl Oda Sakunosuke’s 天衣無縫 and from irl Dazai Osamu’s 人間失格.
天衣無縫：https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000040/files/47052_32363.html
人間失格：https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000035/files/301_14912.html
... I wonder if we will get some (spicy) curry scenes... 🍛（笑）
STORM BRINGER [Code:04] -no spoiler-
Asagiri-sensei used a verse from one of Rimbaud's poem (STORM BRINGER p.336) and I decided to make two translations:
- FR -> ENG
- JP -> ENG
I guess you could use “thy” instead of “your” and “thou” instead of “you” though...
For the JP -> ENG translation, I was heavily influenced by the FR -> ENG one. If I hadn't been able to read French and had solely translated from JP -> ENG, the result would have been very different. Which is why... translating a translation is never a good idea, even though I have to say that it was really interesting to do both translations!
NakaChuu's translation has lost the religious meaning behind the title: - yasashii is used to speak about someone who is "gentle", "kind-hearted"; - shimai is used for "sibling", "sister", or for a "sister school" (like the "Kyoto Sister School Exchange" in JJK), so it does not have the "nun" connotation. If you can understand French, this analysis of the poem is quite interesting.
The collection of poems translated by NakaChuu can be read for free on Aozora Bunko: click here.
Or you can also buy this edition: ランボオ詩集 (岩波文庫) 770￥ /!\ written in classical Japanese language (bungo / kobun)
I also made a rōmaji version for everyone to be able to read the JP (because bungo is the prettiest language ❤︎):
Na ga nikushimi, na ga shisshin, na ga zetsubou wo,
Sunawachi katsute itameraretaru ka no juusei wo,
Tsukitzuki ni nagasareru ka no ketsueki no kajou no gotoku,
Nare wa warera ni mukuyu nari,
Oo nare, akuinaki yoru yo.
You can read STORM BRINGER’s full English translation here.
No, Kunikida-sensei IS NOT Murakami-sensei’s grandfather...
Last week, a surprising news popped-up in my TL on Twitter: link here. (Do NOT call out this person, always interact with respect!! My goal here is only to correct this information because I have the means to do it).
So yup, having studied Murakami in a few Literature classes at uni and learning that Kunikida Doppo was Murakami Haruki’s grandfather only on bsdtwt.. Why would none of my Japanese Lit. teachers mention a connection between two authors? I was left dubious.
So I went on a little Internet trip, googled “kunikida doppo haruki muraki” to find the original post. I first found this, which redirected me on this article which then redirected me on...... wikipedia (how surprising...)
Notably, Murakami's grandfather is Kunikida Doppo.
You can still read this on the two first links, but it doesn’t appear on wikipedia anymore.
I then went on Murakami Haruki’s Japanese wikipedia page and could find nothing related to Kunikida Doppo:
父は京都府京都市蹴上安養寺住職の息子であり、日中戦争に巻き込まれ、それによって深くトラウマを負った[5]。母は大阪・船場の商家の娘であった[6]。
I think you can pretty much read the exact same information on his English wiki page, aka Murakami-sensei's father was the son of a priest and his mother was the daughter of a merchant.
If you want to read more about Murakami-sensei’s grandfather (father’s side), you can go there.
So my next step was to google 「春樹村上 国木田独歩」and I indeed found something interesting here (plus Steffi also found this). Basically, this wrong information was coming from Murakami Haruki’s English wiki page. And while I won’t take the time to translate those two blogs, it seems that Kunikida-sensei and Murakami-sensei could share a similar style or something like this but nothing more.
To be honest, I still wanted to check for myself because the only time I encountered something related to Kunikida-sensei, it was because of my own research on the Kojiki.
It was in a French translation of the Kojiki done by Masumi and Maryse Shibata in 1997 (Le Kojiki : chronique des choses anciennes, introduction, traduction intégrale et notes par Masumi et Maryse Shibata, Maisonneuve et Larose, 1997, p7-127). Their introduction was divided in 3 parts, and the 3rd part was dealing with the worship of the sun aka the sun goddess Amaterasu’s worship. One of their examples was his short story / novella Le lever du soleil [The Sunrise].
BSD chap.93
I couldn’t find anything relevant on Aozora Bunko, but this panel made me wonder if IRL Jōno Saigiku ever used to write in kanbun.
In kanbun, you have different readings:
1st picture: Chinese phonetic reading ondoku;
2nd picture: Japanese explanatory reading kundoku (that you can also call yomikudashi). Here, you could say that it’s a “Classical Japanese translation” of some kanbun.
This is a written version of Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s speech, which was broadcasted in August 14th, 1945. It was actually not understood by a lot of Japanese people, because it was in kanbun (which is a lot more easier to understand when it’s written, but still).
As you can see, it looks like Jōno’s letter.
All the tiny signs (in orange) you can see on the left side of the Chinese characters are indicating in which order you have to read the characters and on the right side, are characters (always in katakana, not in hiragana) that you also have to read, those are mostly particles but not only.
I actually never saw a text written like this with my own eyes, but you could come across this. You have to look at the position of the point to know which particles it is!
You can actually see some kanbun here, it’s from one of Nagai Kafū’s journal Danchōtei Nichijō.