Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

It’s basically used to list a bunch of bad stuff happening. I wouldn’t really consider it the same particle as the feminine わ or the Kansai わ that’s becoming popular everywhere, although they could be related.
https://nihongokyoshi-net.com/2020/03/1 ... r-wa-wade/

Geeze. How many different versions of "wa" are there?!?!

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Suzume

This evening, I checked Netflix out of boredom and saw that it has Suzume now, so I watched that.

I haven't seen the previous movies, Your Name or Weathering With You either, but I did read spoilers for those and figured the plot would be pretty much the same. However, I'd avoided reading any spoilers for Suzume, so I had no idea what the movie was actually about, apart from the obvious that it's a romance involving magic doors somehow. Anyway, I think it was pretty good, and it's nice that they managed to avoid dooming an entire city for the sake of love this time as well.


The most fantastical thing in the movie isn't the talking cats or magic doors or anything, but the fact that they drew a realistic moon. I thought artists were physically incapable of drawing realistically shaped moons. And it's even a gibbous too, the phase of the moon that artists have never heard of (90% of moons in art are physically impossible crescents, with the other 10% being full moons). But somehow the Suzume artists actually managed to draw the moon properly. And even cooler, it visibly changes phase over the course of the movie.



I also noticed the use of a "pekori" sticker at one point, which I found interesting because I've been studying "pekori" for a long time on JPDB and it's a word I always have trouble with. The first definition is "sound of thin metal or plastic surface caving in and springing back​", but it seems like in practice, it's always used for the second definition of "bowing", as it is here.

Incidentally, a few days ago I started studying "perori" on JPDB as well. As if it weren't hard enoguh to remember, now I have two near-identical onomatopoeias to keep straight.



I also just started studying "Kobe", the city name on JPDB a few days ago. And that's got to be one of the most unintuitive kanji readings ever, so I still get tripped up by it a lot. Incidentally, I find it interesting that the sign here just says "Kobe district", but it is subtitled as "to Kobe". I would have expected a "へ" on the sign or something, but apparently not. Though I guess if you're holding up a sign while hitchhiking, it's obvious what you mean anyway.

[lichtrausch]

I also just started studying "Kobe", the city name on JPDB a few days ago. And that's got to be one of the most unintuitive kanji readings ever, so I still get tripped up by it a lot.

You'll come across those kanji readings again. For example, the northern city Hachinohe (八戸) and the word "kougoushii" (神々しい divine).

Incidentally, I find it interesting that the sign here just says "Kobe district", but it is subtitled as "to Kobe". I would have expected a "へ" on the sign or something, but apparently not. Though I guess if you're holding up a sign while hitchhiking, it's obvious what you mean anyway.

"houmen" also means "direction" and it's common on road signs.

[Sizen]

I also just started studying "Kobe", the city name on JPDB a few days ago. And that's got to be one of the most unintuitive kanji readings ever, so I still get tripped up by it a lot.

So this is a sound change that didn't really stick in most of Japan. It's not intuitive, but there is an explanation. Japanese went through a lot of sound changes, some of which didn't stick, that can most easily be seen in the て forms of verbs. (Yes, て form used to be really very simple.)

促音便(sounds like り and ち become っ)：
帰りて - > 帰って
立ちて - > 立って

い音便(sounds like き and ぎ become い)：
泳ぎて - > 泳いで
書きて - > 書いて

撥音便(sounds like み become ん) ：
読みて - > 読んで

There's another sound change called the う音便 however, and it's a bit tricky because sometimes another little rule comes into play.

In any case, う音便 (sounds like ひ [pronounced い word internally], び and み become う):
思ひて - > 思うて (思ひて being pronounced 思いて)
喜びて - > 喜うで
読みて - > 読うで

That last one is fun because, yes, the sound changes were competing phenomena across Japan and sometimes one region might say 読んで and another 読うで. Obviously 読んで won and is the standard, but many of the other う音便 forms are still heard in Kansai. It gets tricky though because there's another rule, like I mentioned. In older forms of Japanese ア行 sounds that we're followed by う (or ふ as it were), made for the sound おう (or オー). For example:
たう -> とう
かう -> こう
まう -> もう

This explains the weird opposition in the words 向かう and 向こう. Same exact word. They just stuck around in different pronunciations for different uses. And they fixed up the orthography, too.

ありがとう is also an example of this. ありがたく -> ありがたう -> ありがとう. おはよう as well. おはやく -> おはやう -> おはよう.

This is also why you might hear someone in Kansai say こうてきた instead of 買ってきた (かひて -> かうて -> こうて) or やってしもた instead of やってしまった (しまひて -> しまうて -> しもうて -> しもた).

So anyway, if we look at the word かみ and apply the う音便 for み -> う, we get かう, which if we apply the pronunciation rule becomes こう. かみへ -> こうべ. Like I said, not intuitive!

Edit: I should probably say I don't think 神戸 was actually ever called かみへ. This is just an explanation of the necessary sound changes to get there. It's quite possible that 神 was simply pronounced こう in the region at the time. I don't actually know.

[golyplot]

Harry Potter

Unfortunately, I can never seem to sleep well, so I've been slowly churning through Harry Potter thanks to countless hours spent reading it at night in the futile hopes of falling asleep more easily.

Last night was especially bad, as I only got around five hours of sleep. Despite getting off the computer at 11, I didn't manage to get to sleep until 1:15am. As a result, I've been making a surprising amount of progress on Harry Potter, and am now past the 2/3rds mark of the first volume, so I went ahead and put a hold on volume 2 at the library.

Anyway, one interesting phrasing change, when Hagrid offers Ron treacle toffee while Ron is cursed with spewing out slugs:

EN: "No thanks," said Ron weakly. "Better not to risk it."
JP: "いらない。気分が悪いから”ロンが弱々しく答えた。

They're similar, but I do feel like there's a notable difference in emphasis here. E.g. it's not that Ron is feeling sick per se, but rather that he doesn't want to risk spewing out slugs while his mouth is glued shut by treacle toffee.


Also one oddity in the English book. I've written before about the mystery of the floor numbers. There's certain locations in Hogwarts with famous floor numbers - the famous third floor corridor of the first book, the second floor girl's lavatory in the second book, etc. For some reason, all the floor numbers were kept the same between the British and American editions, even though the US uses a different floor numbering convention where the ground floor is also the first floor.

The Japanese edition adds one to all the floor numbers, implying that the British version is correct and the American numbers are off by one, though it is a bit surreal seeing all the numbers different than what we're used to. But where it gets really weird is that the (American) Chamber of Secrets copy I have right now put Myrtle's bathroom on the first floor, rather than the second floor as it is normally described, or the third floor, which would be the actual correct number using the American system. I assume this is just a mistake and they meant to write "second floor", but it's really weird.

Trials and Tribulations

When Luke Atmey describes himself as a "meitantei", Phoenix responds by saying he is a "meibengoshi", while Maya introduces herself as a "meireibaishi" and Pearl says she's a "meitamago". In the English localization, these were translated as "Ace Detective", "Ace Attorney", "Ace Spirit Medium", and "Ace Apprentice" respectively. I was confused about this use of "tamago" to mean "apprentice", but I looked it up, and sure enough, Jisho lists it as "(an expert) in the making". It's really interesting to see this kind of figurative language that doesn't match English figurative language.

Also worth mentioning that the English version managed to work in a joke here that isn't present in the Japanese version, since of course "Ace Attorney" is the title of the English games, while in Japanese, it's "Turnabout Trial" so there's no connection. But I guess that makes up for them inexplicably removing the Title Drop joke in Moe's comment about the animal naming in Turnabout Big Top as I mentioned before.

Phoenix:
Err, umm... The name's Wright. Phoenix Wright... ...Ace Attorney.

Other

This evening, I checked Netflix out of boredom and noticed that they now have a live action version of Teasing Master Takagi-san. I'd watched an episode of the anime back in 2021 when Netflix had that and didn't like it, but I decided to watch an episode of the live action series anyway out of curiosity.

It's really interesting to see the depictions of Japanese towns and classrooms and so on in live action. Obviously I've watched countless anime and seen countless depictions of Japanese life, but it is different to see it in live action. However, I still didn't like the show at all and don't plan to continue it.

Also interesting is that they seem to have desks with a pop-up table used for drawing. I've never seen anything like that before.

[golyplot]

Satori Reader

Great note explaining the mysterious "mirumiru":

These are a fantastic way to describe change that happens surprisingly rapidly, either because it is something that usually happens more slowly (like a thick fog descending on a forest) or because it is alarming (like blood rising up from a cut).

Even if no observer is explicitly mentioned, the sense is that the change occurs at a pace that would allow someone to actually see it unfolding before their eyes.

Also, this sentence seems emblematic of just how different Japanese expressions can be from English. It's nice that SR often has translations which try to literally represent the Japanese grammar, something you don't normally get in translations.

春明の帰りが遅く、連絡も取れずに心配していたところに、すずは藤鬼から連絡を受けた。
To a place (=onto a scene) in which she was worrying because Haruaki's return was late and she was unable to get in touch with him, Suzu was contacted ("received contact") from Fujiki.

---
Harry Potter

When Harry leaves the Deathday party, he's explicitly described as taking the stairs up from near the Great Hall to the first floor, which finally resolves the great floor numbering mystery. It seems that the American books have just been using British floor numbering the whole time, which is why they kept the numbers the same. So the second floor bathroom is two floors above the ground floor, etc. It's nice to finally have that cleared up.

As I've read these books many times in the past, there isn't much new to me, but I did notice one bit of foreshadowing that I don't think I'd ever picked up on before. After the trio discover the petrified Mrs Norris, Lockhart tells everyone to go to his office because it is closest, right above them in fact. This implies that Lockhart's office is on the third floor right above the entrance to the chamber of secrets, explaining why Harry first heard the monster's voice while in Lockhart's office, a connection I never noticed before.

As for Japanese, I noticed one strange new word. When Peeves offers them a "bowl of peanuts" at the Deathday Party, "bowl" got translated as "fukazara" for some reason. Japanese has plenty of words for "bowl", but I've never seen that one before. Jisho lists it as just "deep dish; dish with a high rim; tureen​", so I have no idea why they used it to translate "bowl" here.

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Other

In other news, I briefly tried to readI Am a Cat last night out of curiosity, as the Wikipedia article conveniently links to it.. I was happy that I could at least recognize some of the words...

Also of interest is that according to Wikipedia, I Am a Cat is single-handedly responsible for the continued use of "wagahai" in media.

[golyplot]

Harry Potter

I encountered a very strange translation mistake in Harry Potter. When they first start talking about the Polyjuice Potion, Hermione says that the "recipe" will be hard to get. However, in the Japanese version, she instead says that the 材料 will be hard to get. I even looked up 材料 just in case it had an obscure alternate meaning, but nope, it just means "ingredients", not "recipe".

I've never seen anything like this. As far as translation differences go, the Japanese will often translate idiomatic phrases differently, and all the units get converted to metric and all the floor numbers are adjusted and so on, and occasionally there will be a somewhat questionable choice (e.g. sekkyou below), but I've never noticed them straight out change the meaning of the text like this before. WTF is up with that? It doesn't even make sense because Hermione would have no way of knowing whether the ingredients are hard to get or not since she has to get the recipe first to even know what the ingredients are!

Also interesting is that when Ron says "I never thought I'd see the day when you'd be persuading us to break rules", the Japanese translation uses the word 説教する. That seems very out of place because 説教 means "sermon" or "remonstration", not "persuading". It seems like the Japanese version is implying that Hermione was a lot more forceful in trying to persuade them than she actually was. What's up with that?


JPDB

I've gotten overwhelmed with JPDB again. After burning through the post-holiday backlog in January, I've been doing seven new words a day every day on JPDB for months. However, as always, this causes the review load to gradually pile up more and more over time. I'd decided to limit myself to "only" five review sessions per day, and a couple weeks ago, I failed to get through the daily reviews and do my 7 new words a day for the first time. This morning, it happened for the second time. I'm sure it will get more frequent until some sort of equilibrium is reached.

On the bright side, JPDB finally implemented 0.01% increments in the UI on Tuesday, something I'd been requesting for a long time. It seems that Kou is back and trying to improve things again.

Ace Attorney

A pun in AA:TaT that didn't make it into English. The second case centers around a security company named K.B.警備会社, a pun on the word "keibi" (security). Of course that doesn't translate into English, so the English version just calls the company K.B. Security and doesn't bother trying to keep the pun.

Other

On Tuesday, I finished Yuuyuu's podcast for the fifth time and started Utaco's podcast for the 13th time. Not that it matters much, as I very rarely actually pay attention.

[golyplot]

Harry Potter

I found it interesting that when they give a signal to Wood to call a time-out at the quidditch game, the Japanese uses the word "sign", since I'd previously seen it used for "autograph" and assumed that sign only meant "autograph" or "signature" in Japanese. But apparently it can also just mean "signal". That seems like it would be confusing for Japanese people.

Speaking of signing, when Lockhart explains to Ron that he normally uses the peacock quill for book signings, he uses the word "itsumo". Itsumo normally means "always", but it apparently means "normally" as well. One annoying thing about language learning is how just studying vocab isn't enough because you have to learn an entire constellation of meanings for each word, not just whatever meaning is listed in the SRS app.


Also interesting is one sentence I noticed that got split into three separate sentences using Storytelling Present in the Japanese version. The overall meaning is roughly the same, but the sense and style is very different, as the sudden switch into Harry's mind feels much less dispassionate than the usual third-person-limited narration.

"For an agonizing moment, Harry hung in midair, not daring to speed toward Malfoy in case he looked up and saw the Snitch."
-> スピードを上げてマルフォイのほうに飛びたい。 それができない。マルフォイが上を見てスニッチを見つけてしまうかもしれないから。


Ace Attorney

One oddity in case 3 is the currency amounts. The American localization has always translated yen amounts to dollars as 100 yen = $1, which conveniently preserves round numbers. However, case 3 breaks this pattern for some reason, and inconsistently to boot.

The price of the lunch special at Tres Bien is 2980 yen, and with sides included, it totals 6400 yen. However, the localization translated these as $20 and $45 instead, breaking the usual pattern. The English version also inserts some puns here, which is perhaps why they did this. The $20 lunch special is called the "Twin-T special", while the $45 meal is called the "Fortify" box set, clear puns on "20" and "45" respectively. I don't know if the Japanese version has any puns here. I didn't notice any, but then again there's a high chance I wouldn't notice them even if they were there.

It's also inconsistent because soon afterwards, they mention that the restaurant is 5000万 in debt, which got translated as "half a million" using the classic 100 yen per dollar formula. Incidentally, in the Japanese version, when told that the debt is 5000万, they ask if that's yen and say that if it were in dollars they'd be in much deeper trouble. The English version keeps the joke by asking if the "half a million" is dollars vs pound sterling.

Gumshoe:
This is a copy of his loan contract. He's about half a million in the red.

Phoenix:
H-Half a million? Are we talking dollars?

Gumshoe:
Yeah. Hey, if it was Sterling, he'd really be in trouble!

It's a natural way to translate it, although it loses a lot of the impact from the original. Because yen vs dollars is over 100x, which would be a huge difference, whereas dollars vs pounds is less than 2x. Incidentally, I'm surprised they didn't use euros instead, since it's a French restaurant so that'd at least be thematic (albeit an even smaller multiplier).

The weird price discrepancies don't end there though, because a bit later they mention that coffee at the restaurant costs 980 yen, which got turned into $8 in English for some reason, rather than $9.80 like you'd expect. And this time, there aren't even any puns to justify the change.

---


Also, Victor Kudo's music is interesting because Tsuwahasu sung along to it, implying that it is a well-known Japanese folk tune of some sort. However, I couldn't find what it was. The closest I came was this Reddit thread which suggests that it is based on imperial-era Japanese military music, but not a specific song. The comment suggests two old songs that sound similar, but neither sounds like what Tsuwahasu was singing, so who knows.

---

Case 3 also takes place on January 6th, soon after New Years, so there's lots of dialog about New Years traditions, and I assume a lot of it is specific to Japanese culture, though I couldn't be bothered to look up most of it. However, there's one exchange that caught my attention.

When you example the oranges (mikan) at the playground, Maya says it reminds her of New Years, as their tradition is eating mikan and osechi, watching TV, and then playing Old Maid with cards.

For comparison, here's the corresponding English script, which doesn't even mention New Years:

Maya:
Looking at this orange reminds me...

Phoenix:
Of what?

Maya:
That you're supposed to eat a lot of them to ward off colds in the winter. You can't have fun during the holidays if you're sick in bed, you know.

Phoenix:
You don't have to tell me twice.

The reason this part caught my attention though was not due to New Years, but the use of the word "baba".

I'd previously first encountered "baba" after hearing a bit on Noriko's podcast where she talked about the word "nekobaba". This literally means "cat poop", but the actual meaning is "covering up wrongdoings and feigning ignorance​", a metaphor based on the way that cats cover up their shit. (And from there, it also means "embezzlement" specifically for some reason).

Here, Maya says "babanuki", which turns out to mean Old Maid, the card game. It appears to be completely coincidental, as "baba" can also mean "old woman" as well as "poop".



Also of note is that the park in this image has a Japanese-style water fountain, with a water spout that points straight up and a second faucet on the side for washing feet and filling bottles. Nearly every water fountain in Japan uses this exact style for some reason, and they're a common sight in parks like this. However, this style is unheard of in the US, so it's a bit unfortunate that the artists were too lazy to change it for the American localization.




Anime

I watched the last episode (47) of Jujutsu Kaisen last night, but it was pretty depressing and confusing. A normal ending would have the good guys mostly win but the bad guys get away and threaten something even new, which is even what happened in JJK season 1. But the season 2 finale doesn't do that. Instead, it fails to resolve a single thing and just ups the disaster and doom to eleven, all cliffhanger, no catharsis.

The other problem with the finale is that it is extremely confusing. Much of the episode consists of a disjointed montage and nothing is explained at all. To be fair, it seems that the manga was even worse in this respect. I read that the episode was adapted from only a three page montage in the original manga.

Anyway, with JJK done, I decided to start watching A Sign of Affection tonight.


I learned that "crush" is "akogare". I of course already learned "akogareru" many years ago, but I thought it was just "to long for". I didn't realize that the meaning was more like "to crush on".



Also when Yuki says she didn't order yet at the bar, I noticed that she says "o-da-" rather than the usual "chuumon".

Also, there's one point where foreigners are speaking English, and the English is subtitled and the subtitles don't match the dialog! For example, when they say "the air is a little wet", it's subtitled as "It's a little humid".

I do understand why this happens, and I have seen this kind of thing before. Presumably, since they're speaking English, the original Japanese subtitled this scene in Japanese. And then the English subtitlers decided to translate the subtitles back into Japanese for some bizarre reason, rather than just removing them. But it's still funny to see.


Also, they have umbrellas to protect against snow, something that I don't think I've seen before. I've seen umbrellas for the sun, but not for snow.

[golyplot]

Harry Potter

Last night, I finished the book (CoS vol1). I put vol2 on hold at the library a whole week and a half ago (Apr 11) so that it would be ready, but my hold still hasn't come in yet, so I guess I won't be reading any Harry Potter for a while.

Since I don't have any HP books to read, I guess I'll have to go back to reading web novels for now instead. I decided to start by searching JPDB for the web novel listed on JPDB with the highest %known word count. The highest listed that I haven't already read is one called
心配性で一途な彼女が僕をぜんぜん諦めない so I plan to try reading that.




Satori Reader

Another interesting note today, explaining "お忙しいところ", a common phrase used to apologize for bothering someone when they're busy.

（電話で）「はい、パスタの森でございます」「お忙しいところ、すみません。今日の営業時間は何時まででしょうか。」
(On the phone) "Yes, this is Pasta Forest." "I'm sorry to disturb you when you are busy. Until what time are your business hours today?"

お忙しいところ、お時間をいただき、ありがとうございます。
Thank you for giving me your time even though you are busy. ("When you are busy, I humbly received your time, and I thank you.")

A Sign of Affection

Ep2: There's a bit of English near the start, and this time, it's all accurately subtitled, which just raises more questions. Why did they have inaccurate subtitles for the English in ep1 (presumably recursive translation) but do have them in ep2? Whatever they're doing, I would have expected it to be consistent for a given show.

Also, there's one seen where the English subtitles say "I want more", but the Japanese dialog is just "watashi wa". Now, it's pretty common for sentences to be split up and reversed between Japanese and English, but this isn't that. I kept waiting for the rest of the sentence, but it never came. Yuki just says "watashi wa" twice, and nothing else in that scene, so WTF did the English subtitles come from?

I also just realized this show is set in college, not highschool. Approximately 99% of anime students are highschoolers. I've literally never seen an anime that is set in college before (the closest I can think of is Blue Period, which is centered around a prep school for highschoolers trying to get into college and they do briefly visit an alumni at college at one point).

Ep3: One thing I've been wondering about is why Yuki is shown with brown hair in flashbacks to her childhood, even though she has reddish pink hair in the present. Unusual hair colors are common in anime, but normally they stay the same over time. And it's not like this is a fantasy series where it might have been changed by a magical incident, either.

Speaking of hair colors, the childhood friend refers to Itsunomi as "ginpatsu" (silver hair) in this episode, implying that his hair is actually silver in-universe. Normally with anime hair, it's just a visual shorthand, and the characters are assumed to still really have normal hair colors in-universe.

Also, at one point, Itsunomi says a line of untranslated German (Du bist suss). It's convenient I was able to understand it anyway. Incidentally, I think this is the first anime I've seen where one of the characters is a polyglot. It seems like he wouldn't be out of place here.

[golyplot]

Akiramenai

As mentioned previously, I started reading the web novel 心配性で一途な彼女が僕をぜんぜん諦めない (which I'll call "Akiramenai" for short), since my hold on the next Harry Potter book still hasn't come in.

So far, I've been reading two chapters a night, 1-2 on Sunday, 3-4 on Monday, and 5-6 Tuesday night. Or perhaps I should say "read", because even after reading each chapter, I have only the vaguest impression of what happened (e.g. "this chapter is one guy talking to another guy in the library"). After each chapter, I ask ChatGPT* to translate it into English, so I can know what actually happened in the story, because otherwise I'd have no idea. So that's a bit disappointing.

* ChatGPT inexplicable claimed that ch1 is a content violation for no reason and refused to translate it, so I had to use Google Translate and Gemini for ch1 instead. I used ChatGPT to translate ch2-5.

At one point, I noticed the word 尻目 and got happy because 目尻 ("outer eye, canthus") is burned into my memory from studying it on JPDB for ages, but it turned out to be a completely different word meaning "looking at from the corner of one's eye; sidelong glance​" according to Jisho that just happens to look similar.


Satori Reader
そして、羽を大きく広げると、思い切って巣から飛び出しました。

Here, 羽 is used to mean "wing" rather than "feather". I always thought that wing was just "翼" (tsubasa). In retrospect, I should have known, due to the existing of the phrase 羽搏き.

A Sign of Affection

In ep4, Itsuomi is shown changing the TV to English and then repeating along with the dialog, which his friend even refers to as "shadowing". I said before that he would fit in in these forums, but I didn't realize it was this much.



In ep5, Itsuomi's phone is very briefly shown (you have to pause to read it) with a text conversation in German. It's not subtitled (which I guess makes sense since it's only shown briefly and you're not meant to read it). It sure is convenient to be able to understand German in this show!



Edit: Ep6 ends with a unique credits sequence and a "to be continued" message, implying that the original run of the anime was only six episodes (it now has twelve, so it presumably got a second half-season). I've never heard of anime having half-length seasons like this before. What's up with that?

[golyplot]

Akiramenai

One really annoying thing about Japanese literature is the way that every character has two unrelated names and they're referring to by different names in different contexts. It makes it very hard to keep track of the characters. I'm really tempted to go back to the early chapters to look for all the character introductions and make a cheat sheet with their first and last names and relevance.

Well not all stores have this problem. For example, in 悪役令嬢が私をいじめるのには訳があるそうです, the characters all have Western-ish names and thus use a single name consistently. But I remember having to make a character name cheat sheet back when I started reading いつも通りの日常で、、君からすれば years ago, and 心配性で一途な彼女が僕をぜんぜん諦めない (the one I'm reading now) has the same problem.

---

I find it very ironic that I talked about 目尻 in my previous post because later that very night, I ran into 目尻 (for real this time) in another chapter of Akiramenai.



Ace Attorney

In g3c3 when they talk about Furio Tigre having to pay Violetta's medical bills in apology for running into her car, they use the word "otoshimae", which was localized as "compensation". It sounded a lot like "otoshidama" (money given at New Year's) to me, but I looked it up and they use different kanji, so it seems to be pure coincidence.


A Sign of Affection

Ep 7-8 cleared up the hair color question I had. It seems that anime hair is not in effect in this series. Yuki, Itsuomi, and Shin are all presumably dying their hair in-universe, and Itsuomi even comes back from vacation with visible roots.





In ep9, they play Wish Shiritori, and I was amazed that they managed to reasonably translate it while still having the last letters match up in the English subtitles as well.

In the anime No Game, No Life, the characters play Materialization Shiritori at one point, and the subtitles are absurdly bad, to the point where they should have just given up on translating it. Instead, they end up translating it all as made-up gibberish words in order to maintain the last letter thing in the laziest way possible. Like one line with end in "x" and then the next line will be translated as "Xnuclear bomb". Yes, it really was that dumb. It made me want to yell at them "if you're going to do that bad a job, just give up on pretending and translate the words accurately while adding a note to remind the viewers that the Japanese words match endings."

Thus I was amazing that in A Sign of Affection, they actually managed to do a good job with the shiritori scene. In retrospect, I think the main difference is that here, they're writing entire sentences, which gave the translators many more degrees of freedom to translate the sentences while matching letters. With single-word answers, you can't really do that.



P.S. I'm amused by the coincidence that all three of my headings start with "A" now.