#is that how you say that phrase in english???
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Fansub Release + Analysis of Utena Ep 14
This is a big one!!
My fansub release posts aren't usually like this, but this episode is so jam packed with stuff I want to talk about that I had to write my translation notes as a series of essays. It's longer than usual so strap in!
First, a word on “The Mikage Seminar”
I’ve always found the translation “the Mikage Seminar” very strange. In English, a seminar is an event — a lecture. Yet “the Mikage Seminar” is discussed as though it’s not a recurring lecture, but a society or a school of therapy, or a cult (like scientology). In fact I did a bit of reading about scientology to try and find an alternative translation, and discovered that the origins of scientology, namely a set of ideas and practices called Dianetics, bears a lot of similarities to “the Mikage Seminar”. Both involve a type of therapy where one person looks into their mind and talks to an “auditor”.
The auditor coaxes the preclear to recall as much as possible. — Wikipedia
This in particular stood out to me! Mikage often says 「深く。もっと深く」 during his interviews (”Deeper. Dig deeper.”).
The Japanese word ゼミナール doesn’t actually come from the English “seminar” but the German “Seminar” (capitalised). According to Wikipedia, in Germany, and often in Japan, Seminar/ゼミナール is used to refer to a university course that includes a thesis project. So ゼミナール refers to a course of learning, rather than a talk or lecture. And it would make a lot of sense to call a system like Dianetics a “course”. Almost like a “course” of medicine — a “course” of psychological practices that you can join but never complete.
So it would make sense to translate it as “the Mikage Course”. But “course” has more meanings in English than just this, and in the context of a university this makes it sound more like a mundane teaching course. So I tried some other words: the Mikage Sessions, the Mikage Method, Mikage Psychotherapy, Mikage Therapy, the Mikage Movement. None seemed quite right. Until I remembered this post. ゼミナール is a foreign word in Japanese, why not find a foreign word for the translation? And so I settled on this:
The Mikage Seminarium, AKA The Society of the Black Rose…
Seminarium is Latin, and is where both the German and English derive seminar from. Its original meaning is “seed plot”, but it’s also just the Polish word for seminar. I really like how the Latin makes its meaning ambiguous — it kind of sounds like a location, kind of sounds like a society, and kind of sounds like a learning course. Because it is all of these things.
Anthy: では、香苗さん。失礼します。 Kanae: ね、あたしの事、お姉さんって呼んでいいのよ。もうすぐわたしはあなたの本当のお姉さんになるんだから。
A more literal translation:
Anthy: Thank you for having us, Kanae-san. Kanae: Please… you can just call me “sister”. I’m going to be your real sister soon enough anyway.
The translation I ended up going with:
Anthy: Thank you for having us, Miss Ohtori. Kanae: Please... you can just call me Kanae. We're going to be family soon. There's no need for the formalities.
Japanese honorifics strike again!
In English, sisters-in-law don’t ask to be called “sister”. That would be super weird in most scenarios, and this scene is trying to evoke a particular familiar feeling of closing a distance gap in a relationship. The audience is meant to relate. Changing how Anthy addresses Kanae was pivotal to this scene working properly.
わかりました。あなたは世界を革命するしかないでしょ。
I understand. Your only choice is to force the world to change around you.
This line is translated as “Your only choice is to revolutionise the world” by basically every other translation. The reason is clear — the Japanese is the same as when Utena pulls the sword out of Anthy, or when any of the other characters talk about “revolutionising the world”. However, in this context, I don’t like it. The nuance of the English phrase is quite different to the Japanese phrase. In English, it’s often used to describe new commercial products: “This new device will revolutionise the world!” It comes with an implied “for the better”, but has used to describe technological developments so unexciting that it can also feel hollow. When the student council talk of revolutionising the world, they sound like revolutionaries — the context makes it work. But in this context, it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t have any of that fervour, which makes it sound hollow and flaccid when it should sound sinister and manipulative.
I think a pervading throughline for all the Black Rose duelists is that they see their problems as caused by other people, with themselves being blameless. Rather than change how they approach their situation, Mikage tells them they’re in the right.
Your behaviour will set you down a path. If that path leads to your goals, well done! However, if your path does not lead to your goals, there’s only two ways you can achieve them.
The first is to change your behaviour so that it does align with your goals. The second, impossible way, is for the rest of the world to change such that your current path DOES end up leading to your goals. This second way is not possible in the real world. But it is possible in Utena.
Also I’ll just leave this here: “around you” → “revolve” → “revolution” 👀
Kanae tried to build a relationship with Anthy in a passive, non-confrontational, extremely Japanese way — the way she has been taught to behave, the “proper” way, a mechanical following of the social scripts. We don’t see a lot of their relationship, but the way she behaved and spoke of behaving towards Anthy is very very similar to the way my Japanese grandmother has behaved towards my and my brother’s partners.
It was unthinkable to her to change this pattern of behaviour. Her only choice was to change Anthy, change the rest of the world, so that her behaviour would lead to the outcomes she wants. You could describe this forceful bending of reality to be “revolutionising the world”.
この黒薔薇のある限り、私はこれから嘘の私を演じなくて住む。
As long as I have this Black Rose, I'm free from the lie I was living before.
Besides gender, growing up, and resisting change (which exist as separate themes but also all intertwine as one), another major theme present in Utena is the self and subjective reality. The self is explored within those first major three themes, but also in terms of how the self dictates reality with the Black Rose duellists.
Black Rose Kanae says that her past self was a lie.
It reminds me of all the times when I’ve been going through a personal trial and I’ve looked back on my past self and thought “How naive I was. I understand things better now.” And then after a while I realise I was wrong, and my first self was more right. And then later still, maybe I re-realise that the second self was more right! And so on! The reality of truth (or to use Kanae’s language, “lies”) is so subjective.
Who dictates knowledge production? Who decides what is true; what is valid knowledge? This is a question of sociology - and at the moment that answer is "science does, kinda". But science and academic systems are supported by capitalist structures and tainted by capitalistic incentives — needing to be published in a journal, issues of replicability, the barrier to entry into academia in the first place, etc, etc. In the future we may find our current way of organising knowledge to be archaic and primitive in the same way we look back at medieval scholars.
But what about organising self-knowledge? Knowledge where the only one who can really decide what is true is yourself. And the only one that can decide what yourself even IS is yourself. I feel like I have looked back on my old ways of conceptualising myself many times (not even counting the gender-based revelations) and thought it primitive and archaic, and NOW I truly understand who I am and how to think of myself and how my thoughts interact with my other thoughts. But I have no doubt that I’ll look back on this current self of mine and reject their way of thinking too.
After their heart is replaced by the Black Rose, the duellists themselves frame this change as a moment of self realisation, of clarity. Once the rose is inside them, they wake up from themselves, like I have countless times. Kanae says herself, “This is the true me.” Honestly, I don’t doubt it. I think that version of Kanae was her true self at that moment, given the things influencing her. Being brainwashed doesn’t make you less of a person, or less yourself. It just makes you organise your reality differently.
心を凍結させて作っただけの間に合わせのデュエリストでは、彼女は破れないな。
We won't be able to defeat her by simply freezing someone's heart and forcing them to duel.
Anya and I discussed this in depth. I originally translated 心 as “mind”, because that was the first thing that popped into my head and I thought that was the simple part of the translation. However, Anya pointed out that it didn’t make sense with the themes of self and subjective reality, and I strongly agreed, so I changed it to “heart” instead.
Anya suggested “conscious mind” instead of “heart” but I think heart is more accurate. 心 (kokoro) can mean heart or mind in Japanese (I find it interesting that those two things are portrayed as opposites in English), and that kanji is found in the word for biological heart, 心臓 (shinzou). When they say of the Black Rose "This is your new heart" they use 心臓. They also say "Your new 命 (life/lifeforce)" which I translated as soul since it sounded more hardcore and because "your new life" is a set phrase in English meaning a new chapter in your life rather than your life force. I think the idea is that they're freezing the duellists' ability to love and feel empathy, which in my opinion is necessary for them to commit to the unbelievably selfish act of revolutionising/reconstructing/bending the entire structure of the world for their own convenience.
A very special thanks to @dontbe-lasanya for being there to talk through all these themes and ideas. I'm incredibly proud of this episode's translation and I wouldn't have been able to do it without them.
If you want to see more analysis like this, let me know! And also follow this blog to see episodes of the fansub as they're released. You can find all episodes released so far here:
Rose divider taken from this post
#revolutionary girl utena#rgu#shoujo kakumei utena#sku#utena#media analysis#utena analysis#translation#japanese#japanese language#langblr#official blog post#utena fansub
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Czech has a traditional saying for "you cannot please everyone." Namely, "There is no such human in the world that would please all people." ("Není na světě člověk ten, aby se zavděčil lidem všem.") I really really like how the saying puts it, in comparison to the English phrase. It's not just that you (you) cannot please everyone; it's not even - as Czech would normally put it - "a human can't please everyone", i.e. an equivalent to the English "one can't please everyone." There is no such person in the world that can please everyone. It's a shared human predicament. And that takes a bit of the possible feeling of failure out of it.
Today, I'd like to share a quote from Tolkien that I have often found useful whenever struck by the urge to question the value of the stories which I like to write:
"The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it first appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have recieved or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer." -JRR Tolkien, LotR Foreward to the Second Edition
If you find yourself wondering whether or not you should write the story that most pleases you, in the face of external criticisms or concerns as to the value, depth, or ability of that story to hold a reader's interest: I've found these to be excellent words to live by for combatting this particular anxiety.
Once you've gotten past the first hurdle, however, there's no guarantee that everyone left will love every aspect of your work even when they enjoy the narrative as a whole. On that subject, Tolkien once again provides words of wisdom to live by:
"But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points." [emphasis mine] -JRR Tolkien, LotR Foreward to the Second Edition
You cannot please everyone; it is an impossible goal that could drive anyone mad. There must come a time in any writing at which point it is not merely okay, but necessary to set aside the question of what writing choices might best please other people and focus instead on the question of what writing choices will please you the most.
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Streamily Signing with Jennifer Paz as Lapis Lazuli and Malachite
Jennifer Paz did a signing through Streamily for fans who bought a signed print. Here are just a few highlights of the stream.
She remembers dressing up as "Bob" for a charity purpose.
She does some line reads that Lapis had in the show.
Lapis was not Jen's first voice over work. She did The Angry Beavers back in the 90s. She's done a lot of ADR work for films. However, Lapis was her first recurring character.
Regarding a fusion between Peridot and Lapis, she didn't think much about that, but she thinks they could work together at a nursery in the barn and being a therapist.
She points out that she can't draw "worth shite" when a fan wanted her to draw on the print, so she just wrote her favorite quote ("I just wanna go home").
Responding to "can you do impressions of other Steven Universe character," she did some callbacks from "The New Crystal Gems," doing "the Garnet" and an Amethyst impression.
In response to someone asking if she auditioned for the role of Amethyst, yes she did audition for Amethyst and recorded the pilot episode for it. They just decided she wasn't the right voice for it. She loves Michaela's take on the character.
She loved the Mary Poppins rendition by Lin Manuel Miranda.
She comments that Steven Universe helped her with her mental health.
She thinks Lapis and Peridot were great as an Odd Couple type.
Her plans for the holidays include in-laws coming in next week and her kid gets to hang out with his grandparents. She loves her in-laws who are coming in from Philly. They love to drink and she's not a drinker.
Can Lapis waterbend people's tears? Yes, Jen thinks she can. Ask Rebecca, though. She could've done something to Blue Diamond with that. Jen loves that Lapis said "I've felt worse."
Jen quotes when Lapis said "No" to "Lapis, fly us in!" She loves that Lapis is a "waterbender" but her humor was so dry. She's getting over being traumatized and just wants others to do their stuff.
She gives some advice for handling adulthood: the only way out of difficult things is through it. If you avoid difficulties they will come back somehow.
She thinks Lapis would enjoy flying a kite.
Wouldn't it be funny if Lapis became Bob the Coach and started a Little League? Maybe she'd say "There's no crying in baseball."
Her favorite character from Steven Universe was Greg.
Lapis did a lot of sleeping and reading to recover from her trauma.
Jen's favorite colors are blue and magenta.
Jen used to not know what "ship" meant in a relationship context and had to find out on Urban Dictionary. She has a Gen Alpha kid now and there are phrases she is forbidden from saying them.
One of her favorite lines from "Hit the Diamond" was "This plan sucks."
Her favorite ship was probably Stevonnie.
She thinks if Steven and Lapis fused it'd be because they were playing catch or hanging out--it would be accidental while playing a sports game.
Someone started a goth band called Cult of Lazuli because of Steven Universe and Lapis. Jen loves this!
She can't commit to saying a favorite song. She agrees that Lapis would secretly listen to Taylor Swift.
She would love Steven Universe to come back but she doesn't know if it will. She'll just say yes, in her opinion it will come back.
Her opinion is that Lapis's water powers are somehow related to Blue Diamond's.
She made a joke about how Cult of Lazuli rocks "because we're rocks."
While signing a Malachite print, she said some stuff toxic relationships and how incredible it was that Lapis dragged Jasper into the sea--but for what? She hopes those who have been in toxic relationships are okay now.
She could not sing in Brazilian Portuguese in response to a request, but she took out a shaker and sang some of "That Distant Shore" in English. She thinks it might be fun to learn it in Brazilian Portuguese and loves the singer who did the voice for the Brazilian dub.
She would love if someone could do fanart of Lapis singing "Home" from The Wiz, or "Home" from Beauty and the Beast--all the music about home should be a Lapis playlist.
She answered what kind of car would Lapis have? She would have an electric car, because as a reformed terraformer, she cares about the Earth now. The car would be a VinFast, "because uh, just because." ;)
She was at one time bald due to alopecia during one of the cons that she had met one of the fans at. She remembers L.A. Comic Con. She was wearing a wig that she referred to "a bob wig." (A "Bob" wig? Heehee!) She found it itchy. She asked Kimberly Brooks and Michaela Dietz if they could tell she was wearing a wig. She was stressed out and ended up recovering through the use of addressing vitamin deficiency. She sends a message of support to anyone struggling with alopecia.
She signs some prints with "I'd love to see your color shining through," "Maybe I'm not alone," and "I just wanna go home."
She shared that her mom's name is Aurora (which was somewhat similar to one of the fans getting a print).
She shares that she loves the Muppets and her favorite characters are "the two curmudgeons in the box seats."
She said "Bob" is a favorite for her and she has a few new items in the shop. Some orders were not made in time to get into this signing, so she wants to schedule another one.
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the Ada's worst terror 🫶
#bsd#bungo stray dogs#nakahara chuuya#bsd chuuya#chuuya nakahara#dazai osamu#bsd dazai#bsd ranpo#ranpo edogawa#yosano akiko#bsd yosano#they're kunikidas sleep paralisis demon#they're just one bc they come un a pack#atsushi's is curled up in a corner bc akutagawa's appearance was nothing compared to them#skk probably does some shit or fight akd ranpo and yosano are there sitting watching everything burn and sometimes say something#just adding more wood to the fire#is that how you say that phrase in english???#idk#they're menaces and you can't tell me other wise#skk#??
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happy bisexual day to those who celebrate
#dragalia lost#dragalia#orion#orion dragalia#I don't usually cross reference JP translations for Dragalia stuff but I was curious if some of the Really Gay Lines in English were#the same in the original text. Turns out some of them weren't#which just makes the localization funnier#Like. Grain of salt because I don't speak Japanese and rely on machine translations and friends who speak the language#But the really sus “receiving end” line was originally just. “Haha it'd be nice to be the one getting escorted for once :)”#I'm sure it's not an entirely indulgent translation but. Phrasing!!!#then there's the infamous(?) “I seek to have a relationship with everyone here!” where in JP it's clearer that by “everyone”#Orion means “every woman” and not literally “everyone”#bc JP Elly says “In your case won't just any woman do?” while in EN she just calls him shameless LOL#there's a few more#like the scene where Orion says “You're the first man I've ever wanted to protect” and Euden says “damn bro I thought you weren't gay?”#and he responds calmly like “You really are slow when it comes to these matters! I'm just saying you're more charming than you know.”#it's a letdown but it's kinda coy#meanwhile since JP has some extra animations#namely Orion jumping in shock and making a cringing face before responding#the No Homo vibe is off the charts 😭😭😭#and then theres that xmas seasonal line that's about picking up women ...when voices are set to JP.#The EN line is about being broke. For some reason.#But even with all that it's not like there's no gay subtext in JP Orion's dialogue. It's just deeply funny how the EN localizers went#Yup. This one. Bisexual. We gotta make it more obvious.
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#ok but fr marking undergrad essays is such a rollercoaster#i gave two very high marks today and was genuinely impressed and then the next three i marked were practically incoherent#one just copy and pasted their intro instead of writing a conclusion. like it's verbatim the same paragraph#i dont mark down for minor grammar and syntax errors because there's a high rate of ESL students...#... but some of the papers from native english speakers have me more concerned about functional illiteracy than I've ever been#these are 19-20yos in a humanities field at a top university! even the highest scoring essay had basic basic grammar errors and vocab misuse#at least i could tell what the student was trying to say there but some of the others...#if your punctuation and spelling and syntax are all so bad that i literally cant tell what you're trying to say there is a serious problem#even setting aside how many errors like these there were there's the flip side of the issue: actually writing an essay#the last one i marked yesterday had no structure or thesis or secondary sources#everything between the intro and conclusion was the same claim phrased in different ways with some irrelevant non sequitur quotes thrown in#no analysis other than the words 'analysis of this shows' which is *gasp* not a substitute for analysis#OH AND OMG#one made a direct claim about a figure's political stance and attached a footnote. i went to see what the student's source was.#the footnote literally said something like 'i know i should have a source here but it's only context and i don't want to waste my word count#like what???? do you think claims about relevant context don't need evidence??? and the audacity to not give a citation...#... and claim it's because it would take too many words away from your main argument??#just providing the actual citation for the claim would have been 3-5 words max but the footnote about not having room was 30 words#kid do you think i can't tell that you dont have that citation? do you think anyone's buying that you didn't include it to save space?#it's the very first footnote and most of the others are full-length bibliography entries jammed into the footnotes (which we don't require)#so either you were 'worried about space' at the first footnote then changed your mind as you wasted 250 words on unnecessary formatting#or you were over the word limit and were like 'gotta cut something!' and the only footnote you 'simplified for space' was a short basic one#^assuming i believed you. which i dont. because why would you think that would fool anyone.#i still have half the essays left. im tired and so disappointed in how little we're told we should expect from them
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You've mentioned that Jacob's lines in arcade to the deputy sound more sexual in French, is that just like in tone or are the words more sexual?
In French, Jacob doesn’t use any of the nicknames people think sound a bit flirty, so no “angel” or “honey” for us. However, there’s one line in particular that can be interpreted as more sexual than it was in English.
The original sentence is, “The hunt only excites me”, and they chose to translate it as, “La chasse, c’est ça qui m’excite”, which is not wrong, but the phrasing and verb choice kind of make it sound like he’s saying, “The hunt, that’s what turns me on” instead.
You can use the verb “exciter” to translate “to excite” because it’s not technically a mistake, but it’s now more commonly used to talk about sexual arousal rather than enthusiasm…
So yeah, if you’re excited and say “Je suis excité(e)” to a French person, chances are they’ll hear “I’m horny” :’)
#it’s not inaccurate but it can sound weird to us#especially if the person doesn’t know how common and normal it is to say you’re 'excited' in english when you’re happy/impatient#so if they seem confused or amused that’s why#far cry 5#far cry arcade#jacob seed#fellow french people what do you instinctively think the connotation is when you hear 'c’est ça qui m’excite'?#to me the phrasing is clumsy considering what the intended meaning is#he says it’s stimulating not arousing
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unrelated but i was reading a fic the other night that kept saying "mind as well" instead of "might as well" and if it was just a one off mistake id shrug it off but then they KEPT using the SAME phrase over and over and it was wrong every time itkind of drove me crazy
#im the last person to judge people for grammar or the correct usage of words in english but also😭😭😭#literally every other paragraph the phrase would show up how can you be so obsessed with that saying and not know to write it correctly
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I have to wonder how many people celebrating AI translation also complain about "broken English" and how obvious it is something was Google translated from another language without a fluent English speaker involved to properly clean up the translation/grammar.
Because I bet it's a lot.
I know why execs are all for it—AI is the new buzzword and it lets them cut jobs thus "save" money and not have to worry about pesky labour laws when one employs humans—but everyone else?
There was some outcry when Crunchyroll fired many of their translators in favour of AI translation (with some people to "clean up the AI's work") but I can't help but think that was in part because it was Japanese-to-English and personally affected them. Same when Duolingo fired many of their translators in favour of LLM translation. Meanwhile companies are firing staff when it's English to another language and there's this idea that that's fine or not as big a deal because English is "easy" to translate and/or because people don't think of how it will impact people in non-English countries.
Also it doesn't affect native English speakers so it doesn't get much headway in the news cycle or online anyway because so much of the dominant media is from English-speaking countries and English-speakers dominate social media.
But different languages have different grammar structures that LLMs don't do, and I grew up on "jokes" about people speaking in "broken English" and mocking people who use the wrong word when it was clearly a literal translation but the meaning was obvious long before LLMs were a thing, too. In fact, the specific way a character spoke broken English has been a way to denote their native tongue for decades, usually in a racist way.
Then Google translate came out and "Google-translated English" became an insult for people and criticism of companies because it was clearly wonky to native speakers. Even now, LLMs—which are heavily trained on English compared to other languages—don't have a natural output so native English speakers can clock LLM-generated text if it's longer than a sentence or two.
But, for whatever reason, it's not seen as a problem when it goes the other way because fuck non-English readers or people who want to read in their native tongue I guess.
#and it's not like no people were doing translations so wonky translations were better than nothing#it's actual translators being fired for a subpar replacement#and anyone who keeps their job suddenly being responsible for cleaning up llm output rather than what they trained in#(which can take just as much time or longer than doing the translation by hand from scratch)#(if you want it done right anyway)#hell to this day i hear people complain about written translations of indigenous words and how they 'aren't english enough'#even though they're using the ipa and use a system white english people came up with in the first place#and you can easily look up the proper pronunciation and hear it spoken#but there's such a double-standard where it's expected that other languages cater to english/english speakers#but that grace and accommodation doesn't go the other way#and it's the failing of non-english speakers when an english translation is broken#you see it whenever monolingual english speakers travel to other countries and utterly refuse to learn the language#but if someone doesn't speak in unaccented (to them) english fluently in their home country the person 'isn't trying hard enough'#this is just the new version of that where non-english speakers are supposed to do more work and put up with subpar translations#even as a native english speaker/writer i get a (much) lesser version of this because i write with canadian spelling#and some people get pissed if their internet experience is disrupted by 'ou' instead of 'o' or '-re' instead of '-er'#because dialects and regional phrasing/spelling is a thing#human translators can (or should) be able to account for it but llms are not smart enough to do so#and that's not even getting into slang and how llms don't account for it#or how llms can put slurs into translations because it doesn't do nuance or context and doesn't know the language#if you ever complained about buying something from another country that came with machine-translated instructions#you should be pissed at companies cutting english-to-[language] staff in favour of glorified google translate#because the companies are effectively saying they're fine with non-native speakers getting a wonky/broken version
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why does every article reporting on idf war crimes go "hamas, who started the war on october 7th with their brutal terrorist attack slaughtering innocent israeli civilians, has condemned the idf's use of-"? like, nearly verbatim every single time. we know about october 7th. we know by now. half the time, hamas isnt even relevant but they gotta find some way to sow doubt and numb any potential compassion responses. will you get fired if you show sympathy for murdered palestinian civilians without first adding a disclaimer saying its all their fault for being born in gaza? if you call "palestinians under 18" children? if you use the words "murdered" or "brutal" or "massacre" for acts that didnt occur on october 7th? if you call a spade a spade? why are israeli reports front page news without proper fact-checking but palestinian reporting is always "allegedly" even when theres video evidence? why does the idf not get the hamas treatment of reminding everyone that theyre biased before treating their words as law, like they havent been caught bold-faced lying again and again?
#soooooo fucking infuriating#'palestinians are allegedly starving but thats what hamas (who are savage terrorists in case you forgot) said as well so who knows?'#'idf soldiers are allegedly bragging about and showing pictures and videos of their war crimes on social media but#its not in english so we may never know what theyre saying. palestinian ''civilians'' are translating so whatever they say must be wrong'#'in other news. heres what ''doctors'' are referring to as a ''calendar'' but is written in arabic (terrorist language) so the idf must be#telling the truth when they say its proof they are all evil and must in some nebulous way suddenly stop living'#to be fair. the 'secret hamas names list disguised as calendar but REALLY about oct 7' shit was the target of skepticism quite early on#but it really does show how often the idf lies to justify obvious war crimes#maybe they should provide verified evidence or even just be given a bias disclaimer before printing their claims as fact???#every single fucking death toll is phrased as 'hamas-run ministry of health reports death toll of x' like?#yeah? thats their fucking government? what else do you expect?#you do understand that the healthcare portion of their government is probably more reputable#than what the phrasing of those headlines are obviously trying to imply?#i understand that bias is still possible there but its not armed combatants making shit up#its doctors who receive govt paychecks doing their best to identify the disfigured bodies not buried under rubble#youre not slick with that wording
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some ships aren't romantic to me i just need them to fuck nasty and eat each other. with tongue
#can you guess who this is about? בין הפותרים נכונה יוגרלו פרסים#<- idk how to say it in english in funny phrasing but basically if you get it right you may get a prize.#the prize is. me coming into your dms to talk abt this ship fucking nasty and eating each other. with tongue#they're my current go-to toxic yaoi everything they do is dubcon at best <3
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We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.
#we speak#writing#we grew up with pmd games and we feel like the way that pmd pokemon's dialogue tends to be excessively... direct?#should be a feature and not a bug when any pokemon that you meet might be totally unfamiliar with your species and biology#it's probably very polite to start up front with some basic facts about yourself so they know how to act going forward#the very upfront feel to dialogue also very much helps with keeping the dialogue feel more... pokemon#people mock the series for weird npc dialogue a lot but we think that taking these things literally makes for more fun society building#it doesn't all have to fit with socially acceptable for our world we think. polite in our world isn't even consistent by household.#sometimes a polite interaction sounds like “hello! i'm poochyena! i like to chase people and bite!”#name and immediately socially useful information. now you know about the chasing people and biting so you don't assume it's rude#of course poochyena bites and chases people. it likes to do that. you can say you don't like that and it might stop doing that to You#but it will not stop biting and chasing people because that's what it likes to do and it will probably only befriend people okay with that#it makes a very specific dialogue feel that's very fun to do. we like how the pokemon world tends to treat any sort of like#disability or “weird” things as something that you just say out the gate and everyones like “oh okay”#and then treat that as Part Of Interactions going forwards. there are a surprising amount of parts of the pokemon manga#that are dedicated to working around a character's disability after one or all of their means of dealing with it get taken out#admittedly we aren't that caught up on newer content but we find the way that it tends to be just Accepted as very refreshing#making the dialogue this direct does also tend to make it read as more “childish” in english and particular because a lot of Maturity's jus#learning how to dance around what you're saying or phrase it in different ways to get your idea across differently#whereas here everything is just as direct as possible. “i don't like charmander”. “i like roasting berries”. “i want to dig things up”.#all pokemon dialogue tends to go towards being exceedingly simple and it makes for some very distinct writing#especially when you have to tackle complex situations with characters who probably dont employ that sort of vocabulary#though we personally enjoy doing this sort of stuff your mileage may vary ofc#we are biased towards this sort of thins because we find it MUCH more fun to build up what we're talking about from blocks#than to like. try and use more indirect wording that may lose things in translation#unfortunately this is not fun in irl conversation. everyone has to be on the same page and you need to use the same playbook to communicate#we REALLY wish people said what they meant though. we're really tired of being asked shit like “is this accessible”#when what they mean is “can you climb these stairs” a question which depends on the day our energy level and how things have been going#there are a lot of things we could say that would make us feel like some sort of anti sjw type guy and a lot of em boil down to just#"for the love of god dont dance around a Sensitive Topic just get to the point and ask us about it this just makes things harder for everyo
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i can’t talk to people about translation because i'll start losing it and gnawing at people’s ankles. my litmus test is that if you think manga translations should always keep in the -san/-kun/-chan/etc honorifics for official english localisations you need to stay at least 100 feet away from me at all times
#eloise talks#YES it can be a bitch to translate because honorifics convey loads of info about a characters relationship/status to others#NO it should not be kept in an english translation because it is. japanese.#and relies on you knowing japanese honorifics and what they mean to understand what they convey anyway#you will always lose things in translation. you make it work in other word choices and phrases#saw someone complain about a translation saying 敬語で話した方がいいよ was 'you should be more polite' once#because 'well actuallllly they didn't say that so its a bad translation. they said it's better to speak in keigo. localisers are stupid'#i dont have enough time in the world to explain how bad that take is
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pls reblog
#polls#hyperspecific poll#kai rambles#personal#doing this i realised how much if my weird experiences were either too depressing or violent to put as an option#or would need a lot more words to explain#i decided to skip out on ''had a local drug dealer try to groom you into being a mule''#i find it funny because he tried it while my mom was in the room?#but im aware its a sensitive topic#i also did not know how to casually word the times my dad would randomly drive us to like some ruins in the english countryside#and like say ill be back in an hour#and then leave us there#because what the fuck even was that?#also how to explain that my maternal uncle and maternal grandad were in opposing local gangs that folded before i was born#but like in an alternate universe id probably be raised in a gang?#and also anything about my aunt meryl i dont know how to phrase any of that in limited words because she is just the most bizzare lady#i maybe could get the neck brace thing in where she accused me and my mom of stealing her neckbrace and handcream#and told us to never speak to her until we were ready to admit it except we didnt take it#and its probably coming up to a decade now
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Traditionally when learning a language one watches TV shows in the language they're learning and subtitles in their native language (to start with) but I was looking for a place to watch DS9 episodes and found a Norwegian website but I can't turn subtitles off. So I have Norwegian subtitles and English audio, and it's definitely an interesting experience!
#langblr#it's kinda cool bc when i watch with norwegian subtitles i don't pay so much attention to words and phrases i don't know if context is clea#(especially bc in a lot of norwegian tv the subtitles are so paraphrased they tend to be more distracting than useful)#but doing it this way. i'll read the subtitle and hear the corresponding english and be like ohhh so that's how you say it#probably not the most effective way to pick up new vocabulary or phrases but it makes a change#and i'm all about shaking it up!
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watching wish and asha just said 'isn't truth supposed to set you free' and i went:
more seriously i've very rarely seen 'the truth will set you free' used in a context that wasn't at least aware the phrase comes from the bible (the same way people are generally aware that 'to fly too close to the sun' comes from greek mythology)
so now i'm wondering if the people who wrote this line and put it in the movie know where it comes from and didn't care or plainly didn't know. it's just a very weird phrase to use in the context of that movie imo cause it's far less of an all purpose expression than other biblically inspired sayings.
#i'm probably not being very clear but basically i find it jarring to hear an idiom that couldn't have come to exist w/out jesus#in this loosely-defined and magical fairy-tale world#sure wish takes place in the mediterranean so we can assume it IS set in our world#that's still an acknowledgment of real life history whether intended or not#and unlike say 'to fly too close to the sun' that particular phrase has *deeply* rooted religious significance#maybe i'm completely wrong and it IS commonly used in english but i haven't come across it enough#and again never in a context where i'd assume the speaker was fully unaware of the bible being a thing#like if you hear a 21st century person say it in a fictional story or irl you understand how they came to know it#either they read it or they learnt it throught osmosis#it's reasonable to assume they would have come across it even if they're fully secular#but here who in asha's world says that truth is supposed to set you free??
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