Utena Fansub Ep 24 Translation Notes
Revolutionary Girl Utena Episode 24 The Secret Nanami Diary.mkv
The second recap episode! As with the first, I noticed that the flashbacks mostly use alternate takes of the lines! There were a few spots that didn’t, more than the first recap episode, but still, lots of original voice acting here!
Anthy: 小さな歯ぎしり。風に揺れるかずら橋みたい。
Nanami: いいえ、これは海辺のブランコがきしむ音。
Anthy: He’s grinding his little teeth. It’s like a rope bridge swaying in the wind.
Nanami: No, it’s more like a swing set, creaking by the seaside.
These lines are meant to be comically poetic. The original language used almost sounds like something you’d find in a haiku! Evocative and transporting in only a few words. The thing about translating is you need to match the original writers at their level, which I obviously cannot do, and most translators can’t either. Which means most translations are going to range from slightly worse writing than the original to EXTREMELY worse writing than the original. The best translators are ones who write their own good original work. Anyway, this is my best attempt at that kind of evocative haiku-style language in English!
Literal translation
Utena: We should stop. It’s not right. He’s written all his hidden feelings down here. Peeking into that kind of thing is… well…
Nanami: You’ve basically read the whole thing, what do you care about his feelings? What about my feelings?
Utena: About 49 kilos?
Final translation
Utena: We should stop. It’s not right. He’s written all his hidden feelings down here. Those feelings have weight.
Nanami: You’ve basically read the whole thing, what do you care about his feelings? What about the weight of my feelings?
Utena: About 49 kilos?
This is a pun on the word 思い. 思い means feelings, but it’s a homophone with 重い (heavy). Puns are often extremely hard to translate, but this one isn’t too bad, with “weight” able to mean emotional weight as well. But I did find it important to the natural flow of the dialogue to change one of Utena’s lines. They’re just elaborating further on why it’s not right to keep reading the diary, so it felt acceptable to do this substitution. If Nanami comes out of the blue talking about “the weight of my feelings” it’s going to sound weird, but if Utena mentions weight first, it sounds a lot more natural.
作戦その一
Plan A.
The direct translations for these words are:
作戦 strategy
その一 ”the first”, implying part of a series.
But you can’t translate it like that! Not only does it sound ridiculous, but it’s not even an accurate translation. In fact, I think that if something sounds ridiculous (and the source material doesn’t), that makes it an inaccurate translation. The ohtori scripts translate this as “Operation the First” which is mind-boggling to me. その一 is used in most contexts just like how we in English use sequential alphabetical letters, and if you’re giving an alphabetical value to a “strategy” or “operation”, like, c’mon, the word you’re looking for here is “plan”!
Thanks as always to @dontbe-lasanya for their editing work on this project! Couldn’t do this without you <3
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