Talk:List of terms in The Twelve Kingdoms
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This article was nominated for deletion on 2006-10-18. The result of the discussion was no consensus. |
[edit] Division
I like the division of the terms. But now the links will not dirrect the readers to the terms. They still ave to browse through the document, or even do a ctrl-F to find the term. I'd prefer if the terms had a ===Youma=== format instead of the '''Youma'''. Then the terms in the articles can be linked here to the specific term. --Guille2015 20:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
- Though I prefer to keep definitions on the same line as the word (bulks it up too much if they're not, IMO), feel free to fuss with it. Ladlergo 21:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Untranslated words
First let me say that I have absolutely no knowledge of The Twelve Kingdoms prior to following some links to this page. However I noticed that many of the terms listed here are words that maybe shouldn't belong here at all. Aside from some genuine 12K-specific terms, there are also words like youma, which is a common word for monster in Japanese. And then there are words like kokki, meaning black kirin. In this context, the meaning of this word would be immediately obvious to any Japanese speaker, and it's strange that the translators left it untranslated. Even more strange, though, are words like daigaku, meaning university. In any other work, the word would have been translated as university or academy or some such, leaving it untranslated feels like a case of extreme laziness or overzealous exoticism.
Again, I don't know how the actual translation practice is for this show. I'm only assuming that what's on this page is what's being broadcast. If that is the case, it might be worth commenting on top of the page that many of these terms are common Japanese words to avoid giving false impression to the reader. But someone more knowledgeable about this anime should better do this. Uly 06:57, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
- Those terms were not translated in the subtitles of the translation I am watching. And the Twelve Kingdoms is such an influential work - I've seen and read references to the novels in several other works. So I think it is best to leave the terms as used so that people can use this article as a resource when people are looking up additional references to the work. In addition it will be useful for people watching the anime series to leave the terms as they appear untranslated in the English version so they can look up what a term means without resorting to a Japanese dictionary. (I was confused by sankyaku, myself. :) --Danny Rathjens 11:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
In responce to Uly there is a Translator's Note in Volume Three of the DVD series which explains why they didn't translate the words in the anime like the did with some of the words in the novel. Yamamoto Davey wrote that '[he] knew that there were a lot of special terms and names in the world of TK, and the last thing [he] wanted to do was translate those terms in such a way that might become problematic later in the series. Also [he] wanted to keep the same sense of a 'different world' that the Japanese views feel while watching TK.' So in other words, words that may seem so easily translated are not because it sets the mood. I rather like all the terms, even if some are recognizable. However, in the novel some of the terms are translated like the names of the palaces and such, so there is a sort of compromise. I would have actually preferred them not to be translated so baldly, to me, after watching the anime, it seemed to take away from the experience. That's kind of the point of fiction/fantasy. BlackVelvett 8:34, 3, October 2007 (UTC)
