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loghorizonfunfacts · 6 years

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LHFF reads Volume 9, Chapter 1 (live-read)

So KR’s nickname for his Garnet Dragon was translated as “Gar-gar” (Ga-tan in JP), as I would assume “Ga-ga” would be too much like baby talk... or the singer. Unfortunately, I’m only ever going to read Gar-gar as Gar-Gar Binks and that’s just about the worst parallel to draw, so I’m gonna keep using Ga-tan here.

That said, I think Engel localized Ga-tan’s antiquated speech well. I will admit that Log Horizon has introduced me to new terms and words, which is honestly quite enjoyable. In this case, I learned the word “whinge.”

Jered was also translated as Jared. I might be keeping that one, once I get a bot up and running so I can change everything on the Wiki accordingly.

“The protection of dragons, the blood of the fairies, the principle of transmigration, the skills of the great ones.” I remember “great ones” was fan translated/interpreted as “giants.” We have yet to see if “great ones” refers to literal giants or just “people who do awesome stuff.” As for transmigration, I believe that’s a new term from this volume. I’ll have to read more to see if that is brought up again.

One thing that also bugs me: The Chinese server never got a name of its own. Like Japan is the Yamato server and their region is called Yamato. Eurasia is called Eureddo (I think that’s the Yen On term, can’t remember at the moment), but China doesn’t have its own name.

I’m not a game developer, but the idea that making a nigh-faithful representation of Earth at half scale, using satellite photos and drones, would reduce development personnel expenses doesn’t sound quite right. Maybe I’m wrong on that front, though. Again, not a person who does that stuff.

Reading Mamare talk about Shake Shack through Leonardo makes it feel somewhat heretical that I, having lived in NYC for two years now, have never had Shake Shack. Though to be fair, I’m also rarely in Manhattan. (That said, I’m going to look up Tasuda and Ushiwaka to see if they’re real sushi places.)

Amazing. Leonardo makes these comments about Kanami’s looks, and then immediately feels self-conscious once he gets up because she’s taller than him.

I noticed that Leonardo calls Kanami “Miz Kanami” shortly afterwards. I’d have to check the JP version, but since it talks about the translation machine, does it add Japanese honorifics to what’s spoken by other people? Like maybe Leonardo would know about honorifics, but what about people who don’t?

I also don’t envy Engel’s job. Language jokes are really, really hard to translate when you have to translate like your audience has no understanding of the original language at all. (And again I will state: Yen On would do well to have footnotes or a glossary, or something to explain them more... cleanly.)

For some context, Kanami says this: “It’s less a frog than a fuhrahhg, huh!!” I reckon that the first “frog” was written with kanji, and then “fuhrahhg” was written in katakana--and thus, she’s saying it in English. But you can’t really go from English, to English again, so Engel spelled the second phonetically. It’s something that would be best accompanied by an explanation, but the translator has no space to provide one.

Leonardo mentions a place called the Sedona Ruins in the North American server... will have to look up what that’s a reference to.

“[Elias] had chestnut hair and eyes.” Uhhhh yeah sure let’s go with that. The anime straying away from Mamare’s descriptions can frankly be a tad infuriating sometimes, since Hara will go with the anime’s colors while Mamare keeps referring to what the novels say. (Re: William and his totally-not silver hair.)

Engel translated Ling Xiangfeng’s name as Ling Tiangfeng, and I’m... frankly not quite sure why. I’m pretty sure there was furigana for her name that read it as “Rin Shangfeng,” and “Xiang” sounds like “Siang.” That’s a pretty far cry from a T, and neither Mandarin nor Cantonese would read 香 as “tiang.”

In a case of realism, attention is indeed drawn to the slight gap between a person speaks and when the translated version comes out. I knew that it existed from previous spoilers about the side-story, but it’s nice to read it again.

The Keronardo joke is translated as “Croakanardo,” which while it’s proper (as kero is onomatopoeia, the equivalent to croak in English), it... lacks charm. Perhaps I’m too used to “Froggynardo” or just plain “Keronardo.” It’s again, not a bad translation, it’s just very... stiff-sounding in English. Keronardo works both as a joke on his frog costume, and has the benefit of sounding pretty similar to Leonardo. Froggynardo has Kanami’s childishness even if it’s detached from “Leo.” Croakanardo doesn’t sound kiddish and doesn’t have any similarities to “Leo.”

Kanami rationalizing swimming from China to Taiwan, to Japan, with Coppelia shaking her head in the background is the greatest. Did they keep Coppelia’s head shake in the anime? I don’t remember much of it.

“Even in crowds like these, true New Yorkers didn’t lose their cool. They had their own destinations firmly in mind, so they were able to keep walking at maximum efficiency, without paying attention to anybody else.” This is true. Though some people, even though they’re probably locals, walk infuriatingly slowly anyways.

The explanation for how Big Apple turned out the way it did post-Catastrophe makes a lot more sense than what the fandom years back made it out to be, where the 6.01 food riots just turned the city into pieces almost instantaneously. From the description here, it was basically the same as what happened to Akiba, but instead of having someone like Shiroe and Maryelle to get things together, there were several key incidents that boiled over and made things turn out badly.

I still think that Japan getting the reset (and thus, the expansion pack update) before Oceania is BS, especially with the backstory that the game is American-based, but whatever.

“How’s life in England treating you? Is eel pie lethally nasty?”

“Boy, is it ever. Seriously, England’s brutal about stuff like that. Whoever said the only delicious thing in England is breakfast hit the nail right on the head.”

As someone who got the “distinct pleasure” of trying marmite (mostly popular in Britain), and has heard many things about British food, the above jab seems pretty damn accurate.

I’m not even 50 pages in (on page 47, to be exact) and I’ve already laughed several times. The group’s dynamic is already great. Props to Mamare and Engel for their hard work.

“I didn’t think we’d be this useless without the Web.” Way to foreshadow DDD’s fate, Mamare... Reading the novels with context of future events sure is a trip. That said, Log Horizon really is an adventure in “life without modern conveniences,” even if a number of modern conveniences (like flushing toilets) have been recreated by taking advantage of magic. I honestly wouldn’t mind a slice-of-life story about living day-to-day life in a world that had magic, but no modern appliances. Things like cooking alone become harder when you’re forced to revert back to cooking over an open fire instead of an electric stove, and you have no experience with open-fire cooking.

#log horizon #spoilers #light novel #lhff rants

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