Caution!

This article contains spoilers for The Dark Knight.

In the previous article, I discussed the characteristic attitudes of translators through the lens of English and Spanish translations of Japanese anime. In this article, I'm going to examine the Japanese translations of an American movie by looking at one of my favorite scenes and report on the results.

"The Dark Knight" is one of the films in the Batman series of American superheroes. With a special focus on the character of the Joker, the clown-faced villain, it is often compared to Tim Burton's earlier "Batman" and the more recent "JOKER" directed by Todd Phillips, and especially because of the very different interpretations of the Joker in "The Dark Knight" and "JOKER", many people like one of the movies and not the other. Of course, I love them both, but discussing them in detail would make this article too complex, so I won't go into it here.

What I especially like is the interrogation room scene:

Original Version

Japanese Dub

For those who haven't seen the movie, here's a bit of a spoiler: the story features Batman as the hero and the Joker as the villain. Prior to this scene, the Joker's plans have been thwarted by Batman's efforts, resulting in his capture by Lieutenant Gordon. As a result of this capture, Gordon is promoted to Commissioner that same day, and in response, the Joker, still in his cell, gives a round of applause (rumor has it that the applause was not originally in the script and was an ad-lib by Heath Ledger, who played the Joker). The scene then cuts to the interrogation room.

In this article, I'd like to focus on the language used in this scene, reflect on the nature of translation through the work of professional translators, and especially talk about how amazing the Japanese dubbed version of Joker by Fujiwara Keiji is!

The Joker : Evening, commissioner.

ジョーカー：こんばんは、本部長

Lt. James Gordon : Harvey Dent never made it home.

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：デント地方検事が帰ってない。

• In English, the name "Harvey Dent" is called by the full name, but in Japanese, it is translated as "District Attorney, Dent." In Japan, it's uncommon to call someone by their name without an honorific (such as "san" or "sama") or a title (such as "sensei" or "hakase"). I believe this is why the translation is done this way.

The Joker : Of course not.

ジョーカー：そうだろうな。

Lt. James Gordon : What have you done with him?

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：彼をどうしたんだ？

The Joker : Me? I was right here. [holds up his arms in handcuffs]

ジョーカー：俺が？俺はここにいたろ。

The Joker : Who did you leave him with? Your people?

ジョーカー：デントを誰に任せた？部下たちにか？

• The phrase "your people" is a very English expression, and it seems that the Japanese translator had some difficulty with it. In the Japanese translation, it is translated as "your subordinates? I think this is a translation that could only be made by understanding the whole context of the story.

The Joker : Assuming, of course, they are still “your” people, and not Maroni's.

ジョーカー：まぁ、一応今でも「あんたの」部下ってことにしよう、マローニのじゃなくて。

The Joker : Does it depress you, commissioner? To know just how alone you really are?

ジョーカー：だが気づいたら寂しいだろうな。本当は、信頼できるものなんかいないって。

• In the Japanese translation, the object is omitted, and a literal translation of the Japanese version would be something like, "But looks lonely realizing that in reality there is nothing to trust." To be honest, this translation is quite far from the original both in meaning and nuance. Moreover, the Japanese translation lacks the element that this phrase is directed not at his subordinates but at the commissioner, making it feel like a rather inaccurate translation.
• A solution to this issue in the Japanese translation is already suggested in the original English. I personally believe that adding a question mark at the end, to make it sound like a question to the commissioner, would result in a much better translation.

The Joker : Does it make you feel responsible for Harvey Dent's current predicament?

ジョーカー：責任を感じるかもしれないな。ハービー・デントの苦しみを知ったら。

• In this part as well, the element of "you" is missing in the Japanese translation, which results in the omission of the fact that this phrase is directed at the commissioner.

Lt. James Gordon : Where is he?

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：どこにいる？

The Joker : What's the time?

ジョーカー：何時だ？

Lt. James Gordon : What difference does that make?

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：何の関係がある？

The Joker : Well, depending on the time, he may be in one spot, or several.

ジョーカー：時間によっちゃ居場所が一か所かもしれないし、バラバラに散ってるかも。

• I personally like the translation here. It accurately conveys the Joker's lines, and combined with the performance of the Japanese voice actor (who is Keiji Fujiwara, a well-known voice actor in Japan), it highlights the Joker's madness with a slightly "playful and mischievous" tone.

Lt. James Gordon : If we're gonna play games... [takes off Joker's handcuffs] ...I'm gonna need a cup of coffee.

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：ゲームをして遊ぶ気なら…コーヒーでも淹れてくる。

The Joker : Ah, the “good cop, bad cop” routine?

ジョーカー：あぁ、「優しい刑事、怖い刑事」ってアレか。

• I'm not sure if what I'm imagining is exactly what the Joker said, but interestingly, I've heard that similar interrogation techniques are used by the Japanese police. First, a police officer with a high-pressure attitude interrogates the suspect, and then another, younger and kinder-looking officer asks the suspect to confess what they've done. By alternating between the two, they mentally shake the suspect. Is this method also used in the U.S., or is it that the Japanese police are imitating techniques used by American police?

Lt. James Gordon : Not exactly.

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：ちょっと違う。

[Batman slams The Joker's head on the table]

The Joker : Never start with the head. The victim gets all fuzzy. He can't feel the next...

ジョーカー：頭からやっちゃだめだ。それじゃ相手がボーっとして、次の痛みを感じ...

• This is where the skill of Japanese translators becomes evident. Since the structure of English and Japanese sentences is quite different, it's necessary to supplement the part that he failed to mention (most likely 'pain'). However, while making up for that content in Japanese, the Japanese version of the Joker also has a similar expression, as if he left something unsaid.
• Additionally, the uniquely Japanese expression 'ボーっ (Bō~)' is used, giving the Japanese version a fairly colloquial tone.

[Batman punches the Joker's hand. The Joker pauses for a moment waiting for it to hurt]

The Joker : See?

ジョーカー：な

Batman : You wanted me. Here I am.

バットマン：会いたがってたろ。来てやった。

The Joker [OVER SPEAKER] : I wanted to see what you’d do.

ジョーカー：お前の反応を見てた。

• At this point, the Japanese translator deliberately reduces the number of words used, aiming for a more concise and rapid exchange. I'm not sure I would come up with this kind of Japanese just by looking at the original English text, but the meaning is roughly the same.

The Joker : And you didn’t dissapoint. You let five people die.

ジョーカー：期待通りだったぞ。お前のせいで５人が死んだ。

• For English learners, it might be tempting to phrase it as “you didn’t dissapoint (me?)”, but is his statement natural English for native speakers?

The Joker : Then you let Dent take your place. Even to a guy like me, that’s cold.

ジョーカー：それから、デントを自分の身代わりにしたが、俺から見たって冷酷だ。

• This is a spoiler, but in the previous scene, Dent, who was Batman's friend, falsely announces that he is Batman. As a result, the Joker mistakenly believes he is Batman and captures him, and in this scene, he is in danger of losing his life in a different location.
• Though it's not as important in comparison, the Japanese translation of the line line 'Even to a guy like me, that’s cold' was quite hard to catch for me as a Japanese speaker.

Batman : Where’s Dent?

ジョーカー：デントはどこだ？

The Joker : Those mob fools want you gone so they can get back to the way things were.

ジョーカー：マフィアの馬鹿はお前が消えりゃ街は元通りになると思ってる。

• This part is also puzzling to me, but in the Japanese translation, "mob fools" is consistently translated as "mafia fools." Personally, though, I don't think the word 'mob' refers exclusively to the mafia.
• I thought so until recently, when I found out that "mob" can mean "mafia" by itself. So this translation is not so inaccurate.

The Joker : But I know the truth: there's no going back.

ジョーカー：だが実際は違う。決して戻りゃしない。

The Joker : You've changed things... forever.

ジョーカー：お前が変えちまった…永遠に。

Batman : Then why do you wanna kill me?

バットマン：ならなぜ俺を殺したい？

The Joker : I don’t wanna kill you.

ジョーカー：俺は、お前を殺したくなんかない。

• The Joker believes he has Batman restrained, so it's only natural for Batman to ask that. However, the Joker provokes him by saying that while capturing Batman is his goal, killing him is not.

The Joker : What would I do without you?

ジョーカー：お前がいなくてどうする？

The Joker : Go back to ripping off Mob dealers? No, no.

ジョーカー：またマフィアのカネでもくすねるのか？嫌だ、嫌だね。

The Joker : You complete me.

ジョーカー：お前が、俺を、完璧なものにするんだ。

• The scene where the Joker presses on is well captured in the Japanese version as well. In particular, the final line, 'You complete me,' though short, is quite a difficult translation. It’s so skillful and dramatic that you likely couldn't come up with this translation without being deeply familiar with Marvel comics or games for a long time.

Batman : You’re garbage who kill for money.

バットマン：カネのために人を殺すクズめ。

The Joker : Don't talk like one of them. You're not!

ジョーカー：サツみたいな言い方するな。

• I feel that this translator has a tendency to omit or confuse the object of sentences. "サツ (satsu)" is a Japanese slang word meaning "police" or "cop", and it seems to be quite different from what "they" originally refers to. To me, it looks like "they" refers to the "mob (fools)", guessing by the context, but I think the "mob" has a milder meaning, used in "flash mob" or something.
• I've heard that 'You’re not' is a fairly famous phrase in the Batman series, but unfortunately, it has completely disappeared in the Japanese translation.

The Joker : Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me!

ジョーカー：自分じゃどう思ってても、連中にとっちゃお前はイカれてる。俺と同じ。

• In this part as well, the nuance of the Joker's claim, 'You want to be one of them, but you’re not,' has been significantly watered down in the translation.
• However, to defend the Japanese translator, the word 'freak' often appears in horror or suspense films, but it's a very difficult word to translate while distinguishing it from words like 'monster' or 'crazy' and other similar terms.

The Joker : They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper!

ジョーカー：今はお前が必要だが、要らなくなりゃ、嫌われて、除け者さ。

The Joker : You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke.

ジョーカー：連中はモラルだの、倫理だの言ってるが、悪い冗談さ。

The Joker : Dropped at the first sign of trouble.

ジョーカー：ちょっと困りゃすぐ捨てちまったろ？

The Joker : They're only as good as the world allows them to be.

ジョーカー：善良なのは世の中がまともな時だけさ。

The Joker : I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other.

ジョーカー：見てろよ。いざ追い込まれてみろ。いわゆるその…文明人ってやつだって、殺し合いを始める。

• However, this translator shows an overwhelming 'strength' in the flow of 'cool conversation,' and the Japanese used in this scene effectively conveys the intensity between the two characters. It’s unclear whether this part is an improv by the original Joker, but in this section, the Joker hesitates slightly. The Japanese translator accurately captures this hesitation as well. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call this translator not just an inaccurate translator, but rather a 'violent translator.'

The Joker : See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.

ジョーカー：俺は化け物じゃない。一歩先を行ってるのさ。

Batman : [grabs Joker] Where's Dent?

バットマン：デントはどこだ？

The Joker : You have all these rules and you think they'll save you!

ジョーカー：お前にはルールがあるがただの気休めだ。

• The Japanese translator added the phrase "...but that's only a consolation" instead of translating "...you think they'll save you". Perhaps the translator wanted to make it easier to understand.

Lt. James Gordon : [as Batman slams Joker into the wall] He's in control.

ジェームズ・ゴードン総監：彼は平気だ。

Batman : I have one rule.

バットマン：ルールはあるとも。

The Joker : Oh, then that's the rule you'll have to break to know the truth.

ジョーカー：ああ、なら真実を知るにはそれを破らなきゃ。

Batman : [getting impatient] Which is?

バットマン：なんだと？

The Joker : The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.

ジョーカー：この世界はルール抜きで生きるのが賢い。

• This is the first time I've heard the phrase "the only sensible way," so I'd like to use it in everyday conversation!

[mimicking Batman's voice]

The Joker : And tonight you're gonna break your one rule.

ジョーカー：今夜お前は自分のルールを破るかな。

Batman : I'm considering it.

バットマン：考えておこう。

The Joker : Oh, there's only minutes left, so you're gonna have to play my little game if you wanna save one of them.

ジョーカー：だがあと数分だ。二人を助けたきゃここで遊んでる暇はない。

Batman : [softly, fearful] Them?

バットマン：二人？

• In the original English, the joker means that only one of some people can be saved, but unfortunately the Japanese translation says, "If you want to help the two," referring to the possibility that both can be saved. However, it's understandable that such a translation was made, since I couldn't think of a way to translate "one of them" into a short sentence.
• No, I just thought of something: wouldn’t 'どっちかを助けたきゃ…', '『どっちか』だと？' work?

The Joker : You know for awhile there, I thought you really were Dent.

ジョーカー：何、ついさっきまで、お前をデントと思ってた。

The Joker : The way you threw yourself after her.

ジョーカー：あの女にのぼせ上ってるから。

• This contains a spoiler for the story, but 'her' refers to Rachel, the woman whom both Batman and Dent have feelings for, and who is also undecided about which of the two to choose. The Joker does not mention her name, but Batman instantly becomes convinced that the Joker is referring to her.
• Incidentally, when reading slightly difficult English novels, I often come across sentences that are complete with just a subject like this. What impression do such sentences leave on native speakers? Do they feel like incomplete sentences, or are they also natural and without any awkwardness?

[Joker laughs, Batman throws Joker on table, barricades door]

The Joker : Look at you go!

ジョーカー：ほらその調子だ。

The Joker : Does Harvey know about you and his little bunny?

ジョーカー：ハービーはお前とあの女のこと知ってんのか？

• The Joker provocatively refers to Rachel as 'his little bunny,' but unfortunately, in the Japanese translation, it is simply rendered as 'that woman.' However, it’s clear that this phrase is untranslatable.

Batman : [slams Joker into mirror] Where are they?

バットマン：二人はどこだ？

The Joker : Killing is making a choice.

ジョーカー：殺すにはまず選ばなきゃな。

• As a translation enthusiast, I propose a method where I translate '殺しってのは『選択』なんだよ' in a literal and somewhat nonsensical way to deliver a punch to the Japanese audience, but this is ultimately a matter of the translator's preference.

Batman : [punches Joker] Where are they?

バットマン：二人はどこにいる？

• In this scene, Batman says 'Where are they?' twice in succession, but the Japanese translation uses slightly different vocabulary. While it's not unnatural to repeat the same phrase, it can come across as somewhat mechanical or may sound like 'a police officer warning a suspect who is not following instructions,' so I believe it was avoided. However, it cannot be definitively stated that this is incorrect in terms of the situation.

The Joker : Choose between one life or the other. Your friend, the district attorney, or his blushing bride-to-be...

ジョーカー：どっちを殺すか選ぶんだ。友達の地方検事か、奴の未来の嫁さんか…

• Does anyone know what the Joker was trying to say after "his blushing bride-to-be..."? This is the first time I've seen that expression, so I really don't understand what he was trying to convey, and it's not reflected in the Japanese translation.
• However, it's clear that the Joker is persistently provoking and attacking Batman's emotional turmoil. And this scene looks incredibly painful.

[punches Joker]

The Joker : [laughs] You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with!

ジョーカー：お前は無力だ。脅しは通じないぞ！

The Joker : Nothing to do with all your strength!

ジョーカー：たとえお前がどんなに強くてもな！

• I think the Japanese translator did a pretty good job with this part, but it feels like the vectors of the words are scattered, making it difficult to understand the meaning. Looking at the English text, I can understand what the Joker was really trying to say: "There are problems that cannot be solved by strength." That is why I study English without relying too much on translation machines. I have to find the subtle nuances in the original language.

[grabs Joker]

The Joker : Don't worry, I'm gonna tell you where they are.

ジョーカー：安心しろ、居場所は教える。

The Joker : Both of them. And that's the point.

ジョーカー：二人とも。あぁ、そこがポイントだ。

The Joker : You'll have to choose.

ジョーカー：お前は選ぶんだ。

The Joker : He's at 250 52ND Street and she's on Avenue X, at Cicero.

ジョーカー：男は52番ストリート250、そして女はXアベニュー、シセロ。

This concludes the content of this article. Thank you very much for reading all the way through.

This scene is one of the most iconic moments from The Dark Knight, so I highly recommend watching it at least once.

One fun fact I know about this scene is that Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, advised Christian Bale, who played Batman, to "hit him for real" in order to add more realism. In other words, the scene wasn't just acting that looked painful—it genuinely was. So, I wonder if the part where the glass shatters was real as well...

Also, speaking of translation, in my previous article, I discovered that when translating Japanese anime, the English translator tend to translate in a way that is both "violent" yet emotional, while the Spanish translator stay extremely faithful to the original Japanese text, and in this article, I found that the Japanese translator tend to translate English films in a "violent" manner as well.

From these two points, one hypothesis arises. If you take a look at the comment section of the YouTube video mentioned in the previous article, you'll see that many native Spanish speakers aren't satisfied with the Spanish Kobeni's voice actress. While I cannot determine which country’s voice acting is superior, if their critiques are accurate, my hypothesis is that this could be due to the Spanish translator staying too faithful to the original Japanese, resulting in a translation that doesn’t lend itself well to emotional expression in Spanish.

On the other hand, when I consider the powerful performance of the English version of Kobeni, or the legendary performance of the Joker in the Japanese dub (by our dearest voice actor Keiji Fujiwara), it makes me think that a "violent" translation—where you don't adhere too strictly to the original text—may actually produce language that is easier for voice actors to perform in.

Of course, it might be overly simplistic for me to discuss the theme of translation based on just these two examples. But speaking for myself, if my work were ever to be translated into another language, I would strongly prefer a "violent" translation. Even if the translator's interpretation differs from my original intent, to me that's a difference I would love to enjoy exploring.

However, I also feel that forcing this philosophy onto others could be problematic. In Japan, there was a case where a manga artist's interpretation clashed with production staff during the adaptation process, leading to a prolonged dispute that eventually took a toll on the artist’s mental health (Sexy Tanaka-san; セクシー田中さん). The same kind of issues could arise in translation as well.

In the future, I sincerely hope that the creators can form a unified set of values on this issue, rather than handling it on a case-by-case basis.

@anymany

Caution!

This article contains spoilers for Chainsaw Man.

I have been studying Spanish for a long time. That's because a friend I've been interacting with is from Mexico, so I've been focusing on learning Español Latino. Before that, I was learning German for a friend from Austria, but I struggled with memorizing a huge number of nouns and verbs that probably only exist in German (What “Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung” is?!!). In comparison, Spanish vocabulary has many similarities to English, and the words I learned yesterday often appear in the text I read today. So for me, Spanish is a language where "effort pays off" for English learners.

Also, I recently came across an interesting video comparing Kobeni's performance in Japanese, English, and Español Latino. Kobeni is a character from Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto, and she is a member of the "Devil Hunters", the fictional occupation in this story. The video focuses on her performance in episode 6, in the scene where they are trapped on the 8th floor of a hotel by an unknown force.

This video is simply meant to compare the performances of the voice actresses from the three countries, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and specifically compare what "they" said. I used YouTube's transcription feature to examine the translations of the tree countries, and I made a lot of interesting discoveries. So in this article, I would like to share some of those findings.

Also, I am a native speaker of Japanese, an intermediate learner of English, and a beginner of Spanish, so there may be errors in my understanding of each language. If you notice any such errors, I would be grateful if you could point them out to me.

日本語

私たち、全員ここで死んじゃうんだ。おなかペコペコで死んじゃうんだ。

(watashi tachi, zen'in koko de shinjaun da. Onaka pekopeko de shinjaun da; We're all going to die here. (We are) going to die of hunger.)

• Japanese is a language that makes frequent use of onomatopoeia. "Peko-peko" likely derives from the verb "凹む (hekomu; to become hollow)," and it expresses the state of being empty inside. A well-known example of this expression is "onaka (stomach) peko-peko," which is an idiom used to describe the suffering caused by hunger. It’s useful to remember this expression as it stands.

English

Since they can’t get in and we can’t get out, everybody here is gonna die. We’ll slowly starve to death.

• The former part was added to fit the content of the story, but is not present in the original text. As a result, the English Kobeni gives the impression of being more capable of logical thinking compared to other languages.

Español Latino

Todos nosotros vamos a morir en este lugar. Vamos a morir de hambre.

(We are all going to die in this place. (We are) going to die of hunger.)

• When translating Japanese anime into languages other than English, such as Spanish, German, or French, some translators choose to translate from English rather than directly from Japanese due to the similarities in language structure. In this example, however, it's clear that the Spanish translator was working from the original Japanese text. This Spanish translation is quite faithful to the original, and if you translate it as it is, you'll get what the Japanese Kobeni was saying.
• Additionally, Spanish has a wide range of verb conjugations, which often leads to the omission of the subject, a feature it shares with Japanese. I’ve often mentioned this, but in many ways, Spanish is very similar to Japanese.
• However, a significant difference from Japanese is the concept of "gendered nouns" in Spanish. For example, the phrase "(we) all" changes depending on whether the group consists of males or females. If the group were all females, you’d say "todas," but since the room contains both males and females, "todos" is used.

日本語

親が、優秀な兄だけは大学に行かせたいからって私に働かせたんです。風俗かデビルハンターしか選択肢なかったんです。

(oya ga, yūshūna ani dake wa daigaku ni ikasetai karatte watashi ni hatarakasetan desu. fūzoku ka debiru hantā shika sentakushi nakattan desu; My parents made me work because they wanted my smart older brother to go to university. My only options were to work in the sex industry or become a devil hunter.)

• Japanese is a language that frequently uses loanwords from English. The fictional role of "devil hunter" that appears in this work is also rendered as "デビル・ハンター (debiru hantā)" in Japanese.

English

Older brother is the gifted one, so his educations is all that matter to my parents, which is why they made me get a job. It was either become a devil hunter or a sex worker.

• Personally, I found the English in this section to be somewhat stylish and sophisticated, based on expressions about her family and sentences using relative pronouns like "which." Perhaps because of this, the "university" element is missing from the translated text, but it's possible that Kobeni's next line makes up for this omission. In any case, the English translation is quite acrobatic and unique.

Español Latino

Mis padres me pusieron a trabajar porque solo querían mandar a mi hermano el más listo a la universidad. Mis únicas opciones eran trabajadora sexual o devil hunter.

(My parents put me in a job because they only wanted to send my smartest brother to college. My only options were sex worker or devil hunter.)

• I found it interesting that the loanword "devil hunter" was used in Japanese, and it seems that the Spanish translator used "devil hunter" as it is, yet it is probably a foreign word for Spanish. This indicates that the Spanish translator is committed to staying true to the original text.

日本語

私も大学に行きたかったんです。でもここで死んじゃうんです。

(watashi mo daigaku ni ikitakattan desu. Demo koko de shinjaun desu; I wanted to go to college(/university) too, but (I'm/We’re) going to die here.)

• If you have studied Japanese, you may have heard that adding "です (desu)" at the end of a sentence makes it polite language (敬語; keigo; honorific language), which is used when speaking to a superior or someone of higher status. In the video, Kobeni is crying and shouting quite emotionally, but she stubbornly continues to use keigo. On the other hand, the other characters speak to her in casual language, so just by listening to the Japanese in this scene, you can logically infer the relationship between her and the others.

English

I, I wanted to go to college. But I’m just going to my grave!

• Is the expression "go to my grave" a common phrase in English? Because Kobeni is crying and shouting so emotionally, the YouTube transcript and I couldn't hear this part clearly. If our understanding is correct, I think the English Kobeni is using a stylish expression, as always.

Español Latino

Yo también quería ir a la universidad. ¡Pero voy a terminar muerta aquí!

(I wanted to go to college too. But I'm going to end up dead here.)

• The Spanish translation is, as always, very faithful and accurate.
• Incidentally, I noticed that in English, the word "college" was used, while in Spanish, the translation "universidad (university)" was used. In fact, the Japanese word "大学 (daigaku)" can refer to either "college" or "university," and different translators interpret it differently. To be honest, I’m also not very clear on the difference between college and university. My understanding is that college is smaller, while university is larger in scale. If anyone with more knowledge on this topic could explain in the comments, I would be grateful.

日本語

デンジ、くわせろ。

(Denji, kuwasero; Denji, let me eat.)

• In the original text, Kobeni only says the "causative second person imperative" form of "食う (kuu; to eat)," which means something like "let me eat." Therefore, it is impossible to determine from the original Japanese whether Kobeni wants to eat Denji or whether she wants to eat the food that Denji has. It's necessary to infer the meaning from the context.
• However, when the kanji (Chinese character) "喰う (also pronounced "kuu" and meaning the same as "to eat")" is used instead of "食う," it often implies a predator devouring prey. In such cases, the meaning shifts strongly toward "Kobeni wants to eat Denji," but in any case, this nuance cannot be picked up from the audio alone.

English

Denji, let me eat you.

• In the English version, the translation seems to adopt the interpretation that "Kobeni wants to eat Denji."

Español Latino

Dejen que se lo coma.

(Let (him/it) eat (him/it).)

• If our interpretation is correct, this is the first instance where a translation unique to Spanish appears. At first, I thought it was just the unique way the name "Denji" was pronounced in Spanish (as Latin script pronunciation in Spanish is quite different from what English or Japanese speakers might expect). However, I now believe the speaker is saying "Dejen," which corresponds to "let" or "allow." When translated into English, this would become "Let it eat him, (everyone)" which shows that the content of the statement is quite different from both the English and Japanese versions. Yet, interestingly, this translation still works perfectly within the story.
• I suspect that the Spanish translator suddenly changed their stance to better sync the dialogue with Kobeni's mouth movements. This anime, unusually for Japanese productions, has lip-syncing that matches the audio (whereas, in American cartoons, syncing audio with mouth movements is standard, and there's a long history of effort behind that). I believe the translator was likely motivated by a desire to match the mouth movements.
• Additionally, I imagine this Spanish translator struggled with the similarities between Spanish and Japanese. In the story, there’s a character named "Aki," but there’s also the Spanish word "aquí," meaning "here," which is used frequently. If you don’t listen carefully, it becomes unclear which one the speaker is referring to. Spanish has many words that can sound like Japanese vocabulary, which adds to the challenge.

日本語

「その魔人の力で８階から出られないんだ。絶対そうだ！」

「違うが？」

（”sono majin no chikara de 8-kai kara derare nain da. zettai sōda!” “chigau ga?”; "The genie's powers are preventing (us) from leaving the eighth floor. I'm sure of it!" "No, but?"）

• The phrase that ends with "が? (ga?)" is one of those expressions that is difficult to translate into English, but in short, it's a way of speaking that is often used by older men. Throughout the story, the girl in the white shirt speaks in a way that is typical of older men. The character of a girl who looks young but speaks like an old man is very popular in Japan, and it's interesting to see how this unique atmosphere is captured in other languages.

English

“Her ability is keeping us on the eighth floor. That just has to be why!!”

“Incorrect.”

• Although the English translation ultimately conveys the same meaning, the sentence structure changes quite a bit. Pinpointing exactly how and where it changes is a bit tricky, but the final result is that it expresses the same idea as the Japanese. The phrasing is very stylish, and personally, I love the phrase "That just has to be ..."—I want to start using it right away.

Español Latino

“Por culpa de esta poseída no podemos salir del octavo piso. ¡¡Eso debe ser!!”

“No es así.”

(“Because of this possessed woman we can't leave the eighth floor. That must be it!!”

“It's not like that.”)

• The Spanish translation, as always, is very faithful to the original.
• However, the Japanese word "魔人 (majin)" usually evokes the image of a "genie (like the one from the lamp)," but the Spanish translator has taken a unique approach by translating it as "poseída," meaning "the possessed (woman)."

日本語

「魔人をかばうの？私たちデビルハンターなのに。新井君は、悪魔の仲間なんだ。スパイだったんだ」

「酸っぱいじゃ」

(“majin o kabau no? watashi-tachi debiru hantā nanoni. Arai-kun wa, akuma no nakama nan da. supai dattan da” “suppai ja”; "Are you protecting a demon? We're devil hunters, right? Arai-kun, you are a friend of the devil. You are a spy." "Sour!")

• Kobeni mentions the word "スパイ (supai)," which means "spy," but because she doesn’t understand the meaning, she says "酸っぱい (suppai; sour)". Her statement is a meaningless joke, but I'm curious how this has been translated into different languages.

English

“You’re taking her side? And you call yourself a devil hunter. You’ve been spying with them all along, haven’t you? You’re Arai the spy!!”

“Oh, there’s pie?”

• In the English version, "pie" is used as a play on the word "spy". Interestingly, in the scene just before this, the "genie" girl wearing the white shirt had eaten some important food without permission, so the joke fits in quite well with the scene.

Español Latino

“¿Estás de su lado? Y te pones en contra nuestra. Arai eres aliado de los demonios. ¡Eres un espía infiltrado!”

“Y un tarado.”

(“You're on her side? And you're against us. Arai, you're an ally of the demons. You're an undercover spy!” “And a moron.”)

• The Spanish translator used "tarado", which means "stupid", as a play on "infiltrado", which means "infiltrator". However, even "stupid" seems to be a milder translation, and I had trouble finding this translation because the YouTube transcript marked it as an taboo word, like the f-word, and covered it with "[_]".

日本語

絶対スパイだ！！

(zettai supai da!!; (I’m) sure (you) must be a spy!!)

• You don't need to fully understand the finer points of grammar, but this sentence lacks both a subject and a verb, and yet it still works as a sentence. That’s how the Japanese language functions. Even though detailed grammar isn’t necessary, the expression "絶対〇〇だ (zettai ... da; I’m sure () must be ...)" is a very handy phrase to know, and it can come in useful in many situations:

1. 絶対Xだ。（(I'm) sure (it) must X.）
2. 絶対病気だ。（(I'm) sure (he/she) must be sick.）
3. 絶対女の子だ。((I’m) sure (s/he) must be a girl.)
4. 絶対メンドいから「はい」って答えてるやつだ。（(I'm) sure (s/he) answered "yes" because (s/he) didn't want to be disturbed anymore.）

English

I know what you are!!

• In the English version, they intentionally avoided using the word "spy" in the translation, but judging from the voice acting, it might have been the best translation choice. From my personal perspective, the English version of Kobeni’s performance feels crazier and cuter, which I really like. This English voice actor truly understands the concept of yandere.

Español Latino

¡¡Eres un espía!!

(You are a spy!!)

• As for the Spanish translation, it is, as always, faithful to the original Japanese text.
• Spanish has many words that are similar to English, which is helpful for Spanish learners who have already acquired some English. However, there are also words like "espía," which means "spy," where the pronunciation is similar but the spelling is quite different, making it a bit challenging.
• Another example is the word "entender". From the sound of it, I think it's the Spanish version of "understand".
• Also, do you know the Spanish translation for "explanation"? "Explanación"? Good, but "explicación" is more common. ...Why????

日本語

死んで！

（shinde!; Die!）

• It's not a very polite word, but this is an example sentence where you can learn the curse word "Die!" However, the Japanese phrase "死んで (shinde)!" is more commonly used by a delicate girl like Kobeni. If you are a man, it would feel more natural to use "死ね (shine)" instead. Also, I just want to make sure that this is not an English word, but a Japanese word, so you have to pronounce it Japanese style.

English:

DIE!!

• I don't have much to say about the English version.
• But in terms of performance, the voice acting in the English version is absolutely phenomenal. I really recommend listening to it, even just once. As expected from the land of Disney!

Español Latino

¡Muere!

(Die!)

• The Spanish "¡Muere!" is the second person imperative form of "morir (to die)". There are two types of imperative forms in Spanish: the "tú" form and the "vos" form. In this video, the Spanish Kobeni uses the "tú" form all the time because she is speaking Mexican Spanish. On the other hand, the most famous example of a country that uses the "vos" form is Argentina, and if it were translated there, it would probably be "¡Morí!" When I encounter languages like English or Spanish that have native speakers in many countries, I feel a strong urge to study them to the point where I can distinguish the variations in each country. Since Japanese is spoken only in Japan, such languages feel quite fresh to me.

日本語

私のせいじゃない！あなた、あなたのせいだから。あなたがおとなしく食べられてたら解決したのに。

(watashi no sei janai! Anata, anata no seidakara. Anata ga otonashiku taberarete tara kaiketsu shita no ni; It's not my fault! It's your fault. If you had just been quiet and eaten, the problem would have been solved.)

• This passage contains the phrase "It's not my fault," which seems like a useful phrase to remember in different languages.
• In fact, I personally find the original Japanese text a little strange. In the 18th century, the Japanese language underwent rapid globalization, and many new words were created through the forced translation of Western academic terms, and the word "解決 (kaiketsu; solution)" was also born at that time. However, it seems a bit strange that a girl who lost her temper and stabbed her colleague with a knife would use such an academic term. However, in modern times, it's possible that "解決" has become a word deeply rooted in everyday language, making it more natural to use in everyday life. This is just a personal feeling as a Japanese speaker.

English

It’s not my fault, okay? None of this would have happened if it were for him. You should have been good, and let it eat you. And everything would be fine!

• Surprisingly, the English version does not use the word "solve" at all. Her lines are all simple words, which I think makes the English translation better suited to the tone of the story.
• But from a linguistic point of view, the difficulty of the English "subjunctive" has long troubled English learners like me. Even in this example, trying to understand a sentence with "would/should have -ed if ..." from a grammatical point of view can be maddeningly difficult. Similar to the Japanese version, it feels strange that a mentally unstable girl can use such complex grammar so easily.

Español Latino

No, esto no fue mi culpa. ¡No! Todo esto es tu culpa. Todo se habría solucionado si ya hubieras dejado que te comiera.

(No, this wasn't my fault. No! This is all your fault. Everything would have been solved if you had just let (it) eat you.)

• The Spanish translation, known for its fidelity to the Japanese original, uses the word "solucionar."
• Also, bad news for me, the complexity of the subjunctive is also present in Spanish, as if "conjugating verbs" wasn't the first and biggest challenge for Spanish learners. I could catch a glimpse of it in the words "habría" and "hubieras", but I am not ready to deal with it. So I won't go into it too much for now.

This concludes the content of this article. Thank you very much for reading all the way through.

From what I can tell from this scene, the English Kobeni seems to be portrayed as a more intelligent but nervous woman (she reminds me of Wendy Torrance from The Shining) compared to the Japanese version, while the Spanish Kobeni is portrayed as a more childish and powerless girl. Of course, I'm not trying to argue that one country's translation is better than another's, or that it's a problem if a character differs from the original. Rather, I want to point out how the interpretation of a character in each country can significantly influence the translator's script and the voice actors' performances. This is why I consider translation to be one of the creative professions. I can guess that a deep understanding of the work and a unique interpretation are, in my opinion, the most challenging and important issues that a professional translator must face. From this perspective, I think that the translations of the creators of the English and Spanish versions are both professional works that I could never hope to achieve, let alone imagine.

I love English and was once good enough to become an English teacher at a Japanese junior high school. But that was in the past, and since then my English skills have been declining rapidly. So, as part of my language learning, I decided to post some simple questions and comments about the English language that are not easy for me (and that I should ask on HiNative or Quora) on Newgrounds. I am not an expert in English and may make elementary mistakes, but thank you for your patience.

Let’s See How Great a Professional Translator Is | English Is Not So Easy 25

I often post articles that are too manic and boring for Newgrounds because I studied English too much, and I'm afraid this might be one of them. However, I feel obligated to post these kinds of articles because I need to periodically bring my overconfident "If it's in English, I can understand 80% of it" self back down to earth.

Junji Ito (伊藤潤二) is a horror manga artist known for works like "Tomie" and "Uzumaki," and I personally love his work because the characters are unusually beautiful and cute.

What I want to talk about this time is the video on YouTube when vismedia invited Ito to Canada for an interview in 2019. Coincidentally, this video turned out to be an excellent study material for me in learning English. That's because just by correlating Junji Ito's Japanese with the English of the interviewer and translator, there's a lot to learn.

Among the things worth noting is the unnamed translator on the right side of the screen. I'm not a translator, but it's easy to imagine that becoming a professional translator like her would require not only a deep knowledge of both English and Japanese, but also many other skills, such as the ability to take, interpret, and present accurate notes on long and complex discussions.

She is not in an environment like mine where I can spend a lot of time translating with different tools, but she can instantly do translation work that I could never hope to do. In this article, I've transcribed part of the conversation from the interview (thanks to YouTube's transcription!) and examined how accurate her translations are and how to translate "professionally".

As a native Japanese speaker but not a native English speaker, my listening skills are limited, so there may be some errors or awkward places in the English text. If you find any, I'd be grateful if you'd let me know in the comments or via PM.

Short or Long Stories (31:42)

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): I also wanted to ask, I think, in addition to a couple of your longer works that we all know and love, you've serialized a lot of short stories, and I personally think short stories are in many ways better than longer works, like I think Stephen King short stories are better than his novels. I think Philip K Dick's short stories have been more energy than his weird rambling long books. So I guess the question I wanted to ask Ito-sensei is, do you have an idea about how do you figure out whether an idea should be a short story or be serialized, be something longer, and when you are serializing, how far do you plan it out? Do you know the ending or do you let yourself sort of be surprised along the way?

• Although not mentioned in this article, from the full context of the interview, it appears that the interviewer, Ryan Sands, is a professional writer or someone involved in creative work, particularly with a deep knowledge of literature. In that sense, I think this question was one that needed to be asked early on.

Junji Ito: 私は長編の書き方はまだよくわかってないので、だいたい短編が適してると思います。長編は連載のために無理矢理考えだして、短編で済むような話を無理やり引き延ばしたようなものもあります。できれば短編ばかり書いていけたら一番です。

Translator: You know the thing is I still don't really know how to write the long form story that well. For me the short story is really the foundation I think, and when I'm writing a longer story, I kind of have to force it. I really have to pull it out of me. So something that could really fit nicely in a short story, I sort of stretch it out or something. If possible, I'd love to just only do short stories.

• The part she translated with the strong word "foundation", "The short story is really the foundation", was actually "短編が適してる (Drawing short stories is suitable for me)", but her translation makes it clearer that Junji Ito's identity is rooted in short stories. This is a good translation.

Junji Ito: 長編の場合は、どこまでストーリーを考えるかっていうのは作品によって違ったんですけど、『地獄星レミナ』っていう漫画は、最初から最後まで絵コンテを書き終わってから作画に入りまして、一応最後までストーリーを考えました。それとは逆に、最近は行き当たりばったりで、先のこと考えずに書いてるんですけど。最初から最後までストーリー作っちゃってから書くっていうのは、あんまりおもしろくないですね。行き当たりばったりで、とりあえず原稿第一話書いちゃって、「その次はどうする？」ってやった方が、思いがけないストーリーが生まれるような気がします。ただ、書いてる最中は不安でしょうがないですね。「破綻したらどうしよう」とか、「最初に書いちゃったことと辻褄合わせられなかったらどうしよう」っていう不安で、夜も眠れないっていうか、今そんな状態なんですけど。

Translator: With the longer story, like how far I plan the story ahead before I start working on it, it really differs from work to work, of course, but for instance with the work, "Hellstar Remina", I did everything from start to finish. I did all the story boards for everything. So the whole story was finished before I even started drawing it. But lately I've sort of just been like going where the wind takes me as it were, so I don't go all the way to the end of the story when I start it. To be honest, to write it out from the start to the finish is sort of not that interesting to me. It loses its sparkle in a lot of ways. So I just do it on the fly in a sort of way, do the storyboard and then [*Sorry, I couldn't hear*] next, where am I going with this. It takes the story in some surprising directions that it wouldn't otherwise go, and that's really interesting, but it also brings a lot of like anxiety for me personally, like, "Wait! If I do this then what happens next?" or like, "How can I do this?" or "This thing happened and now this? Ugh!!"

Audience: *laughter*

Translator: And sometimes I can't even sleep, like, it gets to that point of the anxiety gets like that, so that's the state I'm currently in so.

Audience: *laughter*

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): Sounds intense.

Translator: (To Ito) それはすごいですね

• This is the skill of a professional translator. She can translate this amount of text in an instant and deliver a speech over a long period. At least for me, this kind of work is impossible without training or, no matter how much training I get.
• If I were Canadian and in her position, I would first be confused by the phrase "行き当たりばったり." While "randomly" is the closest dictionary definition, it's not possible to write a story randomly unless you’re a monkey sitting in front of a typewriter, so she used the expression "where the wind takes me."
• The part including "it loses its sparkle" is not present in Junji Ito's original remark, but it does seem to make the story flow better with this expression.
• Junji Ito's worries about "「破綻したらどうしよう」とか、「最初に書いちゃったことと辻褄合わせられなかったらどうしよう」" would be translated literally as "'What if the story falls apart?' or 'What if I can't make it consistent with what I wrote at the beginning?'" but she humorously expresses it using her own words.

Ito's career as a dental technician (37:20)

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): I know that you worked as a dental technician previously before you became a full-time creator, and I think a lot of our favorite stories have a theme of body horror, you know, dealing with physical deformation and the way that psychological pain affects your physical body, and also beauty and aging, dying young Tomie, and so, I've always wanted to ask you this: Did working as a dental technician...

Audience: *laughter*

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): ...and working with people's bodies or having medical training, did that influence I think the way you think about the body? Is body horror scary to you?

Junji Ito: LOL 私の漫画は「ボディーホラー」であるというようなことをWikipediaで見て、「あっ、そういわれてみればそうだな」って思いました。やっぱり、人体が変形する話が多いので、それは的確な指摘だと思ったんですけど、歯科技工士というのは口だけが専門でですね、身体はあまり関係ないんで、あまり歯科技工士としての仕事がボディーホラーに影響しているかっていうと、あまり関係がないかもしれません。ただ、歯科技工士の学校で解剖学の授業がありまして、人体の名称をラテン語で覚えたりして、そういうところで解剖学に興味をもった、っていうのは事実です。

Translator: Yeah, the fact that my manga is considered "body horror", I actually saw that on Wikipedia,...

Audience: *laughter*

Translator: ...and I was like, "Oh yeah, I guess now that you mention it! Yeah."

Audience: *laughter*

Translator: So, one of the main themes of my work is obviously like how deformations of the body and like, you know, changes in the body, so I, yeah, that was appropriate I thought. But like as a dental technician, that work is dealing with the mouth basically just the mouth area, and doesn't really have any connection at all to the body. So being a dental technician, I mean, as an influence on body horror, I don't think it was really connected at all. But, when I was in school to become a dental technician, we had anatomy lessons where we had to learn, we studied the human body in Latin, and so, I did develop an interest in anatomy from that.

• Junji Ito once worked as a dental technician, and his career is discussed in more detail in interviews, but I didn't cover it in this article.
• What surprised me was that I first consulted the Japanese version of Junji Ito's Wikipedia, but there was no mention of "body horror (ボディーホラー?)", but it was mentioned in the English version of Wikipedia. Based on his demeanor, I assumed that Ito might not be familiar with the English language, but it seems that he has enough English to be able to refer to the English Wikipedia.

Junji Ito: 私も若いころ対人恐怖症だったので、一番怖いのは人間の心だなっていうのがありますね。心を宿した身体というのが私にとって恐怖の対象なのかなと思います。動物のボディーはあまり怖いとは思わないんですけど、鮫とかは怖いですけど。そういうところから、人間の身体のホラーにつながったのかなって思います。

Translator: Actually, when I was young, I really had this phobia of people, basically I was, and the human body like the scariest thing in the world to me was like the human heart. And so, that the heart and the body were, sort of like, this fountain of terror for me.　I didn't find animals scary, although sharks are scary,...

Audience: *laughter*

Translator: ...but the human body was really just a kind of a source of horror for me.

• Although I left it out of this article, Ito had previously mentioned how terrifying Steven Spielberg's JAWS was. I think that was the reason for the audience's laughter.
• "対人恐怖症" is now a common psychiatric term in Japan, and the literal translation is "anthropophobia". But I personally feel that this term is not used as much in English-speaking countries as it is in Japan. So she used "phobia of people," which I think also captures the nuance of his remark well.
• The expression "Fountain of Terror" struck me as a very stylish phrase. The relevant part is "恐怖の対象," and indeed, I feel that this term is challenging to translate into English.

Junji Ito: 歯科技工士をやった経験が漫画に一番役立ったのはですね、漫画を描く道具を加工する、ペン軸を自分の手に合うように削ったりとか、それにサンドペーパーをかけて滑らかにしてあげる、そうすると使いやすくなる。道具を加工する技術を歯科技工士の技術でやってますんで、そこは役に立ってます。

Translator: I think the most useful thing that I learned as a dental technician and the thing that I carry with me even now is, you know, when I have a lot of tools for when I'm making manga, and so I like modify them to fit my hands properly, so I'll shave a little bit off, or you know, take some sandpaper to it and really smooth it down and make it easier for me to use. And so that's something that I used to do as a dental technician, and that skills kind of carried over now.

• In this conversation, there are no very difficult topics discussed, but since Ito is a professional manga artist, there is a possibility that he might delve into complex discussions about drawing manga. A notable example of this is when he later held a live drawing session where he discussed quite advanced topics about the tools he uses and how he draws illustrations, and she translated it all perfectly.

The Genesis of Fuchi (43:05)

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): I wanted to thank you for all the nightmares caused by this character.

Audience: *Admiration*

Translator: (To Ito) このキャラからの悪夢をありがとうございます。

Ito: あぁ… LOL

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): And you mentioned no connection to your dental work, but her mouth has also caused many nightmares for me.

Audience: *Laughter*

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): For people who don't know, this character's name is "Fuchi", and she's an enormous woman with needle teeth and this stare. I have you here so I'll ask, where did this woman come from?

Audience: *Laughter*

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): Who is she? Why is she?

Audience: *Laughter*

Junji Ito: 私が書いてたのが、少女向け雑誌だったんですね。「ハロウィン」っていうのは、少女向けホラー雑誌だったので、主な読者が少女だったんですが、私はファッションセンスがなかったんで、参考のためにファッション誌を買ってきてそれを参考にして漫画を描いてたんですけど、あるファッション誌をめくってたら、モデルさんなんでもちろんきれいなんですけど、「ちょっとおかしいな。ちょっと怖いぞ」ていうふうな、そんなモデルさんの顔を見て、ファッションモデルで綺麗なはずなのに、化け物であるというのがアイデアとして閃いて、そこから「ファッションモデルの化け物」っていうキャラクターを生んだんですけど、当初考えていたよりもお化けみたいな顔になっちゃってまして、本当はもうちょっときれいに描きたかったですね。

Translator: When I was writing this, I actually was writing for, this girls magazine, I mean, it was this magazine a horror magazine called "Halloween", but it was for girls in the Shoujo-manga market, and so the readers were like young girls ostensibly, but you know, I didn't have any fashion sense myself, or any idea of fashion, so I bought some fashion magazines as a reference, and then, I drew this manga while I was referring to these magazines. And I was looking at one magazine, and there's this model and, of course, she's pretty, she's an attractive model, but there's something that was sort of like, "Eh?"

Audience: *Laughter*

Translator: Like it was sort of, you know, something scary or kind of weird about her. I mean, she's a fashion model, so she's supposed to be pretty, but then, you know, she's a monster and that idea kind of got planted in my head there. I came up with this idea of the character being a fashion model but she's actually a monster, and that was kind of, you know, the genesis of it. But she turned out to be really a monster. She was supposed to be more beautiful in my original idea, but she's mostly just monstrous.

Audience: *Laughter*

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): My favorite part of the stories that she's in is that there are a bunch of people who are like, "Oh yeah, let's hire her! She seems great!"

Audience: *Laughter*

Translator: (To Ito) 渕さんの一番好きなポイントは、みんなが「あぁ、渕さんなら雇いましょうか！」って周りの皆さんが言うところで。

Ito: LOL そこはですね、恐ろしいパワーで仕事を得るという。

Translator: She has some power to obtain work.

Audience: *Laughter*

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): It's a very empowering story for all the girls in the audience.

• During the interviews, I could sometimes hear the Japanese spoken by the translator, and her pronunciation was perfect and very easy to understand, indicating that she is a very experienced translator.
• Personally, I found the word "ostensibly" in her translation of "the readers were like young girls ostensibly" interesting. This word does not appear in Ito's original remark, but she seemed to feel the need to add it. It seems that she briefly wondered, "Did he write for a girl's manga magazine even though he's a male horror manga artist?" For Japanese people, it's not unusual for male manga artists to submit work to girls' manga magazines, or for female manga artists to submit work to boys' manga magazines (Fullmetal Alchemist and Demon Slayer are famous examples). However, it may seem a bit strange to non-Japanese audiences.
• I thought it was interesting how she humorously expressed "Eh?!", which was Ito's reaction of "ちょっとおかしいな。ちょっと怖いぞ (a little strange, a little scary)" to the model, drawing laughter from the audience.
• This is my personal impression, but I find the most appealing character to be a girl who is not only beautiful or cute or pretty, but also evokes a feeling of "pain" in those who look at her, even for a moment. This "pain" is described by Ito as "weirdness," and others might call it "creepiness." I believe that this attraction to such women may come from a deeper instinct to understand a person's inner self more deeply.

The Genesis of "Gyo" (46:56)

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): I'm going to ask　about another story that I　think, has caused many nightmares in this room, so I think I know,... for folks who know "Gyo", and another story of Ito-sensensei is the called "The Thing that Drifted Ashore", there's this Primal Fear of what's deep below the water what's in the sea, I personally I read Jaws when I was like 10 or 12, and so, this one really got me hard, but I think also a theme in these stories of like nature sort of getting revenge on us, or the Earth sort of lashing back at humans, and I think, you know, this story came out a long time ago, and since then the realities of sort of what we're doing to the Earth have become pretty clear, and terrifying. Can you talk a little bit about sort of like, what this kind of story or environmental horror means to you now?

Junji Ito: もう50年くらい生きてきますとですね、あっ、55年ですけど、地球が温暖化して、明らかに私の子供のころよりも雪は減りましたし、暑くなってるなって実感できるんですけど、環境を考えた場合、地球はやがて干上がるだろうなって、もちろんそんな近い将来じゃないんでしょうけど、そのうち火星のようになってしまうのかなって思ってまして。やはり、地球の環境は徐々に悪化していくんだろうなって思います。

Translator: I've lived like 50, oh wait, 55 years now, and you know, it's clear like climate change has been happening, and you know there's, like for instance, there's less snow now than when I was a kid. The environment is definitely getting worse and worse, and so, obviously it's not going to happen tomorrow, but I think like what if we are we going to end up like Mars or something you know. And it keeps, the environment just keeps getting worse like we're not getting any better here.

• She faithfully translated Ito’s slip of the tongue, resulting in the phrase, "I've lived like 50, oh wait, 55 years now." However, this was not her mistake.
• As I’ve been writing this text, I’ve realized once again how difficult it is to transcribe spoken conversations into text, whether in English or Japanese. They frequently use what are called "fillers," such as "um" or "you know" in English, and "あの," "ちょっと," or "やっぱり" in Japanese. They often start saying something and then stop, as we saw earlier. YouTube transcription picks up on these fillers faithfully, so it took quite a bit of time to turn the transcription into readable text. And I still haven't found a clear answer on how much of this should be omitted. I hope this article is easy to read.

Junji Ito: でも、そんなたいそうなこと言いましたけど、私が漫画を描くときはあんまりテーマを考えないんですよ。なんか、最初のアイデアはちょっとしたイメージだったり、ちょっと違和感あって面白いなっていうような発想だったりして、それを膨らませて書くんですよ。その過程でテーマをくっつけていくっていう書き方をしていまして。『ギョ』の場合、そうですね、なんていうか、環境問題というのはあまり考えてなかったんですね。それよりも、最初は、さっき鮫が怖いって言いましたけど、海の中に入らなければ鮫は別に怖くないんですけど...

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): うんうん

Junji Ito: それが陸に上がってきたら反則だろって。

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): *giggle*

Junji Ito: それはもう怖すぎるなっていうところから、「ギョ」っていうのは始まりまして。

• Incidentally, the interviewer, Ryan Sands, didn't speak Japanese, but he must have had a fairly high level of Japanese, because he occasionally responded to Ito's words with a nod or a laugh before the translator began to speak.

Translator:  The thing is, I think, you know, when I'm working on manga, like when I'm writing my manga, I'm not sitting there, I don't think of the themes of the work when I start doing it. I get the first idea or an image of something, and I think, "Ah, that's kind of weird!" and so then, I kind of feel like, "Oh that's good!" and I expand on that little nugget of weirdness, and then after the fact, you know, thematic idea sort of get slapped onto it, like, "Oh, it about this!" So with "Gyo", it wasn't that I was writing particularly about environmental themes, it was more about, well, I said before that sharks are scary,...

Audience: *Laughter*

Translator:  ...and the thing is though about sharks is that if you don't go in the ocean they're not that scary. But if they came on to land...

Audience: *Laughter*

Translator:  ...that would be way too scary.

• Her phrases like "Ah, that's kind of weird!" and "Oh, that's good!" and "Oh, it's about this!" were completely ad-libbed. She likely added them to make the translation more dynamic. Since she’s not solving translation questions on a college entrance exam, you can see that the translator is constructing a general storyline in her head and then conveying it as she speaks.
• When she said "nugget," I imagined the delicious bite-sized chicken pieces you can get at McDonald's, but it seems she was using it in a different context.
• As a side note, this part of the interview generated the biggest laughs. Although Junji Ito's stories are often terrifying enough to chill the blood, he himself is a cheerful and humorous person. On the other hand, while Hayao Miyazaki's stories are warm and heartwarming, he is known to be a difficult and somewhat sadistic person.

Horror and Comedy (51:49)

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): I wanted to ask to, I know you mentioned already Umezu Kazuo as an inspiration to you, and I think for folks who've read his comics in English the ones that are mostly out are his horror work, and he's, you know, known as a Godfather of horror but, he's also uh known as sort of a Godfather of comedy and children's manga, and I know, Ito-sensei, you've created, like funny strips or yonkoma (four cell manga; a comic strip format) in the back of your books, and you did an entire series that's hilarious about your cats, so do you think there's a connection between fear and horror ([Precip.24] I think he meant to say "horror and comedy")? Can you talk a little bit about the writing or the art of telling a scary story versus telling a funny story?

Junji Ito: 私の場合は、よく「恐怖と笑いは紙一重」って日本で言われてて、表裏一体というか、本質的には恐怖と笑いは同じようなものだっていう考え方があるんですけど、私はよくわからないですね。恐怖にもいろんな種類があって、笑えない恐怖もあると思うので、必ずしも表裏一体とは思ってないですね。私の場合は、アイデアを思いつくとアイデア帳にアイデアを書いて忘れないようにしてて、怖いアイデアもあるんですけど、ギャグも思いつくと書いちゃうんですね。その笑いのギャグのアイデアをもったいないなと思ってしまってですね。私はホラー漫画家なのでホラーしか書かないんですけど、ギャグを使わないまま眠らせてしまうともったいなくて、あの、ホラー漫画の雰囲気を損なわない程度に、スパイス的にギャグを入れたり、出たアイデアのギャグを入れるっていうような感じで。バランスとしてはやっぱりホラーなんで、怖い漫画なんだけど、ちょっと笑いもいれて読者にほっとしてもらう瞬間を作りたい…まぁ、そんなこと考えてなくて、ホントはギャグ入れたいだけなんですけど。

Translator: I think like in Japan they say that, you know, "fear and humor are two sides of the same coin" there's that kind of thinking that happens. I don't personally know so much about that, but like, there are a lot of different kinds of fear and horror and terror, and some of those, of course, are not laughable you can't laugh at them, but for me personally, I have a notebook of ideas that I keep, and I just write down like any idea as it occurs to me to save it for light or to work on it. So obviously a lot of these are scary ideas, but I also have like little jokes or little funny things that I notice, and I write those down too, and it just seems like such a shame to just leave them there, you know, like "What a waste!" Because I'm a horror artist, right, so obviously I write only horror, but, you know, there's these jokes that I have, and it seems like such a shame not to use them. So I kind of try and balance it so that I don't upset, you know, take away the the horror of it or just sort of like adding a little bit of spice to the mix. So it's mostly horror, so it's scary, but I want to make a little moment for the reader to kind of breathe in and sort of have a little, "Oh, phew!" it's relaxing kind of laughing moment. Although I say that, but really I just want to write little gags in there.

Audience: *Laughter*

• This conversation about how to approach "horror and comedy" starts with the difficulty of the question, with the interviewer struggling with his words, and Itō also carefully choosing his words to respond to the challenging issue.
• "紙一重" is an old phrase that literally means "a layer of paper," but the translator rendered it as "two sides of the same coin. I love this translation.
• There was a time in Japan when the idea that the word "もったいない" was untranslatable became popular, but I am somewhat skeptical of that notion. It usually means something like "wasteful" or "unworthy," but she translated it with her own words, "such a shame" or "what a waste!

Junji Ito: 私がいちばん最高のギャグマンガだと思うのは、楳図かずお先生の「まことちゃん」っていう漫画なんですけど、この漫画は単なる笑いを通り越して、狂気とか、人間のコンプレックスを深くえぐったギャグマンガだと思うんですけど、それが笑いにつながっているということで、楳図先生のギャグマンガはホラー漫画家の描くギャグマンガだなっていうことですね。それが大好きです。

Translator: I think the the best gag manga of like maybe all time is, Kazuo Umezu's "Makoto-chan" which,... I don't know if that's out in English?

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): No.

Translator:  It is not? I'm sorry.

Audience: *Laughter*

Translator: ...But the way Umezu does this thing where he takes up the, you know, the human condition as it were, and turns these pulls the laughter out of it, and makes these jokes, and really like, you know, digs into human complex, you know, the complexes of the human mind and neurosis and just like gouges it out, to sort of create, you know, jokes and laughter from that. I really think that, you know, Umezu is a great example of like a horror manga artist who successfully navigates humor as well, and I just love his work.

Ryan Sands (Interviewer): I think I'm speaking for folks in the audience, but we like when you make us laugh and not just terrify us.

• Although she has extensive knowledge of Junji Ito's works and manga culture, she seems unfamiliar with other Japanese manga artists that only Japanese people would normally know. There was a scene where she looked confused every time Ito mentioned another manga artist's name. In addition, when Ito was asked by another interviewer what horror movie had influenced him, Ito mentioned "死霊館 (shiryokan)," which is actually the American movie "The Conjuring," but it was given a unique Japanese title, and she couldn't translate it either. However, since only researchers of Japanese horror culture outside of Japan would know these details, it's not her fault.
• The phrase "digs into human complex" corresponds to the Japanese phrase "人間のコンプレックスを深くえぐった". To be honest, this expression doesn't feel quite right in Japanese, and I think it's a unique phrase from Junji Ito himself. However, she managed to translate even this part impressively. She also translated the same phrase as "gouge it out," which I also thought was a very fresh expression.

This concludes this article. Thank you for reading this far.

Are there any readers who feel inspired to become translators after reading this far? As a native Japanese speaker with a good command of English, I once considered becoming a translator. However, after seeing the work of this professional translator, I realized that it was completely beyond my abilities, and I gave up that dream.

However, even if you can't reach the top level like they can, I personally believe that learning a language is a valuable pursuit for the learner. Although I'm not an educator, so I can't speak to the specific benefits, I think it's incredibly cool when an English-speaking netizen effortlessly reads Japanese in response to the common "What does this Japanese product say?" posts on Reddit. After all, reading the text in images is something machines can't...

I love English and was once good enough to become an English teacher at a Japanese junior high school. But that was in the past, and since then my English skills have been declining rapidly. So, as part of my language learning, I decided to post some simple questions and comments about the English language that are not easy for me (and that I should ask on HiNative or Quora) on Newgrounds. I am not an expert in English and may make elementary mistakes, but thank you for your patience.

“Ojou-sama Language” in English | English Is Not So Easy 24

Recently, I created an original character named VOFCAT, and I wanted to make a 3D avatar of her. When I created her using VRoid, I was surprised at how much cuter the character turned out compared to when I draw illustrations myself.

By the way, in Japan there is a group of people called "ojou-sama (お嬢様)," who is a noble and refined girl or lady, and there is a concept known as "ojou-sama language."

Especially in anime, there is "ojou-sama laugh (お嬢様笑い)", in which an ojou-sama laughs with an "ohoho" sound, and this type of character also speaks a unique form of Japanese that is slightly different from the Japanese used by ordinary Japanese speakers, and this is called "ojou-sama language".

This made me wonder if there was an "ojou-sama (refined lady) language" in English that might be equivalent. I have been doing some research on this, and in my exploration I have stumbled upon some fascinating discoveries in the enchanted forest of English. In this article, I'll share what I found. This time, as always, the content is a bit scattered, so I hope you can read this not so much as a helpful guide to learning English, but as a casual record of my own English learning journey.

1. How do you do?

According to dictionaries, this phrase is defined as a greeting used when meeting someone for the first time, but it’s considered very old-fashioned and overly formal by native English speakers. In that sense, Japanese ojou-samas are famous for greeting with "御機嫌よう (gokigenyou)," which could be seen as the equivalent of "How do you do?"

While researching usage examples, I found out that a song with the same name was played on the Disneyland attraction "Splash Mountain." However, as a non-native English speaker who has never even been to Disneyland in Tokyo, my investigative skills have limits, so I couldn’t figure out why this song was used, what the story was, or why the attraction was closed.

2. I'm delighted to meet you.

Like "How do you do?" this expression is also used when meeting someone for the first time. Some literature suggests that "delighted" is a word that can be replaced with "happy," but using this word makes it sound more like an ojou-sama.

• "I'm delighted to meet you."
• "I would be delighted if you could..."
• "I would be delighted to..."

While the text indicates that this is formal language that even ordinary people can use, I imagine there are quite a few native speakers who would be surprised to hear someone use "delighted" instead of "happy."

Also, you can use the expression "How delightful it is!" to convey that something is wonderful. Would that also sound ojou-sama-like?

3. And you?

In Japanese textbooks, students are taught to respond to "How are you?" with "I'm fine, thank you. And you?" This phrase is not only completely unusable in American daily conversations, but also, according to a native speaker (Kevin from KER), "And you?" sounds like something a princess or noble lady would say at a ball.

There are also texts that discuss ojou-sama-like responses to "How are you?" and one of the examples introduced was "I'm quite well." Apparently, the word "well" gives it a British English vibe.

4. Pardon? / I beg your pardon? / Pardon me.

Japanese people tend to struggle with understanding native English speakers, so these phrases are taught early in English learning. However, it seems that "pardon" sounds a bit too aristocratic for Americans to use in everyday conversation. Interestingly, in Britain, it’s not such an unusual word, and some people use it daily.

Speaking of which, as in the previous example, many Japanese English learners believe that ojou-sama speaks British English. While I understand that there are different people in America and Britain, I wonder how accurate this image is. Is British English ojou-sama language?

5. May I have the pleasure?

Here, "the pleasure" refers to a dance, and it’s a phrase apparently only used at balls. This is a great example of a context that can’t be understood from the phrase alone unless one shares a certain cultural background in the English-speaking world.

A similar phrase in Japan is "Shall we dance?" which became famous because a movie with the same name was a big hit in Japan. The movie was apparently remade in Hollywood, so perhaps many people remember it from there.

By the way, in response to the main topic of this article, "Teach me Ojou-sama-like English phrases!" some of you may want to reply, "Learn from the way this character in this movie talks!" I agree. I would give the same advice if I were in your position. So, I decided to follow that advice, even though it hasn’t been given to me yet.

Specifically, I enjoy an early Disney work, "The Aristocats," which is about noble cats living in France. In that movie, Duchess (left), the mother cat, is a very beautiful and graceful lady, and I suspect her way of speaking might be close to "ojou-sama language" in English. I sampled her language, especially her conversation with the gentleman cat, Thomas O'Malley (right), who appears in the middle of the story, and I’ll share that in this article.

6. What might your name be?

This phrase was spoken by O'Malley, and I thought it was a very elegant way to ask someone’s name instead of saying, "What is your name?"

7. I am really in a great deal of trouble.

This phrase, spoken by Duchess, is a very glamorous way of saying "I'm in trouble," so I made a note of it. With both "really" and "a great deal" included, it clearly conveys that she’s in significant trouble.

8. If you would be just so kind and (show me the way)

I thought this could be a useful phrase when asking for a favor. In Japanese textbooks, the most polite way to make a request is "I was wondering if you would...," but this phrase is equally beautiful.

By the way, when asking someone to do something, I tend to use "Would you...?" instead of "Could you...?". Although I'm not a native English speaker, I feel that the former asks about the person's willingness, while the latter asks about their ability, and I personally feel that asking about someone's ability might be a bit impolite, so I tend to choose "Would you...?". I wonder if Duchess has a similar philosophy.

9. How can we ever thank you?

No gentleman in this world could refuse a request from a beautiful lady like Duchess. As expected, O'Malley responds, and Duchess’s thank you is again expressed in very beautiful English.

My personal opinion is that including "we" in this phrase gives the impression that "you have saved my family," making it a better expression than "Thank you very much!"

This is totally off topic, but have you ever said or been told, "Haven't we met before?"

I've heard it a lot in movies, but I've never encountered it in real life. So I'm sure if I used the Japanese translated version in my everyday conversation (前にどこかで会った or something), the person would definitely respond, "What? Are you an American?" But this is one of the phrases I want to encounter in my lifetime.

By the way, Madame Duchess's response to this phrase was, "Oh, and I'm so very glad we did this morning."

This is the end of this article. Thank you very much for reading this far.

Finally, I sometimes wonder why I'm so drawn to non-practical languages that I don't even use myself, and I recently realized that it's because I admire the English I've encountered in the worlds of stories. By researching what "ojou-sama" English" is, I believe I can better understand the personalities of characters in Hollywood movies and Nickelodeon cartoons, and gain a deeper understanding of these works without relying on translations. Such insights, I believe, will certainly enrich my life.

[For Japanese Learners]

If someone asked me to teach them "ojou-sama language" in Japanese, I would say, "Just watch Salome's streams." As for speakers of "ojou-sama language" in Japan, I think the most famous one is the VTuber (virtual YouTuber; online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar created by computer graphics), "Ichi Hyakumantenbara Salome (壱百満天原サロメ)".

I believe that analyzing her way of speaking would give a general understanding of this style in Japanese (although the task seems rather tedious).

That aside, I believe that it is generally very beneficial for your language learning to listen to the streams of a VTuber who speaks the language you want to learn. Recently, I've been looking for VTubers who speak Spanish (preferably Español Latino, spoken by Mexicans) and German (Hochdeutsch), so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know (I already have a favorite Californian English speaker for English).

I've occasionally introduced some scary stories from Japan, and this time I'd like to introduce a genre of scary stories that's trending in Japan, known as "scary stories when you understand the meanings (意味が分かると怖い話; 意味怖)". These are stories where nothing seems frightening at first, but as the reader unravels a subtle detail or question, they stumble upon a terrifying truth. Although almost all of these stories can be considered fictional due to the nature of the genre, the blend of horror and mystery in these short stories has made them quite popular. On the Internet, they are often discussed alongside traditional horror stories.

In this article, I will present 10 stories that fall into the genre of "scary stories when you understand the meanings". Each story will be presented in its entirety, and then in the "Answer" section, I will explain the terrifying truth. For those who enjoy puzzles, I suggest you stop after reading the first part of each story and try to figure out the hidden mystery for yourself.

1. The Well

One day, I was irritated by my sister's crying, so I killed her.

I threw her body into the well.

The next day, when I checked, the body was gone.

Five years later, I killed a friend over a trivial argument.

I threw the body into the well.

The next day, when I checked, the body was gone.

Ten years later, I killed a woman I had impregnated.

I threw the body into the well.

The next day, when I checked, the body was gone.

Fifteen years later, I killed my annoying boss.

I threw the body into the well.

The next day, when I checked, the body was gone.

Twenty years later, my mother needed care, and she became a burden, so I killed her.

I threw the body into the well.

The next day, the body was still there.

The next day, and the day after that, the body remained.

Answer:

The narrator’s mother had been cleaning up the bodies thrown into the well.

My Comment:

This story is so famous that it’s guaranteed to appear if you search for "scary stories when you understand the meanings" in Japanese. It's based on a short story from Takashi Atoda's novel "Meiro" (Maze). Frankly speaking, I don't particularly like this story, but since it’s so well-known in this genre, I decided to introduce it first.

2. Living Alone

Despite my parents' objections, I started living alone from today.

I woke up alone, ate breakfast, took out the trash, and got ready for the day.

I was filled with satisfaction, having achieved my dream of living alone.

I locked the house, greeted the elderly woman who waters her flowers every morning, and headed to school.

Answer:

Since the narrator knows the old woman's daily routine, it means that the narrator has not moved to a new place, but is still living in the same house. In other words, the narrator achieved living alone by killing her family.

My Comment:

To decipher this type of story, it’s important to always read critically. Though slightly off-topic, I believe critical reading has become an essential skill in today’s world.

3. House Party

I threw a house party for my birthday.

During the party, I took a picture of everyone inside the house, and something strange appeared in the photo.

From a closet behind everyone, a woman with a ghostly white face and blood-red eyes was peeking out, glaring at us.

Frightened, I had the photo examined by a psychic.

She said, "This photo is not a spirit photograph."

Answer:

Someone who isn’t a ghost is hiding in the narrator’s closet.

My Comment:

The idea of "someone hiding in your closet" originates from a scary story that trended online in the 2000s (a friend of mine calls it ‘Oshimusha,’ though the details are unclear), and there are numerous variations of it.

4. The Well (Another Story)

One night, a man was walking through his village when he heard a girl crying for help.

When he reached the direction of the voice, he found a girl being pulled into a well by a white hand.

The man attacked the white hand with a stick, and the hand disappeared into the well.

Answer:

The girl wasn’t being attacked by a monster from the well; she was trying to save a friend who was about to fall into the well.

My Comment:

Sometimes good intentions backfire, which can make helping others a challenge. It just occurred to me that this genre may have evolved in a similar way to American jokes. Many stories in this genre could also be classified as American jokes. In that sense, I personally feel that the "World's Funniest Joke" could be included in this list.

5. Dog Barking

A couple bought an old house near the forest.

Soon after moving in, they started hearing a dog barking from somewhere.

But no matter how much they searched, they couldn't find a dog.

The next day, they heard the barking again but still couldn’t find the dog.

They concluded that the sound was just the wind rustling the trees in the forest and decided not to worry about it.

A year later, they decided to renovate the living room.

When they pulled up the old carpet, they found stairs leading to a basement.

As they descended the stairs, they found a dog wagging its tail, chained up.

Answer:

Someone has been living in the house for a year, taking care of the dog.

My Comment:

This story reminds me of a famous Korean movie.

6. The Bus

A family took a bus to visit the wife’s parents in the countryside.

When they reached the foot of a mountain, the child started whining, saying, "I’m hungry."

With no other option, they got off at the next bus stop and went to a nearby diner to eat.

After their meal, they watched the TV in the diner and saw a news report about the bus they had just been on, which had been in a landslide accident, killing all the passengers.

After seeing the news, the wife said, "I wish we hadn’t gotten off the bus."

Answer:

If the family hadn’t gotten off the bus, it wouldn’t have been in the path of the falling rocks, and the accident wouldn’t have happened.

My Comment:

This story is one of the most challenging in this genre, almost like a logic puzzle. However, it's worth noting that the story overlooks the possibility that the rockfall was caused by vibrations from the bus's passage.

7. The Elevator

He lived in a high-rise apartment building.

He lived on the 14th floor, so the elevator was essential.

One night, when he returned home, he got into the elevator and pressed the button for the 14th floor.

As the door closed and the elevator started moving, the button for the 8th floor lit up.

He thought, "Oh, someone must be getting on."

Then, he hurriedly pressed all the floor buttons.

Answer:

Elevator buttons don't light up unless they're pressed. This means that someone invisible was in the elevator with him. He had to evacuate as soon as possible.

My Comment:

In Japan, elevator buttons don't light up unless you press them from inside the elevator, but I'm not sure if it's the same for elevators in the U.S. This puzzle only works for those who share the knowledge about how elevators function.

When I post something on Newgrounds, I always consider how much knowledge we share.

8. Hit-and-Run

I was in a hit-and-run accident and had been hospitalized, but I finally got discharged recently.

To celebrate my discharge, a close friend came to visit me at home.

We had the following conversation:

Friend: "Sorry I couldn’t visit you in the hospital."

Me: "Don’t worry about it."

Friend: "Did you see the face of the culprit?"

Me: "No, it happened so suddenly, I don’t remember."

Friend: "I see."

Me: "You be careful too."

Friend: "Yeah, well, I’m gonna head home now. I’ll definitely visit you in the hospital next time."

Me: "Thanks."

Answer:

"I’ll definitely visit you in the hospital next time"? Why is the friend so certain the narrator will be hospitalized again? Because the friend is the hit-and-run culprit.

My Comment:

If you figured this one out, you have the potential to become an FBI investigator. However, I wouldn’t want to be friends with such a person because I'd be worried they could easily read my shallow thoughts during conversations. Or perhaps my intellectual level is already glaringly obvious from my writing…????

At least I couldn’t solve this one, and even after knowing the answer, it took me a while to fully understand it.

9. Robbery

While I was taking a shower in the bath, I heard a scream coming from the living room. 

I quickly got out of the bath and rushed to the living room, completely naked. 

When I got there, I saw a masked man and the bodies of my father, mother, and sister lying on the floor, bleeding. 

As soon as the masked man saw me, he immediately fled through the window, and I sat down on the spot, my face turning pale.

Answer

Why did the narrator hear only one scream when the narrator's entire family was killed? The answer is that the scream came from the robber. In other words, the narrator of this story is the one who brutally murdered the narrator's family, and the masked man witnessed the crime. Since the masked man, whose face couldn't be seen, became a witness, the narrator turned pale.

My Comment

Personally, I consider this a model question for this genre of story, where a terrifying truth is uncovered from a single inconsistency.

The next question is the last one. It is considered one of the most difficult questions in this genre of stories. To make this article more playful, I will give the answer to the last question later. If anyone knows the answer before then, please share it in the comments.

But I am not the author of this story, and this story is quite famous in Japan, so if you really want to know the answer, try Googling the original Japanese text (意味が分かると怖い話「おいやめろって」) and translating it to find the answer.

10. A Best Friend

Friend: "I'm really sorry." 

Me: "Hey, stop it!" 

Friend: "My sister… My sister is sick… I need money…" 

Me: "Are you okay? Take a deep breath." 

Friend: "…Thank you…" 

Me: "If 100,000 yen ($680) would help, I can lend it to you." 

Friend: "Thank you so much… And, um…" 

Me: "Here, if you don't mind leftovers, have some dinner." 

Friend: "Thank you…" 

Me: "Why? We're best friends, remember?" 

Friend: "Actually, I was thinking of committing suicide… If it weren't for you…" 

Me: "It's no problem, don't worry about it." 

Friend: "I'm sorry to bother you so late at night."

This is the end of this article. Thank you very much for reading this far.

Incidentally, I am curious if there is an equivalent to this type of story in the English-speaking world. I did some research and found that "Dark Humor Jokes" seems to be the closest genre, but that's all I could find. If anyone knows more, please let me know!

There is a YouTuber named "命知らずのジョシュ (Josh the Daredevil)". He claims to be an American learning Japanese, and the videos on his channel are all produced in Japanese.

First, here are his two short videos.

Your response to "What's up" is wrong!!

Most Japanese people don't know the correct response to "What's up." They often mistakenly think it's the same as responding to the greeting "How are you?" However, "What's up" isn't asking about your well-being but rather means "What's going on recently?" That's why responding with "I'm good" can make the conversation awkward. Typically, people respond with "Nothing much," but it's also perfectly fine to explain what you're currently doing. Only when passing by someone can you reply with "What's up?" Additionally, since the sky is literally "up," you can give a playful answer like "the sky."

Don't forget it!

My comment

This is really helpful to me. In fact, I don't really know how to respond to "How are you?" either. We learn "I'm fine, thank you!" a lot in school, but other practical responses... I have learned a few from various materials and some friends, but responding to greetings is still one of the topics that scares English learners like me.

English words used only by "Nipponese" people

When speaking English, Japanese people often use the expression "take the plunge." Before talking to Japanese people, I might have heard this phrase once or twice in my life, but Japanese people use it extensively. When I asked a Japanese person why, they said it was because this phrase appears in English textbooks. Of course, if you want to use it, go ahead, but to me, it seems less like an English expression and more like a word that Japanese people have "made their own."

My comment

This is absolutely true. In fact, I didn't know the expression "take the plunge," and I didn't see it in any textbooks, but I had memorized Hironobu Takeoka's "Dragon 100 Sentences," so the unique expressions from that text sometimes pop up in my conversations. However, while learning English, I often listened to AVGN (Angry Video Game Nerd), and it seems that many of the expressions he uses are ones that only he is allowed to use. So I try to remember WHERE I learned a certain expression. Incidentally, I often use double quotation marks (or "「」" in Japanese) in my writing, but this is more of a personal habit than a common trait among Japanese people.

The first time I learned about him was when Toshio Okada, the founder of GAINAX (known for the Evangelion series and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt), introduced him on his YouTube channel. He mentioned that Josh’s videos are incredibly cool and that he even wants to imitate Josh’s unique way of speaking Japanese. In addition, Okada likes that Josh points out aspects of the Japanese language that even Japanese people might not notice.

However, what is even more interesting to me is not just the Japanese language itself but also how he introduces American culture “in Japanese” as an American. This is information I definitely want to know.

Know the American Spirit!

You probably already know that America is the best country in the world, but let me introduce one of the reasons why it's so great. It's called "groove." Some people say that groove is a genre of music, but to me, groove is a feeling. It's the feeling that if you dance a little, your problems will disappear in no time. By the way, there's also a verb "boogie." Its meaning is quite close to "dance," but it has a groove-like connotation. "Boogie" has a more upbeat feeling than "dance" and was often used in the 1980s. By understanding "groove," you'll not only grasp American culture but also the human spirit. For your reference, let me share some of my recommendations here.

(A long list of songs)

My comment

I also love Earth, Wind & Fire's songs and own their album CDs. Although they are quite famous, I like "September" and "Fantasy", and there is another song by them that I absolutely love, but I can't remember the name to look it up.

The word "groove" comes up a lot in the FLStudio tutorial videos, and maybe I am the one who should know about "groove" because I have not yet mastered the essence of it.

The American Custom of Saying, "Your Mom is Fat"

Your mom is fat. When she goes to the movies, everyone ends up sitting next to her.

How's that? Are you angry? This is the American way. What I'm talking about is the so-called "yo mama joke." You can't talk about American culture without mentioning these. The practice of kids mocking each other's mothers has been around for ages. The one I just mentioned is quite famous, but let me introduce two I've made up myself.

Your mom is dumb. Her intelligence quotient is around minus 10.

Your mom is ugly. When she went to the Setsubun festival, she was mistaken for a demon.

If you can, retaliate. Go ahead and mock my mother with all your might.

My comment

(^_^;)... I can't remember the name, but I've seen a scene in a movie featuring Eddie Murphy where they were exchanging such jokes. I didn't realize that "yo mama joke" was such an established cultural phenomenon. However, I know that even American kids get angry when their family is insulted, as I learned from the Teddy Duchamp episode of Stand by Me, so I don't think I'll ever tell a "yo mama joke.

Most of the content he handles is about what he realized in the process of learning Japanese, but some of it raises questions about the English language.

English Even Americans Don't Understand

The English equivalent for "女" is "woman," and "女たち" in English is "women." You might already know this, but there's an important point to note. Quite a few Americans don't know the proper pronunciation of these two words. By understanding my explanation, you might surpass them in English knowledge. Interestingly, although the fourth letter is different in writing, the pronunciation difference lies in the second letter. In other words, the plural "women" has an "o," but it is pronounced as an "e." Don't forget this.

My comment

I found an interesting explanation of this mystery in a video by "Yuru Gengogaku Radio".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45YPaKkXS6A

Originally, "woman" was "wifmann," and simply reading it as written was sufficient. Over time, however, this word evolved into "wuman," or rather, it was supposed to evolve that way, but the problem arose when it was written in cursive. The word "wuman" had too many vertical zigzags and was difficult to read. So eventually "woman" with an "o" instead of a "u" became widely used.

On the other hand, the plural form of the word, which was originally "wifmenn," evolved. As time went on, the "f" sound was reduced in pronunciation, but when writing it, to align with the spelling of "woman," the spelling "women" was adopted.

As for why the pronunciation of "women" wasn't aligned with "woman"—that is, why the latter part of the word isn't pronounced "-men"—the leading theory is that it was because the placement of the accent made it difficult to distinguish the difference.

This is a summary of Josh's explanation about the pronunciation of "woman" and "women." I hope that Josh comes across YGR or similar content someday.

Finally, I love his Japanese. His videos convey how much he studies and loves the language. Watching Josh, I am amazed at his fluency in Japanese and his deep understanding of Japan, which has made me think a lot about my own attitude toward learning English and American (and more recently, Mexican) culture. That is why I decided to write this article about him.

I found it particularly interesting that he always refers to "言葉 (kotoba; word)" as "言の葉 (koto no ha; worde?)". Although Japanese people rarely use this expression, there is a movie called "言の葉の庭 (The Garden of Words)," so I assume this word existed in ancient Japan. His Japanese often includes expressions that ordinary Japanese people would never use, and while some people may point out that his Japanese is incorrect, I prefer to see it as his unique personality rather than mistakes.

Josh posted a video explaining his philosophy.

Why My Japanese Pronunciation Is Poor

I've been told several times that my foreign-sounding pronunciation doesn't match my level of Japanese. In fact, unlike most Japanese learners, I have no interest in practicing my pronunciation at all. There are English learners all over the world, and of course their pronunciation differs depending on their native language. Russian, Nigerian, and Mexican English each have their own unique and wonderful qualities. Similarly, if I were obsessed with speaking like a native Japanese speaker, it would be unfaithful to my beloved America, and everyone in Japan would miss out on the Japanese that only Americans use.

His unique Japanese reminds me of the time when I used to refer to "lumps of sugar" like candy and cakes as "sweets," only to be surprised when a friend pointed out that this word is not widely used in America. But following Josh's philosophy, I too would like to not be too ashamed of my immature and peculiar English, but rather a little proud of it as my personality, or more specifically, my style of calling sweet candies "sweets."

In an older article, I wrote about the Japanese language used in "粛聖!! ロリ神レクイエム☆ (Shukusei! Loli Kami Requiem)" by Shigure Ui.

https://precipitation24.newgrounds.com/news/post/1411980

In this article, I would like to once again ride the wave of trends and explain the Japanese language used in the title and the strange opening video of the anime "Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan" (My Deer Friend Nokotan), which started in Japan this July.

(Metal Cover by Little V ... metal cover????)

しかのこのこのここしたんたん (shikanoko nokonoko koshitantan)

If I rewrite this expression in a more understandable way using kanji, it becomes:

鹿の子のこのこ虎視眈々

I will break down the elements of this text and explain them.

鹿の子 (shika no ko)

It can be translated directly as "deer child." Until recently, the expression 〇〇の子 (lit. XX's child) was not so common, but since the buzz of 推しの子 (Their Idol's Children), this expression has suddenly become accepted.

のこのこ（noko noko）

"Noko" is basically the name of the protagonist, Shikanoko Noko, in that anime, and I think it is used in that sense in this song. However, when it is used in repetition, many Japanese people think of the onomatopoeia "noko noko." This onomatopoeia is mostly used in the phrase "のこのこ（と）来る noko noko (to) kuru (lit. to come nokonoko-ly?)." It is difficult to translate this into English, but many Japanese-English dictionaries translate it as "(to come) nonchalantly / shamelessly." If I were to explain this word in my own words, it could mean "to visit somewhere knowing that one is not welcome," and is typically used by the speaker in a critical context.

However, such a negative meaning does not seem particularly relevant to this song, so in this song it probably just refers to the protagonist's name, and the onomatopoeia is used purely for rhythmic purposes.

Speaking of onomatopoeia, it is not transcribed, but if you listen carefully to the beginning of the song, you can hear the singer say "ぬん (nun)." This doesn't mean a member of a group of religious women, but a kind of onomatopoeia. As can be seen from the fact that no dictionary has an entry for the onomatopoeia "nun," this expression is not commonly used. Even as a native speaker, I first encountered its use on X, which was known as Twitter in the early 2020s. Personally, I think this onomatopoeia probably comes from "ぬっ (nu ʔ (glottal stop))", which is usually used to describe someone or something coming out of the shadows. So in this song, I think it could represent the image of "Shikanoko" suddenly appearing from somewhere.

虎視眈々 (koshitantan)

This is a kind of four-character idiom (四字熟語; yojijukugo) in Japanese, and this expression comes from the Chinese book "Yijing."

"虎視 (ko shi; tiger's gaze)" is, as the kanji string "虎 (tiger) + 視 (gaze)" suggests, about how a tiger looks at its prey, and "眈々(tan tan; vigilantly)" expresses the caution of that gaze. Also, the character "々" does not have a fixed reading, but is a symbol used to repeat the preceding character (the reason for using this symbol is that Chinese characters often have many strokes and are sometimes troublesome to write). Of course, there are cases where "虎視眈眈" is written by repeating the same characters without using the "々" symbol, and both ways of writing are acceptable.

To get back on track, "虎視眈眈" (ko shi tan tan) means a tiger watching for an opportunity to pounce on its prey. The expression "虎視眈眈と〇〇を狙う (lit. aim for XX koshitantan-ly?)" is usually used to describe someone who is preparing to hunt or, more commonly, someone who is ambitious to win a higher position as a boss, champion, lover, and so on.

In summary, "しかのこのこのここしたんたん" means "A child deer, Noko, waits for an opportunity to emerge from the shadows and pounce." I look forward to seeing how this sentence relates to the story of the anime.

This is the end of the article. If you have any questions or any other Japanese text that you have trouble translating, please let me know. I will be happy to translate and explain the text.

There are artists on Newgrounds who draw with a kind of old anime atmosphere, and I've long admired them, but didn't know their methods. Recently, however, I finally learned a technique to create similar illustrations by combining two effects: "Chromatic Aberration" and "Saturation and Brightness Adjustment". This method was shared on these two sites:

[Japanese] Creating an Atmospheric Screen Using Chromatic Aberration

https://www.clipstudio.net/oekaki/archives/148819

[Japanese] Cel Animation Style Illustration Processing

https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/59794801

I am so happy to have learned this technique, and I would like to share it with you in this article.

STEP 1: Adding Chromatic Aberration

First, prepare a completed illustration.

Next, open the image in a photo editor (Photoshop, CLIP STUDIO PAINT, SAI). In my case, I used CLIP STUDIO PAINT,

and duplicate the layer four times. Only the top three layers will be used in STEP 1, with the bottom layer kept as a backup.

Prepare each of the top three layers and set them to "multiply layer." Then fill each layer with pure Red, Green, and Blue colors, respectively. 

Merge each of the RGB layers with their respective layers.

Change the layer mode of the top two merged layers to "screen."

When you move each of the top two layers, the chromatic aberration effect will be applied. This completes the first step.

STEP 2: Creating an Old Anime Style

To make it look like old anime, reduce the brightness and saturation of each of the three RGB layers. Lowering the brightness and saturation of each layer will make the screen duller (and darker), giving it an aged look. How much to lower them depends on your taste, but I chose random numbers around -4 to make it look more decayed.

Set the transparency of the top three RGB layers to about 90%. Adjusting this number will change the blend ratio between the old anime-style layers and the original layer.

Once you have completed the above steps, your illustration will change to an old anime style compared to the original. Additionally, to create an old anime feel, you need to choose appropriate colors and use dark shadows, but these steps are omitted in this explanation. If you find any other necessary steps, please let me know!

Recently, I read the novel Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and it was so interesting that I could not stop reading it. In this article, I would like to write a short story as a book review or unrelated fan fiction. There is no dramatic story in this novel, but I hope that I could successfully express my impression when reading the story.

I originally wrote this novel in Japanese by myself, and translated it into English with the great help of ChatGPT, but if you find any errors in English, please let me know.

========================

Holiday in District ■■

   In my dream, I was standing in an unfamiliar square. The sky was an impossibly deep blue, almost as if it was close to outer space. The square was scattered with large geometric objects made of inorganic concrete and jet-black marble-like materials, devoid of any context. I couldn’t tell what they were meant to represent. But mathematically speaking, they had complex and incredibly beautiful shapes. It was a beauty that seemed to be filled only with the most beautiful things in this world, yet it somehow felt like it was slowly gnawing away at my heart.

   Countless people were busily passing by, but I don’t remember much about them. I only remember thinking that if they were inhabitants of this world, I wanted to be one of them too.

   After walking around and looking at my surroundings for a while, I arrived at an object that looked like the top of a pyramid had been cut off.

   “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

   When I turned around, a boy dressed in a gray hoodie, his skin as white as snow, was sitting on a bench beside the object, letting out a sigh. He wasn’t wearing the hood, and he looked about elementary school age. On closer inspection, his hair seemed to have a slight bluish tint.

   I looked around, but no one else seemed to notice the boy, so it seemed he was talking to me.

   “What’s terrible?”

   “I think it’s about time humanity got angry.”

   “At what?”

   “At technology…”

   “Technology?”

   “I think it’s about time humanity got angry at technology.”

   As he said this, the pale boy looked down and kicked his feet childishly.

   “And you?”

   When I asked, the boy just shook his head. After taking a long pause, he breathed in and murmured,

   “I love this world.”

-+-+-+-+-

   The sound of the alarm woke me up. It was the sound of an ordinary alarm clock. I could reset it for holidays, but I set it for the same time because I didn't want it to affect how I would feel the day after tomorrow.

   Ironically, my Silicon Valley colleague was particularly bad at waking up in the morning. His chronic sleepiness was apparently worse than the alarm clock, and he once complained that he wished the company would implant a company-made alarm clock in his skull. Fortunately, management was not that ethically corrupt, so it remained a joke.

   With sleepy eyes, I pressed the button at hand, leaving my shirt and hair in disarray. Immediately, the lights came on and the automatic system parted the black curtains.

   Outside the window, a giant ghostly telescope, catching the morning sunlight and piercing through the clouds, stood tall as if it wanted to crumble and attack my defenseless self. There's nothing more depressing than being looked down upon by your workplace on a holiday morning.

   Still, for some reason, people seemed to have an unconscious attraction to things that hurt them. I stood up, rolled up the sleeves of my shirt, and looked out the window in my underwear, having taken off my pants. No one can see me from the seventh floor of the apartment building, shaded by the morning sun, no matter what I wear. Below, there were numerous familiar telescope technology buildings, probably unaware of the term "zoning," all with stark glass facades and strange pipes and steel beams entwined like vines. Even though it was morning, I could already see busy figures loading goods into black pickup trucks with military insignia.

   I realized that it had been six months since I came here. Yet it felt as if I'd lived here for a long time, since childhood.

   At some point, holidays here stopped being filled with illusory brilliance. I have had a vague sense since my youth that this feeling would come, and at the time I arbitrarily decided that it was a sign that I was no longer myself. Now I can't say whether that prediction was correct.

   In essence, it felt like my entire life was being dictated by these elusive philosophical feelings, which made me incredibly uncomfortable and uncomfortable.

   Perhaps the colleague who wanted the alarm implanted in his skull suffered from the same disease as I did.

   "Breakfast..."

   After getting up and doing my usual morning routine, I made my way to the kitchen. If I wanted a healthier breakfast, I could go to the dining hall downstairs, but since the base has a supermarket run by a private company (even though it feels like the end of the world) and a well-equipped kitchen in every room, my much more competent colleagues often go there. But I just didn't feel like going out.

   The first thing that came to mind as I stood in front of the stove was scrambled eggs.

   Everything went smoothly. I didn’t go so far as to make a thoughtful salad to go with the scrambled eggs and bacon, but I had some dry bread, so it sufficed for breakfast. Besides, after moving around for the first time in a while, I felt slightly better. Maybe I should ride this momentum and do a deep clean of the room.

   It took about an hour to complete the entire breakfast process, and then I sat down at the table. To my right was the thick, huge window, the curtains of which I had opened, offering a sweeping view of Hope. It was a scene like an oceanfront resort.

   Above all, the weather is good today.

   I wasn't in the habit of playing music during meals. For no reason at all, I would pick up the neatly arranged dishes, take the knife and fork in both hands, and eat breakfast.

   Just as I was about to take a bite, the intercom buzzer rang unexpectedly.

   "Who is it?"

   "Hey, um... do you have a moment?"

   On the display, I saw my colleague, Deutsch, standing at the entrance.

   "I'm having breakfast."

   "Okay, I'll come back later then."

   "If you don't mind..."

   "Really?"

   I pressed the button for the intercom, and I saw him through the automatic door opening across from me.

   I had Deutsch sit on the sofa in the living room while I continued my breakfast within sight at the dining table. However, our conversation didn't really pick up until after my long meal was over and I joined him on the same sofa. Although we did exchange a few words, it seemed he was prepared to wait patiently until I finished eating.

   "The truth is, I have something to discuss with you."

   Deutsch's concern hadn't changed for quite some time. It was about the life exploration symposium hosted by the MITSETI Research Institute. Since the project was co-funded by the U.S. Air Force and numerous national observatories, someone had to report the observation results from Hope, the giant radio telescope on the artificial island of Barksdale, and this year, that responsibility fell to him.

   "It's tough. Every time I write the draft, I wonder if these words are familiar to the general public... well, maybe not the general public, but at least to the average scientist, and if the concepts might be a bit hard to grasp..."

   "Hmm, you worry about that kind of thing."

   "Well, you know, some people can explain things very clearly."

   "Yeah, it's a kind of talent."

   "Probably the result of training," Deutsch said, taking a sip of coffee. "Ideally, I want to make my explanations so clear and engaging that they can't help but be interesting..."

   I chuckled a bit. He was a very talented researcher.

   "Isn't it a bit beneath you?"

   "No way. It's really nerve-wracking. If I leave out even one word or one key point from what I'm trying to explain, it feels like the truth will be misrepresented... Honestly, I envy the BBC. I wish we could poach one of their people."

   "Don't overestimate us."

   "No way!"

   "And even if you convey the truth meticulously and thoroughly, there will always be people who distort it. Just like me."

   Deutsch let out a deep sigh mixed with a chuckle.

   "That's true..."

   I frowned.

   "I wanted you to deny."

   After I said that, he showed more reflection than I expected, which made me feel a bit sorry for him.

   "I'm afraid of being criticized by someone."

   Deutsch suddenly smiled.

   "I can relate to that."

   He occasionally showed a deeply troubled expression. It was hard to notice unless you were paying very close attention, but even so, I thought it would be better if he didn't let it show on his face, and I planned to mention it to him someday.

   "But you couldn't have taken it that way during your dissertation defense, right?"

   I sighed deeply. Oh, I heard all kinds of things. But unlike the criticism of an art piece, which feels like a part of yourself being attacked, I didn't feel as hurt. Or maybe at that time, I was desperately telling myself that it didn't hurt.

   "Even Dr. Hawking's singularity theorem was harshly criticized by the professors at Cambridge."

   "I know... That's why I had given up," Deutsch said, letting out a big sigh. "But in his case, it might have been mixed with a bit of envy."

   "Undoubtedly."

   "When did he develop his condition?"

   "1963, two years before he published his paper."

   "Really?"

   "You didn't know that?"

   "Sorry, I only picked up bits and pieces."

   He stared out the window at Hope, looking deeply contemplative.

   He murmured as if he had just remembered something.

   "You seem to be in a better mood than usual."

   "Do I?"

   "Your demeanor is softer. Usually, you're so reserved and your words so sharp, but today something is different. If you were always like this, it would make me happy."

   My hands moved unconsciously. I've always been uncomfortable when others, especially the opposite sex, tried to get closer to me.

   "I don't like being with the same type of people for too long."

   "I see."

   I averted my eyes without thinking.

   "I get very anxious. I feel like I'll end up comparing everything with that person using the same standards."

   He looked puzzled and pursed his lips.

   "But you've been compared to others all your life."

   I found myself at a loss for words.

   "Maybe that's why it's a trauma."

   "Hmm... that's odd."

   "Aren't you the same?"

   "Not really... Even if you were ten times better than me, it wouldn't mean I'd starve. You would end up somewhere else without me, so you wouldn't even be a rival. Besides, I was never that excellent to begin with."

   I closed my eyes and shook my head.

   "That's not true..."

   Why does this feel so comfortable? As he said, I dislike being with other people intensely. Yet, for some reason, a deeply satisfying atmosphere fills the room.

   "So, you don't go to amusement parks, do you?"

   He broached the topic.

   "Well, no."

   "Because you dislike people?"

   ...Dislike people?

   "That's part of it, but mainly,..." I didn't really understand conversations. I was just leaning into his kindness. Memories of a big fight with my family at an amusement park resurfaced, further dulling my instinct for casual social interactions. "I really don't like places designed with a specific purpose."

   He nodded in agreement and fell silent.

   But after a while, his face brightened suddenly, as if he were brimming with joy.

   "Then let's go outside. Not to an amusement park or anywhere with a specific purpose, but just to the nearby airport."

   He stood up and pulled my hand. I, surprised, muttered with a neutral expression.

   "Well... that's true."

   "On a rare holiday, let's step outside the base for once."

   We passed through the lobby of the living quarters and boarded the base shuttle, which traveled freely within District ■■. The shuttle was powered by a linear motor and was fully autonomous, with no driver's seat. Unlike my workplace, headquarters was quite a distance from here, but it took less than five minutes with this shuttle.

   However, I did not ride it very often. The last time I took it was... three months ago?

   The landscape was beautiful that day. Sometimes it was the dirty coastal industrial zone lined with oil tanks, and sometimes it was a vast open field stretching to the horizon. It was easy to forget that we were inside a base.

   The midsummer sky over the southern coast of the United States remained an unchanging cobalt blue. That day, as usual, the sunlight was blinding, brightly illuminating the interior of the unlit shuttle. On days like this, it had become a reflex to sit on the left side, facing away from the sun.

   The train began to move, and through the window I could see our residence on a small hill, with the giant telescope in the background. In front of us, the monorail of the shuttle crossed the street. There were supermarkets, shopping malls, pharmacies, and it felt like a small town. There was no high wall protecting it, just a four-meter barbed wire fence that disappears into the distant horizon, making it easy to forget that this is a unified Air Force base. A perfect urban space isolated from the outside world. In fact, this base itself was like a kind of amusement park.

   Didn't I just say something about facilities made for specific purposes? After all, my idle talk was full of contradictions.

   As the scenery outside the window approached the shoreline of the artificial island, the buildings quickly disappeared. Ahead, at the end of the monorail branch, I could see a huge suspension bridge connecting to another artificial island on the opposite shore. The bridge looked like it was made of bright red KAPLA blocks. From here it looked like a scene from a dream.

   "How long has it been since you last went outside?"

   "I don't know. But it feels like a long time."

   With that, he fell silent again. Perhaps because I felt a little more at ease, I added,

   "It's troublesome... having to plan, make up my mind, and then go out."

   He made a sound of agreement and folded his arms, looking out the window again. The monorail had just reached the coastline of the artificial island and burst onto the long bridge leading to the main island. For a while, the deep blue horizon would dominate the view.

   "Making up your mind?"

   "Don’t you need to?"

   He sighed.

   "You’re so dramatic."

Did you think

That upon embarking on that journey

You would find something pleasant

To hold in your hand?

   Like many other introverted and awkward people, I had once indulged in writing poetry. However, my motivation was slightly different; most of my poems were like an insurance policy, lamenting my circumstances. They were a way to tell myself "I knew this would happen" when I returned with unpleasant experiences. I believed that by doing so, I could appease the gods and avoid their wrath.

   This particular poem was one of my favorites. Up until I was posted here a long time ago, I often wrote it in the corner of my notebook. Sometimes, I even read it aloud. It was a strange but comforting habit.

   Basically, it was the small things, but whenever I went out, I always seemed to bring back something unpleasant. At some point, it felt like I wasn't allowed to go out without being prepared to accept that unpleasantness.

   "That’s so like you..."

   He muttered. His tone was the same as before, just an acknowledgment, so I didn't pay much attention to it.

   "What do you mean?"

   "Just what I said." He looked unusually solemn. "It's like worrying is your hobby."

   I smirked a bit.

   "If so, it's not a bad hobby to have."

   "Come on, I'm worried about you."

   "I know."

   What is this feeling? Ah, yes. My father felt the same way.

   Even after I left for college and started living alone, my father continued to live in the same place. When you haven't been home in a while, you become insensitive to your family's well-being.

   To my father, I was always his beloved daughter. No matter how bad my personality was, no matter how much I hated people, no matter how much people hated me, even if I lived in this world just for my own survival, to my father, I was simply his beloved daughter, wounded and needing protection.

   Frankly, it was a nuisance. It would have been simpler if everyone but me was an enemy. For a long time, I found comfort in such a binary and simplistic view, or perhaps in that delusion. My love for living alone probably stems from a primal desire for solitude. For someone without ambition, living as a vessel for the vanity of others seemed to be one of the few reasons for my existence.

   However, my father, my enthusiastic supporters, and the world itself refused to let things be that simple. Instead, they often caused great turmoil in my heart.

   A girl named Zoe was a classmate when I was little. She praised everything I did, especially my homework, diaries, and reports. Whenever my work was posted in the classroom, she always complimented my writing.

   However, my writing was only moderately appreciated by the teachers, so I probably didn’t have any particular talent. It was just that Zoe's sensibilities resonated with mine.

   When I wrote a book review, Zoe particularly praised it and told everyone in class that they should read my review. I was mortified, but that book, which explained things in an "irresistibly interesting" way, might be the direct reason I ended up here. To me, that book was like a friend who endlessly and repeatedly narrated the vastness of the universe beside my pillow.

   Zoe called me a genius. To her, I was indeed a genius. Yet I knew many geniuses whom I could never match, and that word felt endlessly empty to me.

   But that's okay, I eventually thought. If I were to lose my job and aim to be a writer, the driving force behind my writing might be those few friends who called me a genius.

   "You said earlier that explaining things is difficult."

   "Yeah."

   "But you do have a clear idea of what you want to do, right?"

   "What I want to do?"

   "The exciting explanations you want to give. The creative simplifications. Don’t you have those ideas in your head?"

   He let out a deep, thoughtful sigh.

   "....Yeah, I suppose I do."

   The shuttle crossed the long strait and landed on Barksdale Main Island, where the General Affairs Bureau is located. The transparent glass structure of the enormous arch, which swallowed the shuttle's monorail, gleamed a brilliant blue as it reflected the sunlight. Along with this, the modest words "Main Office Station" appeared on the glass display board.

   "When you put words together, they gain traction. That's why everyone tries to do it," Deutsch said, folding his arms. "But this kind of work is like swinging a bat wildly. I think it should only be done by those with the proper license."

   If my words are of any help.

   "Your concern is very valid and noble. If there is a limited amount, then interest and accuracy are likely inversely proportional."

   Deutsch nodded with interest.

   "So, it's possible to sacrifice accuracy to make it interesting."

   That's not exactly what I meant, though.

   "Excuse me, I'd like to get a permit to leave the premises..."

   The operators sitting side by side were all young women with sharp short haircuts, as if that hairstyle was their very identity. In my opinion, they, like me, were suffering from the same sickness.

   "Understood. May I have your ID?"

   Even though not many people would want a permit to leave, she didn't even ask why.

Without hesitation, he took out a card from his chest pocket and scanned it. Following his lead, I quickly took mine out from my bag.

   My chest ached with a prickling pain. It's probably that self-hatred again. The postal workers I disliked when I was a student were far more human than the people in this office. At least they were straightforward in their open dislike for my personality, which made it easier to understand.

   Without interrupting her data entry, the operator spoke to him.

   "If you don't mind, may I ask about your plans?"

   "I haven't decided yet, I'm just waiting for someone at the airport."

   You haven't decided, have you?

   "I see..."

   A transparent-sounding buzzer, fully managed by the system, rang out, and the permits were attached to our two cards. There’s a rumor that a very thin transmitter is attached to these permits. Well, it's just an urban legend.

   "All done. The permits are valid for today. Please present them at each gate when you leave and enter. Have a good day."

   "Thanks."

   Saying that, she waved with a big smile. That's where she and I are fundamentally different. I could never smile like that. She really seems like a competent operator.

I love English and was once good enough to become an English teacher at a Japanese junior high school. But that was in the past, and since then my English skills have been declining rapidly. So, as part of my language learning, I decided to post some simple questions and comments about the English language that are not easy for me (and that I should ask on HiNative or Quora) on Newgrounds. I am not an expert in English and may make elementary mistakes, but thank you for your patience.

"Please Kill Urself"?! | English Is Not So Easy 23

I recently found an interesting post about English on X (Twitter). It was a post by Eshtarwind (江市コム), a professional translator of English and Japanese from Indonesia, on January 7, 2024, advising native English speakers not to use these expressions to praise artwork:

“Please kill urself aren't u ashamed ugh”

“I am mentally ill”

“Ugh go die plzzzz”

“Delete this”

Fortunately or unfortunately,... sorry, whether it's good or bad, I didn't get those comments, but if I did, I would first check what it actually means, and I would probably think that my post caused a backlash for some reason and delete it immediately as they said (but this is basically a situation on other platforms than Newgrounds, because on Newgrounds comments were usually displayed with ratings, and I think there's much less possibility for such misunderstandings to occur).

As shown in the "Fortunately or unfortunately" example, I unconsciously assume that expressions that exist in Japanese (幸か不幸か) also exist in English, and I spend most of my time learning English trying to remove this bias from my mind. On the other hand, I thought that this was a general problem of languages, and that there must be some expressions that native English speakers assume are conveyed correctly even to non-native English speakers, but in fact are not.

However, in this article I will not tell you not to use them. That is not my interest. Instead, I want to ask you what they really mean. I would love to know what feelings were in the minds of the people who wrote those comments, and how they were trying to convey them. I am really interested in that.

About the "Please kill yourself" comments, there is an interesting hypothesis from the non-native speaker side. The Japanese thought that the comment writer was trying to say something like, "I love this work so much that it hurts me now. I don't want my heart to hurt anymore, so please stop showing your work. So delete it and kill yourself."

(This is off topic, but this kind of sentiment reminds me of the lyrics to "Something Comforting" by Porter Robinson)

How accurate is this interpretation for native English speakers? If this interpretation is not correct, what do these comments actually mean? I would like to know your opinion.

On the other hand, there is a similar expression in Japanese that means "I love this work so much!":

尊すぎて死ぬ

It could be literally translated as "They are so noble that I am dying," but in this context, 尊い (noble) just means "cool" or "adorable." It actually means "Their coolness/cuteness chokes me," but I think a similar phenomenon would occur if non-native Japanese speakers read it.

This is a linguistic-cultural issue (I wish there were such a science), but about the difference between the expressions "please kill yourself" and "尊すぎて死ぬ", some Japanese people interpreted that the difference is that English speakers tend to express their strong emotion as an aggression against the art or artist, and Japanese speakers tend to express it as an aggression against themselves.

Incidentally, in my case, I always want to express my intense emotions, but I only come up with weird words

Also, when I thought an artist's character was deadly cute, I once tried to comment "She's killing me (from her cuteness)," but before I posted the comment, I found some articles that said it didn't really mean what I intended (according to the article, it means "she makes me laugh a lot"), so I gave up posting it. So lately I just comment "cute!" or "adorable!", but I would really like to use more English phrases to admire other people's art.

[For Japanese learners]

I came up with another interesting Japanese word that would frighten non-native speakers, 黙殺. It is composed of 黙って (silently) and 殺す (kill), which literally means "to kill silently," but actually means "to ignore." Even as a native Japanese speaker, I am not sure why such a simple word is made up of such scary characters.