#both of the translations I've found for this line work equally well for them (which is rather fun) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

four-loose-screws · 2 years

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Hello! Firstly, I'm new to your blog, and I'm really glad I found it! I appreciate what you do, and it's great to see the changes made between regions!

Secondly, if it's okay, could you translate Hubert and Byleths A Support? I hear there's actually a difference in the support depending on the gender of the player, and I'm interested to see the version between Hubert and a female Byleth!

Thanks for introducing yourself! :) There hasn't been much going on recently as I had to go missing for a while, but I hope you've still found plenty of interesting posts around here, in the time its taken for me to respond.

EDIT: So I originally referenced the Fandom Fire Emblem Wiki for Byleth / Hubert's support conversations, which provides the exact same conversation for both f!Byleth and m!Byleth, so I based my wording on that assumption. However, a fantastic anon pointed out that the localization actually did choose a more direct translation, and retained the f!Byleth and m!Byleth differences present in the Japanese version of the A support. My original text is below the updated version, for archival purposes.

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So this answer takes a super interesting twist I did not expect at all!!

First, what you heard is very much correct - just on a small scale, in the very last line of Hubert's. Otherwise, the two A supports are identical.

However, the unique line in the f!Byleth version lost a couple layers of meaning, because... here's the part that takes this from a standard answer to a fascinating one... you wouldn't know the full context unless you know a very specific Chinese mythological story!

I didn't know it either, actually, until I Googled the Japanese words used in the support.

The 'birds' Hubert speaks of were originally not just any birds. They referenced the story of the 比翼の鳥, hiyoku no tori. (Note that is the Japanese word, I don't know any Chinese and can't provide the Chinese pronunciation.) It tells the tale of 2 birds, 1 male and 1 female, each with only 1 eye and 1 wing. They cannot fly unless they are side by side, and so they are always together.

As a quick Google image search can convey, the birds are sometimes depicted as clearly being separate birds, other times they are so close together they look more 1 bird with 2 heads.

The term came to have a second meaning of "happily married couple," so Hubert did not say anything uncommon by comparing him and Byleth to the birds.

Who would have guessed this poetic line was even more so in the Japanese? It hurts to see this stuff lost in translation, but it only serves to prove that people with blogs like mine provide a necessary service! ...As necessary as providing deeper information into mass media can be, anyway.

I included my own translation as well, which does work well enough on my blog because I get the luxury of translator's notes, unlike video games.

Note that the wording is awkward because I kept the Japanese and English word order side-by-side, as I tend to do with very short translations. It's fun to do when I can manage it.

Localization:

f!Byleth:

Hubert: Heh. I've already dedicated my life to Lady Edelgard. To throw my lot in with you is inconceivable. But if I had two lives to give... I might devote one of them to you. We could be a couplet of birds, flying alongside the sovereign of Black Eagles...

m!Byleth:

Hubert: Heh. I've already dedicated my life to Lady Edelgard. To throw my lot in with you is inconceivable. But if I had two lives to give... I might devote one of them to you. Not as master and servant, but as equal partners.

JP f!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 黒き鷲の王に付き従って飛ぶ、(Flying and following the king of the Black Eagles,) 比翼の鳥のような二人に……。▼(the two of us like the hiyoku no tori...)

JP m!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 主君と従者として、とはまた異なる…… (As something yet different from master and servant...) 対等の仲間として。▼ (As equal partners.)

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Original text of my response, saved for archival purposes:

So this answer takes a super interesting twist I did not expect at all!!

First, what you heard is very much correct - just on a small scale, in the very last line of Hubert's. In localization, f!Byleth line was cut and merged with the m!Byleth line.

This is probably because the f!Byleth line couldn't translate directly at all unless... here's the part that takes this from a standard answer to a fascinating one... you know a very specific Chinese mythological story.

I didn't know it either, actually, until I Googled the Japanese words used in the support.

The story is of the 比翼の鳥, hiyoku no tori. (Note that is the Japanese word, I don't know any Chinese and can't provide the Chinese pronunciation.) It tells the tale of 2 birds, 1 male and 1 female, each with only 1 eye and 1 wing. They cannot fly unless they are side by side, and so they are always together.

As a quick Google image search can convey, the birds are sometimes depicted as clearly being separate birds, other times they are so close together they look more 1 bird with 2 heads.

The term came to have a second meaning of "happily married couple," so Hubert did not say anything uncommon by comparing him and Byleth to the birds.

The localizers could have still made the comparison that Hubert and Byleth would be like lovebirds, or be a happily married couple... but since the originally intended meaning could translate only to the players who happen to like both Fire Emblem and traditional Chinese stories, it's just as valid to merge the two supports I think.

I included a translation as well, which does work well enough on my blog because I get the luxury of translator's notes, unlike video games.

Note that the wording is awkward because I kept the Japanese and English word order side-by-side, as I tend to do with very short translations. It's fun to do when I can manage it.

Localization:

Keep reading

JP f!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 黒き鷲の王に付き従って飛ぶ、(Flying and following the king of black eagles,) 比翼の鳥のような二人に……。▼(the two of us like the hiyoku no tori...)

JP m!Byleth:

[ヒューベルト][Hubert] くく……我が命は主エーデルガルト様に (Chuckles ... My life, to Lady Edelgard) すでに捧げてあります。▼ (has already been dedicated.) 故に、貴殿と一蓮托生のような生き方は (Therefore, a way of life in which we shared our lot together) 決してできません。▼ (would never be possible.) ですが、もし私に２つの命があれば (But, if I had two lives,) 残りの１つを貴殿に預けるというのも……▼ (giving the remaining one to you would also...) 悪くはなかったかもしれませんな。▼ (not be bad, perhaps.) 主君と従者として、とはまた異なる…… (As something yet different from master and servant...) 対等の仲間として。▼ (As equal partners.)

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cookinguptales · 4 years

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I've a small query (if it doesn't float your boat, no worries!) I was interested in how you got into learning languages, what led you to it? I've become curious since learning a new language as an adult has only increased my awe of multilingual folk (additionally, I vaguely remember a post about a request in exchange for a donation to charity, and wondered if there were any you'd like a donation to)

First of all, good luck with the language learning! It’s not easy as an adult, but I do think it’s worth it, both in terms of cultural fluency and brain elasticity.

My answer to the language thing is actually extremely complicated, so I’ll be putting it under the cut. I’ll put the charity stuff above the cut so more people can see it.

— I’d just like to warn you, though, before I start, that I have been locked in this house for over a month with no respite and I HAVE A LOT OF WORDS AND FEELINGS IN ME SO THIS POST HAS SO MANY OF BOTH OF THOSE THINGS!!

anyway

There are so many charities that I want to donate to now that it honestly makes my head spin. Every time I look at a site like GoFundMe it kind of makes me want to cry. So a lot of donations I’ve made have been to like local businesses, restaurants, etc. who will close down without help. (Also a lot of local native groups, who are disproportionately suffering right now.) I’ve also been donating to various food banks — Philabundance, a Philly-centric charity that deals with food insecurity in general, is a good one. That was a regular of mine even before the outbreak. I’ve also donated to a lot of the local services in the small town where I’m in now, though you’ll need to PM me if you want the name of that. (It’s… very small.)

Off Their Plate is another great charity that’s been working with small restaurants (who can’t open for business) to get food to first responders. They’re partnered with World Central Kitchen, which is another fantastic charity that helps out during disasters. Plus well-known ones like Feeding America, No Kid Hungry (important while school is out and kids aren’t getting breakfast/lunch there), Direct Relief, etc.

(I uhhh may have overstrained my charity budget the past couple months. It’s odd how that adds to stress and relieves it at the same time.)

I tend to avoid religious charities, especially Salvation Army, because they’re occasionally discriminatory in how they distribute resources and we no longer have laws & oversight to make sure they don’t do shady shit. So I just avoid them in general now. I also avoid the American Red Cross because they’ve been known to misuse funds. Research is key!

I also worry about some of my regular charities, like Immigration Equality & Rainbow Railroad (helps LGBTQ people in dangerous countries immigrate to less dangerous ones), the Native American Rights Fund, various local abortion funds, RAICES (provides legal services to immigrants & refugees), the ACLU, Dysautonomia International, the Rainforest Action Network, etc… A lot of them are getting fewer donations than they’re used to because we’re in the middle of such life-shattering events.

If you are really interested in making a donation (please, please, please do) those are all good options. I also fully recommend looking up needy organizations, services, people, etc. in your own area. I try to donate to a healthy mixture of national/international organizations, local needs, and temporary issues du jour. (Disaster relief, bail funds for protesters, fighting new discriminatory laws, etc.) I would genuinely appreciate any donations, especially if you find a cause near and dear to your heart that I would never even hear about. Anything along these same lines, y’know? If you have anything you’d like me to do in return, just hmu.

I constantly stress about who to donate to — there are so many good organizations and so few dollars to give them — but at a certain point, every dollar to a cause you believe in counts. Every dollar you donate helps to make the world a little bit better for at least one person. That’s what I have to tell myself to calm myself down, haha. So even the smallest donation you make to any of these groups would mean a lot to me.

Anyway, onto the language stuff:

For me personally, I grew up bilingual. Deafness runs in my family, so I learned sign language from a very young age. Note: I say “sign language” rather than ASL. I learned sign language kind of organically, which ended up making a mess later in life. My parents mostly taught me, but so did my daycare (at a deaf school) and so did my babysitters and so did other family members, etc. The point is, not all of them used the same sign language. There was a wide mixture of ASL, SEE, and home signs and my current signing style is… problematic. lmao. My family all understands it (hey, they taught it to me) and I can have conversations with American sign language users, but I know they can’t love my signing lmao. I’ve considered sitting down and taking a legit ASL class for years, but there are so many classes I want to take… I don’t know.

After that, it largely became a case of taking languages whenever they were made available to me. I’ve always liked them. We moved around a lot when I was a preteen so I went to a lot of different schools. (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade were all different schools.) It was rough at home and hard to make friends so I guess I threw myself into academics a lot. My sixth grade school was an odd one; it was a 6-8 grade school and you were supposed to take a crash course in three different languages in sixth grade so you could choose one and take it in 7th and 8th grade. I ended up taking Spanish, French, and German that year. I liked French best! But then we moved so it was kind of moot. (And I hated German, sorry Germans. My mouth doesn’t like the noises. It didn’t help that my teacher was weirdly sympathetic to Nazi-era Germany…? But I guess that’s another post.)

When we moved to Florida, you had to have special permission to take language classes in 7th grade. (FL doesn’t have great academics.) But since I’d already had some Spanish in NC, they let me take it! And then I moved schools again. This new school, my 8th grade school, I’d be in until I graduated 12th grade years later — but the employee turnover at that school was almost comedically bad? I took Spanish for like a year and a half there and had three different teachers. So at this point I’d had 5 different Spanish teachers, all from different countries (where they spoke slightly different Spanish!), all reteaching the same ideas over and over again because they didn’t know where the last teacher had left off. In the end, my last Spanish teacher sent me to the school library with some textbooks because he felt like I was very good at languages and he couldn’t adequately teach me in the environment he’d been thrown into. (My high school was very terrible. So he was right.)

SO I SWITCHED TO FRENCH. I took French for 3-4 years in high school (can’t remember when I started) but the same shit started happening. By the last year, my French teacher had the French I, II, III, and IV students IN THE SAME CLASS and she just put the advanced students in small groups and had us do independent study. Sigh… Around this same time, I started three other languages. At this point, I was getting kind of accustomed to self-study so I applied for a Latin class in the Florida Virtual School and took a year of that. I also spent a summer studying at the University of Chicago when I was 16-17 and learned Middle Egyptian then. (Yes, I was an ancient cultures nerd even back then.)

The Japanese has always been an odd case. Like I said, my 8-12 education was fairly terrible. They had this thing where they used a computer program to teach kids math and the teacher kind of taught along? When I transferred to the school in the middle of 8th grade, the teacher didn’t know what to do with me so he just plopped me in front of a computer and told me to do as much as I could. They started me in… Pre-Algebra, I think? Which I’d already taken in sixth grade. So I ended up getting through Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Algebra, and Algebra II, which… wasn’t in the teacher’s plans. I’d kind of finished several years of math in like a quarter. And then they didn’t have any more classes. So he just told me to like. Sit quietly and amuse myself for the last few months of school?? (Terrible, terrible school.) So I went to the library and found a book about Japanese and started teaching myself that. I really, really liked Japanese! Like it’s a language that just clicks really well with the way my brain works, I think. It’s very logical, I like the syllabary, etc. And I think growing up signing helped me with pictographic languages like Middle Egyptian and Japanese. My brain easily connects visual symbols with concepts.

When I went to college, the plan was honestly to learn more Egyptian and start translating, and I kept taking French to help me read old research in various ancient study fields. I ended up transferring out of the NELC major, though, due to some ethical problems… I guess that’s another post. Several years into my RELS/FOLK degree I went to my parents like. Look. I love learning this stuff but none of it’s useful. Remember how much I loved Japanese? Can I go back to learning that? I could translate that and that’s a legit skill. So I applied to a program through my school and studied in Japan for a while and ended up really doubling down on that language. Weird how I came back to it years later, but I guess it was always the one I loved best.

I have a mind that’s very pattern-based, so I guess I’ve always loved learning languages and the patterns behind them. (This may be why languages with a lot of rule exceptions, like French, irritate me.) They’re like puzzles that I’ve always enjoyed teasing out. Unfortunately, the way my education bounced around meant that I never got a good grounding in most of those languages, so I’ve largely lost them. I can still read French fairly well and my Japanese is good… My Spanish is like. Enough to get me around in the southern US. My German is abysmal. I remember very little Latin & Middle Egyptian. (It’s been over 10 years, I guess.)

So I guess what I feel the need to say to you is that if you don’t use it, you will lose it. I did well in all my language classes. They’ve always been fairly easy for me. Like. Straight As, no problem. I don’t say this to brag. I say it so you know that even for someone like me, whose brain is fairly well-wired for languages, it’s very, very difficult to retain languages when you’re not using them. If you’re not used to taking languages or you started late in life, it’s even harder. So even on the days you don’t want to practice! You gotta practice! Ganbare! Bon chance!

#replies #god these are so many words #sorry to everyone #shaymeson

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