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Manga Answerman - How Come Only Some Manga Use Honorifics?

#887780 wrote:

If it's already clear what the relationships are by the general dialogue or the characters' actions, then the formality of honorifics can be dispensed with in favor of a more straighforward translation that skips those things.

This isn't in itself a terrible idea, but there are enough instances where suddenly it does make a difference when it didn't really before that keeping them (or 'translating' to some rough equivalent, though that usually winds up more awkward than just keeping them) is generally a safer default. For instance, in Gunbuster, Noriko typically addresses Kazumi as 'onee-sama', which the translation changed to 'Lieutenant Amano'. All good, perfectly reasonable... until in dialogue Noriko calls her Lieutenant Amano, and Kazumi tells her that feels weird and to call her Big Sister like she always does.

I think part of the problem is, in order to make the localization of a manga accessible to the widest English-speaking audience, how much familiarity is it reasonable to assume on the audience's part, or how many pages of a book is the publisher willing to devote to explaining things for neophytes?

#887780 wrote:

I think part of the problem is, in order to make the localization of a manga accessible to the widest English-speaking audience, how much familiarity is it reasonable to assume on the audience's part, or how many pages of a book is the publisher willing to devote to explaining things for neophytes?

Given that virtually all manga now is read "backwards" and no longer flopped there is an expectation for readers to familiarize themselves with new things. If a western publisher has to explains things--and they often do--then it's customary to include a reference page or a publisher could simply refer to a website url instead of repeating the same explanations over again.

Also regarding your discussion on long vowel romanization, notice that you're still distinguishing between short and long o by the use of the macron. But what if you can't type that macron? What if you're limited by ASCII but still need to differentiate, which is important in many cases? That's why it's customary and now most anime subtitle translations and some manga translations stick to Wāpuro rōmaji

I understand that for the people who are adamant about this, it's coming from an attitude of respecting the Japanese culture and the language, but I'm sorry... whoever determined that the best English representation of the Japanese long O phenome was "ou" was just out-and-out wrong. Upon encountering the romanization of "shoujo" for the first time, NO native English-speaker is going to simply guess, or just 'stumble on', the correct pronunciation. They're going to pronounce it like the English word "shoe". While not all English words are spelled like they sound, we shouldn't make things intentionally difficult for non-Japanese speakers by incorporating an additional level of difficulty. I would rather hear the mispronunciation of "oh" instead of the long O -- at least it's closer than "shoe".

#887780 wrote:

I understand that for the people who are adamant about this, it's coming from an attitude of respecting the Japanese culture and the language, but I'm sorry... whoever determined that the best English representation of the Japanese long O phenome was "ou" was just out-and-out wrong. Upon encountering the romanization of "shoujo" for the first time, NO native English-speaker is going to simply guess, or just 'stumble on', the correct pronunciation. They're going to pronounce it like the English word "shoe". While not all English words are spelled like they sound, we shouldn't make things intentionally difficult for non-Japanese speakers by incorporating an additional level of difficulty. I would rather hear the mispronunciation of "oh" instead of the long O -- at least it's closer than "shoe".

I have no idea what you're talking about. I am a native English speaker and my very first instinct upon seeing the word "shoujo" in localization was to pronounce it shōjo. I have never heard anybody pronounce it "shoe-jo", and I don't know how you arrived at the conclusion that that's a realistic outcome.

It's a good example, because if you say "No, is IS a rule - if you're not going to use the technically correct character "ō", then the regular Romanization should be shoujo". Okay, then if it's a RULE, it should apply to all Romanizations of "ō" -- regardless. However, not only was that NOT the "prevailing convention" for years and years -- if I read somewhere "shojo manga", I know exactly what is being referred to -- but if "shoujo" is correct, then "shounen" should also be correct. Except that it's not, according to the prevailing Romanization convention of Shueisha, the publisher of Weekly Shōnen Jump. Just try to get the rest of the world to go along with the idea of replacing 'Weekly Shōnen Jump" with typing it as "Weekly Shounen Jump". It's not going to happen, no matter how hard-headed you feel about it. Worse than that is the fact that English-speakers will be pronouncing the "ou" in the title as "Shoe"-nen Jump, not "Show"-nen Jump.

I feel like the "ou" Romanization of "ō" is just an unfortunate choice on someone's part, because without some deeper immersion in Japanese phonetics and pronunciation, 9 out of 10 English readers seeing a word Romanized in that way are going to be mentally reading it as "oo" or just "u", (as in you or boutique) not "ohh", as it's intended. Therefore it isn't practical for casual usage -- it needs to be part of a deeper language-learning experience.

It's not going to help matters any if someone asks "What's a good shoo-jo manga?" Shake your head and walk away in disgust, or launch into a critical language lesson on proper Japanese pronunciation -- neither seems like a good idea.

This whole discussion about the shōnen/shōjo pronunciation reminds me of a similar case that happened in Summon Night 6. The voice director did not make it clear to a few of the dub actors that the character Touya's name is pronounced toe-ya, and so you have these odd voice acted scenes where most of the cast is saying his name correctly while two or three other characters are saying too-ya. That, or said director didn't correct them when he should have. Incidentally, the character's name is rendered as Touya in the script and the art book.

#887780 wrote:

It's a good example, because if you say "No, is IS a rule - if you're not going to use the technically correct character "ō", then the regular Romanization should be shoujo". Okay, then if it's a RULE, it should apply to all Romanizations of "ō" -- regardless. However, not only was that NOT the "prevailing convention" for years and years -- if I read somewhere "shojo manga", I know exactly what is being referred to -- but if "shoujo" is correct, then "shounen" should also be correct. Except that it's not, according to the prevailing Romanization convention of Shueisha, the publisher of Weekly Shōnen Jump. Just try to get the rest of the world to go along with the idea of replacing 'Weekly Shōnen Jump" with typing it as "Weekly Shounen Jump". It's not going to happen, no matter how hard-headed you feel about it. Worse than that is the fact that English-speakers will be pronouncing the "ou" in the title as "Shoe"-nen Jump, not "Show"-nen Jump.

Just because a given publisher picks one way, doesn't mean it's definitive. There's nothing incorrect about "shounen", and I don't know where you're getting the idea that everyone's going to think it's pronounced like "shoe" from, but I've never encountered anyone who does that, and I've heard more and worse mangling of Japanese words and names than you can possibly imagine.

#887780 wrote:

I feel like the "ou" Romanization of "ō" is just an unfortunate choice on someone's part, because without some deeper immersion in Japanese phonetics and pronunciation, 9 out of 10 English readers seeing a word Romanized in that way are going to be mentally reading it as "oo" or just "u", (as in you or boutique) not "ohh", as it's intended. Therefore it isn't practical for casual usage -- it needs to be part of a deeper language-learning experience.

Some are going to get it wrong, sure, but no matter what way you choose to romanise it, someone's going to get it wrong. You think "ou" would cause more of it than "ō", I really don't think so; most of my early exposure to anime and manga had "ou", and I got the correct impression re pronunciation.

While there are points to be made about accessibility to newcomers, the situation is quite different now than it was when I first got into anime and manga; some of the real fundamental basics of Japanese culture and language are actually a bit more widespread now, and the general public isn't as resistant to the idea of picking up something they don't already know all about. The idea that the reader must not be presented with something new or unfamiliar isn't the priority it once was.

If even professional voice actors are getting it wrong, it seems to prove the point I was trying to make. Romanization systems should be aiming at making letter combinations that make the pronunciation intuitive for English readers/speakers based on the same way English speakers apprehend pronunciation of any unfamiliar English word they might encounter (by comparison with other words whose pronunciation is known to them). The actors who got it right would have gotten the correct pronunciation (if not specifically given to them) only based on their prior knowledge of the correct pronunciation of other Japanese names with similar "ou" romanized spellings. If you're familar with the title Ikki Tousen, or the character of Batou from Ghost in the Shell, it's easy enough to guess the correct pronunciation of "Touya". If the only thing you're comparing "Touya" to for reference to its pronunciation is English words that use the ou vowel combination, you'll never guess it. But the romanized spelling can't be "toe-ya" either, because while that makes perfect sense from an English pronunciation perspective, comparison with the pronunciation of other known Japanese words would have that come out as tow-eh-ya.

I definitely prefer to have the honorifics kept in, except in cases like Vinland Saga type stories. My biggest pet peeve however is when there are no honorifics and everyone calls each other by their first name regardless of how things are actually written in the manga. I feel like Viz was the one who did that more often than not, so I’m glad to hear they’ve changed things for Haikyuu at least.

#887780 wrote:

If even professional voice actors are getting it wrong, it seems to prove the point I was trying to make. Romanization systems should be aiming at making letter combinations that make the pronunciation intuitive for English readers/speakers based on the same way English speakers apprehend pronunciation of any unfamiliar English word they might encounter (by comparison with other words whose pronunciation is known to them). The actors who got it right would have gotten the correct pronunciation (if not specifically given to them) only based on their prior knowledge of the correct pronunciation of other Japanese names with similar "ou" romanized spellings. If you're familar with the title Ikki Tousen, or the character of Batou from Ghost in the Shell, it's easy enough to guess the correct pronunciation of "Touya". If the only thing you're comparing "Touya" to for reference to its pronunciation is English words that use the ou vowel combination, you'll never guess it. But the romanized spelling can't be "toe-ya" either, because while that makes perfect sense from an English pronunciation perspective, comparison with the pronunciation of other known Japanese words would have that come out as tow-eh-ya.

I should clarify something. Summon Night 6's dub is sort of an odd duck. It consists of professional VAs from across anime and games (like Bryce Papenbrook, Patrick Seitz, and Erica Mendez), the old Lunar Silver Star and Eternal Blue VAs (like Kathy Emma and Blake Dorsey), and a collection of newbies who either did very well for their first time or who emoted poorly. The too-ya goofs came from one Lunar VA and the rest from the newbies. I can only assume the voice director didn't make Touya's pronunciation clear. Pros like Papenbrook, Seitz, and Mendez could never screw that up, considering their experience up to this point.

Well, it just seems like you're saying the same thing I am.

Two groups: veteran VAs well-familiarized with dubbing Japanese anime and the Japanese pronuciation of romanji words in the script; and neophyte VAs to dubbing Japanese anime, whose only frame of reference for pronunciation is English, not Japanese -- the ones who pronounced "Touya" as too-ya. The fact that there wasn't any variation in the mistaken pronunciations among the second group gives credence to my assertion that the mispronunciation of the romanji "tou" as too is the logical mistake to make by way of referencing the romanji as English pronunciations, not Japanese.

#887780 wrote:

If it's already clear what the relationships are by the general dialogue or the characters' actions, then the formality of honorifics can be dispensed with in favor of a more straighforward translation that skips those things.

This isn't in itself a terrible idea, but there are enough instances where suddenly it does make a difference when it didn't really before that keeping them (or 'translating' to some rough equivalent, though that usually winds up more awkward than just keeping them) is generally a safer default. For instance, in Gunbuster, Noriko typically addresses Kazumi as 'onee-sama', which the translation changed to 'Lieutenant Amano'. All good, perfectly reasonable... until in dialogue Noriko calls her Lieutenant Amano, and Kazumi tells her that feels weird and to call her Big Sister like she always does.