Trigun Translation Trip-up

As is usual practice on this blog, sentences marked with an asterisk (*) are incorrect for the language in which they are typed.

For some reason when I was younger I really liked the show Trigun. I thought it was fascinating and compelling, so I decided to watch it again to see if it still held up. As with many things some of the magic fades once you're older, but I did come across a surprisingly basic translation mistake that illustrates some interesting points of Japanese grammar. It comes at the end of episode 3. A group of bandits is robbing a bank while the entire town looks on in fear. After a show of courage on the part of certain characters, everyone in town pulls out a gun and stands up to the bandits. Unwilling to admit defeat, the bandit leader plays his trump card by revealing that his gun's barrel splits into many smaller barrels that point in many directions. Oh, snap—now he can mow down everyone in front of him, which is basically the entire town. Luckily, Frank Marlin, the main minor character of this episode, sneaks up behind the leader and delivers a witty one-liner that sends the bandits packing. Let's see what he says.

Dialogue Click for Romaji Click for Kanji/Kana Bad Guy:　てめえら、勝ったと思ってるだろう。甘いんだよ。切り札は最後まで取っておくもんだなあ。 Frank Marlon：チェックメートだ。後ろには撃てねえなあ Bad Guy: temeera, katta to omotteru darou. amai n da yo. kirifuda wa saigo made totte oku mon da naa. Frank Marlon: CHEKKUMEETO da. ushiro ni wa utenee naa.

What?! "I can't shoot you in the back."?! Sure, just stroll up behind the bandit, make him think he's dead meat, then tell him he's safe and can go ahead and slaughter the townsfolk because you have qualms with shooting people from behind. That'll send him running for sure. Someone really should have caught that. The dub version renders this line as "Shootin' from behind's just not my style.", which sounds niftier and removes the-finger-pointed-at-head-not-at-back problem but still makes no sense in context. Luckily this moment in the show passes so quickly that the mistake is not fatal. Still, how did this happen?

Omitted Words and Context

Something that often makes Japanese difficult to figure out is that it favors omitting things from the sentence that can be understood from context. Japanese is especially fond of dropping the verb's arguments (subject, direct object, indirect object), particularly the subject. In fact, it this is often a reason that non-native speakers' Japanese sounds foreign and unnatural: We use the pronouns we learned when we first started studying Japanese way too often. You see, even if you don't specify the arguments of the verb in the sentence, the arguments are always there as "null (i.e. nonvocalized but understood) pronouns". For more about this idea and how it affects Japanese grammar and sentence interpretation, see Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You. The basic idea, though, is that even when a verb/sentence does not appear to have a subject (or direct object etc.), it still does and the subject does not have to be the same as the previous verb/sentence's subject. You are supposed to determine the subject from the context. Sometimes this gets really hard because you aren't sure if it's I or we or he or whatever. Most student's assume that if the subject is dropped it's I, but it can just as easily be you or anything else. This is problem number one: the translator appears to have assumed that the subject of うてねえ(utenee) was I (the speaker, Frank Marlon) rather than you (the bandit).

Words Have Multiple Meanings

Problem number 2 is that the translator might not have understood that the word 後ろ(ushiro) has multiple English meanings. Ushiro is often glossed as meaning back because it is the opposite of 前(mae), front/forward. However, the opposite of front/forward can just as easily be considered to be behind. If the translator had considered the definition "behind", maybe would not have decided that Frank Marlon was talking about shooting the bandit in the back. Hopefully, though, he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Marlon was talking about shooting the bandit in the behind, which brings me to my next point.

The tranlator also might not have understood that the English definition provided is not necessarily correct for every sense or usage of the English word. Like many other Japanese position/direction words, ushiro typically refers to a particular part of the space around the object but can also refer to a part of the object itself. Ushiro can mean the space behind an object or the back part/side of the object. Although because of that property it can refer to the body part known in English as the back, it typically doesn't, and and there's a word that refers exclusively to the back as a body part rather than a position metaphor (背中 [senaka]). Here are the example sentences in my electronic dictionary (広辞苑 [koujien] 2008)that were given for the senaka meaning.

Japanese	English Translation (Mine)
敵に後ろをみせる teki ni ushiro wo miseru	[to] show your back to the enemy
ひさしの柱に後ろをあてて hisashi no hashira ni ushiro wo atete	[with his] back against the eave's pillar

The "show your back to the enemy" example is open to a back-side-of-your-body interpretation, so it's not very convincing in my mind. The pillar example comes from 枕草子(Makura no soushi, a.k.a. The Pillow Book), which was written by a court lady of the Empress Teishi in the late 10th and early 11th century. According to this, the rest of the sentence says that the subject was sitting, so in that example ushiro seems indisputably to mean back as in the body part. Given the context there could be some sort of politeness thing going on where ushiro is used as a more polite way of referring to the person's back (just as bottom in English is a more polite way of referring to someone's butt), but in any case, suffice it to say that it is minimally plausible that ushiro in our Trigun clip meant back in the body-part sense. That is, as long as you don't pay attention to the particles.

Particle Mistakes

Problem number 3 is that the translator must not have known what particles (sort of like prepositions) the verb utsu (shoot) uses. That problem is not always the result of ignorance of the Japanese language: Dictionaries often do not provide the information clearly, and because Japanese favors dropping words that can be understood from context, you can hear and read a word dozens of times without ever encountering all the proper particles. Some Japanese verbs take totally different particles from what you would assume based on English.

For example, 探す (sagasu), which means search or look for, can take the location for the direct object (just as English does in "search the trunk") or the lost item (which English does with a certain verb but not with search: "I seek my phone" vs. "search for my phone"). What particles do you use when you use both the location and the lost item in the sentence ("search the trunk for my phone")? I don't know—I've never encountered it and my dictionaries' examples don't resolve the question. The way I would work around that problem is to make the the item the topic and the trunk the direct object and then cross my fingers.

Another example is the word 手伝う (tetsudau), which means help. In English the person you help is the direct object, and you use the preposition with to indicate the thing you're helping with. In Japanese the thing you help out with is the direct object, while the person you help is sometimes the indirect object but typically something else altogether.

Japanese Examples (Sentences I made up)	English Translations (mine)
1. 妹を手伝った。 imouto wo tetsudatta.	I helped my sister.
2. 妹の手伝いをした。(possibly preferred over 1) imouto no tetsudai wo shita.	I helped my sister.
3. 妹に宿題を手伝った。(uncommon I think) imouto ni shukudai wo tetsudatta.	I helped my sister with her homework.
4. 妹の宿題を手伝った。(possibly preferred over 3) imouto no shukudai wo tetsudatta.	I helped my sister with her homework.
5. 妹が宿題をするのを手伝った。 imouto ga shukudai wo suru no wo tetsudatta.	I helped my sister do her homework.

So which particles does utsu use? In translating "ushiro niwa utenee na" as "I can't shoot you in the back", the translator must have thought that Japanese followed English usage (shoot [person/animal/plant] in the [bodypart]) and believed that in that particular sentence the "you" was dropped because it was understood from context while the body part that would be shot was specified. In fact, Japanese does follow English usage somewhat, but instead of treating life-forms differently from objects ("shot someone in the foot" vs. "shot the doorknob" vs. *"shot the door in the knob") Japanese treats them all the same. The thing you shoot is the direct object, and if it's a life-form's bodypart you mark it possessive in a pattern similar to sentence 4 in the tetsudau chart. When the particle ni is used with utsu it marks the direction of the shooting. To test this understanding, which I gleaned from a combination of English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries, I searched Japanese google on a topic that was sure to have lots of results—zombies! I tried various Japanese renditions of "shoot the zombie in the head" with quotation marks to search the exact phrase. *"頭にゾンビを撃つ" (*atama ni zonbi wo utsu) and *"ゾンビを頭に撃つ" (*zonbi wo atama ni utsu) both had no results, but "ゾンビの頭を撃つ" (zonbi no atama wo utsu) did have some results. Other searches, such as "に撃つ" and ”人に撃つ” (hito ni utsu) confirm that ni marks a direction when used with utsu. This table sums up how particles work with utsu.

Japanese Examples (Sentences I made up)	English Translations (mine)
ゾンビを撃った。 zonbi wo utta.	[subject] shot the zombie.
2. ゾンビに撃った。 zonbi ni utta.	[subject] shot at the zombie.
3.ゾンビの頭を撃った。 zonbi no atama wo utta.	I shot the zombie's head. I shot the zombie in the head.

On that note I'll leave you with this video.

Naruto and the "Believe it!" Controversy

As a self-styled grammar ninja, I think it's about time I post about both grammar and ninjas. Okay, you caught me—it's only tangentially about ninjas and mostly about grammar. I'm going to use the power of grammar (it's a lot like the heart of the cards) to clear up an age-old controversy among anime fans and, with any luck, illustrate some deficiencies in the state of Japanese language instruction. Anime can be exceptionally educational, even when it's not meant to be.

Background

Naruto has been one of the most popular and successful anime series in America and presumably also in Japan. According to wikipedia, the original show ran for 220 episodes excluding movies and OVAs (original video animations [anime jargon]). After Naruto ended, a sequel series called Naruto: Shippuuden went on the air. To date that show has broadcast 320 episodes (see wikipedia).

It's fairly common in anime for characters to be given idiosyncratic speech (sometimes just an overused word but other times a general pattern or style of speech) to create an impression of uniqueness and to facilitate characterization. Naruto, the protagonist/main character of the Naruto shows, was given a catch phrase of sorts (it's much more in the vane of an overused word/phrase): He would very often end his sentences with or say「だってばよ」(da tteba yo).

The phrase was evidently not well understood among the fansub community (I also did not understand it when I first encountered it) and remains a mystery to most anime fans and fansubbers today, as evidenced by the discussions here, here, and here. Many if not all fansubs avoided the problem by simply tacking「だってばよ」onto the English translation of Naruto's lines whenever it occured, rendering it "dattebayo". Now, that kind of thing is not unusual: Japanese titles and forms of address (chan, san, sama, dono, O-nii-chan etc.) are often left untranslated (Funimation's dub of Ouran High School Host Club went so far as to make them part of the English dialogue). Leaving bits of Japanese in the subtitles/translation is in many ways a lazy translation decision (possibly even a poor or incorrect one), but it has been heartily embraced among many anime fans. I think it's because it gives a sense of connection to and understanding of Japanese culture and because the knowledge can be reincorporated into various geek subcultures. Regardless, "dattebayo" took on cult status among fans, and a fansubbing group even adopted the phrase as its name ([infamous?] Dattebayo Fansubs).

I don't know who to credit for this image, but it isn't me—believe it!

When the dubbed version of Naruto was released in America, all hell broke loose. In the course of its English adaptation, Viz Media chose to translate "dattebayo" as "Believe it!". A nerd rage fest erupted among fans, who complained that Viz was making the show too kiddy and lame, and that "Believe it!" was stupid, annoying, and otherwise lame. Fans also adamantly insisted that "Believe it!" is not what "dattebayo" means (Don't ask me where their confidence came from). You can query the internet to get a taste of the various reactions. "Believe it!" became a became a standard/default criticism of the show. It was kind of a big deal—it eventually became a meme. I bet that even now, years later, it would not be very difficult to start a flame war over it.

Dattebayo Myths

Apparently a mythos has developed among fans about what "dattebayo" means/is. Much of it is incorrect. Here are the main contentions, which I gleaned from the three links above because I found them pretty representative and reminiscent of what I've seen over the years.

• "Dattebayo" is a verbal tic
• "Dattebayo" doesn't mean anything
• "Dattebayo" doesn't have a literal meaning or doesn't have a literal English translation
• "Dattebayo" is one word/unit
• "Dattebayo" is a made up word/unit
• "Dattebayo" is related to the word "datte" meaning "but"
• "Dattebayo" doesn't not mean "Believe it!" because "Believe it!" is used to fill up time and match mouth movements

Unfortunately for those invested in the mythos, that's all wrong.

My problem with the verbal tic explanation is that to me a verbal tic is something that is involuntary or compulsive, not merely something that someone says more than others. However, Tv Tropes uses verbal tic as terminology for idiosyncratic speech phenomena and lists dattebayo" as an example. Since you can't argue with a tautological definition and in order to avoid sophistry, I'll just say that "dattebayo" is just as voluntary as the rest of Naruto's speech and leave it at that. The grammar discussion will dispel the other myths.

Grammar Time

It's no wonder fansubbers did not understand "dattebayo"—it's full of wacky grammar stuff that isn't explained well in classes or books. This analysis is based on my observations from watching a LOT of shows. None of the books I have right now support it (or refute it), so if you find any sources let me know. Interestingly, the current entry 8 for "dattebayo" in Urban Dictionary breaks "dattebayo" up into all the right parts, but many of the details beyond that are wrong.

"Dattebayo" is not one word but three (da, tteba, and yo), though I'll analyze it by morpheme. The morphemes are da, tte, ba, and yo.

Da:Da is the "informal"/"plain" form of "desu", which means "be" (Japanese has slightly different verb forms for different levels of formality/politeness). Japanese verbs don't exhibit person (1st, 2nd, 3rd person), so they don't change no matter what the subject is. Japanese also generally doesn't mark the future tense, so "present tense" verbs can also be future tense. Thus da can mean is, are, am, and "will be".

Tte:Tte is a contraction that has undergone at least partial grammaticalization. Tte is probably a contraction of to and some form of iu (say/speak/tell/call), though there are some other possibilities. For our purposes, the Japanese word to is translated as "that" or changes the translation of iuu. It's not clear whether tte is a contraction of "to iuu" or "to itte" or "to ie", but it clearly displays special grammatical properties of each of them and of its own: For instance, tte can be used as a replacement for to in many contexts, it can end a sentence, it can be used in front of a noun without no or any verbal connector, it can be used with no as if it were a verb, and it can mark the topic of the sentence. Because of those wacky properties, tte has many correct "literal" translations, but in "dattebayo" it only means say/tell. Here are some example sentences from「どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型辞曲」(When and How to Use It: A Dictionary of Japanese Expressions and Sentence Patterns)to illustrate some of those grammatically special usages of tte. As usual, the English translations are mine.

Sentence with tte	Sentence without tte
後藤さんは明日来られないって。 Gotou-san wa asu korarenai tte. "I hear he can't come tomorrow." "Mr. Gotou said he can't come tomorrow."	後藤さんは明日来られないと聞いた。 (Gotou-san wa asu korarenai to kiita.) "I heard Mr. Gotou can't come tomorrow." 後藤さんは明日来られないと言った。 (Gotou-san wa asu korarenai to itta.) "Mr. Gotou said he can't come tomorrow."
A:PCって何ですか。 A:PC tte nan desu ka. A:"What's a 'PC'?" A:"What do you mean by 'PC'?" B:パソコンのことですよ。 B: pasokon no koto desu. B: "It means personal computer."	A:PCとは何ですか。 PC towa nan desu ka. A:"What's a 'PC'?" A:"What do you mean by 'PC'?"
子どもを持つのって、大変ですか。 kodomo wo motsu no tte, taihen desu ka. "Is having children hard?"	子どもを持つというのは大変ですか。 kodomo wo motsu to iu no wa taihen desu ka. "Is having children hard?"
これは村上春樹って作家が書いた「海辺のカフカ」っていう小説です。 kore wa murakami haruki tte sakka ga kaita "umibe no kafuka" tte iu shousetsu desu. "This is a novel called Kafka on the Shore, which an author called Haruki Murakami wrote."	これは村上春樹という作家が書いた「海辺のカフカ」という小説です。 kore wa murakami haruki to iu sakka ga kaita "umibe no kafuka" to iu shousetsu desu. "This is a novel called Kafka on the Shore, which an author called Haruki Murakami wrote."

This playlist contains several clips with various uses of tte. If you'd like to read the dialogue as well as listen click the Youtube icon in the player. That will take you to the playlist on Youtube, where the dialogue is transcribed in the description.



Ba:Ba is a bound morpheme (i.e. not a word in isolation) that means if and usually only attaches to a certain verb form (referred to as base 4 in some books). It's one of at least four ways to express if. Normally iu in ba form would be "ieba", which is one of the reasons it's possible that tte is a contraction of "to ie". Since tte can be used interchangeably with to, "tteba" it could also be a contraction of "to ieba" (say "to ieba" several times quickly and without articulating the vowels very clearly) or of "tte ieba".

From a non-native speaker's pesrpective, the difference in sound and form between "tteba" and "to ieba" is fairly large and is probably why the fansub community didn't widely recognize it (though of course a deficiency in Japanese instruction played a large part). The fact that tte is not generally classified as a verb further obscures the equivalence.

Dialogue Click for Romaji Click for Kanji/Kana Palm:最近気付くと包丁（を）持って、それをじっと見詰めて落ち着く自分がいるなって思ってて。これ、ほぼ限界に近いってことだから、手遅れになる前の今なら逃げても追っかけてまで殺そうと思わないと思うの。 Killua:これさえなけりゃ。 Bisky:本当に美味しい御飯なんだけどねえ。 Gon:逃げないってば。何度も言ってるでしょう Palm: Saikin kidzuku to houchou (wo) motte, sore wo jitto mitsumete ochitsuku jibun ga iruna tte omottete. kore, hobo genkai ni chikai tte koto dakara, teokure ni naru mae no ima nara nigete mo okkakete made korosou to omowanai to omou no. Killu: kore sae nakerya. Bisky: hontou ni oishii gohan na n da kedo nee. Gon: nigenai tteba. nandomo itteru deshou.

Dialogue Click for Romaji Click for Kanji/Kana Earth: なんだ、あれは。 Elle:一体なんですの。 Sunbeam:馬鹿か。 Umagon:メロメ。 Kyanchome:やっぱり。 Folgore:あ、あいつだ。 Kyanchome and Folgore:キース！ Ellie:なに？あの方と知り合いなのか。 Sauza:来寄るな。 Sunbeam:短い付き合いだった。 Kyanchome:敵だよ。 Folgore: 滅茶苦茶強いんだってば。 Ellie:入るぞ。 Earth:よい。 Kyanchome:無視しないでよ。 Earth: na n da are wa. Elle: ittai na n desu no Sunbeam: baka ka Umagon: me ro me Kyanchome: yappari Folgore: a aitsu da Kyanchome and Folgore: kiisu Ellie: nani? ano kata to shiriai na no ka Sauza: kiyoru na Sunbeam: mijikai tsukiai datta Kyanchome: teki da yo Folgore: mechakucha tsuyoi n da tteba Ellie: hairuzo Earth: yoi Kyanchome: mushi shinaide yo

Yo: When used at the end of a sentence yo conveys emphasis and/or strong emotion. Although it is often explained as being equivalent to an exclamation point, that is not the full story. In spoken English, the emphasis yo conveys can be reflected in tone of voice and/or in word emphasis patterns. In written English it can be translated with any device that conveys stronger tone or different word emphasis (an exclamation point, italics, bold, capital letters, or nothing). Sometimes yo is only about emphasis and does not involve particularly strong emotion.

In the first episode of 絶縁のテンペスト (Zetsuen no Tempesuto) (English title: Blast of Tempest), Yoshino, one of the protagonists, is reading or translating into English out loud as part of class. While he does a gaggle of girls gossips in hushed voices about him. As he reaches the end of a section they wonder whether he has a girlfriend. Finishing the section he coolly replies out loud, as if he were still reading for class, "iru yo." (I do.).

Dialogue Click for Romaji Click for Kanji/Kana Girl Gaggle: 吉野って割りとよくねえ？ まあね。真広いなけりゃただの人だし。 可愛いんだし。とりあえず言っとけば？ でも、さ、彼女いるって噂、聞いたんだけど。 Yoshino: いるよ。 Girl Gaggle: Yoshino tte wari to yokunee? maa ne. Mahiro inakerya tada no hito da shi. kawaii n da shi. toriaezu ittokeba? demo, sa, kanojo iru tte uwasa, kiitandakedo. Yoshino: iru yo.

When Naruto says "dattebayo", however, yo conveys strong emotion and basically means exclamation point.

"Dattebayo"

Putting all that together we can see that "dattebayo" does have a meaning and a literal translation: "If I say it is!". Because Japanese operates according to different rules for what constitutes a fragment and when the rest of the idea is implied, and because tense works differently, we can modify that meaning to "If I say/tell you it is/will be, [then it is/will be]". Now, since English doesn't follow the same fragment/implication rules as Japanese, Viz could not have used the literal translation to make a quality dub, so it had to come up with a more idiomatic English equivalent. The less-literal, more-idiomatic translation options include "Count on it!", "Bet on it!", "I'm telling you ([x])", "I said so, didn't I?", and "Because I said so."—depending on context. Turns out "Believe it!" was a brilliant translation, not only because it could be used to cover extra lip movements but also because it matches the Japanese meaning naturally in a large number of contexts. だってばよ！

Update

When I first wrote this I mentioned that there were other options besides the possible contractions of to and iu. Since then I have thought of some major possibilities that deserve mention. One is a contraction of to and te (The same て in the て form). Another would be that tte is a phonetic change of a probably different te (the type that appears in "te na wake de" which has the same meaning as "to iu wake de"). It's clear from older Japanese forms and from words and expressions that survived into modern Japanese (though they might be considered archaic) that ba can attach to adverbs/adverbial phrases. That makes these other possibilities reasonable in the absence of more information.

Ask a Grammar Ninja

I haven't been very active with this blog. I suppose because I lost motivation. I have a bunch of half-done draft posts I might finish, but things might be much more fun and engaging if some of what I write is motivated purely by people who visit the blog (hopefully there will be such people) rather than just what's in my head at the time. Let's try something different.

Ask me questions!

Ask me stuff about Japanese or grammar or any other general topic I post on. You can ask in a comment on this post or send me an email. I'll find a place for your question and my answer/thoughts somewhere on the blog, whether that's here, a new post, an update, or a comment. Even just a "How do you translate this?" or a "Why is it this and not that?" would be great. I'll tell you and I won't even have to kill you.