極主夫道 | Week 2 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#41

I think that’s supposed to be とも, right?

Some TL feedback/discussion - possibly wrong, of course

It’s worth noting that 兄貴 in this context is specifically slang for a more senior Yakuza member, and doesn’t literally mean “older brother”. I have no idea how to convey that in translation though.

I think “cruel business” is a bit misleading here - “shady” migth be a better fit. I also think まん is a negation in this case, and he’s saying they don’t run a shady business.

This で indicates sequentiality - things got bad/difficult after aniki disappeared

やあらへん is じゃない, and わ is roughly the same as よ → 「お〜」じゃないよ！ - he’s saying something along the lines of “this is nothing to go ooooh over!”

〜ねん marks a question, similarly to の → 何してんの！ - what the hell are we/you doing?

The お〜 is a sort of “ooh” of amazement/excitement, so he’s basically asking “why are you getting all excited over frying croquettes”

おばはん means aunt or middle-aged lady, not grandma

I don’t think that’s quite right - isn’t Masa saying this? I can’t imagine him being all “long live violence” after getting slapped into oblivion. I’m not entirely sure why he’d just yell “violence!” though. Maybe he’s playing into 暴力 also referring to domestic abuse, essentially calling out “I’m being abused”?

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#42
暴力

I believe he is essentially saying “this is violence”, from his point of view Tatsu is being a bit of a hypocrite.

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#43

D’oh

Leave it to me to miss the most obvious interpretation. That’s twice now :joy:

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#44

Fixing asap, now it’s much better reading for “friend” kanji.

Thanks a lot for reading thru and explaining!

Of course, and indeed how to translate. I was thinking just leaving it as “aniki”, similar to “senpai” but it’s not that well known in English.

“Grandma” not aunt was my hyperbole.

As for “long live violence”, no clue if this is correct interpretation - I think it is Masa being super happy on the receiving end of Tatsu’s violence, because he sees “old Tatsu” now. But that again is a wild guess.

Thanks for all grammar points and dialect points!

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#45

It’s difficult not to overthink things when your brain is already working so hard! :slight_smile:

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#46
時間くっている場合ちゃう on page 51

One definition of 食う is “to consume time and-or resources”, which supports your analysis.

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#47

Oops, you added an extra あ.

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#48

Does anyone know what the first kanji on page 56 is? I am stumped.

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#49

Isn’t it 嘘
うそ

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#50

わー ありがとう! I completely misunderstood the division between the left and right side, so even my trusty pattern index couldn’t help me. I guess I haven’t seen the kanji for うそ very often!

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#51

Outside of learning it at level 41 on WaniKani and seeing it in this manga, I almost never see it, either. It took me a moment to process at first, too. I can only think of one other manga that I’ve seen it in, personally. I’ve seen the word written in katakana more than anything else.

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#52

Really? I feel like I’ve seen the kanji for 嘘 a bunch of times. In fact, there’s (at least) two different versions, one where the bottom looks like spikes, and one where it looks more like a cactus, and I feel like there was a discussion about that in a prior book club…

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#53

It could be just what I’ve read, honestly.

It’s pretty much just manga and news, and outside of the book clubs I’m involved in here, I’ve only had time to be actively reading one other series lately (though that is also the one I have seen the kanji used in, that author just likes to show off his kanji knowledge in general though, it feels like. Lots of rarely-used kanji forms.)

For what it’s worth, Jisho doesn’t specify that it’s usually kana-only, which would mean one is probably likely to see it. I just haven’t really, but 2/4 book clubs I’m in are series by the same author (Ayumu and Takagi-san), so it’s possibly just a lack of variety thing on my part.

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#54
兄貴

It’s a tricky one to translate, to be sure. But I guess in most cases, in this chapter at least, it can just be translated as “you” - Japanese doesn’t use second-person pronouns very often, but in English it’d be rather weird to address someone as either a title or by their name constantly. Most uses of 兄貴 are Masa addressing Tatsu directly.

But yeah, it’s a tricky one. Leaving it as “aniki” might be the most accurate, but does rely on the reader knowing what it means in context, and I don’t think it’s quite as ingrained in anime/manga culture as “senpai” is.

Yeah, that’s true. Between reading in a language I’m not at all fluent in and having to decipher Kansai-ben while I’m at it, I keep missing the straight-forward stuff because I’m constantly wrangling things around to what I know in the first place :sweat_smile:

Oh well, it’s all part of the learning experience.

Oops indeed! Good catch, I’ll fix that right away :slight_smile:

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#55

まん is equivelent to のです・ます (see the discussion above). the negation would be 〜(し)まへん or just 〜ません

I’m not sure how you’d translate アコギな商売 directly but I think the general thrust of the sentence is something like “you drive a hard bargain” (through the yakuza filter)

something like “chief” or “boss” I guess :thinking:

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#56

Fun fact - in Yakuza 3 / 龍が如く３there’s a character who says aniki like… what feels like several thousand times, and you can see this exact split in “how much do we translate this vs. assuming our audience wants the original flavor enough to make do with the untranslated word” localization philosophy by comparing the original PS3 version with the Remastered version (which has a new localization and generally can assume English-speaking audiences are a lot more familiar with the series and its tropes than the original one did):

Proof

Yakuza 3 for PS3:

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image1123×980 57.9 KB

Yakuza 3 Remastered for PS4:

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image1154×967 62.8 KB

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#57

Going from the English I’d say that feels more like 親父(おやじ) or 親分(おやぶん) :thinking: It definitely conveys the seniority aspect though.

Man, Yakuza do love their family values, don’t they :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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#58

I’d say it’s reasonably common to use them like a japanese person would use aniki, but obviously they also cover those other things as well.

I think it’s just a general thing in languages that have separate words for older/younger siblings tbh

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#59

You may well be right, the only language I know of that does thatv is Japanese. It extends beyond older and younger siblings though - there’s 姉貴 and 兄貴 of course, which could essentially be similar to 兄さん and 姉さん referring to young men and women even if they’re not related to you, but there also being 親父 for the boss, 小父御 or おじさん for the boss’s “sworn brother”, 小父貴 for someone of higher rank than 小父御, as well as fellow members of the same group being called 兄弟, that sounds to me like they’re taking the family aspect of it a bit beyond what you’d normally do in Japanese. Especially for what essentially amounts to a working relationship.

But it’s entirely possible I’m viewing this through too much of a Western lens.

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#60

afaik it’s not unusual in japanese for people who are unrelated but close to use 兄さん・姉さん as suffixes (also おじさん・おばさん). might come across a bit childish though, not sure…

it also works in turkish and chinese. I can’t speak in detail for chinese, but it’s pretty normal in turkish to call even strangers the turkish equivalents, and it’s pretty common (in my limited experience) to call people abi/abla (older brother/sister) in a working environment

basically it feels to me like the yakuza heirarchy is an extension of that idea, rather than an obsession with family. could be wrong though :man_shrugging:

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