I’m waiting for the TJPW VOD show to go up before I translate it, so I’ve been reading the NJPW English book in the meantime. I’m maybe about halfway through the glossary, and there’s some fun stuff in there! (Also lots of bad words. I censored them just to be safe 
)
I thought it was funny how they commented in the entry for “heel” that it sounds like 和製英語, but is English.
Also, it teaches the word “bastard”, but warns that it’s not used in regular daily conversation, the TOEIC test (I had to look up what this is ), or business English, of course.
I actually learned a new English phrase! One of the words in here is “bollocks”, which I already knew, but I had never heard “the dog’s bollocks” before. Apparently it means “the best thing”, contrary to the usual meaning of the word, haha.
It also used the phrase “首洗って待っとけ！” to explain “Get ready!” and I got excited because I remembered seeing 首洗って in a very old DDT translation I did and not knowing what on earth to do with it (me: “Wash your neck? What??”). A couple of my friends informed me that it refers to a traditional means of preparation before execution via decapitation, so they thought “get ready” isn’t actually threatening enough. One of my friends said she translates the above phrase more like “prepare to die.”
This sent me down a bit of a google rabbit hole, because I was curious how other people were translating it. It was kind of funny because there didn’t seem to be a real consensus! Pretty much every site I looked at had a different suggestion. I appreciated this post, which appears to be part of a series called “Hey, Boss! There’s no English for that!” It talks about the difficulty of translating that phrase, and why various choices are unsuitable.
The author of that post thinks “be prepared” is too weak, so they probably wouldn’t approve of NJPW’s choice of “get ready!”, haha. The translation they suggested was “just you wait and see.”
So, I went to see how I’d translated it back in… December 2021 (
). The specific phrase the wrestler was quoted as using was: “首洗って、覚悟して待っとけ.” And I went with… “So wash your neck and brace yourself.”
Honestly? Not too bad. The “wash your neck” part reads a bit strangely in English, but I think “brace yourself” gets the point across well enough.
Something that I thought was funny in the NJPW English book was in the entry for “shit”, they also mentioned “piece of shit”, and there was a note about Kenny saying the phrase which directed me to a short interview earlier in the book. I’d skipped it initially because it was all in Japanese, but I went back and skimmed the section in question, and it was pretty funny! The translator talked about the difficulty of translating Kenny calling Tana a piece of shit at the end of 2018. EDIT: Just realized I forgot to add what the translator eventually settled on for “piece of shit”. It was “ポンコツ野郎”.
It’s fun reading about the translation problems that people have to deal with on the other side of the equation, haha.
The NJPW book says that “guy” means “man,” but as an expression can also refer to women, which is true, but it says to note that “dude(s)” is only used for men, which is pretty spectacularly false, actually .
I liked the note for “aggressive” which said that a Spanish translator whom the writer knows translated the Spanish word for aggressive (I had to look this one up. It’s “agresivo”) as 好戦的, and the writer thought that was really classy, so they’ve been copying them ever since.
Also, the book says (in the entry for “backstage”) that Jay and Zack’s backstage interviews are must-see for English learners. This made a few of my friends laugh because some of Jay’s and Zack’s interviews are nearly incomprehensible even to us, native English speakers.
For the entry on “biting” it says that of course this is illegal, so you have to stop within the 5 count.
And “spoiler alert” is one phrase that is taught in this book as well as the book on fandom vocab I have (which is the same genre of book). It’s ネタバレ注意. (“Bias” is also in both books, but the usage in the fandom book is not the same as the usage of the word here ).
All in all, the book is going pretty well for me so far! I added it to Natively, but had some trouble rating its difficulty score. I went with “lower intermediate” because I feel like it’s above my current level (and considering the lack of furigana, which isn’t a problem for me personally, but might deter others), but the copious amounts of English makes it easier. Somehow, I don’t expect a lot of other folks on the site to read this one, so my ratings might weight it pretty heavily…
Also, I saw this image from shupro in this tweet and almost considered trying to read the article, but decided it probably wasn’t the best use of my time at the moment. I’ll just appreciate the photo from afar. I believe she’s holding a bouquet of daisies, which is a nice touch. EDIT: Nope, it’s sunflowers !
One last note I wanted to mention is that there have been some more Kota Ibushi tweets. Some negative stuff about NJPW, but also something positive! He mentioned wanting to come to AEW for at least a few times (his health permitting, as his injury still hasn’t healed), and he specifically mentioned wrestling as the Golden Lovers! He also named Adam Page when asked who he wanted to fight.
Seeing that really cheered me up. The Golden Lovers story lives on, despite everything…