I ended up deciding not to move DDT and TJPW down to the less accessible promotions category, despite losing Mr. Haku’s translations. Both promotions continue to have more English support than most of the others, and Wrestle Universe is one of the easiest streaming platforms to use in English. I would consider them kind of on the edge, though.
I talked about this more in my last study log post, but to make a long story short, I’m going to try informally translating the DDT post-match comments after each show! I thought I’d post about them in here instead of my study log.
The first one I tried to tackle was the December 12 show. Here’s the official recap article for it (the source of my translation), and a fan-written summary of the show in English. I started with DeepL, but went through the machine translation line by line to make sure it was accurate. Some of the post-match comments exist in video form but were not transcribed on the website, so unfortunately I will have to miss out on those until my listening comprehension improves.
DDT uploaded the main event, and you can watch it here! There is no commentary, unfortunately, but it’s a fun match. There’s not a lot of story to this one, though it pulls on various story threads from the past year that are a little complicated to explain. It’s a special tag match between six of DDT’s top wrestlers who are tagging with people they usually don’t tag with.
The big thing in this match was Konosuke Takeshita (current KO-D Openweight Champion) winning after demonstrating “秋山準直伝”のジャンピング・ニー for the first time. The word 直伝 was new to me, though I know both of the kanji from WK! It means direct transmission (of mysteries or skill). The Jumping Knee that Takeshita used was taught to him directly from Jun Akiyama (who learned it from Jumbo Tsuruta).
I thought it was funny that Tetsuya Endo referred to Akiyama as a どう猛な獣を簡単に飼い慣らせる, basically a ferocious beast that can’t be easily tamed. Before Endo officially formed his new faction BURNING (which Akiyama is part of), his original plan was to name his next faction after Animal Crossing, so I appreciate that the animal theme continued for a bit!
I laughed when Endo talked about how he wasn’t able to take in 秋山準の毒. Jun Akiyama is a respected wrestling legend, so there’s something really funny about Endo talking about his teaching in terms of poison or evil influence. Endo was just recently in the heel faction Damnation, and he’s a different person in some ways after Damnation dissolved, but at the same time, he’s not really that different, haha!
Regarding the other matches:
I had a little trouble figuring out how to translate 本部席 here: 本部席からベルトを持ち出す. I could understand that it was referring to where Daisuke Sasaki grabbed the belt from, but I don’t know the proper term for this table in English! I think it’s where the general manager Hisaya Imabayashi usually sits, hence 本部, which means headquarters or the main office.
In his post-match comments, Sasaki said “アイツら絶対許さない” and a friend helped point me on the right path with translating it. I started with “I’ll never forgive them”, but according to one of my friends, it’s more like “I won’t let this slide”, which is frequently said in anime. This makes a lot more sense for his character.
I laughed at Kazuki Hirata’s last line: “秒殺だけはやめてください”. DeepL gave me “please don’t kill me in seconds”, and that actually seems to capture the sentiment pretty well, haha! 秒殺 was a new word for me, but its meaning is very straightforward! It means instant killing, basically. Or winning in a flash/instant defeat.
All in all, it was fun trying to translate these, and I was surprised by how much I could feel all of the wrestlers’ characters coming through, even with my very low level proficiency with the language. I’m going to keep doing these as long as I can, and hopefully they’ll get easier as I continue to learn more vocab and grammar!