The 🤼 プロレス thread! Learning Japanese through pro wrestling

Yeah I didn’t love the “we’ve hired too many wrestlers” framing from the top boss, but he wasn’t necessarily wrong about the broader point. There’s always a ton going on in Stardom and Stardom World isn’t great for keeping up with it, and I have to imagine the language barrier would compound that a lot. When that friend asked for advice on getting into Stardom I briefly explained Giulia’s relationships with Suzu and Syuri since that was most relevant to what I was recommending at the time, but I have especially noticed since then how much else there would be to explain somehow, from big stuff like Waka’s ongoing odyssey or Kamitani’s defense record and Shirakawa’s injury to stuff like who exactly all the visiting wrestlers are, or anything going on on New Blood, or what’s the deal with ゴキゲンです anyway. And I noticed the last show with English commentary on Stardom World was quite a long time ago.

It makes me selfishly extra stoked to have maximum access to commentaries, press conferences, interviews, and Shupro articles! But it does make it really hard to tell how enjoyable the show would be without any of those things… Especially as I’m all the more aware how much they each have enhanced the experience for me (strange to have gone from not ever imagining a need to understand Japanese commentary to having a hard time imagining not understanding it).

Part of what makes the head honcho back of the magazine interviews interesting is where they describe the focus as being, and it does seem like that focus being on overseas outreach and streaming services is generally less than it was in past years, especially for Bushiroad. The focus for Stardom seems to be growing regional shows as much as possible, so the investment goes into stuff like that bus.

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Here it’s a kind of interjection bridging the eked out confidence of “we’re not going to lose!” with the wry resignation of “I’ll do my best.”


Some attempts at alternatives:
“Oh god. I’ll do my best.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying that! I’ll do my best”
“What am I getting into… I’ll do my best!”

The translation for “ほぼマックスみたいなところはあるので。” isn’t right. I would say she’s probably comparing herself/magirabbi to Max’s level (and that’s why Pom won’t be a problem for them). “After all, we’re pretty similar to Max in a lot of ways.” would be my rough attempt. ほぼマックスみたいなところ would be “qualities/features/aspects pretty much like Max” so someone’s got those.

I’d say the これ is the title contract / this signing / the title shot itself, and the 成り立つ would be like, being valid/fulfilled. So I’d put it more like roughly “Yeah. First of all though if they won’t be here will the match even happen?”

Also a nitpick but for “ぽむちゃんがやりたいって言うなら”, “if Pom-chan says she wants to do it” would be more literally accurate I think than “Pom-chan said she’d do it, so”

This is a small hard to explain nitpick, but I would tweak this to be something like “How nice for us!”
都合いい I would say has a similar connotation as 余裕 this context. Like, it’s convenient for them (at Pom’s expense) so it has a little extra smugness.

Also one more small tweak: I wouldn’t say she’s directly thanking someone here with ありがたい (it’s not ありがとう), more like she’s expressing general gladness/thanks for the situation. I’m finding it a little hard to translate directly without slipping too much into overly English sounding phrases like “Sweet!” or “Hallelujah!” but since the point here is they’re very smugly talking up how good the situation is for them maybe something like “I’m so glad!” or “what a pleasant outcome!” or “It’s our lucky day!” something…

I might punch it up slightly to “smug and relaxed”, although that might be a little bit too much.

The grammar with くらい here I would phrase more as like, we’re close friends, to a degree I never would have imagined before. Like it’s intensifying the 仲良し by saying it was 前じゃ考えられなかったくらい - i.e. so 仲良し it would have been unthinkable before. Whereas your translated version is doing something slightly different grammatically (although I’m having a little trouble articulating exactly what)

I would say the サイン以上にインペイラーだよって part doesn’t involve よって
but rather she’s saying literally like "This action expresses インペイラーだよ (I’m Impaler) moreso than a signature " so something like “it expresses the Impaler’s identity more than a signature”

… Something about the following captions all in a list without the photos attached is especially funny :grin:

I would say Pom is actually the subject here, and it’s the slangy kind of 持ってる.
Sort of like “she’s got ‘it’” in English – it comes up a lot in school manga and stuff to talk about like, a popular person in school or that kind of thing. Describing that kind of ineffable quality of having things go their way, or that kind of thing. So here it’s a little bit sarcastic. “Wow, Pom Harajuku’s really something isn’t she?” or “Wow, Pom Harajuku’s popular isn’t she?” would I think both work okay (the former leading more into the next sentence, the latter hitting the sarcastic element more).

I might go with more more “wild” or “really out there” or “outrageous” (said the last one before noticing you used it later - a repeat would probably be fine herer, after all she said it twice!). “unthinkable” sounds a little grim in this context considering someone technically just got kidnapped…

Slightly unjustified tweaks, but my attempt is along the lines of “It feels like outrageous things are afoot. And this is just our first defense!” as the “but” and the singular “thing” felt slightly odd to me in the sentence English. (the “afoot” is probably a little much though :sweat_smile:)

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Yeah, it’s honestly funny that he worries about people not understanding because of having too many wrestlers, when like… half of their audience isn’t understanding because they won’t subtitle or translate the essential stuff to understand anything :sweat_smile:.

Like, AEW has a huge roster, and yeah the audience does at times have trouble following the stories because of it (I’ve seen enough wrong opinions on twitter to know that some things which feel self-explanatory to me are not as obvious as I think they are…), but overall a language barrier is a much bigger barrier to understanding than messy or complicated storytelling.

I guess I do worry a bit about Stardom’s roster growing too big, but mostly because 1) it has caused AEW some problems (the bigger the roster gets, the less big opportunities for individuals, which can lead to unrest), and 2) I don’t want it to lead to another wrestling monopoly where Stardom hoards all the top talent in the joshi scene.

Prominence show spoilers (not any match results, but an announcement): especially with Suzu Suzuki leaving Prominence… I was super bummed to hear that. I hope she doesn’t sign with Stardom just because I feel like the rest of the joshi industry could really use her.

I worry about small independent joshi groups like Prominence and Nomads surviving… I hope they don’t get subsumed by bigger companies or have all of their top talent poached away from them.

Yeah, the whole time I’ve been following Japanese wrestling, I’ve been following pretty much all the extra stuff I could (it was easier with NJPW, since post-match comments get subtitled, and interviews and pressers get translated). We had it so good with Mr. Haku when he was still with DDT and TJPW. I feel like I say that a lot, haha, but it’s true! You could watch DDT/TJPW and not really feel the language barrier thanks to him. He didn’t translate shupro articles, but the other stuff, yeah. I can’t imagine what it’s like to follow these companies without that (it literally drove me to, well, do what I do with the translations now).

It does make it so much harder to get people into Japanese wrestling, though, because it’s really a totally new way of following media. It took me probably a month into watching NJPW before I discovered/understood what the post-match comments were and why I should seek them out. And it took a bit before I started reading all of Mr. Haku’s comment translations for TJPW because I didn’t realize how much they enhanced the experience.

There was really a huge learning curve to the whole thing, and it was hard to explain when I wrote the opening post for this thread, too, trying to explain how it all worked, haha. I feel like you often need to come into it with a friend who is watching with you and basically holding your hand through everything and explaining every small little detail to you until you’ve been watching long enough to survive on your own.

TJPW in particular has loads of lore, but a lot of it is really subtle and has been built up over a period of years, so it becomes more rewarding the longer you’ve followed it, but if you don’t have someone to sort of jump start your understanding, it can be kind of hard to get into it. You’ll gradually pick up the character bits and understand some of the recurring dynamics, but that requires watching over a long period of time, and sometimes it’s hard to convince someone that it’s worth it to give it that time haha.

It’s part of why I’m such a big fan of well-written wrestling essays, because I feel like they help shortcut people to the investment stage and save you the trouble of trying to explain long and complicated stories off the top of your head. But to write one of those, you need to be a genuine fan of the company with extensive background knowledge who has been following it for a long enough period of time (including the supplemental material), and there aren’t, like, a whole lot of fans who have the right set of interests and skills to make those. At least, not the kind of wrestling essay that I really like, haha. Especially for joshi wrestling, sadly.

I guess maybe some of it is in video essays and podcasts and such, but I have a lot of trouble watching/listening to those, so I prefer written essays. It’s just nice when you can be like “oh, this wrestler is very cool! here’s why!” and link to an essay that explains everything in nice succinct detail.

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Huh! That’s interesting news. I probably would hope she signs with Stardom to be honest – her work there, particularly with Giulia, is some of my very favorite stuff in pro wrestling, and a year+ of incredibly busy and successful freelancing followed by a presumably very lucrative contract seems like an ideal step in the career path, especially for someone so young (that bit in that shupro interview where she was like “it’s definitely tiring but nothing yakiniku and a sauna won’t mostly fix” didn’t sound… like the most long-term sustainable path in the world…). Not even gonna risk looking more into it right now while I’m still waiting for the big Stardom show to upload though! I’m sure whatever her decision is she will definitely, definitely have interviews in Shupro explaining it…

One positive thing at least though on the other hand is it does seem perfectly possible to get into watching matches with barely anything as an introduction beyond like, a primer somebody posted on reddit or just hearing that a particular show was cool. When I got into NJPW I would always opt for Japanese commentary even though I didn’t understand it and had no intention of learning Japanese, but just because the atmosphere was better (and the English commentary if it existed was generally relatively disappointing) and didn’t particular register I was missing anything by not understanding, say, the post-match promos (even if now the show-closing promos are pretty much consistently some of my favorite moments). And even all this Shupro reading was motivated originally much less by “I’m dying for additional context to these wrestling shows” and more by “I want to try out Kinokuniya’s magazine subscription service - I guess I’ll go with this.”

I’d be really curious ultimately what the breakdown is between fans seeking out any of that additional context vs. just watching the matches - both among English fans and Japanese fans for that matter.
I think it’s oddly both true that pro wrestling doesn’t have a language barrier and anyone can watch a show and have a great uncompromised show, and also that it does have a pretty steep language barrier and there’s a ton of context and enjoyment to be gained from learning the language or having access to high quality translated material. I think the path of only over time (if ever) slowly watching enough to care to accumulate that additional context is all but inevitable compared to immediately jumping in the deep end, and so it’s interesting that the language barrier is less of an intial barrier of entry and more of a barrier to deep investment.
I suppose that strange dichotomy is probably why a lot of (all? NJPW is awfully good about it in comparison to other promotions at least, but…) promotions’ solutions for foreign language support ends up middle of the road or incomplete.

On a sort of related subject, I was wondering, I get the impression you listen to the English commentary when available, is that fair to say?
Nothing wrong at all with that of course if so! I’m just curiously looking forward to the time I’m very confident will come in the not too distant future when you do hit the “hey I can sorta follow Japanese commentary somehow!” point :sweat_smile:.

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That is true! Pro wrestling is accessible on multiple levels, and the basic plot of a match is enjoyable without any additional context. However, I am totally the kind of person who got into it specifically because of the deep diving haha, so for me that’s where the main interest is :sweat_smile:.

The first wrestling show I ever watched live was AEW Double or Nothing, which happened like two months after I got into wrestling, and even then, I knew enough to know that I needed to pay attention to details like Kenny’s gear (and he did in fact wear the Golden Lovers symbol on his shoulder… :smiling_face_with_tear: my action figure of him has it as well).

I guess people who get into it for the Golden Lovers are probably predisposed to watch pro wrestling a certain way, because the wrestlers have taught us to look for certain clues and to seek out supplemental material (from the NJPW post-match comments to shupro interviews to Being The Elite to… Kenny’s instagram stories, haha).

It’s funny and frustrating to me to see some wrestling fans criticize Elite fans for “reading too much into things” when the Elite lore enthusiasts just get proven right time and time again. It’s almost like wrestlers deliberately put clues into their work that are meant to be read into…

Yes, I do listen to English commentary when it exists! My fatal flaw as a wrestling fan is that I am interested not only in the narrative, but in the narrative about the narrative, so I get curious about how the stories are getting presented by the commentators…

During the particularly lean years in the latest chapter of the Golden Lovers story (2019-2020, pre-AEW/NJPW relationship), I would listen fruitlessly to NJPW commentary for any sort of hints that things were heading in that direction, which was often a frustrating experience because the commentary team wouldn’t call any of Kota Ibushi’s v-triggers by that name (except Rocky did once, at Wrestle Kingdom 2021, I believe). According to my friend who is fluent, the Japanese commentary team was the same way.

Of course, I’m still at a point where I need translation help on things said in the ring, and English commentary helps with that, though I’m getting better there. With TJPW, it’s less of an issue because Mr. Haku is usually also translating on twitter (and his translations are almost always better and more complete), and even if he’s not, I’ll be looking up the Japanese later and translating on my own. Mr. Haku is actually genuinely great on commentary the few times I’ve heard him do it (in GanPro). He translates quickly and with a lot of detail, and he has extensive knowledge of the background lore and weaves it in excellently.

However, I actually really like the usual TJPW English comms team (Chris Brookes and Akki is my favorite duo, though I don’t mind Drew Parker) in their own right because Chris and Akki have a really entertaining relationship. Their characters sort of hate each other (in ChocoPro), and usually how it goes is that Akki will root for the underdogs and Chris will root for the wrestlers who are being the meanest (except for Mei Saint-Michel, whom Chris especially hates), except for Raku, whom Chris likes. He also won’t say a bad word about Itoh because she’s his boss in the Itoh Respect Army.

In a weird way, I guess I watch the TJPW English comms team because I enjoy how it sort of furthers wrestling lore (mostly ChocoPro, but a bit of DDT/TJPW), if that makes any sense :sweat_smile:? It is helped a lot by the commentators being wrestlers themselves. They don’t know the full details of the TJPW stories, but I’ll forgive them if their commentary is funny enough, haha. One of my friends can’t stand English commentary usually, but even she will watch with Chris and Akki because they’re very funny without being obtrusive. I guess they work because they fit the vibe of the promotion, and it helps that they have wrestled several of the TJPW wrestlers themselves.

I am at a point with TJPW where non-Chris/Akki/Drew English commentary does bother me (like the L.A. show), though I think I would’ve probably been more than fine with Veda on comms, because Veda is a genuine fan of the promotion, and I would have liked to hear her thoughts on things.

It’s tough because I definitely know more about TJPW than just about any person they could pick for English comms (the same is not true of DDT; there are some fans in Japan who are huge fans of the company and also very knowledgeable and qualified to do commentary), but at the same time, I get so curious how the stories are being received by the English-speaking audience, like what’s getting transmitted and what isn’t.

When my listening comprehension is better, I’m totally planning on switching to Japanese commentary, though. I occasionally get practice with it when watching TJPW and DDT shows with only Japanese commentary as an option, and I can tell that my comprehension is slowly improving. I understand most of the commentary about moves and such, I’d say.

The things that I miss are like the fun personal asides from the commentators, and most of the more lore-rich contributions from wrestlers on commentary, which are less straightforward to understand. That stuff is like the meat of the commentary to me, so when I can understand that like 95% of the time, that’s probably when I’ll make the switch, because that’ll outweigh my other curiosity.

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That makes sense! They do seem like they would be really fun. Sometimes the English commentary lineup does tempt me, like Waka did commentary in English for I think Historic X-Over, which seemed like it would be fun.
And in a weird mirror sort of situation, if I were watching AEW and had access to both English and Japanese commentary, I’d probably opt for Japanese even though it probably be less good for storylines, just for Miki Motoi and El Desperado. :sweat_smile:

One aspect about Japanese commentary that surprised me is how frequent guest commentators are. I usually think of them as pretty rare and focused on building feuds in English commentary but it seems like nearly every show with commentary in Japanese promotions has a wrestler come out to be a third person on commentary for at least the latter half of the show (usually one who had a match earlier on the card). It’s not quite lore per se most of the time but that extra chunk of personality/character is really cool.

Seems like the ability to hold attention for a long time and distinguish fully multiple people talking is late to click in with listening comprehension though! So I think your plan of when to switch over makes sense, and I think it’s an attainable milestone to look forward to!

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Honestly, Chris Brookes has done such an amazing job for himself in Japan. Fair play to him

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Having one of those weeks where I’m just sort of behind on everything, but I watched the April 22 TJPW show when the VOD went up and just finished the translation! Looks like the comment transcriptions on the main site are maybe a permanent fixture?

The first match was the team of three Yukis vs Itoh & Hikari & Shino. Predictably, Itoh and Hikari sort of fell apart there at the end, which did their team no favors.

Shupro kept up their favorite bit when transcribing the comments for this team, and all of them are listed by first name alone (which of course does not hold up in English, haha). Interestingly, the DDT site didn’t. I guess it probably does autotranslate better that way, though I don’t know if that’s an actual concern for them, or if they’re just trying to stay consistent.

As always, I could not resist participating in the bit :sweat_smile:. Here’s the video for トリプルYUKI, and here’s what I had:

Yuki (Kamifuku): “Triple Yuki, victory!”

Yuki (Aino) & Yuki (Arai): “Yay!”

Yuki (Aino): “Haven’t we got a high win rate? Two matches, two wins.”

Yuki (Kamifuku): “I’m grateful to my parents, truly.”

Yuki (Aino): “Seriously, they’re the best.”

Yuki (Kamifuku): “The parents who gave me this name, seriously good vibes.”

Yuki (Arai): (laughs)

Yuki (Kamifuku): “Yukis, we did our best. Put your hands up!”

Yuki & Yuki & Yuki: “Yes!”

Yuki (Kamifuku): “Well, to the Yukis who worked so hard, here are some gummies.”

Yuki (Aino): “You gave me some the other day, too, didn’t you?”

Yuki (Arai): “Yay!”

Yuki (Aino): “Not only that, they’re Ninja Meshi, too. The best! You know what, they’re shaped like infinity. Like our Yuki strength is infinite.”

Yuki (Kamifuku): “Legit infinity. Well… that’s it.”

Here’s Itoh/Hikari/Shino’s comments:

Itoh: (to Shino, who doesn’t speak for a bit) “Say something. It’s your fault we lost.”

Shino: “I’m sorry…”

Itoh: “You piece of shit. You’re not sorry. Say something! …It’s not a laughing matter! Are you reflecting on what you did?”

Shino: “It was my fault…”

Itoh: “Then what are you going to do next time?”

Shino: “Next time, I want to beat the Yukis.”

Itoh: “How?”

Shino: “…With feelings.”

Itoh: “Say it properly!”

Shino: “I don’t want to lose with my feelings!”

Itoh: “OK!”

Hikari: “We’re breaking up!”

Itoh: “I’ll never do it again. We’ll never team up again.”

Hikari: (to Shino) “Go home.”

I had a moment where I wasn’t sure how hard to go with Itoh’s “ポンコツが”, but, well, figured she wouldn’t be opposed to my choice, haha. It was funny to me that Itoh blamed Shino so much for them losing when Itoh and Hikari certainly did not help their team…

Next, Rika and Miu faced Suzume and Arisu, which was a fun match that I totally kept forgetting was technically a preview match for the International title, haha. One day, Daisy Monkey will win… :smiling_face_with_tear:

In Rika and Miu’s comments, I think I understood Rika’s, uh, first few sentences:

Tatsumi: “I won! I won, but I wanted to get a direct win over Suzume, even though it’s just a preview match. To be honest, maybe that wasn’t good.”

These two were a little trickier: “まぁ次は本番、5・5おもいっきり可愛がれたらなって。もう一瞬の油断も隙も迷いも何もないので、余裕持って、でも油断せずいけるかなって思ってます”

“Well, the next one is the real deal, and I’m going to train with all my strength for May 5. There isn’t going to be a single moment of carelessness, no gap, hesitation, or anything else, so I think I have some leeway, but I can’t let my guard down.”

Miu: “Please be sure to defend the belt.”

Tatsumi: “Yes!”

Miu: “I’ll be rooting for you.”

Tatsumi: “Thank you. I’m counting on you, cheerleader. I’m going to do it!”

(Did you feel Suzume’s feelings?)

“That girl was really breaking a lot of rules, wasn’t she?”

Miu: (laughing)

Tatsumi: “Hey, the bad one, the bad bee came out, huh? I want to face her and do this fair and square.”

I also totally laughed along with Miu when Rika called out Suzume for breaking the rules, haha.

Suzume and Arisu’s comments caused me a bit more trouble. I think I got the first chunk:

Suzume: “I challenged Rika-san the other day. Today was a preview match, but it turned out to be a regular tag team match. I already knew what they were like, but Daydream was strong and dangerous as usual.”

This sentence was tricky: “でも私は未詩さんやリカさんより自分が強いとは思ってなかったし、それでも一瞬を勝ち取る自信があったから挑戦を決めて.”

“But even though I didn’t think I was stronger than Miu-san and Rika-san, I was confident that I’d win for an instant, so I secured the challenge. That confidence hasn’t changed.”

Arisu’s lines were tricky! “鈴芽さんが挑戦表明して、これは前哨戦だと思って私も気持ちをめちゃめちゃ出して。それでも負けちゃったのがめちゃめちゃ悔しくて。しかも、逆に助けられてばっかりなかんじだったから…悔しかったです”

Arisu: “Suzume-san challenged, so I considered this to be a preview match and really poured my feelings into it. Losing despite that makes me so disappointed. Not only that, but it felt like I’m the one who’s always being helped… It’s frustrating. Suzume-san’s momentum is incredible.”

And I wasn’t quite sure about Suzume’s last lines, either: “始めにちょっとすかされたりとかで、まだリカさんは私のことを全然見てないのかなっていうのを感じたので。どうにかこっちを見てほしいというか、振り向かそうみたいなところがありました.”

(We saw some moments that were a bit different than usual, such as when you choked the champion in retaliation)

Suzume: “Yes. At the start, I felt like Rika-san wasn’t paying attention to me at all. I wanted her to look at me somehow, or I guess I should say I wanted her to turn around and face me.”

The main event of this show was so wonderful. I’m gonna write up a bit about it in my wrestling journal, I think! It was Pom & Max challenging Yuka & Mizuki for the tag belts. I loved how we could see that Pom trusts Max more now, and despite Max weaponizing Pom repeatedly through the match, there was one moment where they let Pom use them as a weapon, too :smiling_face_with_tear:. It was just really good. I hope this tag team comes back, because I am so incredibly charmed by them.

Unfortunately for Pom, though, the victory was not to be… MagiRabbi’s superior tag team prowess ultimately won out in the end.

When Yuka got on the mic afterward, her first couple sentences were a bit tricky: “いや…マックスだけに気を取られてたけど原宿ぽむ、やるやんけアイツ。やっぱり自分の中でも変わろうとしてるからいっぱいいっぱいなところもあるけど、そうやって変わろうと思ってること自体がとても愛しいことなので.”

Sakazaki: “Well… I was just focusing on Max, but Pom Harajuku, that girl can really go! There are lots of things she’s trying to change within herself, but I love that she’s trying to change like that. That girl was really good. Still got a long way to go, though.”

Then she said to Mizuki, “これどした?” I think my question here is more a translation flavor question than anything, haha. I also wasn’t quite sure about Mizuki’s response: “なんかなってる?”

Mizuki: “How is it?”

Sakazaki: “It’s looks like a stylish tattoo.”

Mazuki: “Really? I wonder if it’s that. It’s like proof of being Max’s friend…”

Sakazaki: (immediately wiping it off) “I erased it.”

Mizuki: “Since we successfully defended today, I’m still double champ! That’s a surprise, huh? I never thought the day would come that I’d win the tag belts with Yuka-chi again.”

Sakazaki: “This makes the fourth time in total (it’s the third time for Mizuki).”

Mizuki: “Fourth time? Well, I’m very happy, and I still want to make TJPW’s tag team scene even more sparkling from here. So I’m really happy that I got to see Pom-chan’s serious expression today, and I’m going to try my best not to let her overtake me.”

I was following along with the transcript when watching, since this was a VOD, and Yuka immediately wiping off the mark on Mizuki’s face as soon as Mizuki suggested that it was proof of Max’s friendship killed me, haha.

Then Yuka said, “はい、縁もたけなわではございますが…ということで、いつもはハンバーグやけど.” The first part of this was a bit confusing :sweat_smile:.

Sakazaki: “Yes, our bond is at its peak… That is to say, we usually have hamburger steak, but…”

Mizuki: “It’s Osaka, so…”

Sakazaki: “Takayaki, okonomiyaki, or what else?” (to the voice saying “kushiage”) “Let’s do that!”

They close with “Eat kushiage” and “HAPPY HAPPY”

I got the beginning of Yuka and Mizuki’s comments:

Sakazaki: “Alright! We defended our belts!”

Mizuki: “V1!”

Sakazaki: “Well, with the rather unusual combination of Max and Pom…”

Mizuki: “It was rough.”

I saw “デコボコで” and was like HEY WAIT A MINUTE I KNOW THAT ONE

I didn’t really know what was going at all with Yuka’s line here, and Mizuki’s afterward was also confusing…

坂崎「タイトルマッチする日がくるとは」

Sakazaki: “The day of the title match arrives.”

瑞希「これは押されつつあったけど、すごくすごく私たちにとって…」

Mizuki: “It was a lot of pressure, but for us, it was really, really…”

Sakazaki: “There’s no one in TJPW who’s that scary.”

Mizuki: “Yeah. It felt like a new door had opened for us.”

Sakazaki: “It was amazing, huh? Max being so reliable, and Pom being really lively. But I don’t know if they see her as a partner, or as a toy.”

Mizuki: “Well, with Pom, they helped support her on the way out as they should. I thought it was kind of a strange relationship.”

Sakazaki: “I want to do it again.”

Mizuki: “…You want to do it again?”

Sakazaki: “Well… that is, uh…”

Mizuki: “I want to do it again!”

Sakazaki: “I guess so.”

Pom’s and Max’s comments are so sweet… :pleading_face:. I think I managed to get everything?

Pom: (crying loudly) “I lost… I’m sorry…” (The Impaler wipes away Pom’s tears) “Even though I had the strongest ally on my side, I lost… But, hey, our opponents were really scary, but we’ll always be” (in English) “the best tag team forever,” (in Japanese) “right? From now on.” (The Impaler growls and goes backstage with Pom)

And that’s it for that show!

In a few days, I’ll have the 4.29 VOD to translate, and 5.1 Inspiration, too, and then 5.5 Korakuen… I totally spaced it that this week is Golden Week :sweat_smile:.

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I think there’s a joke here about the shared name - like, “Yuki who did your best, raise your hand!” And then they all raise their hand. Like more of a class attendance kind of “手を挙げてー>はい!” than a “put your hands up” celebration.
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My attempt: “Well, if there’s a Yuki here who worked hard, raise your hand!” “Present!”

ポンコツ conveys to me more like, being a total foolish mess, than like, being a malicious actor. I’d maybe go with dumbass or something over piece of shit for that reason.

She laughs while saying this with an aside and it sounds like she just says ゆきさん so I think you can run with the bit here and leave the Yuki singular - she just isn’t specifying.

I believe the 解散 is just like, as in “this backstage segment is over!”, rather than the tag team breaking up. She’s just declaring a conclusion and signaling to leave, and seems a little surprised when Itoh says she’s not going to tag again.
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This is an interesting one!
For 可愛がる this comes up on weblio:

1 かわいらしいと思って、優しく扱う。「子供を—・る」
2 ひいきする。目をかけてやる。「ひいき筋に—・られた役者」
3 (反語的に用いて)痛い目にあわせる。手荒く扱う。しごく。「そいつを—・ってやれ」

So the main meaning is to treat someone/something adorable sweetly, like say, a cat. But it’s got the ironic usage of making someone go through something trying (like through hard training).

I think where your translation goes wrong with this is that it’s about putting someone through that hard experience. Like, it’s not “to train hard” so much as “to train someone hard” since for the irony to work there needs to linguistically be both the person petting the cat and the cat, if that makes sense.

The other thing is I would say the Xたらな here is like “it would be (good) if X”, similar to how like, in English “if only X…” means it would be good if X were to happen even though the conditional isn’t filled in.

And so with those + 可愛がれたら I’d say being passive, I think what she’s saying is:
“I hope she really puts me through the wringer.”
It would be (good) if I were to be 可愛がる’d (in the ironic sense) (by Suzume)

The other smaller thing I would say is I think with the ので it would be Rika who doesn’t have 一瞬の油断も隙も迷いも - like she’s polished those out.

I think I would put it more like roughly “It’s because I was confident I could steal a victory in an instant that I secured the title shot.”
Like - she might not be stronger, but she just needs a moment and she can take a victory anyway.
And rhetorically speaking, she’s spinning the loss today into a renewed pitch for her being able to win the title shot: the latter isn’t hurt by the loss today because that title challenge isn’t about her being stronger than her opponents today, it was about her confidence that she can win, and that hasn’t changed.

These seem fine!
A minor tweak maybe is “it felt like I’m the one who’s always being helped” I think could be something like “it felt like she was having to help me out the whole time, (instead of my helping her like I wanted)” - I think that’s what the 逆に is doing - she wanted to help Suzume but Suzume was helping her.

I’d say what she’s getting at here is that like, she didn’t feel Rika was acknowledging her as a threat and regarding her that way, and so the increased aggression was to try to bring that out in Rika.

The すかされたり I would say is best matched maybe to a Weblio definition for すかす (quite far down the list) that has “油断する。” – so tying back in to what Rika was saying a moment ago, Suzume did feel that she was being cockily ignored as a threat. And at the start of the match that can be seen in Rika not handshaking, telling Miu to start the match when Suzume stepped out first, and when Rika tags in she declines to take the opportunity given to her by Miu of Suzume stuck in their corner, instead opting for a clean break and to start in the center of the ring.

So I’d just kind of unliteralize all the “looking” in the translation probably.
“私を見てない” would be “She doesn’t see me”
“私のことを見てない” would be more like “she doesn’t acknowledge / pay attention to me” I would say. Like that’s where the figurative speaking comes in since you can’t literally see someone’s こと.
Sort of like the difference between like, “She isn’t looking in my direction” vs “I’m not on her radar” - Suzume isn’t on Rika’s radar at all. And that continues into the last sentence with like, the explanation that the aggression was attempts to get on Rika’s radar in that sense.

I think this is pretty much right!
The biggest small thing is I think the way Yuka says it - やっぱり自分の中でも変わろうとしてるからいっぱいいっぱいなところもあるけど
– says like, there are things that she should change. Like roughly “as expected, since she herself wants to change lots of things, there were lots of things (to change), but it’s sweet in and of itself that she’s trying.”

The これどした? is about the mark on Mizuki’s face. I’d put it as like “what’s with this?” (gestures to her cheek)

The なんかなってる? is maybe like, “is something up?”
I don’t think she knows what Yuka is talking about at this stage, so I think it’s a “huh, what happened?” kind of response.

I would say here the “proof of being Max’s friend” part is clarifying what she meant by あれ. It doesn’t quite come across like that in the English here. something like “I wonder if it’s that, like, proof of being Max’s friend…” might be closer.

もたけなわではございますが appears to be a cliched closing speech opener for at an event involving food (like a banquet or wedding reception). As in like, more or less literally “this banquet is at its height, but (I’m going to give a closing speech).” That website puts the timing as like, 10-15 minutes before the end of say, a wedding party, before the bride and groom’s closing speech:

「宴もたけなわではございますが…」と切り出し、宴会がもうすぐ終わることを告げるタイミングは閉会の10分~15分前がいいでしょう。結婚式であれば新郎新婦の締めの挨拶の前が適当です。

so that’s why the audience laughs there – it’s a joke using the sense of transitioning to the closing statements, + the food in Mizuki’s usual closer.

The 縁 is probably a transcription typo.

I’m not sure how best to translate that.
“Since I know we’re all ready to dig in…” might sorta work trying to think of similar cliches with food speeches,
“I suppose it’s time to wind the banquet down” or something might sorta work making the が more explicit…
I feel like the closest I get to fully literal involves phrases lie “lively banquet” which sounds like a strange thing to say…

I’d say what’s happening here is Yuka is continuing her thought across her two pieces here.
とは + trailing off expresses like, surprise, 珍しいness, sort of. Kinda like in English “to think that X…” means you’re surprised by the unusualness of X even though you didn’t technically finish a statement.
And so she’s remarking on the remarkability of a day when a title match with a strange combination like Pom and Max arrives.

Mizuki’s interjection I would say isn’t commenting on the experience so much as the combination of Max and Pom and what makes them unusual - they’re 凸凹 in the sense that one’s very big and the other’s small. I don’t get the impression デコボコ can mean like, a rough experience, so much as it means like a rough texture, in the sense of being literally physically uneven in shape (like the kanji).

Here it’s a similar thing of Mizuki continuing a thought while Yuka interjects supporting information. They’re like – collaborating on a train of thought in both of these bits so the pieces don’t quite line up but it all builds up the point (that it was an unusual new experience).
(I don’t really have translation points on this one though)

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Managed to get tickets for All In today!

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That should be exciting! I hope the show is good. I still can’t even imagine going to a wrestling show at this point, with covid being how it is, but I bet it’ll have a great card.

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I finished translating the contract signing on April 29 for the International and PoP title matches! I thought it would be at the beginning of the VOD for that show, then was surprised when it wasn’t in the Wrestle Universe upload, and then only when translating it did I realize that it apparently took place after the show that day :sweat_smile:. But, well, regardless, at least I finished it before Korakuen!

Here’s the video, and here’s the transcript for the Rika/Suzume portion, and for Sawyer Wreck/Mizuki.

Suzume: “I came to TJPW because I admired Rika-san, and it was also Rika-san who spurred me to make my challenge. At the time, I came here without having any martial arts experience or an entertainment background, but over the past four years, I have picked up my own style of fighting.”

I wasn’t quite sure what Suzume was saying here, particularly that middle part: “何より応援してくれる皆さんに出会って、私はもう何も持ってないなんて思ってないので、チャレンジャーとして正々堂々挑みたいと思います.”

“Above everything else, I met all of the people who support me, and I don’t think I have anything left, so I want to take her on fair and square as a challenger.”

I was confused by at least something in I think just about every sentence of Rika’s response, haha :sweat_smile:: “このベルトを持っているのは当たり前だと思っていなくて。今まで積み重ね積み重ね、見てきたもの感じてきたもの数えきれないほどの経験があって、やっと手にできたベルトなんです。なのでまだまだこの子といけるところまで突き進んでいっちゃいたいなと思っています。防衛戦も所属の選手全員とまずは防衛戦しないといけないと思っているので、防衛ロードは序章も序章です。なので去年のようには絶対にいかないので、まぐれはもうないです。私が100倍返しで防衛決めたいと思います.”

Rika: “I don’t think having this belt is commonplace. After everything I’ve experienced up to this point, the things I’ve seen and felt, the countless experiences I’ve had, I finally have this belt in my hands. So I want to push forward and go as far as I can with this thing. I think I have to defend the belt against all of the TJPW roster members first, so this is also the prologue for my defense road. It’s definitely not going to go like how it went last year, so there won’t be another fluke. I want to pay it back a hundredfold and defend my belt.”

Namba: “I would like to ask you a few questions. At the Osaka show the other day, there was a moment where Suzume choked Tatsumi in response to Tatsumi’s choking attack. Suzume, what was your intention in choking Tatsumi? And Tatsumi, how did you feel about it?”

Suzume: “Rika-san accepted my challenge very sincerely and readily, but as a champion, she didn’t seem to be taking me seriously as a threat, or at least I felt like she wasn’t considering me at all, so I wanted to get on her radar somehow.”

Rika: “Well, first I was surprised, and I thought she was knocking at a taboo gate that shouldn’t be opened. What she did was forbidden. I don’t know what will happen now, since she opened that gate.”

Namba: “In the Tokyo Princess Cup last July, Suzume got a pinfall victory over Tatsumi. How do you both feel about that result?”

Suzume: “I just said that I’ve learned my own way of fighting over the past four years, but I think that was the match that gave me this confidence. I never thought that I was stronger than my senpais or Rika-san. But I proved to myself that there is a way for me to win, and that’s the reason why I’m challenging with confidence now.”

Rika: “Well, I don’t want to dwell on the past, but I feel once again that I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I think she truly got lucky there. I won’t let her get lucky again. Because I’m the lucky girl… No, I’m not a lucky girl. I’m lucky, but I won’t lose my title defense because of my ability, of course.”

The Sawyer and Mizuki portion was both shorter and also partially in English! I got the beginning:

Sawyer: (in English) “I first want to offer my most genuine congratulations to the new champ. And my deepest condolences that your reign is going to end on May 5.”

Mizuki: “…I thought maybe you were nice because of your amazing smile, but you don’t seem to be like that at all. Y-yep.”

Got totally confused by the “舐めんなよ” part here until I did a bit of googling and sort of found an answer. Still couldn’t quite figure out what she was saying, though, haha: “でもきっと私のことを赤ちゃんかなんかだと思っているので、舐めんなよの気持ちで頑張ります!”

“But surely you must think I’m like a baby or something, so I’m going to do my best not to get looked down on!”

Namba: “Let me ask you a few questions. First of all, Mizuki, did you see Sawyer’s singles match against Moka Miyamoto today?”

I got confused by Mizuki’s answer because it seems like she said she decided not to watch it, and then… she described stuff that happened in the match (maybe that’s the joke? The crowd did laugh after that first line…): “見なかったことにしたんですけど、もかちゃんが宙に浮いて落とされてというのを見て、本当に背が高いだけじゃなく、力が強いんだなと感じたので、私はとても怖いです.”

Mizuki: “I’d decided not to watch it, but seeing Moka-chan getting dropped from so high in the air, I felt that not only is she tall, but she’s strong, too, so I’m super scared.”

Namba: “Sawyer, have you seen Mizuki’s matches? What kind of impression do you have of her?”

Sawyer: (in English) “And I definitely don’t think of you as a child or a baby. I know you are very powerful, and I implore you to bring everything you’ve got to this match, because I will be doing the exact same thing.”

Namba: “Lastly, please talk about your strategy for the match, if you have one.”

Mizuki: “It’s confidential!”

Sawyer: (in English) “Well, if you’re not sharing, I’m sure as hell not sharing.”

Mizuki: “Hm, I wonder if I should have given a lie…”

The height difference between them at the end is truly incredible. It was even funnier in the video than in the photos. I’m really looking forward to the match, honestly. I’d never seen Sawyer Wreck before, but she really impressed me in the light tube deathmatch with Hikari, and I think she and Mizuki will make for an interesting combination.

Rooting for Suzume to take the belt off of Rika, too! I believe in her!!

It doesn’t look like there’s too much to translate for the actual 4.29 VOD or 5.1 Inspiration, so I’m hoping I can make pretty good time on those, haha.

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You’ve overlooked one negative:

私はもう何も持ってないなんて思ってない
I don’t think I have anything left

She’s saying she no longer thinks that she doesn’t have anything because she’s met all the people who support her.
Like, she came in with no experience or anything, but now she can’t say that she has nothing because she has supporters.

I don’t think “commonplace” is a good equivalent for 当たり前 here. The main meaning I would say for 当たり前 is like, “as a matter of course” / “naturally” / “duh, it needs no explanation” - like, do ducks like bread crumbs and swimming in ponds? 当たり前だろう.
or the first definition here :

1 そうあるべきこと。そうすべきこと。また、そのさま。「怒って—だ」
2 普通のこと。ありふれていること。また、そのさま。並み。ありきたり。「ごく—の人間」「—の出来」

the “commonplace” gloss presumably comes from the second definition, but I would say that’s an extension of the first - like, in that example a ごく当たり前の人間 is commonplace in the sense that they’re a straightforward unsurprising person, not deriving in exactly in the way that commonplace derives of like, you being able to find lots of people like that.

And so anyway, here what she’s saying is that she doesn’t think that her holding the belt is a matter of course, a foregone conclusion, an obvious outcome. Rather all of her experiences built up to it and allowed her to at last win it against the odds.

I think what she’s saying is that (talking about the journey she wants to take with the belt) she feels first she has to defend it against everyone on the TJPW roster (and then beyond) so with this match her defense road is in the prelude to the prelude. Like, from here she’ll have to beat everyone in TJPW, and then that in and of itself will be the prelude to whatever else she does with it.

The 序章も序章です grammar is a bit hard to google, but I found various results for different XもXです type phrases. If the sense I put above as “prelude to the prelude” isn’t right than at least it’s an emphasis of just how much of a prelude it is, I’d say.
One example I found and liked is I believe an amateur novelist somewhat self-consciously describing an update laying the groundwork of world building and terms, before starting in on the start of the story itself.

Nah, seems fine! Maybe just one of those cases where the wording in English needs some intangible reworking to get things sounding fully clear.
My attempt:
“I get the impression you must think of me as some kind of baby, so I’m going to do my best fueled by the resolve to make you not look down on me!”

Yeah, 見なかったことにしたんですけど I would say implies in and of itself that she did actually watch it. Like “I meant to not watch it, but…” does the same in English.
I’m having a bit of trouble articulating why it’s that and not a neutral “I decided to” but I guess it’s just… her tone of voice, and just one of those things of like “if it meant that it would be phrased differently somehow”? :sweat_smile:
Like the context and the んですけど I guess imply that the “but” sense connects to the ことにする sense (when taking the transcript as a full sentence maybe makes it look like it connects forward to the thing with Moka).
“Well, I meant to not watch it…” is how I would probably put it in English.

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Golden Week was A Lot, but I am back with another translation! Finally!! I finished the April 29 one-day 6-woman tag team tournament! This one also has transcripts of the comments.

This was Sawyer Wreck’s TJPW debut, which is funny because the show went up after her match with Hikari. She faced Moka in this show, and it was a fine match, though I think she left a much stronger impression in the other two.

Sawyer’s comments were in English!

(You just had your Tokyo Joshi debut match. How was it in the ring, fighting with Moka and having your debut in Tokyo Joshi in Japan?)

Sawyer: “It was absolutely everything that I thought it would be, and hoped that it would be. There’s something fun and different about being in the ring with people who are equally excited about violence as you are. And I felt it tonight. So I’m excited.”

(You’ve got a light tube match coming up with Hikari Noa, and then you’ve also got a Princess of Princess title match coming up. What do you have in store for the Tokyo Joshi wrestlers?”

“I dance with death on the daily. And that is something that I love to do. Like we are old friends. So you can expect the same kind of familiarity, with violence and with death in the ring, as I do everywhere. It’s going to be fun.”

(What about the title match with Mizuki for the Princess of Princess belt?)

“I acknowledge what an honor it is to be placed into this match, and my largest congratulations to the new champion on her victory. I’m so sorry that I’m going to end your reign early. My condolences.”

Of course, the main thing this show was the tournament! I totally got spoiled for the results (having to keep track of things in order to translate them makes it hard to stay in the dark), but I’m happy that my favorite team won! I saw a few people on twitter talking about how it was a totally even field and anyone could win, and I thought Pom/Raku/Yuki seemed like the clear and obvious favorites… :sweat_smile:

I really liked that each member of the team won a match, with Yuki winning the first, Raku the second, and Pom getting the most important win at the very end. I thought that was a neat way to give Pom her moment, and also highlight how effective they were as a trio. Plus, Pom and Raku aren’t exactly frequent winners…

Here’s the post-match:

Pom: “I DID IT!!! I won! We won the tournament! Thank you!”

Her next sentence took me a couple tries, but I think I maybe got it? “もう確実に昨日までのぽむだったらこんな3試合も…ベンベン泣いてるところでしたけど、今日は大好きなユキさんとらくさんと応援してくれるみんながいて…”

“It’s definitely the case that before today, doing three matches like this… I’d be crying. But today I have Yuki-san and Raku-san whom I like so much, and I have everyone who’s supporting me…” (cries) “I won’t cry! I won’t cry! With everyone’s power combined, we won!”

Raku: “I can wash my body with this in the bath and then sleep easily.”

Aino: “Let’s sleep as much as possible!”

Raku: “Pom, do you always wash your body?”

Pom: “Yes! The three of us deepened our friendship and won the tournament…”

I wasn’t quite sure about this sentence from Aino: “でもこうやって私たち三角関係とかいって、よくわからない関係だけど.”

Aino: “But calling ourselves a ‘love triangle’ like this, it’s a relationship that’s hard to understand. I’m so happy that we were able to win TJPW’s 6-Woman Tag Team One Day Tournament and leave results!”

Pom: “They’ve been saying it ever since the match ended.” (to the crowd saying “congratulations!”) “Thank you!”

Aino: “Pom, since you won, you should close.”

Pom: “OK! …I didn’t prepare anything.”

Then she said, “でも素直に気持ちをお伝えしたいので…やっぱオタクらしく愛してるよで.” I think I got this? But I wanted to make sure I didn’t get it wrong, haha!

“But I want to convey my feelings honestly, so… Well, I love you like an otaku, after all.”

They close with: “Ready, set—” “I love you!”

The 三角関係’s comments:

Pom: “Yay!”

Aino & Raku: “I’m so happy!”

Pom: “Wow, yay. I’m so happy. It’s my first time. Getting to the finals like this, and winning in the main event… It’s the first time I’ve ever done it!”

Aino: “I’m really happy!”

I had no idea what to do with ブロック的 in this line: “なんかもう…ちょっとめっちゃ厳しい闘いだったけど、ブロック的にもさ.”

“It was… a bit of a tough fight, but it was blocky too. Well, we really, really wanted to win.”

Both Pom’s and Aino’s first lines here were confusing:

ぽむ「ずっと言ってましたから。だって東京女子の3人組といえば…うちらじゃん。絶対、ユキらくぽむじゃないですか。よかったです、ホントに」

Pom: “I’ve been saying it this whole time. Because as far as 3-person teams in TJPW go… it’s us. It’s definitely YukiRakuPom, right? So I’m glad, truly.”

愛野「とはいえさ、3人組といえばうちらやろ!って思って、絶対優勝したい!って思ってたし言ってたんだけどさ。でもさ、そうはいえさ、なかなか厳しいやん。だからさ、どうしよって思ってたけど」

Aino: “I did think, ‘when it comes to 3-person teams, you think of us!’ So I was thinking and saying, ‘we absolutely have to win!’ But, that said, it was really, really tough. So I was thinking, ‘what should we do?’”

Pom: “With the power of love between the three of us, right? We nurture it like every day.”

Aino: “I was moved by what Pom said when she closed the show.”

Pom: “Really? You’ve come to like me? You like me more now?”

Aino: “Yes.”

Then the transcript has “らしいでーす! らくさんも?” for Pom, though I thought I heard a 好き in there… :sweat_smile:

Pom: “She likes me! Raku-san, too?”

Raku: “Well…”

Pom: “Well, eat delicious food today, take a bath, and wash yourselves with Nivea. We have SO MUCH of it, so you can use as much as you want.”

Raku: “Use all of this.”

Aino: “I’ll have to use it all up to wash Pom.”

Raku: “That’s right.”

Pom: “Well, the three of us are going to keep working hard together!” (screams)

Aino: “So loud…”

享楽鳥鳴’s comments:

Nakajima: “Tori! You!!”

Toribami: “I’m sorry…”

Nakajima: “It’s alright. You’ve got guts!”

Then Kaya said, “あと1回だったのに…” and I wasn’t exactly sure what she was referring to, but assumed the 回 was rounds? :sweat_smile:

Toribami: “Even though we just had one round left…”

Misao: “That’s right…”

Nakajima: “The future is bright. Today, Kyoraku Choumei is disbanding, so you’ll have to do your best on your own.”

Misao: “Are we breaking up?”

Toribami: “Do you hate me…?”

Misao: “I don’t hate you. You tried your best. I think one of the reasons we lost was because I said ‘Chouraku Kyomei’ on the mic. Sorry! But your tenacity was amazing.”

Nakajima: “She was great. But we’re disbanding today.”

Toribami: “Are you angry?”

Nakajima: “I’m not angry.”

Misao: “We’ll each spread our wings and fly off into our own bright futures.”

Nakajima: “Let’s flap our wings! Just those who are birds.”

Toribami: “…Oh. Oh!”

Someone was losing it behind the camera for most of this, haha, and I also laughed. I feel like Shoko and Misao just get more entertaining the more Japanese I’m able to understand. Despite what they said here, I hope they keep tagging with Kaya, though. The hero and the kaiju and their bird friend… :smiling_face_with_tear:

Next up, the Inspiration translation (pretty short!) and Korakuen (I’ve been too afraid to see how long it is… I’ll あの橋を渡る when I come to it…).

I also need to update my wrestling journal with some Golden Week stuff, but, well, not the biggest priority at the moment.

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The だけど here is as it often is, a sort of softening aside. I’d put it more as like sort of (roughly) “We call ourselves a ‘love triangle’ like this - not that I really understand what kind of relationship this is - and anyway I’m so happy…”

“愛してるよ” is the call she picked. I would put it more like roughly "… Well, it’s gotta be an otaku-like ‘I love you’ "

I mean, it’s a tournament, so I would assume ブロック here is a tournament block.
I think her point doesn’t come out the clearest, but I think she’s probably talking about the tournament being in a single day, like it was one block of matches. I would say the もさ here is like, providing another reason that it was tough.

This is a nitpick but I feel like “it was really, really tough” is one “really” too strong for “なかなか厳しいやん”
“It really was tough” feels more on the money to me somehow of the sense conveyed with the なかなか and the やん. Of like, moreso than expected (but not necessarily to an extreme degree).

yeah, the were in the finals, so if they’d won just one more round they would have won.

This is a nitpick but Misao’s tone is very very like, surprised interjection here, playing into the bewildering bit of them both being over the top with Toribami in the middle. Like she turns to address the audience rather than actually ask anyone.
image

So I’d put it more like an echo than an actual question: “disbanding?!”

Grammar point!
With the だけに there she’s not saying only birds will flap their wings and fly off into the future, she’s saying that that’s an action that suits birds.

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Well, just when I thought I was on track to catch up, wrestling had to throw a curveball…

Yesterday they announced that Yuka will be graduating from TJPW at the end of the year. I was (and am) pretty devastated about it :pensive:. I’ll probably still get to watch her in AEW/ROH, but she’s unlikely to get the same depth of stories there unless Tony Khan starts giving the women’s division more time, and it seems unlikely we’ll be getting more Magical Sugar Rabbits.

プロレスは諸行無常…

In any case, I gave myself one night to grieve, then got to work on translating the presser the next day because I want to try to get on that before machine mistranslations have the opportunity to spread. I dragged my feet over it because I really didn’t want to do it, but once I got started, it was easier to keep going.

I managed to finish the first draft, though it was a lot harder than usual, because not only is it way less fun to translate something that’s a bummer, but the grammar was a lot stiffer and I’m not as used to it…

Gonna share this one a bit differently, I think, because there were lots of portions I wasn’t sure about, but I really want to make sure the entire thing is as accurate as possible, so rodan, would you mind looking over the whole thing and correcting anything that seems even slightly off? Thank you :pray:.

Here is the transcript, and here is the video.

And here is my rough draft:

On May 8, in Tokyo at Kanda Myojin Bunka Koryu-Kan in the Reiwa era, Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling held a press conference and announced that Yuka Sakazaki will graduate on December 1 at the Korakuen Hall show “東京女子プロレス誕生10周年記念興行~We are TJPW~” (“Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling’s 10th Anniversary Show ~We are TJPW~”). From 2024 onward, Sakazaki will be wrestling based overseas. The interview was attended by Sakazaki and representative Tetsuya Koda.

Sakazaki: “Thank you for gathering on this occasion for this personal matter. As was just announced, I, Yuka Sakazaki, will graduate from TJPW on December 1 at Korakuen. I’ll say that my heart was very shaken before deciding, or that I was in a state of not being able to decide. I would have had a hard time making the decision without a milestone like this, so I decided to use the occasion of the 10th anniversary to graduate.”

Koda: “There are a little less than seven months until December 1, but it has already been announced that Sakazaki will be on excursion overseas and will be absent from the next show on May 13 in Hamamatsu through the Ryogoku KFC Hall show on June 4. In addition, she is scheduled to make many trips overseas within the rest of the year as she looks to her future activities from next year onward, so her opportunities to participate in TJPW will be limited. In the meantime, her next scheduled defense of the Princess Tag Team Championship that she currently holds with Mizuki is set for June 11 at Korakuen Hall. The challenger team will be Rika Tatsumi and Miu Watanabe. Sakazaki will be going overseas immediately after announcing her graduation today, so her next match in Japan (after announcing her graduation) will be the title match on June 11.”

Sakazaki: “I don’t know what the fans’ll think about me defending the title after I said that I’m leaving, but it’s precisely because of that that I feel so strongly that I can’t let go of the tag belts that I hold with Mizuki. I will definitely defend my belt, defeat Daydream’s Rika Tatsumi and Miu Watanabe, and reign as a champion with the desire to continue to make TJPW even more exciting.”

――What is the main reason you decided to graduate? How long have you been thinking about it?

Sakazaki: “I’d had the vague thought that ‘someday, I’ll have to quit’. I had the conception of my student days as being a fixed period, like three years in high school, and because TJPW is so special, I couldn’t stay forever. But it turns out that it’s very hard to want to leave everyone, and to make decisions on my own. Then, in the blink of an eye, ten years had passed. But when I couldn’t decide after ten years had passed, when I felt that I couldn’t leave, since it is the tenth year, I thought that would allow me to graduate.”

――Why did you choose to work overseas?

Sakazaki: “I love pro wrestling itself, and my body is still in good condition, so I want to continue doing pro wrestling, but because I love TJPW, the colors of it and the atmosphere of it, I think I have to leave TJPW and go to a different stage of my life. If I stay in Japan, it might interfere with TJPW’s image, so I wanted to continue wrestling overseas where it does not interfere with TJPW’s image.”

――From next year onward, will you be stepping into a Japanese ring?

Sakazaki: “Concerning a Japanese ring, I’m undecided, but I 100% won’t be appearing in a joshi promotion.”

――Between Ota-ku in July and Korakuen in December, what are some things that you still have left to do, and what is the last thing that you want to do?

Sakazaki: “There are still some things that I can only do at TJPW, and there are TJPW stories that I still haven’t finished. So in the remaining seven months or so, well, I think it’ll be more like half that, like three months, but I hope that during this period, I can run through it without losing track of all of those memories.”

――Did you tell Mizuki that you were graduating?

Sakazaki: “I discussed it with Mizuki before making my decision. ‘Don’t leave me!’ is what she said, but she encouraged me, saying ‘it’s Yuka-chi’s decision’. We were discussing it the whole time, and it made me feel even more that I didn’t want to leave, so it was not a decision that came easily, but Mizuki supported me even though she hated the idea (of my graduation).”

――Do you want to hold the tag belts with Mizuki until you graduate?

Sakazaki: “Yes, I do. I want to keep defending them until I leave, and take the tag belts to Disneyland with Mizuki. I will continue to defend them. Oh, I said ‘Disney’.” (laughs)

――What did representative Koda think when he heard about Sakazaki’s intention?

Koda: “As Sakazaki said, I personally feel that with TJPW, rather than wrestlers staying in the same place for 20 or 30 years and reaching 40 or 50 years old, they should run with their youth and graduate. And each wrestler can continue wrestling elsewhere, or take up a different occupation, and as they go ahead, the new girls that join will take over the spirit of TJPW handed down by their seniors, and it’ll be an organization that will continue for decades to come. I think this kind of thing was expected and assumed, so I want to support the decision she voiced.”

――Since Mizuki has a singles title match set for Ota-ku in July, what do you want to do for your match while you can’t have a tag team title match?

Sakazaki: “Since Mizuki’s match is already set, there is a wrestler that I want to face. We have an exchange with AEW wrestlers, so I think it would be nice for Japanese audience members who can’t go to the U.S. to be able to see AEW wrestlers up close. So I want to invite an AEW wrestler.”

I have some Thoughts about all of this, but I’ll wait until I have the draft finalized before I share them.

I’m hoping to finish the translation for Inspiration soon, and get started on Korakuen, but this presser seemed urgent enough that I let it jump the translation queue…

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Geez, that is a little bit of a blow!
(the last round of avoiding stardom spoilers might have finally cut me off of twitter thanks to accidentally going to the homepage not logged in a few times and realizing how often it’s full of pepe-laden cryptocoin hocking - so anyway I’ll probably be even less in the loop of stuff like this, at least until the point where I’ve read up to in shupro rolls around…)
I wonder if that explains in retrospect why Yuka was so actively back in the main event recently, or in contrast suggests they should have pulled the trigger on Miu clearing the wall…(though it sounds like that tag match might be an opportunity for that…) in any case at least she’s presumably going to a promotion that works plenty with TJPW in general.

令和の間 is the room in that facility that they’re in (from the venue’s website):


So like, the Reiwa Room.

This is too literally translated - the sense of 揺れる here is more like, shaking like wavering than shaking like from a shock.
From weblio for 心が揺れる:

しっかりとした決意が固まらない、または何らかの魅力的な選択肢の登場により自らの考えが定まらないことなどを意味する語。

So it’s about not being able to make a decision.
“I went back and forth a lot (trying to decide)” might better convey the sense.

I think the たい applies back across the て clauses here so I would put it more like “I intend to at all costs” rather than “I will definitely”

I think what she’s saying here is that she understood her time in TJPW as like, something with a fixed period similar to how in school you’re only in high school X number of years.
In the video she has some trouble forming the thought in a way that doesn’t survive to the transcript:
期間が決まっているという認識
is originally more like
期間が決まっている…物?…という認識
and I think the idea is that 期間が決まっている物 is what she 認識’d her time in TJPW to be. After all, the も in 学生時代も implies there’s something else that fits the criteria described (and it’s the subject she’s talking about).

I think I’d go with here something like “But of course it’s difficult to say goodbye to everyone”
It’s nitpicky but “it turns out” feels like sort of slightly the opposite sense from やっぱり, and the “want” here feels a little like maybe it’s from がたい looking like たい when it isn’t.

I feel like the sense I get from 自分で決断するのがすごくつらくて is more like – “it was very hard to muster the resolve (to leave) on my own.” Like I don’t think it’s decisions in general that were つらい so much as pulling the trigger on this specific one.

でも10年過ぎちゃったら決断できないな、離れられないなと思った
here I would say is more like “I thought if more than 10 years pass, I’ll never be able to decide. I’ll never be able to leave.”
Like, 10 years is the upper limit of how long she’ll be able to stay without being stuck there forever emotionally, so that’s why she’s leaving at pretty much exactly the 10 year mark.

I feel like 卒業させていただこうかな is more like “I guess I should get them to let me graduate”
The passiveness of the させていただこう can probably evaporate in the translation to English I think, so like “I thought it was time to graduate” or something along those lines, probably.

I would probably personally tweak this to “flavor” since I don’t think the 色 is literal.

I think this could be tweaked to maybe like “I can push through to the end without letting any memories slip away.”

I’d say in the やはり青春じゃないですけど part he’s saying like, “well, ‘youth’ isn’t the right word, but”
Like it’s not exactly the same as being a youth developing towards graduation from school, but the wrestlers should nonetheless similar develop towards departing the promotion.

I would tweak this to be more active, like, “therefore I presumed and anticipated that this kind of eventuality would occur”

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tamu_believes_in_you

Thank you so much for the detailed help!! I got less wrong than I was expecting, so I guess that’s a good thing at least… Though there were parts that I sort of wish I had gotten wrong :pensive:.

I totally get that. I’m still on there all the time because, well, wrestling is on there still, and also I like having a locked account where I can post stuff and not have random strangers see it, and have a space to share stuff that I don’t want to share in like a particular group chat or whatever.

I feel like Japanese twitter and American twitter are becoming more and more disconnected experiences…

I did see an interesting article shared just today on twitter. It’s called “Nothing survives transcription, nothing doesn’t survive transcription”, and it’s the transcript of a lecture. There’s a lot in there that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, not only in terms of direct speech to text transcription, but also in terms of, like, book arts and transcribing text written in one physical form into a publishable form that is quite different from the original, and what you lose in doing so.

Obviously it’s particularly relevant now with the TJPW translations and all of that. We’re working through so many layers here: promo delivered to a live audience → video of promo → shupro’s transcript of the speech → the Japanese filtered through my brain → my attempt at conveying it in English → your take on it → my attempt at synthesizing it all → formatting my transcription/translation for general audiences → distilling it down to a few points when promoting it on twitter.

And that’s not counting all of the various tools that I’ve used, from ichi.moe to Yomichan to DeepL to smartcat, which in a way, all add their own flavor to how the meaning is presented and perceived. And of course translation itself is a whole additional complication with the concept of transcription described here. There’s a lot lost by necessity, and things added by necessity, and the end result is really its own thing entirely.

Getting back to the subject of this last translation…

I didn’t quite get it up on the blog fast enough to beat the accounts posting translated contextless soundbites from the presser, but it is what it is. At least it’s up now.

I did, uh, break my no-discourse rule on the translation account a bit and tweeted this:

私は個人的に東京女子プロレスでずっと若い選手だけが突っ走って卒業するのより、選手が40歳、50歳になって20年、30年居続けるのが欲しいと思います。私と同じように思っている他の海外のファンもたくさんいると思います。

I was going to ask a friend to look over the grammar beforehand, but then I just decided screw it, if there are mistakes, it’ll hopefully just make it feel more genuine.

Some thoughts in English:

I thought Koda’s comments were pretty frustrating, and they honestly seem to contradict things that had been said about the company’s booking philosophy in the past? Obviously the model he proposed here is very idol-ish, but the entire booking style of the company sort of requires an established older guard at the top for the younger wrestlers to strive to beat, and that seems opposed to the I guess constant turnover model suggested here.

Not to mention the implication that TJPW is basically just like… a feeder company for other promotions, when in actuality it’s the #2 women’s wrestling promotion in Japan, and probably honestly the world, since I don’t think any other women’s wrestling company in any other country sells as many tickets. That part also seems to contradict things that had been said in the past where it seemed like they were genuinely intending to compete with Stardom and that sort of thing. Are they truly okay with the thought of constantly losing their top wrestlers either to retirement or to another company like this?

It honestly made me wonder how much of it was basically a PR spin to attempt to explain Yuka leaving in a way that fits into like the TJPW mythos. Maybe Yuka simply wanted to work in America, and this was the most gentle explanation they could give for her departure.

Naturally, I’ve seen some doomsayers reading into things and viewing this as Koda basically pushing Yuka out due to her age, but that doesn’t really track to me because the company prominently features wrestlers like Nao and Misao who are also in their 30s, and they even gave Misao her own produce show, so they’re clearly high on her, even though she’s pretty far from being an idol.

The way Yuka described things in this presser, she kind of expected to eventually leave when she joined the company, and saw it as just a temporary thing, though I wonder if that was partially due to TJPW’s very humble origins, and the overall low success track record of the many DDT side projects :sweat_smile: (Dramatic DDT talked about that in his write-up, which I thought was valuable insight here).

But there are many aspects of TJPW that have changed since the company started. At the beginning, they had a joke rule in place that the wrestlers couldn’t get married, which I think there was a storyline centered around with the wrestlers protesting it, lol (it was before my time). Obviously it’s not actually real because Misao got married at the end of 2020, defying that idol trend and becoming the first married wrestler in the company.

And of course, they let Hikari do a light tube deathmatch there, which is very not the usual fare for TJPW. The wrestlers have repeatedly talked about how much creative freedom they have there, and how the company will work with them to let them do things.

So I feel like if a wrestler genuinely really wanted to stay for a long time, they’d probably let her, especially since they book Aja Kong all the time, and they clearly understand the value of using vets like that. No wrestling promoter in their right mind would turn away a skilled worker due to their age, at least not nowadays. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still an implicit underlying pressure, though. But I guess that gets back to Dramatic DDT’s point about how this is a win because it’s not a retirement.

It does make me wonder about the next generation of TJPW wrestlers, like Suzume, who joined because they were inspired by the TJPW originals like Yuka, Shoko, and Miyu. Will they feel differently about things and won’t want to leave because they see TJPW itself as a destination? I guess we’ll just have to see how things go.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the reason why her whole storyline from July 2022 through March 2023 happened was basically to give her that one last run at the top and then also wrap up her story with Mizuki, which had been waiting for a conclusion for years.

With Miu, there definitely are a lot of people who’ll feel frustrated if we never get closure on that. I wonder if that’s one of the stories she talked about having left to do…

I also wonder about the tag team belts and that whole story. It feels very… Golden Lovers in DDT 2014, not to make this comparison again. But it was a similar kind of deal there, where Kenny was leaving at the end of the year to go to NJPW, and he and Kota had the tag titles at the time… I don’t think they announced that Kenny would be leaving before that match, though idk, I could be wrong. The story of that match basically ended up being Kenny and Kota passing on the legacy of DDT to Takeshita and Endo, who won the tag belts from them a few months before Kenny left.

So I guess I wonder if we’re going to see something similar to that in TJPW, with Yuka also handing off the legacy of the tag team division to a team that will carry the company in the future…

I guess my ideal team in that scenario would be Daisy Monkey, probably. I think they foreshadowed that in Grand Princess. That would be a tough hill for them to climb, though, considering TJPW booking patterns.

That said, I don’t know if I could argue against them picking Daydream, even though they’re not my favorite personally, and I think the fans will certainly be rooting for Miu in that match, though I’ll selfishly hope that MagiRabbi retain for at least a little longer…

I do hope she ends up working with TJPW again, in some capacity (even if that’s just an occasional match with them at AEW/ROH or DDT). Her comment about 100% not wrestling for a joshi promotion again made me doubt that a bit, though, plus her comments about not wanting to negatively affect TJPW’s image in some way (I wonder if she wants to debut a more heelish character, or if she’s talking about something else. I guess we’ll find out how she evolves in 2024). It made me fear that she’s not going to interact with TJPW wrestlers in the ring again after she leaves.

I just imagined Yuka coming back and wrestling in, like, NOAH. Now that would be the weirdest twist of fate imaginable for me…

Actually, funny story, a few days before this announcement, guess what else happened? At the last big NOAH show, Katsuhiko Nakajima and Go Shiozaki got back together and reformed Axiz. I couldn’t believe it! I was so over the moon about that, and then, well, wrestling gave me something back that I had wanted for years, so of course it had to take something away, too… :pensive:

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No problem!
One correction I have been meaning to make is I can definitely get stuff wrong or not catch things :sweat_smile: so do keep in mind the set of stuff I comment on isn’t necessarily the same set as stuff you got wrong!

That article seems interesting!
I do get unfairly a little frustrated sometimes when I can especially sense that your translations are like, translations of the transcript first, rather than translations of the promo the transcript is itself in a way translating. But I mean it makes sense as an inevitability to make it feasible.
That’s one really really nice thing about learning a language - getting farther is more and more refreshing experiences of directness! Having those layers of mediation fade away really does make a positive difference in feeling, even for stuff where I’d never have complained about the mediation, like movie subtitles. So it’s really rewarding even just to see your interpretations slowly but surely feel in some way closer to the direct source over time.

About Koda’s statement, I do think that part of the spin at least was characterizing it less in the sense of like, undervaluing older/stalwart wrestlers, and more not wanting to hold back their growth, and I do think that’s fair on some level. 10 years is already a really long time, and the advice about how changing jobs to maximize career growth seems probably extra true for a career like pro wrestling where it’s so tied to just getting your name out there as much as possible in the limited time you have for an active athletic career (even if wrestling being the way that it is can extend that timeframe sometimes…).
I think especially for someone like Yuka, who’s already done so much in TJPW in terms of accomplishments, but who still could clearly have the capability and means to grow in entirely new directions, the risk of stagnating in the long term could be real (at least vs. what could have been moving around more - although there’s obviously tons of risks with that strategy too).

The big overseas move though is especially bittersweet and its own whole thing compared to promotion changes in general… I feel like in some ways worst case scenario it goes great and they seem really happy and make a lot of money, but not in the kind of way where they earn the dynamic growth and impact it feels like they deserve :sob: … but I suppose no one’s really safe from the real worst case scenario of momentum totally halting or a Hachiman-esque embarrassing about-face. I guess nothing to do but hope for the best and support what was surely an extremely difficult decision for them.

I agree that it doesn’t seem like they pushed her out due to age or undervalued her, and “I think it’s good to be receptive when a wrestler wants to move on for her own growth” is definitely a far cry from like, a mandatory retirement age like in the 80s.
It’s odd not really… having any joshi promotion that’s lasted since then to compare to.

I do think you’ve got a point about Yuka’s perspective starting along with TJPW in the beginning versus TJPW-as-destination potentially being more common a viewpoint in the future. Those young debuting wrestlers (or at least one of them) I think talked about being fans of specifically TJPW as a kid which surely wouldn’t have even been possible for a wrestler to say until pretty much now.

I got the impression she was mainly saying she wanted a clean break from TJPW to see what Yuka Sakazaki on her own was like, since she’s been so entwined with TJPW her whole career to now. And then also clarifying that she wasn’t going to a different women’s promotion in Japan. Also I got the impression the “interference” image-wise was like – two similar wavelengths fighting for the same channel, that kind of interference. Like she’s still so TJPW through and through that partly she’d want the clean break to not accidentally eat TJPW’s lunch or vice versa - whereas America is away enough there isn’t that danger.
I’d be kinda curious if maybe the IWGP Women’s could be on the table? She certainly fits the bill that belt seems to be going for of like, “woman who is well known in the US” but I guess now it has been on a fully Stardom show so maybe it is actually a Stardom thing. I don’t really know if I’d want that or not, though. The dream match I’d still want to see as long as it somehow didn’t involve anyone poaching anyone would be MagiRabi vs. FWC…

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Haha, don’t worry! I think I’ve seen every single professional translator I follow also get stuff wrong (Chris Charlton has a couple infamous examples…). I think occasionally getting stuff wrong is something that none of us can escape, no matter how good you get at something. You get a lot less wrong than I do, though, and that’s very helpful! I’m just grateful for whatever insight you are able to offer :blush:! I’ve put enough disclaimers on the blog and the twitter account, hopefully people have realized that the published translations are not infallible, haha.

Yeah, my ultimate goal is to eventually move away from needing the transcripts entirely. They’re definitely a limitation, and are flawed objects in themselves. But without them, this wouldn’t be possible at all for me, so they’re a necessary evil, haha. I do feel really happy whenever I’m able to notice the problems with them on my own, or work without having them, but unfortunately it takes so much time and energy (and with a still way too high failure rate…), I can’t really translate on my own for many promos. Not yet, at least!

Just as the TJPW rookies are slowly but surely figuring out this whole wrestling thing, I’m slowly but surely figuring out this whole Japanese thing, haha.

kennysmort

I’m glad that it’s rewarding for you! That makes me feel a bit better about still needing so much help all the time.

Yeah, that’s a super good point. I think your read on it is definitely along the lines it was intended to be received. I’ve seen a lot of Western fans getting mad at, uh, well, certain soundbites from the presser that were posted without the rest of the context, which is part of why I wanted to get the full thing out there.

Yeah honestly my immediate impression with this comment is that she wanted to nip in the bud any possible rumors of her going to Stardom. She seemed like she wanted to make it super clear that she’s still very loyal to TJPW, and that she wants to do her own thing only if she can do it without hurting them.

It’ll be interesting to see how things go for her. I’m trying to be optimistic about it… she’s certainly talented, and could do a lot of great things if given the opportunity.

I guess there’s always a chance she could change her mind on things and go in a different direction in the future. Like if she tries out the whole US thing and it doesn’t work out how she expected, TJPW would probably gladly welcome her back if she wanted to return.

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