The cat girl with cat puns everywhere comes off as corny and cute, as was meant to be, as

opposed to --

“Welcome home, meow!”

“Why are you coming home so late, meow?”
“And who’s that other girl you were with, meow?”

“Oh, I’m not jealous or anything, meow.”

“But If I see her with you again, I’ll take this knife and play Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu with her body,
meow.”

I mean… /could/ it work? I guess? Does it sound natural? Not really.

So what do we do about these? It’s honestly different all the time. How central is this specific
mannerism to the series and the character? (Like most every character in One Piece having
their own personal laugh that makes a sound representative of their ability/personality -- and
now you come to expect it from everyone) Does including it add something to the translation or
take something away? How else can this be conveyed?

Like in the case of the cat girl nyao endings. It’s meant to make the character sound cute and…
well… like a cat. So make the character sound cute and catsy and campy by slipping puns and
meows in where you can, seems like a straight-forward thought process.

In the case of Naruto, often times translations would omit it entirely, or choose a consistent
phrase to use for it and include it only in really meaningful moments. Sometimes this one can
come back to haunt later… like when a character says the main character’s catchphrase back to
them and it’s supposed to be meaningful… but it doesn’t have the weight because it wasn’t
used to define the character.

Knowing the series and knowing the context are definitely important when making these kinds of
decisions.

Like if you were doing a high school slice of life series, you’d almost certainly leave the
honorifics like -san, -kun, -chan, -senpai intact, along with letting people refer to people by their
last names instead of substituting in first names (which happens a lot), because all of that is
going to come into play at some point almost certainly. Of course, this is just my opinion, but if
you’re going to do a series that takes place in a Japanese High School, it doesn’t hurt to keep a
little bit of Japanese in when it’s that relevant.

Of course it can be a slippery slope down to “Just according to keikaku -- keikaku means plan”
of arbitrarily leaving words in Japanese for no other reason than to do so.
There’s also an argument of “Anime fans like it this way.” that comes up a lot… and when it
comes down to it, it’s for the fans… the viewers… the readers. You’ve always got to translate
with your audience in mind… but I’ve definitely seen that go wrong too… since the loudest fans
often represent a minority of the audience… and once you start compromising everything to try
and satisfy specific people… everything kind of crashes and burns.

Gonna actually keep today’s post short.

Should be back to mostly weekly posts now!