hi there~ a note from your translator about my experience translating Prince of the Sun, Princess of the Moon!
Lodoss is the series that got me into the Japanese language, so I was very excited when I found this tiny volume. for the record, I do plan on doing the other 7(00) Lodoss volumes. i own most of them, i just have to win the lottery or something so i can stop working and have enough time to do them. (^_^)
the thing that struck me the most when i was translating this volume is that Mizuno-sensei likes that olde timey practice of giving people epithets. For instance, whenever he refers to Brook, the king of Skard, especially when it’s Reena doing the referring, Brook is called 父ブルーク (Father Brook), or 王ブルーク (King Brook). In English, that sounds a bit weird, so I left a lot of them off, but I tried to make up for it in other ways, mostly in syntax, that is, word order, and register, that is, i made people talk more high-falutin’ than they otherwise would have. When Brook speaks with the Demon in Low Ancient at the end of Bonds of Blood, though, Mizuno-sensei does use some old Japanese personal pronouns, so the “thees” and “thous” there were direct translations.
Mizuno-sensei also likes paragraph breaks and non-tagged dialogue. all those carriage returns? yeah, not my idea. i think Mizuno-sensei thinks they make things dramatic, and maybe they did in 1996, but now they look kind of silly. i left them in wherever they didn’t hinder reading comprehension, because as far as i’m concerened Lodoss = camp. also, i didn’t insert any dialogue tags. if Mizuno-sensei wanted his Japanese readers to be confused, we English readers are going to have to be confused, too. sorry…
also, the first story, the self-titled one, maybe it’s just my imagination, but i don’t think it was as well written as Bonds of Blood. i mean, let’s face it, i’m not the world’s most widely-read person in Japanese, indeed most Japanese fouth graders are better read than i am in that language, but Bonds of Blood flowed much better, and sentence structure and word choice were much more cohesive.
having said all that, they were both super fun to read, and super uber fun to translate. if you’ve got any questions, i’m opening comments on this post, so ask away~
also, *spoilers* “But Brook knew nothing of that, because in the next instant, his torso was seperated from his neck…” how can that not be the best line of all time? torso? say goodbye to neck. *laughs inappropriately*
thanks for reading,
~meredeth.
-wields the Soul Crusher.
