What's in a name? (名前には何の意味があるかな。)

You know, I do think that the ability to change punctuation (properly, mind you) when translating is becoming something of a lost art... Too often, we see the "yo" and simply insert an exclamation point, thinking our duty done, or we replace a "ka" with a question mark, no questions asked (ah ha ha). But really, if we were to actually stop and think a little bit about these snap-substitutions, we would find that, at least fifty percent of the time, these seemingly simple particles-cum-punctuation deserve a bit more consideration than we are wont to divulge...

Er. Sorry. Checking over translations for my scanlation group apparently gets me waxing poetic. And, you know, really ticked at people who don't understand Japanese but insist on translating it anyway.

GEEZ.

Ok, moving on to the topic at hand.

As I have mentioned in a number of previous posts, choosing a phone e-mail is rather important to me; despite what Shakespeare would have us believe, there is rather a lot in a name (er, electronic address, in this case), and I want to make sure that I've picked the right one for the job.

My last phone e-mail was, though chosen rather at the spur of the moment and somewhat jokingly, wound up being quite satisfactory. Nerdy, yet not too nerdy, and certainly innocuous enough to pass unnoticed beneath the noses of at least 75% of the population, who just thought I was being a little self-centered. (It was theworldendswithme, remember.)

And yes, I suppose I could simply fall back onto the old standby, as it were (although maybe not... does anyone know if you can use an e-mail that was deactivated?), but I like to think of this as an opportunity to try something fresh and new; to expand myself, as it were.

Not to mention a way to entertain you all, am I right?

...forget I asked.

Anyway, I thought that I would begin this little brainstorming session with something of a recap, just to get all of our ducks in a row, and to make sure we're not forgetting some previous seed of genius:

1) sabaku no ko (砂漠の子, child of the desert)

2) sabotendaa (サボテンダー, the Japanese name for Cactuar)

3) cactuaa (a mash up of Sabotendaa and Cactuar, or simply how Cactuar would wind up being pronounced in Japanese) 

4) kansai gaijin (関西外人, a foreigner from the Kansai region)

5) kansai jin (関西人, person from Kansai; Kansai-ite)

6) inconvenient ideal (My favorite Dir song of late)

7) tokugawa no (徳川の, Tokugawa's... Of the Tokugawa...)

8) edo jidai no [you na] (江戸時代の[ような], The Edo period's... Of the Edo period... [Like the Edo period]) 

(And remember, reasoning for any of the above can be found here or here, should you find yourself in need of refreshing.)

So far, we have one vote for "sabaku no ko" and one vote for... well, I guess each one that has to do with Cactuar. That one might wind up depending on which is already taken, so that shouldn't be a big issue.

But eight choices is nothing like enough! Let's keep going until we have a nice, big two-digit number, eh? (No, not ten. Geez.)

9) honyakusha (翻訳者 , translator)   

Ok, I admit it; this one is sort of boring, but it is what I am, at heart, not to mention what I want to be sometime in the future. Admittedly, I'd really like to be a localization expert... but rookaraizu (the Japanese phonemic representation of localize, or localization) isn't really.... well, hey, on second thought...

10) rookaraizu (ローカライズ, localization) 

It does look sort of cool, doesn't it? I might butcher the romanization a bit though, if I use it... one "o" just looks better, don't you think? And hey, no one can romanize properly these days anyway... Though admittedly, if I purposefully made a mistake in my e-mail which I am constantly condoning others for making, intentionally or no... I just don't think I could live with myself.

The second "o" stays.

(No, I said I wouldn't stop at ten, quit your whining.)


11) tanjun ja nai (単純じゃない, [I'm, It's] Not Simple)

Aaand once again, my horrible, horrible video game nerdiness is revealed. Oh well, that's all right--if I want to make a career out of it, I should be dedicated!

This one comes from Dissidia, the Final Fantasy fighting game for the PSP that came out sometime last year in Japan, and sometime this year in the US--you can guess which one I have, oh ho ho. Apparently, they went and changed a lot of things around in the US release too, affecting characters' power levels, fighting abilities... man. Definitely no incentive to play now, what with all of my experience in the Japanese version. I already have a tendency to button mash with fighting games, I don't need to be re-learning how to fight over here!

Er... yes. Anyway.

The e-mail idea is a quote from one of the many cut-scenes (which are, by the way, amazingly useful as study tools, I think). See, you play as a character from one of the ten Final Fantasy games (they were smart enough to pretend that XI and XII never happened) and fight through "story mode" when you're playing by yourself, finding crystals, fighting a bunch of people, and then ultimately having a showdown with the main villain from the game your hero is from. It's fun times, I promise.

Anyway, this particular quote is from Squall's (Final Fantasy VIII) story, in which he tells Ultimecia:

おまえに理解できるほど単純じゃない.

Which I translate (roughly) to:

It's not something so simple that you could comprehend it.

And I'm such a good blogger that I'll even provide the actual cut-scene from whence it came (though you'll have to fast forward to... 6:37 on your own. Youtube can only provide so much.):



(Sorry about it being too big; my blog layout is just not conducive to most videos. You may have to open this one in another tab, guys.)

Of course, as you can see, in this case, it relates particularly to Ultimecia's understanding of Squall's travel to travel alone, etcetera etcetera... but that's completely irrelevant, especially considering that fact that probably 2.5% of you have actually played this game before. No, I just rather like the sentiment behind the statement, and it's nice to feel as though you're too complicated to be easily understood.

I don't know, sometimes phrases (especially in Japanese, lately) just sort of stick with me--I'm not sure if it's the metre, the flow, or just the composition itself, but things like this just make me stop, think, and roll them around in my head for a while.

I like things like that.

...Enough to get me off on a tangent, anyway. Moving on.

12) ore no monogatari (オレの物語, my story)

Another Final Fantasy derived quote--this time from Final Fantasy X, which may very well have kicked it's way to the top of my own personal rankings. The storyline, man, the storyline...

But I digress. Again.

Anyway, "stories" are a running theme in X, particularly when it comes to the main character, Tidus, and his mentor-figure, Auron. Mainly, they come into play as a form of encouragement: "this is your story," so do what you want to do. "This is my story," so I'll decide the way things go. Which, I think, is a pretty good message. これはオレの物語だ, or "This is my story" is the full quote I'm pulling this from.

Not to mention the fact that it also references this rather nice piece of music:



(Sure, I could have used my nifty music player thing, but... I didn't want to. So there.)

This option is probably a lot more easily identified as nerdy, though. Oh well, since when has that bothered me.

... well, I said not ten, and twelve is certainly not ten. In some cultures, I'm sure that twelve is, indeed, so far beyond ten that the two don't even bear comparison!

Don't you love it when I try to justify laziness with cultural awareness?

Anyway, I guess that I'll leave things here for now. Be sure to tune in later, when surely I'll have thought up more options, all of them sillier and more obscure than the last!

... You know, it's really going to suck when I have to actually choose one.

This is Edo, signing off thinking that she might just be making things harder on herself.