Twelve Kingdoms: Interview with the Translator, Grammar & All That Fun Stuff

Fumi Yoshinaga's Ooku is one of the

few manga series I've encountered that

uses "courtly" language.

Kate: I’m currently reading Heaven Official’s Blessing by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, the same author as the delightfully titled The Scum Villain’s Self-Serving System. The dialog is modern-sounding with informal references and slang despite the heavy material (gods, etc.). Is this a trend in Asian novels? Do any writers go in for “forsoothly” language?

Eugene: Japanese historical dramas have long used the equivalent of Hollywood Shakespearean dialogue. The more recognizable rhetorical flourishes (like honorifics) are preserved, while updating enough of the grammar and vocabulary to make it comprehensible to modern audiences without becoming anachronistic.

Like Shakespeare and especially Chaucer and earlier, hardly anybody today could understand the material if it actually remained faithful to the period. Nevertheless, the people back then sounded to each other more or less like what we sound to each other today.

The same way Anglo-Saxon verbs and Latin verbs can mean the same thing while still not being the same, a Chinese cognate has a different "flavor" than a native Japanese word or a loan word from a European language. Kanji orthography has also evolved over time, resulting in multiple "spellings" for the same kanji.

Sort of like aluminium and aluminum or theatre and theater or spanner and wrench. How a kanji is written can also tie the text to a particular time or place. In the Twelve Kingdoms, Fuyumi Ono prefers more "classical" kanji, and often uses Chinese words, rather like dropping a French, German, or Latin word into an English text.

For example, Ono uses a kanji in a passing reference to a kind of youma that wasn't in any online Japanese dictionaries, so I thought she made it up (which she also does, this being a fantasy world), until I found the reference (originally in Chinese). Google Translate is very useful when translating the Twelve Kingdoms! 

Kate: Speaking of Shakespeare, you often throw in allusions—“parting is such sweet sorrow,” for instance. Shakespeare crops up in manga: I own a manga series in which an art gallery is titled “The Nutshell” as a deliberate reference to “though I am bound in a nutshell” from Hamlet. And when I was a teenager, I saw a fantastic version of Shogun MacBeth live.

 Is Shakespeare a big deal in Japan? Are the references as common—and often unacknowledged—as in the West?

Eugene: Akira Kurosawa adapted MacBeth in Throne of Blood and King Lear in Ran. Especially in Showa period dramas, it can seem that every girl's school in Japan has to put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet. In Hanako and Anne, an entire story arc is devoted to Hanako translating Romeo and Juliet for her BFF Renko to star in.

Kate: Youka complains that names “really are confusing.” I can relate! There’s Keikei and Keiki. There’s an Emperor Kyou but that Emperor is in En. And a Kei Province but that province is also in En. And then there’s the Russian multi-name thing, so the author refers to Enki by Enki and by Rokuta. And don't get me started on the number of bureaucrats!

Does the kanji make a difference? That is, are the names less confusing in Japanese?

Eugene: Yes, kanji make a big difference when it comes to proper nouns in Japanese. Not only do kanji allow the reader to differentiate between homophones, but they add semantic information that makes them each unique and memorable. A kanji has its own built-in set of mnemonics, which are often referred to when making introductions. Click on the link for more about names. 

Kate: A few times I have run into double negatives as a kind of emphasis. Are double negatives common in Japanese texts? ("I can't get no satisfaction" sort of thing.)

Eugene: Double negatives are ubiquitous in Japanese, especially tag questions. The difference in Japanese is that "Yes, we have no bananas" is acceptable grammar. So you end up with a translation that is "Yes" in Japanese and "No" in English. Very much the bane of the Japanese language student.

Birds don't necessarily fly (through the sky).

Not all birds fly.