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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: So's Your Face!
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
The other day, we were watching one of the Gundam Seed movies, and something happened that started the kind of debate we have when translating stuff, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to give an in-depth look at the kind of thought we put into these things. I'll try to explain in a way that doesn't require any previous knowledge of Gundam Seed.
It started with Haro. For the people who aren't familiar with Gundam, Haro is a round little robot. I confess, we're mostly only familiar with Gundam Seed (we stopped downloading anime around the time Gundam 00 started, but we really really really want to watch it, and look forward to the DVD release), so the rest of this explanation might only apply to Gundam Seed. In Gundam Seed, Haro talks a lot, but only has a few pre-programmed phrases that it repeats as it sees appropriate. And the pink Haro in Gundam Seed has a little bit of a dirty mouth, and can be a little mean.
We saw a commentary with the Japanese voice actors who play Athrun and Lacus talking about Haro's vocabulary, and wondering why the little robot says such terrible things when Lacus, a very sweet, loving girl, would have been the one to program the phrases. If I remember correctly, their theory was that it was Lacus's way of venting, or getting all her negative energy out. Talking about it just now, the two of us came up with a theory that, since Pink was the first Haro of the Gundam Seed universe, it may have been Athrun who programmed those phrases. Except we just listened to the CD drama where Athrun gives Pink to Lacus, and apparently it didn't know any of those phrases at that time. Anyway, whatever the reason, the fact is that Pink Haro is not necessarily very nice.
One of the phrases Pink likes to repeat is “omae mo na!” This is translated as “You are too!” and when Haro says, “Haro! Genki! Omae mo na!” it becomes “Haro! I'm fine! You are too!” But let's look at it a little more closely. According to the Japanese language dictionary at Infoseek, one definiton for “omae” is a second-person noun used to indicate someone of equal or lower social standing than the speaker, mostly used by men. This is the most common use of “omae” (at least in the manga we've translate), so we think it's safe to assume that Pink isn't going around calling people “O honorable one.” The “na” at the end makes the phrase a little more emphatic, which, depending on the context, can make the sentence sound kind of mean. “Mo” is a particle indicating inclusion (which is why I shouldn't leave it out), and that's where the “too” comes from.
Anyway, from Pink's phrase “Mitometaku nai” (“I don't want to admit it;” I don't remember what the subtitles had it as), as well as another one that we've always had a difficult time translating, we see that Pink has a little bit of an attitude. So keeping all that in mind, “you are too” didn't quite seem to have the right oomph to it. Of course, in this case, that can be overcome with proper intonation in the voice acting, but since we translate manga, we don't have the luxury of leaving things to voice actors. And so I hit on something brilliant (actually stolen from Scrubs):
“So's your face!”
Examples:
Haro: “Haro! I'm fine! So's your face!”
Lacus: “You're very kind.” Haro: “So's your face!”
Kira: “I'm a coordinator.” Haro: “So's your face!”
Kira: “They don't like coordinators much here.” Lacus: “That's a shame.” Haro: “So's your face!”
Plenty of oomph and also hilarious.
But “so's your face” has a fatal flaw: it's not actually what Haro said. And thus we begin the debating, but since accuracy in translation is one of the very most important things to us, so the debate goes something like this, “It has the right oomph!” “Not what Pink said.” “But it's hilarious!” “It's not what Pink said. And it doesn't work in every exchange.” “'So's your face' always works!” “It's still not what Pink said.”
But there is one argument that might be effective: it's more about what Pink means than what Pink says, and if you tried to say “So's your face” in Japanese, it just wouldn't sound natural at all. In other words, they don't say “So's your face” in Japanese, and maybe if Pink had been programmed in English, that's what s/he would be saying. Still, since we're not the creators, we don't know if that's really and truly what Pink means, so we came to the conclusion that if we were translating something like Pink for one of the companies that we don't adapt or localize for, we'd translate it just the way Bandai did. But if we were translating and adapting, we might go with it. Maybe.
Or maybe, because we still hate to put things in characters' mouths, we might translate it more literally, and then put translators' note, inviting readers to substitute “So's your face” whenever “You are too” pops up.
And thus you can see that translating is an eternal struggle. Eternal, or until you look at the context again and realize that if you want to show that Haro actually has some idea of what's going on around them, “Same to you” probably works much better anyway.
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