(no subject)

[skygiants]

Things that are always kind of surreal: hearing "Dona Dona" pouring out from your laptop while you fold your laundry, and realizing it is because you just loaded up the Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack. Oh Japan, please never stop stealing from my culture! It fills me with lulz. (I totally hold out hope for a Prince of Egypt anime one of these days. Imagine what they could do with the plagues! A Book of Esther anime would also be glorious.)

And speaking of Japanese media that fills me with lulz, rushin_doll recently lent me the first volume of Morioka Hiroyuki's Epic Space Opera Light Novel Series Seikai: Crest of the Stars, Princess of Empire.

It's - uh. Well, okay. The author of the book has clearly put a lot of thought into worldbuilding and conlanging! Which is cool. However, the problem comes with the translation of the conlanging . . . which is terrible. The all-powerful empire that dominates the star system is called the Frybar, which seriously just sounds like a burger joint. The book is full of sentences like "I inherited the Traiga and the Rebeun of Viscount of Parhynu from Spunej Erumita, so you could also call me Feia Borl Paryun." I. What?

I would like to give the book the benefit of the doubt and assume all of this sounds infinitely more dignified in Japanese. Even spelling many of these words a different way would help! I absolutely refuse to believe that there was not a better translation option than "Frybar," and whoever did decide on it should be fired right now.

There were other things that were enjoyable about the book - plenty of strong ladies and a lot of interesting culture clash stuff, although I predict frustration re: the issue of colonization, seeing as the Colonizing Empire is Not So Bad and Just Doing It Because They Want Universal Peace, No Really, Look How The Democracies Are Screwing It Up - but either way if I decide I want more I will go watch the anime or something, because there is a limit to what I can take seriously in terms of ridiculous sff nomenclature, and I have just run up against it.

Comments

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

Frybar _was_ the more dignified translation. In the original, it was Sautetavern.

[skygiants]

No, see, that would be better.

(Anyway, it is a truth universally acknowledged that everything sounds classier in French, with the possible single exception of the song "I'll Make A Man Out Of You.")

[gramarye1971]

*pokes around the Internet a bit*

If the original Japanese is indeed フリューバル (FURYUUBARU), I am still scratching my head about where that 'fry' sound came from out of what seems to be written as a long 'ryuu' sound. If I were translating it, I'd fall back on an umlaut to come up with something like 'Frübar'. (Which sounds like a frozen yogurt shop, but still.)

[skygiants]

*giggling* Yeah, it does sound like one of those trendy frozen yogurt shops. Which, admittedly, in classiness is a step up from burger joint?

[littledust.livejournal.com]

FRYBAR

Man, if that doesn't belong in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I don't know what does. Perhaps it is an interplanetary buffet???

[gramarye1971]

Indeed. And now I want frozen yogurt. (One of the trendy shops where they blend the yogurt for you just opened up in the mall I pass by on the way home from work....)

[skygiants]

I'D EAT THERE. World domination and all-you-can-eat ribs! :D

[skygiants]

I actually have an irrational antipathy to trendy frozen yogurt shops. >.> I like sugar in my frozen yogurt, okay! I like it processed and full of chemicals! WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND.

[wickedtrue.livejournal.com]

*STARRY EYES*

Frybar is going to be my multidimensional burger joint in everything I write now. Just watch me!

[skygiants]

DO IT!

[moonyazu9.livejournal.com]

A Prince of Egypt anime would be epic and a half. I agree.

[skygiants]

The movie already got us halfway to angsty bishonen Pharaoh, after all.