If you're going to transliterate an accent, do your research and do it accurately I know it doesn't look like there's rules for elision but there are, cadence is a big part of remaining understandable when the actual enunciation is gone and if you fuck it up the whole sentence just reads Wrong
if you're going to include honorifics in your anime fanfic then at least make sure you get them right I've seen too many fanfic where characters use honorifics they never actually use in canon, like a character written using '-chan' even though they're a proper ojou-type who only uses 'last name-san', and similar mistakes
also I have seen far too many fanfic written by people who have only read a wikia for the work and if you ask me there should be a rule against that because, like, why are you even bothering to write about something you know next to nothing about?! writing about an incomplete work is one thing but this is something else entirely
Related to honorifics fuckups, I get driven a bit mad by honorifics being retained in fic (and subs) for series where the characters wouldn't realistically be using the things in actuality. Like the fact that these European fucks are using them in the Japanese is the same reason that the Hobbits speak like how they do in English: it's a translation convention to make things intelligible to the culture consuming the product. It's not because European Fuck ＃2 is actually using Japanese honorifics. You do not need to retain these things in cases like those, dammit. It's not fucking Maria-sama ga Miteru where like half the fucking plot alone is the honorifics these little shits use towards each other and hearing someone call their petit soeur WHOEVER THE FUCK-chan for the first time is like A World Shattering Moment That You Makes You Die Of THE ROMANCE. Because Oh My God The One Japanese School Girl Called The Other Japanese School Girl Something More Affectionate AND SHE'S THE BITCHY FANCY ONE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
someone posted a scene from like yakuza 3 where majima calls kazuma kiryu kiryu-chan but the subtitles say "kazzy" because i guess they figured nobody would Get It if they just put kiryu chan Edit: i realize this is 0% fic related uh
Yeah... I think when it originally came out, people probably didn't assume the level of familiarity with Japanese honorific conventions as they do now, so you get things like that in official translations. And now fanfic, because it's what people experienced back when and what they associate with the characters. ... Now I can't remember if Kiwami/Kiwami 2 had that or Kiryu-chan.
I have seen- waaaay back in the days when ff.net was the only game in town- some good uses of sudden shift of "ooc" honorifics; instances where the characters had spent time building a relationship and the introduction (often paired with shifting from family name to given name or a shortened nickname) was emotionally impactful because gasp he just called her -chan/she just called him -kun because they're developing a more intimate bond!!! But that has to be done A) on purpose and B) not with any sort of casualness. Honorifics say a lot about the character, both how they think of themselves and how they think of their potential peers. You gotta think that shit through!
Japanese honourifics in translated stuff is always a trip. My personal guideline is generally something that's literally set in Japan, like the Persona games, just go for it. But I will definitely raise some eyebrows at, say Fullmetal Alchemist with honourifics because it's set in Fantasy Germany with a Fuhrer and everything. At the same time I've never played The World Ends With You (literally takes place in Shibuya, Tokyo in the mid-2000's) and thought 'but what honourifics do they use'. Then there's stuff like Phoenix Wright where the Capcom localization went 'hold my beer' because changing character names isn't the Done Thing these days except, apparently, when you decide to uproot an entire franchise, set it in alt-history California, and rename every single named character to have three puns each. Then I guess the answer is 'Phoenix Wright doesn't use honourifics but Ryuuichi Naruhodou does.' I'm confused and on a roll, so to cap it off we have JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Two Japanese high school students, an American real estate tycoon, an Egyptian fortune-teller, a dog, and a French swordman go on a road trip to kill an English vampire. What honourifics do they use? What language are they even speaking? I don't know, the characters don't know, and the author probably doesn't either. This isn't really a helpful statement to make, I guess. I misspent my youth on early FF.net so I am as inoculated to early anime influences as humanly possible. Like if I'm mid-fic and someone is like 'Oh, Spock-sensei' my brain just shugs at me.
Actually, they already did. That's why the Japanifornia thing: Gyakuten Saiban has equal densities of Japanese puns and memes and pop culture references, but people in the West wouldn't get the jokes, so "Naruhodo, Naruhodou?" became "Isn't that right, Wright?"
oh god spock-sensei would make me so furious unless there was a contextual reason for it my time on ff.net since i was like 13 didn't really inoculate me, so much as fill me with more hatred granted, i was also part of the letter writing campaign to nozomi that got the japanese honorifics added into the subs of marimite under threat of us not buying the official english release and my favorite bit of lotr since i was a kid was the translation section. so i've been very serious about these things and their use for a long while.
Yep. I remember, back when I was part of a Persona RP group, some people did have their characters use honorifics, and I think there was a whole info thing about "here's where to look for a primer on how honorifics work" that you were expected to at least skim through? And I remember pretty clearly that my character not only used honorifics, but she would really carefully shade those honorifics depending on who could hear her and who she was talking about, and whether she liked the person. It amused the hell out of me and her that one of the people she really hated - the grandson of a yakuza boss, who ICly really should have known how honorifics work - never quite caught on to the fact that she was not complimenting him or being weirdly flirty or cutesy by calling him "[Name]-tan". And she was especially not being complimentary when someone else she spoke of in the same conversation got "-sama". Tbf, she already had reason to think that guy was an idiot...
Fic of manga/anime where THE NAME ORDER IS WRONG like, how hard is it, people??? It's just lastname firstname, and people only really use firstname if they're close. also, like. The AO3 tags have the names in the right order. How do you post without realising you screwed up. (This commentary brought to you by Shouta Aizawa, who I can conceptualize only as an opposite-day rendition of the actual BNHA character.)
that has filled me with the horrifying possibility of finding nanoha fic where she's deemed nanoha takamachi by people in japan. like people from mid i can see calling her that because that's just how mid's fucking naming order goes. but like that name order difference is a detail that's kept to when they're in japan so i'd just be driven mad by that. it'd be like getting nanoha's handedness wrong. it's a minor ass world building detail but it's one that is A Noted Aspect Of This Franchise. thankfully this is so far only a hypothetical fear. but boy is it a big one.
for me it depends on whether or not honorifics are kept; if they aren't then english order is fine and frankly preferred since it's consistent with dropping japanese honorifics in favor of english ones. but if the writer is keeping japanese honorifics then they better be using japanese name order as well. I personally lean towards english order + no honorifics across the board because I find it super awkward to keep japanese honorifics in english writing anyway so whether a lack of them fits the setting or not doesn't really bother me
But it's really hard to write BokuAca fic with English conventions because almost none of the cast are on a first name basis with each other and there are characters with really specific preferences about honorifics. It's generally my preference to write names and forms of address English style, since I'm writing in English, but for that fandom I just can't do it.
I mean, I'd categorize that under translation convention, for the most part. An English fic using English name order is not exactly shocking. As for Nanoha specifically... well, it comes up occasionally? Probably better not to do it, but Not That Big A Deal.
So in the spirit of the season, their strategy is to slowly bleed the life out of everyone already in their thrall.
This reminds me of the Hatoful Boyfriend fandom incident in late 2016. Tons of people had apparently been assuming "Isa Souma" meant "first name is Isa, last name is Souma" for years, and when I pointed it out on anon to some popular incorrect quotes blog, half the fandom had some sort of existential crisis.
It is for me. Language and translation conventions are a Very, Very Big Deal to me. It's part of why LotR is one of my favorite books.
oh my god no i am remembering terribly transcribed accents and just fucked accents in general. like, yes, please actually convey ana's accent in overwatch fic but can you first Study How Egyptian Speakers Of English Speak And The Character Herself Please Fucking God JUST DO THIS FOR ME PLEASE. but at least ana is not zarya AND THEREFORE CURSED
