2007-10-03

Rivals

Lovely example of the multi-level lexicon in action:

加齢からくる肌トラブルをなかったように若さからくる肌トラブルをなかったように
Karei kara kuru hada toraburu o nakatta yō niWakasa kara kuru hada toraburu o nakatta yō ni
Make skin trouble caused by maturity disappearMake skin trouble caused by youth disappear

I've tried to reflect the key difference in my translation: the word corresponding to "youth" is wakasa, as native as a Japanese word can get -- but the word corresponding to "maturity" is karei (加齢, "increased years"), a Chinese-character compound imported from the mainland or designed to sound as if it were.

It's not that there aren't any Japanese words that you could use there. The obvious choice is toshi, meaning "year[s]" or "age" (with the implication "advancing" in cases such as this). But this would be... indelicate. Sino-Japanese words are the vaseline on the lens that lets everyone pretend they can stay young forever -- just like Latinate words are in English.

(Speaking of which, yeah, English "trouble" is in there too. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)

Incidentally, these characters are supposed to be mother and daughter. The mother's backstory is that she considers her daughter both a comrade and a rival ("良き仲間でもある") when it comes to beauty. The daughter's bio does not mention her mother at all. That's brutal, Cezanne. Brutal but hilarious.

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