Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyousoukyoku Episode 10 Discussion

4kicks said:


Sigh...

No.

Nana does not say "larval" in the LN, or the anime, at least not in original Japanese for either.

TL;DR
- 幼虫: Yochu (what she didn't say) = Larval

- 幼生体: Yoseitai (what she said)
幼(Yo: Young), 生(Se: Living/raw), 体 (Tai: Body/being/creature..etc)

Young-living-being = Young organism, or just Young being, which works as 3 syllables if they were trying to dub this too.

Both official LN translation and anime subs are wrong.
...................
Long version:
Alright, I'm going to do a deep dive for this to explain what's what, and why the translators of BOTH the LN and anime subs are wrong; as well as how how this miscommunication that led to this confusion between the original creators and the translators likely came to be. If I was a youtuber, this would be one of those "X Explained" videos, but for linguistics.

Terms:
larval = 幼虫 (Yochu) Obviously wrong because they didn't use that, if you heard what Nana said in the audio. You can clearly hear the subtle tonal emphasis between when she says "Yo~seitai"....please relisten for yourself, as this point will be important later in this post. The kanji they used was as follows:

幼生体
幼生体
Yō-sei-tai
幼(Yo: Young), 生(Se: Living/raw), 体 (Tai: Body/being/creature..etc)

Young-living-being = Young organism.

Common knowledge of kanji/Chinese characters is they have multiple sayings depending on context. So 幼生 can also be read as "osanai", which translates to very young. THAT is what the text printed says, and it's core meaning.

So, when you put those three kanji together you get "Yo-seitai" or "Yoseitai" (but not "Yose tai"; will get back to later), which directly translates to, you've guessed it, "Young Organism".

............
So now you might ask, how did this confusion come about? Glad you asked.

The reason is in both the original LN Japanese raw, manga (which is adapted from the LN), and most likely the anime dialogue script as well; they put the hiragana next to the kanji. It's meant to make it easier for people with trouble reading difficult/understanding kanji, particular a younger audience (even Japanese adults can have trouble with kanji sometimes). So while the pronounciation is identical, the underlying meaning behind the kanji is what gives it it's true meaning. If you were to only translate the hiragana, with zero regard to the kanji, then you'd get a crappy Google translation that has a hard time understanding nuances and translates everything literally...in this case, "larva/larval"

In the full sentence text, it reads: "Kono yo-seitai (osana-tai) wa hogo suribeki to shingen shimasu".

Now back to the cause of the confusion, why it's not "yose tai" differentiad by the space. It is different from "yo seitai/yoseitai" because while the former means larval in English, that is the literal translation (abviously not meant to be taken literally). It should be noted that putting kanji next to each other, and spaces between them; it is a very important thing which can change it's entire meaning. It's like if you forget a comma between "Let's eat, Grandma" with "Let's eat Grandma", but I digress. So that means the space between "yose itai" is like saying "yose/yosei" which has multiple meanings, like fairy, and you've guessed it; larval--when reverse transliterated back into different kanji, thereby changing it to a different meaning to the original text.

And therein lies the cause of the confusion, the (likely) reason for the mistake and miscommunication between the original creators and translator(s). There's a chance that the official anime subbers got a guide or something similar to reference from the LN, so the error trickled down from the top. If I were to make a bet, the translators are likely not native Japanese, or they are, but not as proficient in English...because your average native Japanese reading this series/watching this anime, would not make this beginner's mistake, which even me, someone who is only a beginner at Japanese (native Chinese-American) can perfectly understand.

So there you have it. A proven mistake made by people who get paid for this, being properly corrected by some shmuck with too much time on their hands on the internet...but a dedicated fan of the series nonetheless, who just happens to be a Grammar Nazi in both Japanese and English.

Feel free to spread this post around the interwebs...maybe the people localizing the LN in English and the anime subbers will take note of this and change their jarring errors.

I also made a critique on the episode where the elf Yuya was incorrectly introduced as a "spirit" instead of "fairy", where they likely misheard "Yosei" with "Seirei".

Starhammer said:


Just to let you know,thats how Nana said it in the LN too,so really,not the subbers fault.
Made me laugh though :)