But his post also said: Chihayaburu is a ““makurakotoba” (which Porky also says in the episode), a modifier that changes meaning of some words in the entire song.” You guys used translated as “pretentious words” which doesn’t convey what the term means. Crunchroll translated it as a “decorative word” which makes a lot more sense. Your guys translation seems kind of trollish, along with the “titty monster” translation you guys did last episode. I still prefer your subs over crunchyrolls but sometimes I kind of question why you guys make certain translation choices.
Even when the gods
Held sway in the ancient days,
I have never heard
That water gleamed with autumn red
As it does in Tatta’s stream
Rexroth
Even in the age
Of the strong swift gods,
I never heard
Of water like Tatsuta River
Dyed with blue and Chinese red.
Here’s ours and CR’s for fun.
Ours
Even in the age of swift gods and miracles, unheard of was
Such burning autumn red as drenches the Tatsuta river
CR
Impassionate gods have never seen
the red that is the Tatsuta River.
As you can see, only the last one actually translated it as anything at all (probably because it’s really hard to actually translate the word into English) but in any case none of them are anything like “impassionate” which is a terrible translation and makes the entire scene this episode make no sense.
As for makurakotoba, it’s something exclusive to older Japanese poetry like this, so it’s not just decorative, but also something people wouldn’t normally use, so pretentious is pretty close.
And I’m pretty sure CR had something awful like “boobies” for titty monster, which no one that’s old enough to high school would ever say, let alone as an insult.
My tl;dr here is CR’s translation for this show is really bad.
Here are two other blogposts I’ve found talking about what Chihayaburu may mean.
This one claims: “Chihayaburu, Chihaya furu （ちはやぶる/ちはやふる） means “1000 quick shakes”.
It refers to the white paper wand (haraigushi) of a Shinto priest, shaken to purify an area and the people before a ceremony.
It is a makurakotoba keyword for poetry, representing the diviniy of a place.”
Ah, I didn’t know there was an article on it. Thanks a lot for replying, I’ve been wondering about this phrase’s translation and its nice to know you’ve looked at other translations.
Do you guys have a complete translation of the poems or do you just translate them as they come in the series? I’d be really interested to see your take on all of them.
I thought they were using someone’s “official” translations. Little reason to to that except for the episode titles though.
no, there are multiple existing professional translations yet they decided to do their own poor translation of the poems
Thank you communists, I love you!
that was a fucking episode holy shit
So… does this mean that we have a shitty translation too or did Commie fix it all ?
we’ve been changing the poems since episode 1 of season 1
Is it actually swift and not impassionate? Obviously I’m not an expert at Japanese or I wouldn’t be using subs but I’ve never seen it translated either way in other book translations such as http://books.google.com/books?id=U0KcAwrVksQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hyakunin+Isshu&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nVwpUYSEH–F0QGbzoHgDA&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hyakunin%20Isshu&f=false
and
http://books.google.com/books?id=g2gvYfrpOi8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=hyakunin+Isshu&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nVwpUYSEH–F0QGbzoHgDA&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBA
8thSin’s posts on his blog defends your guys interpretation: http://8ths.in/cr-i-am-disappoint-chihayafuru-tl-notes-rules-observations-sub-review/ which seems to make sense.
But his post also said: Chihayaburu is a ““makurakotoba” (which Porky also says in the episode), a modifier that changes meaning of some words in the entire song.” You guys used translated as “pretentious words” which doesn’t convey what the term means. Crunchroll translated it as a “decorative word” which makes a lot more sense. Your guys translation seems kind of trollish, along with the “titty monster” translation you guys did last episode. I still prefer your subs over crunchyrolls but sometimes I kind of question why you guys make certain translation choices.
Here are four different professional translations of poem 17.
McMillan
Even the almighty gods of old
never knew such beauty:
on the river Tatsuta in autumn sunlight
a brocade—
reds flowing above,
blue water below.
MacCauley
I have never heard
That, e’en when the gods held sway
In the ancient days,
E’er was water bound with red
Such as here in Tatta’s stream
New edit of MacCauley from the University of Virgina (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/hyakua.html)
Even when the gods
Held sway in the ancient days,
I have never heard
That water gleamed with autumn red
As it does in Tatta’s stream
Rexroth
Even in the age
Of the strong swift gods,
I never heard
Of water like Tatsuta River
Dyed with blue and Chinese red.
Here’s ours and CR’s for fun.
Ours
Even in the age of swift gods and miracles, unheard of was
Such burning autumn red as drenches the Tatsuta river
CR
Impassionate gods have never seen
the red that is the Tatsuta River.
As you can see, only the last one actually translated it as anything at all (probably because it’s really hard to actually translate the word into English) but in any case none of them are anything like “impassionate” which is a terrible translation and makes the entire scene this episode make no sense.
As for makurakotoba, it’s something exclusive to older Japanese poetry like this, so it’s not just decorative, but also something people wouldn’t normally use, so pretentious is pretty close.
And I’m pretty sure CR had something awful like “boobies” for titty monster, which no one that’s old enough to high school would ever say, let alone as an insult.
My tl;dr here is CR’s translation for this show is really bad.
Here are two other blogposts I’ve found talking about what Chihayaburu may mean.
This one claims: “Chihayaburu, Chihaya furu （ちはやぶる/ちはやふる） means “1000 quick shakes”.
It refers to the white paper wand (haraigushi) of a Shinto priest, shaken to purify an area and the people before a ceremony.
It is a makurakotoba keyword for poetry, representing the diviniy of a place.”
http://omamorifromjapan.blogspot.com/2011/09/kumano-and-nachi-amulets.html
While this one claims: “chihayaburu
pillow-word epiteth usedof gods (awesome, majestic, imperious…)”
http://100poems-100poets.blogspot.com/2012/06/017.html
You could just link to the Japanese wiki page, which is very relevant and descriptive (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%83%E6%97%A9%E6%8C%AF%E3%82%8B).
Ah, I didn’t know there was an article on it. Thanks a lot for replying, I’ve been wondering about this phrase’s translation and its nice to know you’ve looked at other translations.
We had to do a lot of research after multiple people said CR’s translations for the poems were bad.
Do you guys have a complete translation of the poems or do you just translate them as they come in the series? I’d be really interested to see your take on all of them.
the latter, but that is nearly all of them by this point