Ramble: The weirdness of translating Japanese characters addressing one another

(originally posted on tumblr in 2017)

scraftyisthebest asked:

Hi there! I just came across your blog, and I must say that I definitely love reading it. Your posts are very insightful and interesting to read. Anyways, wanted to know: does not referring to someone with honorifics have some sort of...special implication in Japanese? I ask because in P4 Arena, this is sort of brought up in Kanji's joke ending, in which he asks Naoto to only refer to him by his name, causing her to become permanently flustered when near him and causing Kanji to panic.

Aha! See, this is a very complex thing you bring up here, so let me try to explain with as much care as possible. Ahem *puts on scholar-y glasses*

Now, first of all: 

1.)Addressing other people in Japanese.

When you start learning Japanese, the textbook will tell you to just refer to everyone as “[Surname]-san”. Why? Because that’s generally the safest way to go. In Japanese communication, there is a lot of nuance to proximity, so picking anything other than “[Surname]-san” would require you to know exactly how “close” or “distant” you wanna place yourself to your opposite, which is not something you should try to do unless you already have a good feeling for the language. The whole thing has a lot of dimensions which are based entirely on a sort of gut-feeling that’s learned over time, rather than an exact science. 

Just for overview let’s give you a veeeeery simplified list of what different ways of referring to people can imply:

[Surname]-san: The person is a stranger, someone you don’t feel close to for another reason or a superior and you’re trying to politely keep your distance, so both of you have your personal space.

[First name]-san: The person is a pal of yours, with whom you’re close enough to swap anecdotes from your lives without feeling embarrassed. 

[Surname]-kun: A foreigner is probably never going to need that one. The two most common reasons to use this one: A.) You’re in a business-y situation and the person you’re talking to is younger or less experienced than you. This way you show them respect, without putting them above you in the hierarchy. This situation has nothing to do with gender. B) You’re good friends with the person you’re talking to, too close to use “-san”, but you can’t use the rather childish “-chan”, so you us “-kun”. That tends to happen a lot more when the other party is male and you are female. 

[First name]-kun: The same as the above, but closer. 

[Surname]-chan: You’re definitely making fun of the other party, no way around it. Using -chan with the last name makes no friggin’ sense.

[First name]-chan: Functionally identical to Germans adding “lein” or “chen” to people’s names *hint hint*. “-chan” is just “-san” with a lisp, as a small child would pronounce it. The mispronunciation is considered very, very adorable, and so it’s often used for nicknames, hence why you usually use it when you’re so close to a person that you’re comfortable with teasing each other and making fun of each other. However, most men don’t want to be considered “adorable”, hence why you rarely use “-chan” for guys, unless you’re trying to outright make fun of them.

Surname without honorifics: You’re most likely talking about someone who isn’t there to hear you. Most likely trash-talk. That, or you’re a couple of teenage or college-age boys who give no two damns about being polite to each other. Or you’re a (probably fictional) teenage boy too awkward to use someone’s first name, but too slang-y to use honorifics. Pick your poison.

First name without honorifics: SUPER-CLOSE. Like, Best Friends Forever close. You need to be 100% comfortable with a person to drop all honorifics with them, otherwise it just feels awkward. 

Now, that we got that one out of the way, it would seem like what Kanji was asking Naoto to do was *very clearly* giving her permission to invade his verbal privacy in ways he isn’t comfortable with. Except… This is where we get to point 2:

2.) How that part was translated into English

Now, some readers might remember that I’ve done posts about that in the past, but basically, the English translation of the Persona Games is not always exactly “accurate” with how it lets people refer to each other. Specifically, Party members are a LOT more likely to refer to themselves by their last names in the original Japanese than they are in English. Ken Amada from Persona 3, for example, is referred to by his last name by every single member of SEES in Japanese, without exception. Likewise, Yosuke always refers to Chie and Yukiko as “Satonaka” and “Amagi-san” in Japanese, only dropping the “-san” for Yukiko later into the game, when he feels they’ve become friends. 

Now, knowing that, let’s look at Naoto. Her speech in Japanese is extremely neutral: She speaks like the prose out of a Mystery Novel, plain and simple, no slang or anything. Accordingly, she also has a very specific way of referring to people she knows: 

[Surname]-san for people above her age or girls her own age (she uses it for Rise), [Surname]-senpai for her Senpai within the IT and [Surname]-kun for guys her own age. So yeah, in Japanese, Naoto calls Kanji “Tatsumi-kun”, not “Kanji-kun”, staying in the realm of professionalism, as she does.

And that’s where the translation issue occurred. 

In the scene you’re talking about, Kanji originally asked Naoto to call him “Kanji-kun”, since she was the only one in the party still using his last name (since Yosuke never used it to begin with, Chie and Yukiko both started out calling him “Kanji-kun” right after they got to know him and how adorable he can be, Teddie calls nobody by their last names, and Rise has no friggin’ respect of him, sometimes even just calling him just “Kanji” without a honorific)

Now, Naoto NEVER refers to anyone by their first names, unless they’re children or act like children (namely: Nanako and Teddie), so this request made her incredibly uncomfortable. It was outside her comfort zone, because first names aren’t usually even in her vocabulary. Kanji didn’t consider this. He just told her he found it weird being called by his surname, because nobody else ever does it. Hence why her reaction shocked him like it did.

So yeah, THAT’S what happened in that scene. 

*takes off scholar-y glasses* 

I hope this helped!