CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Hi guys, hope this one hasn't been brought up too much before, I took a quick look around and couldn't find anything.

I've been watching One Piece lately and have enjoyed it more than I expected. One thing surprised me though and that's the bad language which crops up from time to time. Obviously it's nowhere near as bad as some anime. However, it has always struck me as being slightly out of place with a lot of the anime - though not all. My suspicion has been that the translators to English might have added more swearing than was present in the original Japanese just to make it seem 'cooler' or more 'mature'. I know this has been the case before with Dragonball Z and others.

So, since I have no real grasp of the Japanese language, I thought I'd ask here. Can anyone confirm or reject the hypothesis?

Thanks.

A lot of Japanese is in emphasis and inflection, or so I've been told. The language itself isn't necessarily rude or coarse like we're used to in English, however there are a lot of ways you can say common words that influence their tone negatively.

For example, there's one particular word I've heard come up from time to time in a lot of Anime, though I couldn't think how to spell it, romanji or otherwise. On paper, the word is just "You," similar to "Hey, you" or "I'm talking to you." However, the tone of the word is very rough and disrespectful, more analogous to "You fool," and more vulgar variants, so don't go around Japan throwing it around like you're talking to people.

This implied rather than presented coarseness doesn't really translate exactly into any other language, so English translations frequently inject more common bad language, not to spice it up, but to convey the attitude of the speaker more accurately.

Thanks for that. I'd still be curious to hear if there any Japanese speakers who could confirm the accuracy. Not sure what the chances of that are here at CAA. Anyone?

Fish and Chips (post: 1374687) wrote:A lot of Japanese is in emphasis and inflection, or so I've been told. The language itself isn't necessarily rude or coarse like we're used to in English, however there are a lot of ways you can say common words that influence their tone negatively.

For example, there's one particular word I've heard come up from time to time in a lot of Anime, though I couldn't think how to spell it, romanji or otherwise. On paper, the word is just "You," similar to "Hey, you" or "I'm talking to you." However, the tone of the word is very rough and disrespectful, more analogous to "You fool," and more vulgar variants, so don't go around Japan throwing it around like you're talking to people.

This implied rather than presented coarseness doesn't really translate exactly into any other language, so English translations frequently inject more common bad language, not to spice it up, but to convey the attitude of the speaker more accurately.

That's pretty much it. There are words commonly translated as words we can't say here... There's the "k" word which is just a general word of frustration, there's the "shimatta" extension which demonstrates frustration with what was said before it, and there are the, like, 10 ways of saying "you" which show varying levels of frustration or even hatred for the person.

That's not to say they don't have words that aren't supposed to be said. Yes Japan has a whole episode devoted to those words, actually.