Shakugan no Shana Final 22 – notes and the like This entry was posted by Vale.
Last autumn when Shana Final started, I was naive enough to sign up for translating it. I watched the first series sometime back ages ago when Naruto still had two-digit episode numbers, and it didn’t impress me all that much, so I hardly remembered any of it. I think I’ve seen the second season too, but those memories are lost as well. Point being, I was under the impression that it’s a simple anime with a main character who could be used to define moe and tsundere, some fighting and demons and high school romance. Then the first episode slapped me in the face with a recap of the second season, so I had close to no idea what the hell is going on at all. The next five or so episodes I did before Funimation simulcasted it were much less painful, but I wouldn’t call them easy. Now that Funi derped and I had to translate episode 22, I once again realized that it’s difficult.
The script for episode 22 is hardly 200 lines, which is very short. Black Rock Shooter is similar in length, but while translating BRS takes less than an hour, I had to work on Shana 22 for three or so hours. The dialog is simply not normal. However, unlike Symphogear, it’s written well. It’s consistent in style, and it fits the context, but that won’t make it any easier to translate. The Denizens and the Flame Hazes, the Snake of the Festival most of all, speak in very, khm, unique styles. It wouldn’t be hard to translate it if I didn’t have to do it by listening. It’s full of archaic phrases that no one actually uses, but their meaning is obvious if written down. Novel adaptation all right, but alas, I only got the novels just a few minutes ago.
What the flying bus
Gyuki uses the unrestricted spell Raincoat of Storage (倉蓑笠 kura-no-minokasa, lit. straw raincoat of storing) to create an illusion of them. (Yes, it’s a typo in the script. One fuckup.) His illusions are quite hardcore, he can change others’ appearances as well. In this scene Khamsin says something I couldn’t figure out back then. He says “jisei no taga ga hazurete shimatta you desu ne“. The phrase taga ga hazureru (箍が外れる) is quite a rarely used phrase, which means that something goes out of control. I guess that jisei will be the jisei of self-control (自制), in which case the sentence would mean “looks like they lost all their self-restraint”, referring to the Denizens rushing towards them like madmen. (Two fuckups.) This scene Behemoth calls the three Denizens with them Hyakki Yakou (百鬼夜行), which means “many demons marching in the night” or “many people plotting evil”. As a name of the group, I’d put for example Demon Parade as a translation.
The Qadesh mentioned in the name of Khamsin’s unrestricted spells is probably Qetesh, who was a goddess of fertility and sexual pleasure. (It could as well be the ancient city, but cities don’t really have hearts or blood.) Let’s move on.
He finishes Khamsin’s sentence by literally saying “… forever, in health” (…どこまでも、健やかに …doko made mo, sukoyaka ni). The line was an obvious choice.
A joke lost. I originally put “You’ll have to atone”, because he makes a joke on the name of Alastor (天罰神 tenbatsu-shin, lit. God of Divine Punishment) and punishment (罰 batsu). He has a sense of humor.
Tiamat’s one-phrase lines are usually the most challenging to translate (and even when she honors us with speaking in full sentences, it’s not much easier). At times it’s not even easy to figure out what is she trying to say, and then translating it to two word phrases that give off the same impression as the Japanese is even harder. Let’s see her lines in this episode.
- 異変出来 ihen-shuttai. An accident occurred. She probably refers to Kazumi returning to the battlefield with the Engaged Link. (Three fuckups.)
- 肯定 koutei. Affirmative.
- 助人参上… であります suketto sanjou… de arimasu. Assistance arrived. Actually Wilhelmina is saying it, not Tiamat. Thus the …de arimasu.
- 厳談抗告 gendan-koukoku. Both gendan and koukoku means protest.
- 堅守専心 kenshu-senshin. Devotion to protection.
Marchosias is such a dirty minded guy. When Shana says she likes Margery, he makes quite explicit jokes involving a lesbian romance. He says that after the battle it may evolve into a love affair (色恋 irokoi). And Shana agrees!
Dantalion shouts only a few lines (luckily). I can’t put it into words how hard I laughed at that “oh my” line.
When the Snake of the Festival talks, translators die. As I pointed out before, I didn’t have the novels when I was working at the episode, so his lines gave me some trouble. For example, when he talks about Bel Peol, he says the following: 神意を判じ、虚実を裁く (shin’i wo hanji, kyojitsu wo sabaku). The latter half is simple, because Bel Peol is called the Arbiter of Reverse Reasoning, so of course she judges falsehood. However, the first half is all the trickier. 判ずる (hanzuru) can mean both interpret (as in interpreting a dream) and discern, and the word for truth or true intentions (真意) is read shin’i as well. Considering that Hecate is the priestess, I chose the latter word, which makes the line into what it is in the script. (Four fuckups.) He says that she is accomplishing (verb omitted) the best of her tricks (術策の粋 jussaku no sui). That sui took me a while to figure out. Then Alastor’s line tricked me too, but that’s mostly because I’m not familiar with the new terminology. The “secret chamber” he mentions is the Conloquium (he says that word too, I just couldn’t figure out what it was).
The preview again features Yuji blogging. Especially the shouka(n) later in the sentence… I still have no idea what that word is supposed to be. I know of a shouka that may make sense in that sentence, 昇華, which means sublimate, but… The certain thing is that someone says an ultimate lie, and the divine plan nears completion. (Five fuckups.) Yeah, it was hard. (Fuckups will be fixed in a v2, if there will be any.)