This is kind of a small spoiler about Petite Princess Yucie. I lament that I don't really speak Japanese, because I think I've been missing a lot of humor.

In the 7th episode of Petite Princess Yucie, which is one of my favorites, Glenda and Yucie have to fight against a cat magician who is enslaving people in the Demon World by turning them into cats and forcing them to serve him. Despite how that sounds, he's a ridiculous character and most of the episode is played for laughs.

It turns out that the source of his power is a certain magical artifact. At the very end of the episode, Yucie and Glenda have reached it. Glenda creates a hyperspace mallet in her hand. The cat looks up at her in despair and start listing all the awful things that will happen if she destroys the item -- things which, it turns out, Glenda and Yucie and the audience all consider desirable, but which would be disastrous for the cat.

And in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice, Glenda responds, Shitteiru wa. Then she turns to the item, raises the hammer, screams, and hits it with all her strength. It's hilarious. The English translation of shitteiru wa was "I know."

But that doesn't really convey the full flavor of it, because she's using the wa feminine softening suffix. I think that must come across as mockery, in context. Or is that her actual form of speech throughout the series?

That's what I'm really wondering. I wish I could understand things better. If Glenda, who is aggressive, rambunctious, emotionally expressive, and often quite violent (and my favorite character in the series), ends up using "woman's speech" routinely, then that would be a totally untranslatable source of ongoing humor in the series because of the total incongruity of soft speech and unsoft behavior. But I can't tell; it's too subtle for me to pick out. I'm just not good enough yet.

Another thing: Chawoo, Cocoloo's steward, often gets translated as speaking with a drawl. I think he's speaking with an Osaka-ben, but it's really hard for me to pick those things out, too. But I did notice that he uses -han instead of -san, which is a signature of the Kansai-ben.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 02:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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