June 19, 2012

What's Japanese for "Privateer"?

I just received an email about Mouretsu Pirates. I was going to respond by email, but decided to make a post about it.

I like collecting ALL of a show before beginning to really watch it. I knew I would like Mouretsu Pirates, but I stopped at about ep 5 so I could go back and enjoy it all over a week.

I think you're going to enjoy the whole show in about two days. Nearly every episode ends in a cliffhanger; it's going to be difficult to stop watching it.

There are a few good stopping points: episode 6 ends the Recruitment arc. Episode 12 ends the Ghost Ship arc. Ep 13 is filler. Ep 18 ends the Hakuoh Pirates arc. Ep 19 is filler. Ep 20 and 21 are a single filler story. And then it's a straight run right to the end of the series. But trying to stop in the middle of any of those arcs will be extremely difficult. It'll be like when Ubu showed Divergence Eve to his friend Dr. Devious; they ended up watching the entire show in a single evening.

Anyways, my wife was watching a tokusatsu TV show called 'Aba-Rangers' and we caught the word 'shi-raku-sen' translated as 'privateer,' in this case meaning a ship, not a person.

I am going to guess that the '-sen' part is " ? " which is 'ship' or 'vessel,' the way 'sen-chou' ( ?? ) is 'captain.'

I don't know if this term is used for Bentenmaru et alia, but I was giving you a heads up to listen for it in case.

I think he tried to include this kanji 船 sen, but my email program doesn't handle that encoding.

In the show they invariably use 海賊船 kaizokusen to refer to Bentenmaru (and Barbarossa). It means "pirate ship".

However, the term being translated as "Letter of Marque" is shiraku menjou. That translates to "bloodletting license". Which is certainly an interesting phrase.

It wouldn't be too much of a surprise to learn that there were no traditional Japanese terms for "privateer" or "Letter of Marque" because there weren't any privateers in Japanese history, even though there were lots of pirates.

But I thought I'd post this to see what others might say about it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 06:41 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 "Privateer" is translated into "shiryaku-sen" 私掠船 "ship of private robbery", and "letter of marque" into "shiryaku-menkyu" 私掠免許 "license of private robbery".

The words are obviously, translations of Western concepts.

Posted by: cuc at June 19, 2012 07:45 PM (QQaEV)

2

I'm not surprised that I heard it wrong. My ear is better now than years ago but I still miss things sometimes.

I was listening to Misa in the early part of episode 6, and I'm sure she said menjou. But I know of other places where they used menkyu.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 19, 2012 08:33 PM (+rSRq)

3 And native speakers may say it wrong, too. I just blogged a clear-cut case of that three days ago or so.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at June 19, 2012 08:39 PM (5OBKC)

4

Sometimes that's the result of regional dialects. It took me a while to realize that someone with a tohoku-ben said omigoto as omingoto or even as ominoto.

There's a scene in Someday's Dreamers where in flashback Yume is talking to her best friend Junko. They both are speaking with a thick Tohoku accent, and it drives me nuts to hear them because it doesn't even sound like Japanese to me. It's like listening to someone from Alabama speaking English.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 19, 2012 10:31 PM (+rSRq)

5 Menjou å…çŠ¶ and menkyo å…è¨± both mean license in different contexts, so I'm not surprised they've used both in the series. For instance, in the intro to episode one, they use shiryakusen-menjou for "letter of marque", and in episode two Kane uses menkyo for his large-ship piloting license.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at June 19, 2012 10:36 PM (2XtN5)

6 You know, I just finished episode 26, and weirdly enough the word 'shiryakusen' isn't used once on its own during the entire series.  That didn't occur to me until you mentioned it.
The term the show used for letter of marque is ç§æŽ èˆ¹å…çŠ¶, shiryakusenmenjou.  They'll often just use the word menkyo, license, to refer to it though.   The meaning breaks down as follows. 私  (shi)  : Private, for personal as opposed to public gain.
掠 (ryaku) : From the verb kasumu, to steal.
船 (sen) : Ship.  Pretty obvious.
免  (men) :  To allow or permit.
状 (jou) : Letter or paper.

Hope this helps.

Posted by: tellu541 at June 20, 2012 12:01 AM (q5Mzl)

7 For the record, it's Dr. Heinous.  But he is devious too.

Posted by: ubu at June 20, 2012 07:57 AM (GfCSm)

8 What's Japanese for "Is it Saturday yet?"

Posted by: Siergen at June 20, 2012 06:14 PM (PuIGa)

9 I'm looking forward more to Friday than Saturday. I want to find out what's coming in Shining Hearts.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 20, 2012 06:21 PM (+rSRq)

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