INACTIVE

of how tricky translating Japanese to English (and vice versa) can be.

I recently wrote my opinion on the online translation and the official translation by YenPress and I also answered an ask about 2CT. I actually didn’t want to go into more detail than what I had already written in those two posts, but looking at the online scans I noticed that some information might have been lost in the translation, so here I am again to clarify a few things =D

(Warning: 2CT)

First of all, these are the online scans of ch.90:

And this is how I interpreted the scene:

yellow: so-called “real!Ciel”

blue: “our Ciel” (young master)

Things that got lost in the English translation:

1. The two children use different “you”s when referring to each other [In Japanese, there are a lot of different ways to say “you” and each of them has different connotations]:

yellow Ciel to blue Ciel:  お前/omae (”you” we use when referring to an equal or inferior)

blue Ciel to yellow Ciel: 君/kimi (polite standard-”you”)

2. The yellow Ciel uses the phrase “～してあげる” when he says “I will protect you.”(「お前は僕が守ってあげる」). We use this phrase only to close friends or family members, i.e. to people we regard as equal or inferior. 

→ As you can see, a single, short sentence like ”I will protect you” ( 「お前は僕が守ってあげる」 ) can contain a lot of information about the speaker, in this case we get to know how the speaker regards the person he’s talking to. It’s quite obvious in the Japanese version that (if there are twins) the yellow Ciel is the older one =D

3. The “you” in “I still had you” is emphasized in the original text, since there’s a ‘dot’ next to the word 君(”you”) (see below). A ‘dot’ usually indicates a keyword or a special (hidden) meaning. So the correct translation of this sentence would be “I still had you” (I mean the translator could have put quotation marks or at least written in bold/italic type).

4. The translation “Don’t take me away!!” in the online scanlation is not accurate (and this phrase doesn’t really make sense anyway). It should be “Don’t take (him/that person) away!!” (「連れて行かないで!!」).

[*For comparison, YP translated the same line as “Please don’t!!“. Not sure why they chose this phrase, but at least it’s less confusing than “Don’t take me away!!”]

First:

In the Italian version the phrase “I still had you” has been translated with “Io… ho te.” which means “I… have you.” Notice the enphasis on the “You” in the Italian translation.

Second:

In the second page, the phrase “Don’t take me away!” has been translated with “Non portatelo via!” which means “Don’t take him away.”