#e109

-------------------------------

余 yo Dark Meister's pronoun / The "Royal We"

I made an extra translation note appear in the episode itself as well, because initial test screenings of the episode produced some confusion on the Dark Meister's "we" pronoun.

余 (yo) is a very old, archaic pronoun that was used by shoguns or other rulers. To simulate the same regal effect it gives, our English equivalent is the "Royal We".

"The royal we (also known as the majestic plural or royal plural) is the use of a plural pronoun used by a single person who is a monarch or holds a high office to refer to themselves." (Wikipedia)

The note here is just that while the pronoun itself is plural, it does not necessarily mean that the person using the pronoun is speaking in plural. The "Royal We" is a singular pronoun basically used in place of "I" by royalty.

On pronouns, character voice, and translation

With the next episode being titled ワレのターン (ware no taan), with a heavy emphasis on ワレ (ware) being related to Zwijo, I felt like this was a very good chance to talk about this.

Given how meticulous each Go Rush character has their own way of speech and pronouns to refer to themselves, I place a lot of emphasis on making sure that some of that nuance translates to English. Of course, it's impossible to make it 1:1, and usually pronoun choice is something that's glossed over in other translated works, but it means a lot to me so I place more importance on it.

Things like Yuudias speaking without contractions (which, while it makes his speech sound weird, is the point), making some characters speak more flowery than others ("don't know" vs "know not"), etc - are all part of this interpretation of their speech patterns, pronouns, and quirks.

As a minor example, here is a list off the top of my head of all the non-conventional pronouns used by characters in Go Rush:

ソレガシ (soregashi) - Yuudias

コレガシ (koregashi) - Kuaidul

アタイ (atai) - Dinois

私 (watakushi) - Yuuna

サ (sa) - Sabyuas

Again, just some I can list off the top of my head.

Yuudias and Kuaidul's dual opposing pronouns are even more important knowing what we know now of their dynamic. Do you remember when Yuudias said this in episode 90?

In Japanese, それ (sore) and これ (kore) are placement markers meant to denote whether something is close to you or not. これ (kore) means it's close to you, while それ (sore) means it is close to someone else.

In Yuudias' case, when he uses ソレガシ (soregashi), he quite literally embodies what he meant when he said there was never a moment he thought of his body as his own. After all, he has always been referring to himself as being close to someone else, not himself.

Kuaidul is the inverse of this - he has always thought of his body as his own, and to an extent also Yuudias' body as his own. When these two characters speak, you are meant to get the sense that Yuudias and Kuaidul are speaking in regards to each other, that they are next to each other, intertwined and similar.

I know the Go Rush writers themselves also place a lot of meaning on subtle things like this. When Zwijo was first introduced, one of the writers tweeted that Zwijo's Japanese captions for his summon chant (and by extension, all of the other Velgearians) should not be written normally but instead written entirely in katakana, because they are aliens.

The implication being that Zwijo and Yuudias are 1) speaking with an accent but also 2) meant to be perceived foreign by forcing all of their summon dialogue through this "filter". It makes it way more awkward to read even if, in the end, they are just speaking Japanese. It's one of the ways they can use text to emphasize how different the Velgearians are without completely alienating (ha) their audience.

Character speech patterns are basically a special interest of mine - for example, Spectre's "preview line" in Duel Links ("yoroshiku onegaishimasu") was something I recognized as him immediately despite it being a common phrase, because he's one of the only characters that speaks in such a polite and formal way. It's that one thing he always says before a duel. It's uniquely him despite the phrase being completely ordinary. This is what character speech and character voice mean to me.

All this to say, it's impossible to translate Zwijo's ワレ (ware) in ワレのターン (ware no taan), the title of the next episode, without a bad-looking translation note at the very top. But it's undoubtedly his, and undoubtedly referring to him. It's just unfortunate this is lost in translation / won't be picked up on by people who don't know what his pronoun is or the significance of it.