#e110

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ワレ ware Zwijo's personal pronoun & Sabyuas' imitation

I wrote a very lengthy translation note going into the way I translate character voices in the last episode's translation notes.

I also wrote about how we translate Zwijo's way of speech before in a short style guide (some parts are a little outdated now, but most of this post still holds).

Given how important it is for this episode, I'll write a little more on it.

Previously, I said Zwijo gave off somewhat of a royal or regal feeling, but with 90+ episodes between then and now and almost 2 full years of hearing Zwijo speak more, I would like to correct that. His presence and speech is more akin to that of a decorated general, less nobility or royalty. These aren't mutually exclusive, but the aesthetics are different between the two.

Zwijo speaks with a lot of authority and always sounds rather confident about himself. Not in an arrogant way, but in a way born from experience. Someone who has decades and centuries of conflict under his belt and knows what does and doesn't work.

So when Sabyuas imitates him this episode, he is attempting to emulate the behaviors and speech of someone way outside of his league, so to speak. He emulates Zwijo on the surface, but does not really understand who he is as a person. This isn't my speculation, but the writing of the episode itself showing how he assumes Zwijo's decisions with no basis except his own biases. It is because of this that he loses against Epoch, since he is too caught up in being like the Zwijo he has enshrined in his head, instead of actually getting to know him or the way he thinks.

Anyway, this is a long way to say that I really appreciate the attention to detail in character quirks from the writers. Like I said in last episode's note, this usually isn't something that gets translated well or even at all across language barriers, and it's because it's something that's very hard to do. Of course, we choose words and sentence structure carefully when translating these characters (especially in regards to Yuudias, who has one of the more challenging quirks to translate), but to match the same "feel" Zwijo gives off in the original Japanese is close to impossible.

All I can do is tell you how I interpret his speech and hope our word choice gets it across from there.

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