Talk:Suzumiya Haruhi:Volume1 Chapter1
Translator's Notes
Cookie tin
They drew their new seat positions from a ハトサブレの缶 (Hatosabure no KAN).
Kamakura is famous for a biscuit called Hatosabure (鳩サブレー), a biscuit shaped like a pigeon. Sold next to Kamakura station and a very popular omiyage (souvenir) among the Japanese.
Toshimaya is a shop that sells many kinds of sweets. "Hato" (鳩) means dove in English and "sabure" (サブレ) is "sable" in French. Children loved the many white pigeons in Kamakura, so the owner of Toshimaya named the cookie "hatosabure."
Info from: WikiTravel Ryoko's Homepage Images
--GDsMDDLFNGR 03:44, 27 May 2006 (PDT)
Open Translation Issues
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Resolved Issues
Suzumiya Haruhi's language
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"Normal humans don't interest me. If anyone here is an alien, from the future, from a different dimension, or an esper, then come find me! That is all."
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She didn't carry a lunch box, so I guessed she went to the cafeteria to enjoy her lunch
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I suddenly want to see her hairstyle on Sunday.
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It is as if to her, the guys are pumpkins or potato sacks, and she couldn't care less.
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What is that girl trying to pull?
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What the hell does Earth want?! If this continues I would get Yellow Fever!
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He lay his sports jacket on his shoulders; his shirt is wrinkled throughout his chest.
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My grandma was the one who first called me that.
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I pressed my numbing back head and turned around slowly.
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...all the tables were moved out into the corridor...
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Taniguchi had probably experienced the same thing himself. =
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People with average grades
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For a guy at least.
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At the end I got the second to last seat of the court-facing windowside column.
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...released the 50-ton bomb
I'm curious about the phrase Kyon uses to describe Haruhi's introduction. He compares it to releasing a 50-ton bomb. That seems strange to me, as 50 tons is tremendously heavy. I dug around a bit and found two possible bombs he could be referring to:
- The first Hydrogen bomb—code named "Ivy Mike" and detonated by the United States in 1952—was an enormous device housed in a 2-story building on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshal Islands (its detonation totally destroyed the island of Elugelab). A large number of sources on the internet say that it weighed 50 tons (though Wikipedia suggests it was actually around 82 tons).
- The reference could be to a 50 megaton bomb. That is the approximate yield of largest nuclear bomb ever to be detonated (or built). Commonly known as the Tsar Bomba, it was built and droped on Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean by the USSR in 1961. Its primary purpose was as a Cold War political stunt, since at 8 meters long and weighing 27 metric tons, it was too large to be a practical weapon.
Could somebody check the original book to see if the translation is correct (ie, tons vs megatons)? While it is possible the reference is to Ivy Mike (especially with Japanese society having very high awareness of US nuclear testing in the Pacific), such a large bomb could not ever be "released" from anything. It was a building constructed on an island, not a bomb that could be dropped from a plane, so the usage seems to be a mistake (though it is entirely possible that it is either Kyon or Tanigawa-sensei who made the mistake, rather than the translator).
BlckKnght 09:21, 27 May 2006 (PDT)
Funny you should note this... I also felt weird about this line and looked it up. Here's the original:
頭でひねっていた最低限のセリフを何とか噛まずに言い終え、やるべきことをやったという解放感に包まれながら俺は着席した。替わりに後ろの奴が立ち上がり―ああ、俺は生涯このことを忘れないだろうな―後々語り草となる言葉をのたまった。
Which translates to something like:
After I managed to finish my carefully thought-out, minimal-length introduction without stumbling over my words somewhat, I sat down, tucked in that feeling of relief you get after having done something you had to do. The person behind me stood up for her turn and―ah I probably won't forget this for the rest of my life―said the words that would be the topic of conversation for a long time.
--GDsMDDLFNGR 12:04, 27 May 2006 (PDT)
I thought about it some more and need some clarification... the original text used 噛 (to bite, chew, gnaw), so it's literally "without chewing my words." I put in "mumbling" for now. Any suggestions?
(Clarified - 噛む also has a slang meaning of saying something incorrectly, or getting a line wrong; updated the above translation accordingly)
--GDsMDDLFNGR 21:42, 27 May 2006 (PDT)
I've rewritten the passage, loosely based on your translation. Thanks!
--BlckKnght 13:24, 30 May 2006 (PDT)
Grammar Corrections
A Few minor corrections I thought I'd leave here. I probably would not have caught them if I my English teacher last year hadn't always take off a full point per grammar/spelling mistake.
"At the end he/she could only say "I see...then I will just...", and ask themselves..."
-Here it is probably fine to leave he/she because it is a translation (showing the victims to be both male and female), but 'he' is the standard for a pronoun with a gender unknown. But, you should change "themselves" to "himself or herself" (or himself/herself to match with your slash usage before. You may also want to use "or" instead of a slash in the future because the slash in this place is non-standard usage and probably would not be used in a book.)
"Therefore when I came to school the next day and discovered that instead of tying three ponytails, Haruhi had cut her long and slender hair short, I felt quite depressed".
-You need a comma after "therefore" because "when I.... ponytails" is a separate clause and "Therefore" is part of the clause "I felt quite depressed".
" But none of it is possible— no aliens, time travelers, or supernatural powers exist in this world. Okay, let's say they do exist. They wouldn't just appear right in front of us humble citizens and say, “Hello, I'm actually an alien.” "THAT'S WHY!"
- Okay, this part is a bit confusing to me. Does the narrator actually Say the first paragraph above out loud? If so, you need quotes, one before "But" (the one up there is one I added to quote text) and another after "alien."
That's all I found, keep up the great work.
