Trace of Two Pasts novel discussion

[kathy202]

Just my 2c, but I don't think it really makes sense in English to tell someone "you had it bad" or "that's really sick" after they describe how they were being a little shit to their adopted mom who they also describe as struggling financially because of them. Especially when the person recollecting all of this is an adult, reflecting on their past and how they were a rebellious teen.

Yeah I think that's what makes this so hard to translate. I can barely think of an appropriate thing to say in such a situation. Probably just "oh boy".

Imagine if this were actually written in English and someone had to translate "oh boy" into another language without knowing what that expression means in English aside from the literal meaning of "boy"...

 

[frosty]

I don't know if it's because he translates literally, or if it's because it's the rudest way to translate that line (Tifa isn't rude), but how could I ever trust him doing a part that is utterly romantic like the one Peko just translated? Or really, *any* part at that point since she wouldn't sound like Tifa?

Just reading both the translations side by side makes me feel that Stanley just isn't as well trained in Japanese colloquialism as @odekopeko . Especially when he translates conversation, the characters are talking in a very literal...almost academic manner.

As much as he probably has his biases - it doesn't look like he's willfully mistranslating things to be "Clerith" and "Cloti" - the only areas I can see as "issues" for Tifa's portion (if he gets around to it) would probably be hair splitting for the terms used like "love" and "adore" and "fondness"...but contextually I'm sure he'd get the main things right.

Like @cold_spirit said, I really just wish this Cloti/Clerith translations weren't a thing and I'm just glad for people in the community who do this for free, so thanks to them!

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Something that often goes wrong in Japanese-to-English translations is speech-marking, leaving it unclear which character is speaking the line. Japanese also uses tense differently from English, so if the tense isn't adjusted accordingly, the results in English can be quite confusing.

 

[Eerie]

Yes, I don't think he's making mistakes on purpose either. What he's done is great, don't get me wrong! But with the past that the clerith fandom has, I was on guard XD

Also you have to remember that not everyone has English as their mothertongue. To me that Tifa quote looked funny and I didn't understand it. Maybe to you it was obvious, but Peko's translation is more easy to understand for me.

Edit: yeah I look a lot at Peko's tenses too. I'm like "don't worry this is easy, there's almost no tense in English" and she cries because to her it's difficult since she's used to JP tenses lol.

 

[Torrie]

Just reading both the translations side by side makes me feel that Stanley just isn't as well trained in Japanese colloquialism as @odekopeko . Especially when he translates conversation, the characters are talking in a very literal...almost academic manner.

Yes, it's one of the biggest difficulties for us non-native speakers. Seeing stylistic differences between synonims, understanding if the word is appropriate, if it's the right meaning among a bazillion other meanings reserved for specific contexts... I appreciate a lot what these people are doing for the community, because it's an incredibly hard game of constant word choices.

I'm like "don't worry this is easy, there's almost no tense in English" and she cries because to her it's difficult since she's used to JP tenses lol

Don't get me started on English tenses. My students often freak out because there are 12 of them LOL

 

[kathy202]

On the topic of the novel itself, I wonder if they'll write Emilio, Lester or Tyler into the game at some point in the future. Assuming they're still alive, they must have tried to contact their families at some point and realize that something is wrong...

 

[Torrie]

Would be interesting to see that, but what if the point here is not to give them any more spotlight because everyone joining the Shinra army basically becomes cannon food... If they didn't make it into SOLDIER either, their lives might have been pretty short.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

There's at least one NPC in Crisis Core that is writing to Tifa in Nibelheim because he's *from* Nibelheim himself... He's the kid of the general store owner and is trying to get work in Shinra...

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I'm like "don't worry this is easy, there's almost no tense in English"

Are you teasing her? Many native speakers and many fanfic writers do not use tense correctly in English, but there certainly are many tenses and the distinction between their uses is often quite subtle.

 

[Eerie]

I don't know, compared to French, English is easy with tenses to me lol.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It's not that there's no verb tenses in English, it's that there's not a lot of verb conjugations (endings) compared to a lot of other languages. Instead of modifying the verb itself, English uses helping verbs (particularly conjugations of "to be") to create all the tenses. Many of them are just the present tense with the extra verbs added on.

to bake (present tense)
I/you/we/they/you all - bake
he/she/it - bakes

A lot of other languages would have like... at least three more conjugations (for you, we and they) and that's not counting things like "polite" vs "causal" forms of pronouns, some with their own conjugations... or how different verbs are sometimes grouped together into "familes" of conjugations...

Then you get into all the tenses...

present tense - bake/bakes
past tense - baked
future tense - will bake

And that's not even going into things like perfect tense (am/are baking)...

That said, if you cut out the helping verbs and the irregular verbs (which most helping verbs are), then you *really* only have four different verb conjugations to learn...

(normal verb)
-s
-ed
-ing

Which is.... *way* fewer conjugations than almost any other language. It also means English *really* needs the sentence subject that is *doing* the verb to make grammatical sense and that the helping verbs *need* to get conjugated right.

I will be baking.
I am baking.

These are *not* the same tenses even though they use the same verb conjugation!

Compare that to oh... Spanish... which has the following conjugation *just* for present tense...

comer (to eat)
I - como
you (informal) - comes
he/she/it/you (formal) - come
we - comemos
you all (informal) - coméis
they/ you all (formal) - come

And that's *one* family of verbs... the ones that end in "-er". There's "-ar" and "-ir" verb endings with their own (similar) conjugations and a whole bunch of irregular verbs that have their own conjugations... On the other hand, Spanish *can* leave out pronouns a lot easier than English can and still work as a language...

Compared to stuff like *that*... English's verb conjugations are almost confusing in how *few* there are of them...

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

That's true, nevertheless the rules for combining auxiliary verbs and participles to form tenses, and the rules for when to use the various tenses, are complex and rarely perfectly understood or applied even by native speakers.

 

[kathy202]

Would be interesting to see that, but what if the point here is not to give them any more spotlight because everyone joining the Shinra army basically becomes cannon food... If they didn't make it into SOLDIER either, their lives might have been pretty short.

Yeah I think this is probably more likely to be the case. Seems more convenient for the writing too lol. Though if one of them did make it into SOLDIER and bumped into Cloud and Tifa, the whole "first class" BS is gonna get interesting... I doubt that will happen though.

As for tenses, I suppose English is one of those with fewer tenses and conjugations. Though I imagine it'd still be hard depending on what language one is coming from. Many native Chinese speakers have told me that English grammar is the hardest thing for them. Not surprising since Chinese has no tenses and no conjugations. Yet it somehow manages to be a bloody difficult language.

As for Japanese, based on my sad attempts at learning it, there isn't much of a logical mapping between the many Japanese verb endings and few English conjugations, or maybe I just haven't figured out what it is yet. So for every verb ending in Japanese, one would need to remember the equivalent English expression, and there's plenty to remember.

Ugh, languages are hard. I can't even say I know what the English grammar rules are or that I'm getting them right.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

From the little I know, Japanese will often use the present tense when English would call for the past tense. The other thing that really throws me when people translate into English from Japanese is not marking the dialogue with the speaker. Here's an example

Soon after, Aerith noticed that Tifa wanted to speak. She’s reserved at times.

“You wanna talk? Let’s talk.”

“I’d like to hear about you this time.”

“Me?”

“I’m a good listener. You see, I am always doing so at the bar.”

She straightened her posture and pretended to polish a glass.

“Hello, it’s your first time here, isn’t it. Where are you from?”

“Wow.”

Aerith was in admiration.

“Do you live around here?”

“Nope. I live in the slums of Sector 5.”

This dialogue is probably laid out using the Japanese format. However, as it currently stands in English there is pronoun-antecedent confusion and some confusion over which woman is doing/saying what. To clear that up, we'd lay it out as follows:

Soon after, Aerith noticed that Tifa wanted to speak. Tifa was reserved at times. “You wanna talk?" said Aerith. "Let’s talk.”

“I’d like to hear about you this time.”

“Me?”

“I’m a good listener. You see, I am always doing so at the bar.” Tifa straightened her posture and pretended to polish a glass. “Hello, it’s your first time here, isn’t it. Where are you from?”

“Wow.” Aerith was full of admiration.

“Do you live around here?”

“Nope. I live in the slums of Sector 5.”

 

[Torrie]

It's not that there's no verb tenses in English, it's that there's not a lot of verb conjugations (endings) compared to a lot of other languages. Instead of modifying the verb itself, English uses helping verbs (particularly conjugations of "to be") to create all the tenses.

True, but in the eyes of a typical ESL student, the tenses look like this:

Spoiler: The 12-tense chart everybody dreads

A typical complaint is how to learn to understand them and to switch from tense to tense fluently when speaking.

As for translations, I agree with the changes Lic suggested. The text becomes a lot more readable this way.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Right... it's just that for oh... Spanish... everything English does with helping verbs is crammed into yet *another* verb conjugation rather than being separate from the verb. So instead of playing "mix and match your helping verbs to get the right tense", you're playing "remember the upteenth verb conjugation".

Although "to eat" is a really bad verb to pick for that diagram as it's *not* a regular verb. It's irregular... there is no "-ed" form of "eat". Instead it's "ate" or "eaten" depending on the tense, so that's making it even harder to figure out what is going on. Same thing goes for "to run", "to go" and a bunch of other very common verbs.... including "to be" which is where all the helping verbs come from!

Here's a regular verb in the same diagram.

There's only three tenses going on here... bake, baking, baked.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

"baking" and "baked" are not, strictly speaking, tenses, but participles - the present and past participles respectively. Auxiliary verbs are derived from 'to have' and 'to be', but also include modal verbs such as 'shall', 'can', 'may' and so on which are conjugated oddly, and the use of 'do' to form questions or add emphasis.

That table shows twelve different tenses, and doesn't address moods such as conditional, potential, subjunctive, or the passive and active voices.

 

[frosty]

On the topic of the novel itself, I wonder if they'll write Emilio, Lester or Tyler into the game at some point in the future. Assuming they're still alive, they must have tried to contact their families at some point and realize that something is wrong...

Same. I'm still trying to guess how much of the content of the novel will be in Remake Part 2 itself, since I feel the book is essentially a spoiler-free teaser for the next part.

If Part 2 stops at the Northern Crater or Aerith's death as most people think it will, and Part 2 is estimated to be released in SE's FY2023 (Year ending March)...and Emilio, Lester and Tyler only feature in the Lifestream incident...which would be in a Part 3 (FY2025?)....it seems like a LONG wait to reintroduce them, and it's a LONG wait for some of the dots to be reconnected from book to Lifestream event. Like what, 4 years minimum?

I guess for Aerith it's clear that, duh, "First Love" story in Gongaga....and maybe a nod here and there to the novel when the party encounters the Turks / expanded conversation with Tseng

 

[Eerie]

From the little I know, Japanese will often use the present tense when English would call for the past tense. The other thing that really throws me when people translate into English from Japanese is not marking the dialogue with the speaker. Here's an example


This dialogue is probably laid out using the Japanese format. However, as it currently stands in English there is pronoun-antecedent confusion and some confusion over which woman is doing/saying what. To clear that up, we'd lay it out as follows:

FYI, this is what we do with Peko, we add who is talking so people will know at glance who's speaking

Also for the lulz, this is what "cuisiner" (to cook) looks like in all tenses in French. BTW French and Spanish are super similar with tenses, we even have similar rules for what tense to use depending on what we use in the first part of a sentence. And yes, I do use that site from time to time when I write in French.

My town is even known to use "passé surcomposé" which.... doesn't even exist there lol. It would sound like "j'ai eu cuisiné, mais je le fais plus".

If Part 2 stops at the Northern Crater or Aerith's death as most people think it will, and Part 2 is estimated to be released in SE's FY2023 (Year ending March)...and Emilio, Lester and Tyler only feature in the Lifestream incident...which would be in a Part 3 (FY2025?)....it seems like a LONG wait to reintroduce them, and it's a LONG wait for some of the dots to be reconnected from book to Lifestream event. Like what, 4 years minimum?

It definitely won't go that far though. If we have Nibelheim (=Kalm) to Nibelheim we'll be lucky. Kalm to Northern Crater *would* be perfect but let's be realistic it's not happening. They already hinted that Wutai would happen in a later game, so we can guess that we're not going to Northern Crater, not even to Aerith's death this time around.

 

[Thenir]

On the topic of the novel itself, I wonder if they'll write Emilio, Lester or Tyler into the game at some point in the future. Assuming they're still alive, they must have tried to contact their families at some point and realize that something is wrong...

I seriously doubt they could be still alive, probably after the incident Shinra hunted down any person related to Nibelheim who could reveal that something wrong happened there, with the only exception of Tifa, since nobody knew she survived.

 

[kathy202]

And also Zangan and Cloud. Shinra sure leaves breadcrumbs behind. Though I suppose if those 3 were working for Shinra it wouldn't be hard to track them down.

 

[Eerie]

Zangan was already on the fly before this, avoiding Shinra because he was at odds with them. Next part is going to be Tifa and Zangan BTW, Peko told me this on Saturday.

Cloud well... he was a failure, mako poisoned. So I can understand that they thought it didn't matter.

 

[kathy202]

That's kinda what I meant, if the writers wanted to, it's not hard to write something to explain why they're still alive. But yeah, I guess it'll be weird if that excuse didn't also involve Shinra at least attempting to get rid of them.

 

[Eerie]

I feel that Tifa and her three friends discussing the odds of Soldiers dying... clearly points out that it's their fate, and the reason why Tifa only received one letter. For Nojima to put such a serious discussion between kids is clearly a pointer for readers to think "ah, so they died, either as grunts, either through Shinra's ways like the Turks". Up until now, no one really has wondered about their fates, they were 3 nameless boys who used to play with Tifa as kids. But given how this was written, it's meant to make you think you won't see them again. Peko told me that while reading, she felt that Tifa somehow guessed that they did die, since she received no news.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I feel it adequately sets up either eventuality, but I lean towards us never hearing about them again. Not because I think Shin-Ra has ever been particularly efficient at covering its tracks*, but because part of the premise for Cloud and Tifa's relation to one another is that they're each all the other has left of Nibelheim.


* Seriously. Shin-Ra's solution for what happened to Nibelheim was to bring a bunch of additional people into awareness that something-bad-but-not-an-accident had happened to the town. Meanwhile, they just left the obviously bombed-out debris of Banora to sit there after blowing the place to smithereens with bombs bearing the company logo (and likely to leave shrapnel behind).