I've been working on my summer project, which involves reading the first part of the Three Musketeers in Japanese (a book I know pretty much by heart otherwise).
Next to some words, I've been encountering a comma to the right of every hiragana. Since they all appear to be pretty rare words, my guess is that the commas are there to show where the words starts and ends, however I'm not really sure that's what it means. Anyone familiar with that?
Otherwise there is plenty in hiragana that is normally written in kanji, it's aimed at 5-6 grade.
They're called わきてん. From my punctuation guide: used to "italicize" words and phrases; also applied to words which for some reason are written in kana instead of the usual kanji. Sometimes used to distinguish slang, dialect, or other types of unconventional words.
Does that make sense? (not sure it does to me right now) It's too hot to force my brain to work well enough to translate that into conversational English. :P
like じゅうり said, they're used to emphasize a word, like italics would be used in English literature. I applaud your reading Three Muskateers! How does it compare to the English translation? I'm finishing up the last of the books I bought and was thinking about what I'd read in Japanese next, myself (although considering I just got a fabulous idea this week for a board at school based on the "Speak 'friend' and enter" line from [i]Lord of the Rings[/i], that might be my next project!)
Thanks! I guess they are sort of italics due to being rare and not written in kanji the target audience would have never encountered, because meaning/context-wise there is no reason for emphasizing (and none in the original).
Well, as far as the translation goes, I'm too much of a beginner to judge it overall. Though the very first sentence was wrong ("the first Monday of April 1625" in the French original and English translation, "April 1st 1625, Monday" in the Japanese ::)). Aside from that the dialogue feels less expressive in the Japanese translation, but I'm not very good at judging the overall tone of the expression, which is not very vocabulary-dependent - e.g. mostly lacking the cursing. Still, there was for example this time when someone is called a "maraud" in French, which in the context admittedly could be translated in a lot of ways, but I found the Japanese "よくない人" on the rather boring side of choices.
Happy about my choice of book though, I had to pick either something very easy, or something I knew very well. If this was my first time reading the book, I wouldn't have the patience to stop after two-three pages and study the words... of which there are a lot. At times of dialogue it gets easier though, which is why I didn't pick up The Count of Monte Cristo instead, too many descriptions and throughs there XD
ooh I love Monte Cristo! The series I'm reading now is a favorite of mine in English, but I'm sad to say the translation is really lacking - like in your case it seems the translator was confused! For example there are several instances of the word 'crossbow' being translated as 十字弓 (literally 'cross' and 'bow') instead of the actual word (石弓)
Monte Cristo is a curious case, I discovered while researching and wondering what to pick up. Many years ago they showed a Japanese samurai series on TV here, whose original name was 日本岩窟王 (and it was just pretty much Monte Cristo in a different set up). Then a couple of years ago I watched an anime based on The Count of Monte Cristo, also called 岩窟王. So I had pretty much assumed that 岩窟王 is how the book was called in Japan. However it turns out, 岩窟王 was a very old sort-of adapted translation/rewriting of the book - before they got to read the original some guy rewrote it, changing names and circumstances to fit Japanese lifestyle. Edmond Dantes' name was changed to something-taro even ;D
[quote author=alekth link=topic=1355.msg8044#msg8044 date=1311332375] Monte Cristo is a curious case, I discovered while researching and wondering what to pick up. Many years ago they showed a Japanese samurai series on TV here, whose original name was 日本岩窟王 (and it was just pretty much Monte Cristo in a different set up). Then a couple of years ago I watched an anime based on The Count of Monte Cristo, also called 岩窟王. So I had pretty much assumed that 岩窟王 is how the book was called in Japan. However it turns out, 岩窟王 was a very old sort-of adapted translation/rewriting of the book - before they got to read the original some guy rewrote it, changing names and circumstances to fit Japanese lifestyle. Edmond Dantes' name was changed to something-taro even ;D [/quote] Oh man, gotta love the Japanese 'adaptations'... although it kind of makes me want to read that one [i]more[/i] now... ;)
