"Girl on girl" is really just a porn term, while "yuri" as a genre doesn't just cover porn, but the romantic genre as a whole.
Yeah yeah whatever. If you go to Comiket or whatever, and ask some pretentious doujin artists what yuri means they will give you that answer. The fact is that to the average Japanese person, yuri means lesbian porn.
Let's say you were translating from English to some other language, and I use the word "retro". The word retro has an incredibly complex meaning if you use it in an artistic context. The vast majority of the time someone uses the word, they mean "old school" or "a blast from the past". If you translate it as such, it's perfectly fine.
Even if someone spoke English, and you used the word retro, they wouldn't have those other deeper meanings in mind. Just like the average Japanese person would probably just think of lesbians when they used the word "yuri".
"Girl on girl" is really just a porn term, while "yuri" as a genre doesn't just cover porn, but the romantic genre as a whole.
Yeah yeah whatever. If you go to Comiket or whatever, and ask some pretentious doujin artists what yuri means they will give you that answer. The fact is that to the average Japanese person, yuri means lesbian porn.
"Girls' love", or just plain "lesbians". That wasn't so hard, and not as porn connotation as "girl on girl".
I don't think there's such a big difference there, but even then you aren't contradicting the argument made by the Otaking. You translate the Japanese word into an English equivalent that makes sense.
One of Otaking's examples of good subs, Street Fighter 2, directly contradicts one of his points. They translated "Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku" and "Shoryuken" into English, but left "Hadouken" untranslated. Following Otaking's point about consistent translations, "Hadouken" would've been turned into something like "Fireball", "Surge Wave" or "Wave Motion Punch". My point wasn't that you leave the Japanese untouched, but that even before fansubs became popular, professional subbers still made glaring mistakes.
From what little I know of it, Maria-sama ga Miteru is more classified as Shoujo Ai (similar to Shounen Ai). The term is more for emotional bonds and reationships and not so much the physical (Yaoi and Yuri).
Let me just say, this is why it completely disturbs me to see 13 to 16 year old girls running around with Yaoi paddles at con.
Of course, and since THE FANDOM is the level everything MUST be held up to... Dude, I hate to break it to you, but you do know you are trying to enter an ivory tower, do you?
Coming to a cinema near you: THE FANDOM or the opera.
So? Girls' Love is used, not "shoujo ai". "Yuri" was translated into a term that is not what is meant by the Japanese dialogue, so that's hardly sticking to what Otaking claims.
From what I can tell what you were arguing was that Shoujo Ai was not a valid term or classification based on the assumption that the Japanese use the words Yuri and Girls Love instead. Thus your argument seemed to invalidate itself as Shoujo Ai is the Japanese term for Girls Love. If I'm wrong sorry.
From what I can tell what you were arguing was that Shoujo Ai was not a valid term or classification based on the assumption that the Japanese use the words Yuri and Girls Love instead. Thus your argument seemed to invalidate itself as Shoujo Ai is the Japanese term for Girls Love. If I'm wrong sorry.
No, he was arguing that:
"Shoujo Ai" is not a valid term in the fandom
The fandom he speaks of is most probably the American fandom, now, if you take a look at the sources Robert himself provided:
Following the pattern of shÃ…Ânen-ai, a term already in use in North America to describe content involving non-sexual relationships between men, western fans coined the term shÃ…Âjo-ai to describe yuri without explicit sex.[6]
Now this all hangs on how much trust you will put in this Erica Friedman who is staff (or something like that) at Yuricon, but do you now see the contradiction? And the reason for the red text.
Robert, I think what you have to realize is that you are a fan. When you are a fan of something, words mean something different. Any fandom, hobby, industry, etc. has its own vocabulary. Those vocabularies usually consist of words that other people do not know. For example, the average person does not know what firmware is. Hell, people don't even know what a hard drive is. Sometimes in a particular culture, normal every day words will take on different meanings. For example, the word "anonymous" has a different meaning when speaking with 4channers than it does for the average person.
When you are talking about words like yuri having these complex meanings, that's true for people who are into that fandom. For the average person on the street, it has a very shallow and simple meaning. You may have a deep knowledge of the etymology of a word or non-word like shoujo-ai, but its completely different for the average person who isn't a fan like yourself.
What the otaking is saying is that when you translate something into a language, you should translate it in such a way that all people who speak that language can understand it. Think about Initial D for a second. I could translate Initial D in such a way that only automobile enthusiasts would be able to understand the show. I could use only English words, yet still the average person on the street wouldn't understand it. Just as easily, I could translate Moyashimon in such a way that only people educated in molecular biology could understand it.
You have to forget about things you know because you are a fan. We shouldn't be translating things into anime fan English. We have to translate things into general English, so that any literate English speaker who picks it up will understand it. Translating something into a language that only anime fans will understand is unnecessarily limiting.
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Let's say you were translating from English to some other language, and I use the word "retro". The word retro has an incredibly complex meaning if you use it in an artistic context. The vast majority of the time someone uses the word, they mean "old school" or "a blast from the past". If you translate it as such, it's perfectly fine.
Even if someone spoke English, and you used the word retro, they wouldn't have those other deeper meanings in mind. Just like the average Japanese person would probably just think of lesbians when they used the word "yuri".
Let me just say, this is why it completely disturbs me to see 13 to 16 year old girls running around with Yaoi paddles at con.
Coming to a cinema near you: THE FANDOM or the opera.
Shoujo Ai is literally Girl's Love.
If I'm wrong sorry.
When you are talking about words like yuri having these complex meanings, that's true for people who are into that fandom. For the average person on the street, it has a very shallow and simple meaning. You may have a deep knowledge of the etymology of a word or non-word like shoujo-ai, but its completely different for the average person who isn't a fan like yourself.
What the otaking is saying is that when you translate something into a language, you should translate it in such a way that all people who speak that language can understand it. Think about Initial D for a second. I could translate Initial D in such a way that only automobile enthusiasts would be able to understand the show. I could use only English words, yet still the average person on the street wouldn't understand it. Just as easily, I could translate Moyashimon in such a way that only people educated in molecular biology could understand it.
You have to forget about things you know because you are a fan. We shouldn't be translating things into anime fan English. We have to translate things into general English, so that any literate English speaker who picks it up will understand it. Translating something into a language that only anime fans will understand is unnecessarily limiting.