The Emotional Pumpkin

感情的な南瓜

Thursday, October 21, 2004

If only

I know some of you have seen this already, but here's a trailer (the link for the trailer is on the "About the Movie" menu) for a really cool looking Japanese sci-fi movie, Casshern, that was released in theaters there last year. The internet has been abuzz for the last year or so with speculation as to its possible release in the US. The Japanese DVD release is this Saturday, 10.23, and we can only hope that a US release will follow shortly thereafter. Anyway, the trailer is entirely in Japanese, and the only translation that I could find is really not very good. So I decided to translate it myself. I'm not a native speaker by any means, so there are some parts I couldn't make out. They are marked below as unclear, and in some of those cases I had to guess what the meaning was from the part I could make out. However, what results is still, I'd like to think, more accurate than what's available currently.
Japanese
Koko ni hitotsu no seika wo happyou sasete itadakitai.
Sono na ha shinzou saibou.
Kore ga koko made tsukutta no?
Okusama...gobyouki da to okiki shimashita ga...
Luna ha dou surunda?
Tomodachi ga tatakatteiru no ni, jibun dake konna tokoro ni iru wake ni ha ikanai.
Genin fumei!
Shinzou saibou ha mada kansei saren no ka?
Dou iu koto da?
Gunbu ga ugoiteru to iu koto desu.
Naze hito ha tatakau no ka na?
Anatagata ha nani wo shita no desu ka?
Shi wo osameru aratana shinzou ningen to shoushin*
Ningen wo minagoroshi ni suru
Kodo ni maru roku...hayaku shirou!
(whisper)
Watashi ga omae wo tsukutte miseru**
Kisama ha dare da?
Ore ha mo ningen janainda yo
Tatta hitotsu no inochi wo sutete
Umarekawatta fujimi no karada
Tetsu no akuma wo tataite kudaku
Kyasshan ga yaraneba, dare ga yaru?

English
I'd like to present a result of my research.
It's called "neo-cell"
You've come this far already?
I've heard your wife is ill...
How is Luna?/What will you do about Luna?+
It's unacceptable that, though all my friends are fighting, I'm the only one in a place like this.
Cause unknown!
Is the neo-cell development still not complete?/Is the neo-cell still not regulated by the government?++
What is it?
The military is making a move.
Why do people fight?
What have you done?
You've been changed into a neo-human, who has the power to govern death.
We will kill all the humans.
Code 206...Hurry up!
(whisper)
I will cure you.
Who are you?
I'm not human anymore!
To throw away just one life
A body reborn, invincible
To crush the iron demons
If Casshern doesn't do it...who will?

* I originally had this line as shio osamuro aratana shinzou ningen to shoushin. See comments below for details, but the gist of it is that there is no such word in Japanese as osamuro. It still sounds like that's what he's saying, but osameru fits much better.
** This line was originally watashi ga omoi wo tsukutte miseru. See comments below for details. In this scene, the man speaking, the biologist who designed the neo-cell (this background information is in the English intro on the Casshern website) is talking to his wife, who is afflicted by a pollution-related disease; his research is entirely motivated by his desire to cure her. I am again a bit doubtful of the updated line, but again it fits better that what was originally there. The word he uses for you in that line of dialogue is omae, which is really a bit rude and not one that husbands generally use when speaking to their wives; kimi or anata is more common. However, it is not out of the question that he would use omae. Also, I was a bit loose in the translation here; tsukutte miseru literally means "I'll build [something] and show you". The word tsukuru means to create or construct (tsukutte is a conjugation thereof), but when you take the context of the sentence and the situation into account, he's probably saying he'll cure her.
+ This depends on context. Either could be true, depending on the rest of the conversation.
++ There are several kanseis in Japanese, and the two likeliest meanings are completion or government regulation. Depending on context, either could be true; without seeing the kanji for the word, I can't be sure.

UPDATE 10/21/04: I tried to do a nice side-by-side translation table, with Japanese on one side and English on the other, so it's easy to see which lines correspond, but Blogger choked on it and it messed up the appearance of my whole blog, so now I've just got the Japanese first and the English following.

UPDATE 10/25/04: Due to the comments below, I've updated the translation and added footnotes where my original guesses were.

7 Comments:

Blogger jinnie said...

Here are my thoughts:
Luna ha dou surunda? = What about Luna? / What will you do about Luna?
Shio osamuro aratana shinzou ningen to shoushin ...
i heard this part over and over.. I still can't find all the meaning to the words i'm hearing. I heard "Chi wo ____ anataga shinzou ningen to shoushin.."
Also, I heard "watashi NO omoi wo tsukutte.."
If you really want to add drama, then "kisama wa dareda!" = "Who the hell are you?" :P

i once read a really good translation at utada-online.net/forums but i think the topic got too old and is deleted now. i can't find it. T_T

did you know some of the actors from the movie also starr in the music video for the theme song? guess who sings the song. ^_^;;

10:51 PM  
Blogger jinnie said...

i found this site that has another translation.
after reading it.. could it be "watashiga omae wo sukutte miseru?"
like.. "i will save you"?
that 'shinzou ningen to shoushin' part still doesn't make sense to me.

11:07 PM  
Blogger jinnie said...

i did some more search..
"shi wo osamaru(or osameru) anataga.."
you who govern death..

11:45 PM  
Blogger Richa said...

Aha! First, it's aratana, not anata ga. Aratana means new, using the kanji for atarashii. So the line is actually "Shi wo osameru aratana shinzou ningen to shoushin". Shoushin means, among other things, promotion. So a tentative translation of that sentence is, "You've been changed into a neo-human, with the power to govern death". I'll update the main post with this soon.

2:08 PM  
Blogger jinnie said...

aha! that makes much better sense. :)
you know, while i was google-ing for translation, i was amazed at the number of sites that link back to the site with the really bad, rough translation. ugh. and the number of people who post the same translation as their own. who knows where it all started from. *shrug*

7:39 PM  
Blogger jinnie said...

doh! ジレンマがあるよ。
http://torrents.theppn.org/details.php?id=19550
どうしよう?

7:05 PM  
Blogger Richa said...

答えが簡単だよ。今ダオンロードしたら、後でDVDを買わなきゃ。

10:27 PM  

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