This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Right, this translation gets closer to the original in some ways by not reproducing the additions and deletions in the original proposal, but also loses some of the colour. Notably, none of the three translations really quite reproduces the heroin-addled vibe of the original (this was perfect, I am in a state of absolute bliss, I took a dose, and then I got another dose!! and soon I'll get yet another dose, I can't wait!!). I wonder if this sort of pathology has been thoroughly RLHFed out of ChatGPT, or one could elicit it with the right prompt.
(The "sexy heaven" thing in yours came from a typo @phailyoor introduced - it's 天国にいる気分 on paper, not the enigmatic 天国に色気分 for which that interpretation would be a fair guess.)
oops I should have double checked for typos.
More options
Context Copy link
@4bpp sorry for double-dipping, but since I've got you here do you know why わ is used? Obviously it's usually feminine, and I understand that the male usage is from the archaic patterns where it's broadly an emphasiser like ぞ and therefore used by archaic / cool characters to express emphasis. Is that what's going on here? It doesn't quite seem to fit.
As a Kansai resident I will say it does not code feminine here, though I can't speak for all of Japan obviously. Men routinely use わ in Kansai dialect, which is in general considered a rougher way of speaking than Kanto ben.
Hmm, thanks. I've seen it come up a number of times from e.g. light novel protagonists, who I would not say are Kansai or cool. @4bpp may be right and it's just memetics that I'm overthinking.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it codes as overwhelmingly feminine in the way, say, using あたし as a first-person pronoun would, but written out like that it gives the whole phrase a somewhat more pretend/role-playing vibe, so if I really wanted to dig into it I would check if it's an imitation of the speech patterns of the vtuber the author is simping for, or has some other pop-cultural weight behind it. Either way, I don't think this is particularly worth overthinking - people have working mirror neurons, and someone using "y'all" in English or simplifying pronouncing -ing as -in would also not warrant a deep investigation of the implications and whether they have Southern or African-American roots (as opposed to, as per my theory, imitating something they have heard elsewhere).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I didn't spot that tbh. After a decade I still can't quite get all the nuances of how に should be used, especially when it's used as part of more sophisticated/niche grammar structures. N1 is still a little ways off...
I do notice that none of the translations got the nuance of 「キモい！」と反応してくれて right.
The use of くれて to imply this was a sort of mutually positive interaction changes the entire tone of the passage, so it's kind of bad GPT misses it. Though I feel like I'm putting far too much thought into the ramblings of a perv on the internet.
Like with your parallel post, I think this is reading too much into a detail. Japanese all but requires having a social directionality suffix when talking about actions done between or on behalf of other people in any remotely polite speech, so just writing ...と反応した, と言った would feel incongruously rude especially in the context of someone gushing about his vtuber idol. To translate it explicitly is to take an unremarkable piece of information that is conveyed by default expectation and elevate it as remarkable - it's as if a Japanese, or English, translator took a German text, where, after the German norm, all occupations must be marked for gender (der Fahrer (the male driver)/die Fahrerin (the female driver) etc.), and took care to translate the markers, turning the neutral "die Busfahrerin hatte einen Unfall" into the potentially sexist "the woman bus driver had an accident". (This would be even worse if you were translating to e.g. Chinese, where not even 3rd-person pronouns are gendered in speech - imagine every he/she turning into a they with an explicit mention of the person's gender!)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link