Yes, and it’s also used about actual child predator pedophiles. It’s a word with multiple senses/connotations, and one of those senses corresponds closely with the English word “pedophile” while the others do not. That’s why “pedophile” is not always the correct translation for it – though whether it’s correct in this case I can’t say, as I haven’t watched the anime in question.
If you’re into sexualized (cartoon) children you’re a pedophile, so the translation would be factually correct. That sort of pedophilia just has much less cultural acceptance in English speaking world
That sort of pedophilia just has much less cultural acceptance in English speaking world
Which is why it’s not always the most accurate translation. Part of the job of a translator is to translate cultural nuance, which would be lost here.
It’s a bit like how in English, Epstein wouldn’t call Trump a pedophile, he’d say he “likes them young”. In Japanese he could call him a lolicon and get the same tone.
If the term isn’t meant to be so “heavy” in the original usage, and there isn’t an equivalent “light” term here, I wonder if it would’ve been better to just translate it as “I didn’t realize you were a creep” or something else that misses the nuance, but gets the intended feeling and tone across.
I don’t know, I haven’t seen the scene or heard the vocal delivery, I’m not sure what kind of anime it is, or what kind of tone it’s trying to strike. If the mood is “she has discovered a dark secret and is scared” then yeah, “I didn’t realize you were a pedophile” would work great.
But if instead she’s found some porn that isn’t necessarily naked children, and it’s played off as deadpan funny or awkward or misunderstanding, then I think “I didn’t realize you were a pedophile” might not come across light heartedly in the way “I didn’t realize you were a creep” or something similar would. Even if it’s an accurate “word for word” translation, it might not sound right in the scene or match the character’s delivery.
But I don’t know this anime or what it’s about, so I don’t know what the tone should be. It just sounds like there’s disagreement with the line as chosen.
Yes, and part of the job of a translator is to make sure that this fact is clear to the reader of the translation. “Pedophile” is virtually never a socially acceptable moniker in English whereas sometimes in Japanese “lolicon” is. Therefore it cannot be translated directly. This isn’t particularly unusual; Japanese is a very contextual language, so even beyond cultural differences there are lots of words that require a different translation in different contexts.
For this specific scene the translation could well be fine (I imagine it’s probably a gag scene where the other character gets flustered and rejects the accusation), but there are circumstances where a different translation is required.
Except the context is just that pedophilia is much less stigmatized. It still means pedophile it just doesn’t carry the social consequences because it’s more socially acceptable. It doesn’t mean something that can’t be expressed in english. It’s not complicated. Saying someone is perving on little girls would be less impactful than calling them a pedophile but it means the same thing.
Yeah, and to someone who doesn’t know that context, using the word “pedophile” is going to make the line sound very different from what it does in the original language and culture.
I mean, not really? It means the same thing, it’s just not as stigmatized. That doesn’t make it suddenly not pedophilia. It’s still pedophilia, just nobody cares.
“Pedophile” is a very loaded word in English, arguably one of the most loaded words in the language. Calling someone a pedophile in English is tantamount to saying that they should be shunned and behind bars or at least on a list. Doing so without evidence can get you charged for defamation (and acquitted, but only if you’re rich enough—but I digress).
ロリコン in Japanese is substantially less loaded. Therefore “pedophile” is not universally the accurate translation; in some circumstances it’s more accurate to use an euphemism, or the loanword “lolicon” which is pretty well established in English at this point.
This has nothing to do with condoning or condemning pedophilia, by the way. And even if it did, then I’d argue that, if anything, using “pedophile” in a mild and casual context, like how “lolicon” is sometimes used, serves to reduce the stigma rather than maintain it. Though that’s a discussion I have no interest in getting into right now.
Japan is uncomfortably comfortable with loli shit, and it’s reflected in anime… Which is why anime will never be a family living room activity for me, unless I’ve vetted it to be clean. For example, Death Note is ok, but Dragon Maid is not.
To be an anime fan you have to learn this specific skill where you disassociate during cringe “fan-service” moments and come back to Earth once it’s over.
My favorite personal example of this is Langrisser Mobile. Easily my favorite mobile game ever made with tons of depth to character building and strategy with a genuinely engrossing story full of political intrigue in a fantasy setting. And I can never recommend it to anyone.
This is because certain female characters allow you to perform love confessions to them if you max them out. Almost all female characters (for the first few years) are under 16. You can confess your love to the 10 year old girl and she will promise to keep it a secret till she’s old enough. You can also buy a skin for her where her skin is glistening wet, she shakes her ass at the camera, and wears white, see-through-because-they’re-wet stockings. Why.
It’s wild just how pervasive it is in 2D/3DCG Japanese/Chinese media (Langrisser Mobile is a Chinese gacha spinoff of a Japanese game series). Basically every gacha game ever made has you hunting underage girls for sport. And the players are just totally fine with this. Meanwhile, just off of the top of my head there’s almost literally every single anime ever set in a high school, about half of isekai fantasy, almost every modern shonen battle anime – all giving creepshots or sexual harassment scenes about underage girls. It’s genuinely unavoidable.
The thing is that anime is usually really good for the themes and story and art, but they occasionally sprinkle turds into it, so you kind of metaphorically eat around them. It’s still worth watching as long as you can compartmentalize and ignore the bad parts.
You just reminded me, years ago, I used to burn custom handmade censored versions of anime and tv shows for my family. I’d sit there after school for hours in a video editor cutting out every sex scene in Game of Thrones, every loli scene in anime. Then I’d burn that to a DVD-RW and recreate the disc art using a sharpie. Finally I watched it with everyone on the DVD player.
In retrospect it was a lot of work just to share my favourite shows with my family, but I don’t regret it.
Or just don’t watch anything that sexualizes children. Pretty well cuts off half or more of the anime out there but I’m not a pedo or interested in watching pedo shit.
Part of the job of a translator is to translate cultural nuance, which would be lost here. That’s what makes the translation inaccurate in some contexts.
So small-minded? Let me remind you that “cannibal” is originally an ethnonym coined by Columbus for the native Caribbean people, whose culture certainly had a lot more nuance than just eating people.
Yes, and it’s also used about actual child predator pedophiles. It’s a word with multiple senses/connotations, and one of those senses corresponds closely with the English word “pedophile” while the others do not. That’s why “pedophile” is not always the correct translation for it – though whether it’s correct in this case I can’t say, as I haven’t watched the anime in question.
If you’re into sexualized (cartoon) children you’re a pedophile, so the translation would be factually correct. That sort of pedophilia just has much less cultural acceptance in English speaking world
Which is why it’s not always the most accurate translation. Part of the job of a translator is to translate cultural nuance, which would be lost here.
It’s a bit like how in English, Epstein wouldn’t call Trump a pedophile, he’d say he “likes them young”. In Japanese he could call him a lolicon and get the same tone.
How would you translate the word to best fit the meaning?
They already basically answered that.
Though in this context, maybe the best thing to do is to not translate it. Most of the audience is likely to know the word already.
Did the character mean to say that they’re a pedophile but without the bad implication of it?
I don’t know, I haven’t watched the show so I don’t know what the meaning is here.
If the term isn’t meant to be so “heavy” in the original usage, and there isn’t an equivalent “light” term here, I wonder if it would’ve been better to just translate it as “I didn’t realize you were a creep” or something else that misses the nuance, but gets the intended feeling and tone across.
Does “pedophile” not work in the scene in question?
I don’t know, I haven’t seen the scene or heard the vocal delivery, I’m not sure what kind of anime it is, or what kind of tone it’s trying to strike. If the mood is “she has discovered a dark secret and is scared” then yeah, “I didn’t realize you were a pedophile” would work great.
But if instead she’s found some porn that isn’t necessarily naked children, and it’s played off as deadpan funny or awkward or misunderstanding, then I think “I didn’t realize you were a pedophile” might not come across light heartedly in the way “I didn’t realize you were a creep” or something similar would. Even if it’s an accurate “word for word” translation, it might not sound right in the scene or match the character’s delivery.
But I don’t know this anime or what it’s about, so I don’t know what the tone should be. It just sounds like there’s disagreement with the line as chosen.
The lack of stigma against pedophilia does not make it not pedophilia, it just makes it socially acceptable to be a pedophile.
Yes, and part of the job of a translator is to make sure that this fact is clear to the reader of the translation. “Pedophile” is virtually never a socially acceptable moniker in English whereas sometimes in Japanese “lolicon” is. Therefore it cannot be translated directly. This isn’t particularly unusual; Japanese is a very contextual language, so even beyond cultural differences there are lots of words that require a different translation in different contexts.
For this specific scene the translation could well be fine (I imagine it’s probably a gag scene where the other character gets flustered and rejects the accusation), but there are circumstances where a different translation is required.
Except the context is just that pedophilia is much less stigmatized. It still means pedophile it just doesn’t carry the social consequences because it’s more socially acceptable. It doesn’t mean something that can’t be expressed in english. It’s not complicated. Saying someone is perving on little girls would be less impactful than calling them a pedophile but it means the same thing.
Yeah, and to someone who doesn’t know that context, using the word “pedophile” is going to make the line sound very different from what it does in the original language and culture.
Part of the job of a translator is to…
I mean, not really? It means the same thing, it’s just not as stigmatized. That doesn’t make it suddenly not pedophilia. It’s still pedophilia, just nobody cares.
Damn, you really don’t get it.
“Pedophile” is a very loaded word in English, arguably one of the most loaded words in the language. Calling someone a pedophile in English is tantamount to saying that they should be shunned and behind bars or at least on a list. Doing so without evidence can get you charged for defamation (and acquitted, but only if you’re rich enough—but I digress).
ロリコン in Japanese is substantially less loaded. Therefore “pedophile” is not universally the accurate translation; in some circumstances it’s more accurate to use an euphemism, or the loanword “lolicon” which is pretty well established in English at this point.
This has nothing to do with condoning or condemning pedophilia, by the way. And even if it did, then I’d argue that, if anything, using “pedophile” in a mild and casual context, like how “lolicon” is sometimes used, serves to reduce the stigma rather than maintain it. Though that’s a discussion I have no interest in getting into right now.
That just sounds to me that pedophilia is not frowned upon in Japan, not that the translation is inaccurate.
Japan is uncomfortably comfortable with loli shit, and it’s reflected in anime… Which is why anime will never be a family living room activity for me, unless I’ve vetted it to be clean. For example, Death Note is ok, but Dragon Maid is not.
To be an anime fan you have to learn this specific skill where you disassociate during cringe “fan-service” moments and come back to Earth once it’s over.
My favorite personal example of this is Langrisser Mobile. Easily my favorite mobile game ever made with tons of depth to character building and strategy with a genuinely engrossing story full of political intrigue in a fantasy setting. And I can never recommend it to anyone.
This is because certain female characters allow you to perform love confessions to them if you max them out. Almost all female characters (for the first few years) are under 16. You can confess your love to the 10 year old girl and she will promise to keep it a secret till she’s old enough. You can also buy a skin for her where her skin is glistening wet, she shakes her ass at the camera, and wears white, see-through-because-they’re-wet stockings. Why.
It’s wild just how pervasive it is in 2D/3DCG Japanese/Chinese media (Langrisser Mobile is a Chinese gacha spinoff of a Japanese game series). Basically every gacha game ever made has you hunting underage girls for sport. And the players are just totally fine with this. Meanwhile, just off of the top of my head there’s almost literally every single anime ever set in a high school, about half of isekai fantasy, almost every modern shonen battle anime – all giving creepshots or sexual harassment scenes about underage girls. It’s genuinely unavoidable.
i wonder whether there’s a filtered anime streaming platform for western audiences specifically.
also at that point why would you bother with anime at all? just watch western cartoons / animations, there’s many of them too.
The thing is that anime is usually really good for the themes and story and art, but they occasionally sprinkle turds into it, so you kind of metaphorically eat around them. It’s still worth watching as long as you can compartmentalize and ignore the bad parts.
You just reminded me, years ago, I used to burn custom handmade censored versions of anime and tv shows for my family. I’d sit there after school for hours in a video editor cutting out every sex scene in Game of Thrones, every loli scene in anime. Then I’d burn that to a DVD-RW and recreate the disc art using a sharpie. Finally I watched it with everyone on the DVD player.
In retrospect it was a lot of work just to share my favourite shows with my family, but I don’t regret it.
Or just don’t watch anything that sexualizes children. Pretty well cuts off half or more of the anime out there but I’m not a pedo or interested in watching pedo shit.
Part of the job of a translator is to translate cultural nuance, which would be lost here. That’s what makes the translation inaccurate in some contexts.
That sounds like not calling a cannibal a cannibal because of the negative connotation which the word doesn’t have in cannibal culture
So small-minded? Let me remind you that “cannibal” is originally an ethnonym coined by Columbus for the native Caribbean people, whose culture certainly had a lot more nuance than just eating people.
So we need to translate it so the audience undertands there’s a level of implied cultural acceptance of pedos. How’s this?
“I didn’t know you were a redditor”