Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfax | Hacker News Reader

>titled How Do You Live in Japan and renamed The Boy and the Heron for the international market

This might sound pedantic, but neither of those statements are quite right. It's not called "How Do You Live" in Japan, it's called Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka. And it wasn't "renamed" for the "international" market, it was given an English name that it didn't have until then.

I'm irked by this because this is something I've been constantly correcting people with, mainly to indirectly challenge English-language exceptionalism (anything not Japanese is English - we don't know the French or German titles yet), but also a reminder that any publication worth its salt up have emphasised that "How Do You Live" was a tentative title.

View on HN

> I'm irked by this because this is something I've been constantly correcting people with, mainly to indirectly challenge English-language exceptionalism (anything not Japanese is English - we don't know the French or German titles yet),

This is needlessly pedantic. By that logic, your use of Romaji is "incorrect" and Euro-centric exceptionalism, because the official original movie poster uses Hanji/Katakana. (And in fact, it'd be "incorrect" to say it was released in Japan, because in Japan, they'd say it was released in Nippon.)

It's an English-language article about a Japanese movie. Saying "titled 君たちはどう生きるか and renamed The Boy and the Heron for the international market" would make no sense because the audience of English readers won't be able to make sense of it.

It's not "English-language exceptionalism" to provide information in English when writing for an English-speaking audience, especially when it's clear in context that the information is a translation.

> This is needlessly pedantic

Needlessly pedantic?? This... is... Hacker News!

> Needlessly pedantic?? This... is... Hacker News!

I stand corrected.

While we're being pedantic: there's no katakana in the title on the original poster.

> While we're being pedantic: there's no katakana in the title on the original poster.

I think you're right. My Japanese is very rusty at this point, but I was taught that titles were always written in katakana, similar to how titles in English are always written in title case. But う is hiragana, for example.

I'm curious if anyone has an answer for this.

> I was taught that titles were always written in katakana, similar to how titles in English are always written in title case

Whoever taught you that is wrong, titles are not written in katakana. Katakana is mostly only used for loan-words and onomatopoeia. English titles of foreign movies will be written in Katakana, maybe they were confused by that?

Plenty of English-language articles about this film have already done a proper job of reporting on this (before the English language title was given), by noting that Miyazaki's next film is "tentatively" titled how do you live.

  kimi-tachi     wa    dou iki-ru       ka
  you-and.others TOPIC how live-NONPAST QUESTION

“How do you live?” seems like an OK out-of-context translation?

Those are always fraught for cinema—the Russian release of Inception was titled Начало načalo “beginning”, which of course wasn’t the translation of the titular concept during the film itself (that was внедрение vnedrenie “integration, infiltration”)—but if you have to give something to an English-speaking audience, it’s probably as good as it gets. (Specifying the translation is on shaky ground would be good journalistic practice, of course.)

The comment above _is_ pedantic. It's stating that the name of the movie IS Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, that could be roughly translated to "How do you live?"

Any other post about this movie, in any other language, is going to make the same "mistake".

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the context you're coming from, but I've always presumed that international titles are implicitly translated into English in English-language material. For the benefit of other readers: To my beginner Japanese–learning ear, "How Do You Live" is a pretty straightforward translation of "kimitachi ha dō ikiru ka". I don't think there's any subtext of English-language exceptionalism, here or in general, especially since this translation is so straightforward (except for maybe an English translation losing the nuance of "kimitachi").

Again though, I readily concede that your online interactions may be very different from mine—just wanted to add my 2¢ :-)

The movie is based on a book which was released under the name "How Do You Live" in English. So this may be partly because they didn't want to license the name, since the movie ended up containing 0% of the content of the book.

But yes, it wasn't renamed. It just has another name. Nobody's hiding the original name from you.

AFAIK the book wasn't translated into English until after the film was announced, and was pitched as "the book Miyazaki's next film is based on."

(I agree the OP's comment is ridiculous.)

Maybe his point is that “How do you live” is already a translation and not the actual name of the movie. The actual name is the Japanese version.

Kinda like saying that Rome is not the actual name of the city. It’s Roma because that’s how it’s called in Italian and the city is in Italy so that’s the actual name.

> Kinda like saying that Rome is not the actual name of the city.

To be honest, I'd probably disagree with this too—the way I see it, in English, Rome is the actual name of the city. (It's not the "native" name, of course, but English isn't the native language of the city, so that's not relevant either way.)

I mean, by the same logic you could also change the name of people? If your name is Michael should I call you Michele because that’s how it translates in Italian? I say no because that’s stupid.

Still, even if the parent post is indeed technically correct I don’t think it really matters the same way it doesn’t really matter if you call Roma Rome or Milano Milan or Venezia Venice.

Printing 君たちはどう生きるか is meaningless to anyone who speaks only English, and a transliterated version technically isn't the Japanese title either.

I agree with you. But I also personally don't really care if they translate the movie title or rename it.

A further observation, to add onto my reply: The article prominently displays the Japanese poster with 君たちはどう生きるか on it. I agree that they probably should've given the Japanese title in the body text for clarity, but I assume including the poster goes some way towards indicating the presence of an implicit translation.

Who is this "correction" for? Is there an actual existing person who thought the title of the movie was in English, and not a Japanese phrase that translates as "How Do You Live?"

For the article.

Just in case you are not aware, How Do You Live (the film) is based on a book, How Do You Live. The book was translated and its English name is just How Do You Live.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54110592

When something has an editorialized name change between regions, the first thing I wonder is if some media already has that name [0]. I wouldn't be surprised if the movie distributors fear copyright issues with whoever released the book under that title in their market(s), or perhaps they don't want to give them such obvious free marketing.

0 - Like how the Japanese videogame titled "It's a Wonderful World" had to have its named change to "The World Ends with You" in some (all?) regions because of copyright issues. https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/04/17/breaking-the-languag...

Yes, I've read the book.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com