• neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    10 hours ago

    In all seriousness, there might be style guidelines that explicitly say to not translate proper nouns like character names that have literal translations.

    And in most cases this probably makes sense. Frieren is reportedly a bit cringy for people who know German because the series uses on-the-nose German words for basically every character and place. Frieren = freezing, Himmel = heaven, Stark = strong, Fern = far/distant, Heiter = cheerful. There are probably similar examples for Japanese characters in other series, though I can’t think of any at the moment.

    Chainsmoker Cat is an ideal show to bend that rule though. “Thanks for the help, Chainsmoker Cat!” is legit a better line than “Thanks for the help, Yani Neko!”

    It’s like that scene in Coffee and Cigarettes where GZA and RZA from the Wu-tang Clan meet Bill Murray in a cafe and they constantly refer to him by his full name. Never “Bill” or “Mr Murray”, always “Bill Murray”. It’s not always funnier to do that, but sometimes it just is.