Finally Clown is done! I'd have had him up sooner but I totally forgot to get the missing after-route-choice dialogue and had to take the time to go through and do that. Oops. Anyway, he's up now! I really wasn't sure about this character. I'm not a huge fan of clowns in general, but I ended up liking the character and his story. There are some really good moments between him and the main character.
But now lets talk about translating. Clown was a bit of a problem, for multiple reasons. First I want to mention that the official romanization of this character's name is 'Crown'. What? No. It's very clear, at least to English speakers, that it's supposed to be 'Clown' and that's why I've written it that way, defying official spelling. Actually, most of the difficulty with his translation comes from his name.
Basically, throughout the story there are three terms used to refer to the character: the English, and therefore his name, Clown; the word most Japanese speakers use, ピエロ which is just the French word 'pierrot' meaning 'clown'; and the older Japanese word for clown, 道化師 (doukeshi). It leads to interesting interactions like this:
クラウン「そこの奥さん、お困りのようだがこのクラウンにお任せあれ」
"Dear lady, please leave this matter to me, Clown."
母親「あなたは、道化師さん？」
"Are you a clown?"
Based just on his little self introduction with his name, it's pretty obvious to English speakers that he's a clown, and we wouldn't follow that up with 'are you a clown?'. But while he uses his name, the English word, the other person uses the traditional Japanese word. Depending on the interpretation and translation it can sound a little weird, so you have to be a little more careful in word ordering/interpretation to not make the characters sound...dumb.
Another thing I'm sure I've mentioned elsewhere for other translations is the use of suffixes with names in Japanese, but I'm bringing it up again. When the main character refers to Clown, she adds the -san suffix to his name. This is often translated as 'Mr.' in English, but it's also pretty common nowadays for translators to either leave it untranslated, or leave it out all together as it doesn't really have a direct translation into English. But then in stories like this, we get the following interaction:
〇〇「クラウンさん、すごい……」
"Clown-san, that was amazing!"
クラウン「どうぞ、私のことはクラウンと。 そしてどうかもっと、砕けた言葉で話して欲しい」
"Please, I am a clown, you don't have to speak formally around me."
〇〇「うん……クラウン」
"Right...Clown."
Leaving the suffixes on, you can see the transition from formal to informal speech when the main character drops the -san in this passage. But as I don't translate -san in my work, I had to be a little freer with my translation, as the exchange doesn't really make any sense without the suffix.
The next item on this list of Clown-related translation issues is this passage, which appears in some form in both Ch. 5's of the Sun and Moon route:
クラウン「私は国に帰らねばならない」
"I must return to my country."
Nothing wrong with this at first glance, but at the beginning of the story in Ch. 1 it's already established that we are starting in Carnival in the Land of Jester, Clown's country. He can't 'return' there because he's already there. To be fair, the pair go off to a town after meeting, but as there is no indicator of extended passage of time, I imagine it didn't take them long to get there, and they likely didn't suddenly cross over into some other country as they did so. So I translated it as 'return home,' or instead of 'country' I used 'castle' to keep some consistency, as this oddity crops up a couple times.
But in spite of the issues I had with the translating, I hope you'll enjoy reading his story!
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