Welcome to the Japanese Phrase of the Month for June 2021!
Yeah, I know it’s been a few months. I did admit from the beginning that this might not be monthly…
This month, let’s talk Japanese pronouns! And in particular about a common pronoun trap in anime, manga, and video games.
I’ll give a pronoun overview for general readers, and then get into some concrete details about the pronoun trap.
「手前」and Friends
Have you been translating them correctly?
Key background info: Japanese hates pronouns.
The first rule of Japanese is, Japanese hates pronouns. The second rule of Japanese is, Japanese hates you specifically. Yes, you.
The Japanese language is famous for a couple of things that really don’t seem to go together: it has a billion different versions of the same pronouns, and also, it doesn’t use any of those pronouns.
At first this might seem crazy. I mean, it’s super cool that there are so many more and varied pronouns in Japanese than in English! I can go beyond just “I” and “me”? Amazing! And there’s a lot of interesting gender-related stuff happening, too. But as someone who tutors teens and adults in Japanese, I often have to remind my students to stop being all me, me, me all the time when they talk… and to never, ever call me you. Because for the student, my “pronoun” is sensei!
Using too much “me” sounds unnatural and self-obsessed. Using too much “you” sounds inappropriate. So Japanese, being the high-context language that it is, solves this problem by going around it. Speakers delete me from most sentences about themselves, and frequently delete you or use a name or job title instead.
I suspect the abundance of personal pronouns in Japanese is directly related to the ugh factor of personal pronouns in Japanese.
There are so many of you, but you all suck.
Why would something with an ugh factor become so abundant? Well, many of the “you” pronouns which we consider very rude now used to be polite enough back in the samurai days. Over time, they all descended into rudeness, and Japanese society had to switch to new “you” pronouns to stay polite. “You” is always wrong eventually, because as I said, Japanese hates you.
So just by hanging out meaning you, second-person Japanese pronouns may eventually acquire bad karma and become insults. Back in the day, 貴様 was normal. Now it’s the rudest thing ever. てめえ? Normal, then rude. お前? Normal, then rude. We must create dozens of pronouns, because they will all eventually be terrible.
Yu Yu Hakusho fans can see the progressive rudeness in this handy chart:
君 – Kurama’s default, only sometimes rude
お前 – Yusuke-level rudeness
てめえ – Kuwabara-level rudeness
貴様 – Hiei-level rudeness
Okay, you may think. I get that you are terrible, but what does this have to with me and my translation career?
TWIST ENDING: YOU ARE ME
“You’ve always been the caretaker.”
Yeeeeep. Because pronouns are rare, translators tend to feel relieved when there’s any pronoun in the sentence at all. Haha! we crow triumphantly to ourselves. The pronoun hasn’t been deleted from this sentence! I know for sure who it’s about!
But what nobody warns you about in Japanese 101 is this: sometimes you and I are the same word. The biggest culprit is てめえ, our official Phrase of the Month, but we also have runners-up ぼくand 自分.
With these words, translators can fall into the trap of thinking they always mean what they usually mean.
In reality, てめえ means self almost as often as it means you. Let’s check out the Goo Dictionary entry:
て‐めえ【手▽前】
の解説［代］《「てまえ」の音変化。「てまえ」のぞんざいな言い方》１ 一人称の人代名詞。わたし。あっし。「手前にはかかわりのないことです」
２ 二人称の人代名詞。おまえ。きさま。「手前に文句がある」
[補説]1は「あいつはてめえのことしか考えない」「てめえから名のって出る」のように自分自身の意でも用いられる。
And now let’s see some examples in action:
すいやせん兄貴、てめえの力では、どうにもなりやせん。(example from the Nico Dictionary entry)
I’m sorry, boss; it’s beyond my power.
This one is meaning #1, me. In live dialogue, depending on the context we might localize it to something like “Sorry, boss, but they won’t listen to me.” Me is the oldest and original meaning of the word.
てめえでやりな。
=自分でやりな。
Do it yourself.
This one is the “自分自身” in the note on meaning #1.
And finally, we have:
てめえは隠れてろ！
You stay hidden!
This one is meaning #2, the you that we’re so familiar with. This is the historically newer meaning of the word, and now an insult. So the timeline is me –> you –> you jerk.
All of these examples involve phrases you almost never hear in normal life, but are quite likely to encounter in anime. This means translators are more likely to make errors, like mistranslating the first example above as “I’m sorry boss, it’s beyond your power.”
This is the pronoun trap we pop culture translators encounter.
Other pronouns that might surprise you (or me, or them):
ぼく【僕】
の解説［名］男の召使い。下男。
［代］
１ 一人称の人代名詞。男性が自分のことをさしていう語。対等またはそれ以下の人に対して用いる。「僕んちにおいでよ」「君のほうが僕より若い」
２ 小さい男の子に対して呼びかける語。「僕のお名前は」
[補説]1は、現代では親しみのあるくだけた言い方として使われ、改まったときは「わたくし」を用いる。古くは「やつがれ」と読み、相手に対してへりくだる気持ちで用いられた。明治時代から、書生・学生が「ぼく」と読んで用いるようになった。Source: Goo Dictionary entry
So, ぼく is usually me, but if you’re a little kid I’m talking to, it might be you.
じ‐ぶん【自分】
の解説
So, it’s someone’s self, and usually the self is mine… but if we’re in Osaka, it could be yours! And 己 (おのれ) works the same way as 自分, except that 己’s you-ness is much more widely applicable… you know, kind of like てめえ.
And if we wanted to go into really marginal cases, I could list even more! The Japanese Wikipedia article on first-person pronouns even has a section specifically devoted to this historical fluidity between the first and second persons.
I guess the moral of the story here is, if a sentence isn’t making sense with the pronoun meaning you already know, you can treat the pronoun just like any other word: look it up and see if the dictionary lists another meaning! There’s never any shame in that.
I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any phrases/grammar points you’d like to see broken down in the future!