November 04, 2023

Frieren the Slayer

The mismatch between English and Japanese titles can be really surprising.

For example, "Sousou no Frieren" has an English subtitle of "Frieren: After the Journey" Which makes it sound like the cozy remembrance we all know and love. But I was skeptical. Then in episode 8, one of the demons says "Sousou no Frieren" and the subtitle gave me a double-take. So I dug out my Japanese character dictionary, because my pocket dictionary was no help, and online translations weren't helping me match the characters either.

(I have to recommend DeepL for translation, far better than Google or DDG.)

葬送のフリーレン translates as "Funeral Frieren" at the nicest I was able to determine. The first character gives "To bury, to consign to oblivion, or to shelve". The second "To send". So "To send to your grave Frieren." So it makes sense when Lugner said:

/images/Frieren01.jpg?size=640x&q=95

Posted by: Mauser at 07:00 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 149 words, total size 1 kb.

1 The fan-translated manga went with the title Frieren at the Funeral.  But it translates just as well to Frieren of the Funeral.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 04, 2023 07:18 PM (PiXy!)

2 The ambiguity in the meaning comes from the flexibility of "no", which can be any way to make a noun more specific. Which Frieren? The funeral one. What that means depends on context, and both "at the funeral" and "after the journey" are the result of trying to nail down one specific meaning based on volume one, while the original Japanese allowed for "all of the above, and I can change my mind at any time". She's a floor wax and a dessert topping.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at November 04, 2023 09:57 PM (oJgNG)

3 I guess the difference is whether she sends you to your grave with an nice eulogy, or a blast of Zoltraak.

Posted by: Mauser at November 05, 2023 05:31 PM (sZ6tC)

4 J is an expert at the moon language here, but AFAIK, "sousou" is a noun that means "attending a funeral". Not just a funeral. So, we have Freiren who attends a funeral.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 07, 2023 10:17 PM (LZ7Bg)

5 Which is why the translation of Lugner's use of the phrase seemed so interesting.

Posted by: Mauser at November 08, 2023 04:35 AM (sZ6tC)

6 I didn't want to get into the weeds, especially since I can't include kanji in the comments, but wwwjdic currently has it as "attending a funeral procession; seeing off the deceased; burial of someone's remains; observing a burial", which includes verbing it with -suru. Japanese Wikipedia cross-links it to the "funeral procession" entry in English, French, and German (at least). The two compound words that show up in the dictionaries I have unpacked are sousou-ka (dirge), and sousou-kyoku (funeral march).

-j

Posted by: J Greely at November 10, 2023 08:56 PM (oJgNG)

7 That's it? The climactic battle is "KYS"?!

Posted by: Mauser at November 12, 2023 11:54 AM (sZ6tC)

8 They bait-and-switched you. It wasn't a climactic battle. It was a curb-stomp. Padded out to a full episode with flashbacks explaining why it would be a curb-stomp.
Just like the previous big-bad Named demon, now that I think about it, who brought a knife to a gunfight. Or maybe brought a musket to a WWII armor battle.

Posted by: mikeski at November 15, 2023 08:08 PM (DgGvY)

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