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Talk:Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom/Music

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Broken compatibility with Touhou Music Room

The footnote next to "The Rabbit Has Landed" is nice and quite informative. However, it appears to break Touhou Music Room's ability to parse the page and auto-update track names and comments. Should we care about this or no? Shockdude (talk) 21:56, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I thought the practice of placing notes next to song titles has been going on for a long time? Why would it break it now? Is it the Wikipedia link? Code Slasher (talk) 21:58, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
Well I just checked TMR again and it properly updated all the track names and comments this time. I guess TMR is old and weird and does what it wants at this point. It did however put the footnote in-line with the comment/title (track 3's title became "The Rabbit Has Landed This is a reference to Neil Armstrong's quote...") but w/e. Shockdude (talk) 04:04, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

忘れがたき、よすがの緑

Okay two things here.

One: adjectives in Japanese are exclusively left-branching. よすがの緑 (yosuga no midori) means midori is the noun that the phrase focuses on, with yosuga no modifying it. (Note that 'midori' is used in various contexts as both an adjective and a noun on its own; in the latter case, it's analogous to saying 'greenery' in English.) I'm still a little fuzzy on how to best translate 'yosuga' myself, but I can at least say that this does not translate as "the green edge". If it did, it'd be 緑のよすが. よすがの緑 is the other way around: "greenery of (the) edge". Code Slasher, I'm pretty sure that you just stuck this in Google Translate or something and called it a day? I can tell, because Google Translate routinely fails to account for the direction in which adjectives branch, leading to phrases that end up with their meaning turned on their head like this. Please don't just use a machine translator and assume it's correct. Like, seriously now.
Two: "Unforgettable, the (etc.)" sounds completely unnatural in English. '忘れがたき' is another adjective applied to 緑, even if it's got a comma in between, so the structure ought to be "The Unforgettable (etc.)". Japanese grammar is more flexible when it comes to making things sound natural, especially with short phrases like this, but if you insist on preserving the comma in the English title it's going to come out wonky no matter what. This isn't something where you can match up every part of the sentence on a one-to-one basis; you've got to make some concessions so that it sounds natural in the language you're translating to.

Does this make sense? I really hope it makes sense. Gilde (talk) 06:19, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


Let me make this perfectly clear: do not attack me or my research. When I try to see if a song title on this wiki is correct, I meticulously look for information behind why a title is named a certain way. I look for context clues in the background information and I compare the Japanese words with other sites to see in what manners they are used. This takes me a very long time. I also have an advanced knowledge of the English language (there is a reason why I got a score of 33 on the English section of the ACT, and I already have my degree). By all means, please provide your own opinions of my translations, but do not shout out baseless assumptions about me such as I am only using a translator. There is no need for that.
One: I have seen adjectives in Japanese that were not exclusively left-branching. One does not need "の" to make certain adjectives, for example. I am still a little fuzzy on how to best translate "よすが" myself, but I gave it my best shot, and I can at least say that this does not translate as "greenery of connection". A process known as "metonymy" caused "緑" to gain an extra meaning beyond "greenery", which is simply "green". It is my opinion that "green" is describing the "edge", which makes sense due to the context of the game. The Earth from an angle could be seen to have a green edge from space (if the horizon has a land mass), correct?
Two: there is a comma present in this title. There is also a comma present in "Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke", which we did not get rid of. It is to my knowledge that this wiki tries to preserve title punctuation as much as feasibly possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing for this title. "Unforgettable, the Green Edge", while "wonky" at first, has a poetic, archaic flow that suits the Lunarians quite well, as if it comes from a poem or Shakespearian play. Perhaps it could be improved on by calling it "Unforgettable, That Green Edge" (although the title does not really contain anything to justify a word as important as "That")?
P.S.: The words "is reflecting" do not mean "reflects" in this case. The tense of the verb "utsusu" is very important in that title. Be sure you chose the correct one. Code Slasher (talk) 07:26, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


I'm sorry, I don't want to disparage the work you're doing. I apologize for phrasing things harshly and accusing you of just using a machine translator. It was uncalled-for on my part. I'm also sorry for the other extremely rude comment I made (and subsequently undid), because that was extraordinarily childish of me. I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk down to me like this, though? Like, with mimicking the way I arranged those points? It's clearly passive-aggressive. I may have gotten upset just now-- and I don't mean to defend what I said-- but the intention of my original post was to inform; I didn't try to go out of my way to hurt your feelings there or anything. The way you're talking makes it sound like you think my work and my research is somehow inferior to yours, which I would seriously disagree with. Looking for context clues, comparing with words on other sites, spending a whole lot of time on it, all of that is stuff that I do too, you know. You're not unique in that regard. It'd also be nice if you could maybe not command me to do stuff, either, with all the "do not do this, do not do that". It's a little rude. I mean, I'm guilty of the same thing in my original post, but I'll try harder to not do that in the future too.
So, next, like. The actual translation discussion.
One: Could you please actually provide an example of these right-branching adjectives you say you've seen in Japanese? Because, like, you kind of didn't do that just now; whether or not "の" is in the adjective is unrelated to the direction in which it branches. I can't recall any right-branching examples in the years I've been doing this sort of work, and every source I found-- there's tons on the first page of Google results if you want to have a look-- says "strictly left-branching". As long as よすが comes before 緑, it's the former that's the modifier and the latter that's the subject. (And I know what "metonymy" means. You don't have to say "a process known as metonymy" like I'm unfamiliar with the term.)
edit: Upon searching around some more, I think I've cleared up some of my own confusion regarding よすが. A mistake that I've made in the past is that I didn't distinguish between よすが and its corresponding kanji 縁 (which, incidentally, is hard to distinguish from 緑 sometimes). The thing is that the kanji was used for several words with distinct pronunciations. ふち specifically is the one that means "edge", "rim", etc., but えにし and よすが do refer to 'connections'. えにし is for connections and relationships with other people, and よすが refers to something that serves as a memento or reminder. Just putting it as "connection" was obviously too vague on my part, I admit, but since it's よすが in hiragana rather than the more ambiguous kanji 縁, I'm fairly sure it's not "edge". Here's a couple sources that I checked, by the way. First one is an aggregator for English-Japanese dictionaries, while the other two are dictionaries written in Japanese.
I think that the 'memento'/'reminder'/'connection to the past' thing fits with the story. The Lunarians did live on Earth once before moving away from its impurity, so it figures that the greenery down there would serve as a reminder of the past for them.
Two. ...well, okay, there's not much of a "two" because I'll concede this point. Upon thinking about it, you're right; it does sound rather poetic. I'm sorry for jumping down your throat with that one.
And, well, I guess three. Would you care to elaborate on the tense of the verb 映して in the Stage 2 song title? To my knowledge, it's not a fully-conjugated verb to begin with. Could you also elaborate on the difference between "is reflecting" and "reflects" in English in this case? I mean, one's a continuous action and the other can be a single isolated action, technically, but I don't think there's much difference in meaning.
Gilde (talk) 08:55, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


Code Slasher, it's beginning to look like a recurring theme where you get incredibly offended at criticism and proceed to call it a personal attack. You need to cool it a bit with the persecution complex, lest it become a self-fulfilling prophecy where people begin to follow your edits due to you crying foul, and you seeing this negative attention as reason to cry foul even more. Nobody here should care what grades you received in school, or that you spent a long time researching things (everyone should?); if your research leads to good results and an agreeable phrasing, that's what's important. Discussing these things shouldn't be so problematic, but you are making it a bit difficult to work amicably. Gilde figured that you had used a machine translation because it frankly looked like a machine translation: your use of の reversed the order of the words, which machine translations tend to do, and indeed Google translate even gives "green edge" for よすがの緑. Gilde could have been less abrasive, but you also aren't helping your case here.
You really won't find many (if any) examples where the modifier is on the right rather than the left, even considering there being some contextual rules in place like the omission of words for shorthand. I'm not too sure what examples you might be thinking of. With い- and な- adjectives (which are entirely different) you won't see the adjective on the right either, unless separated by additional particles. The modifier is simply before the の, when の is being used to modify a noun. As such, "green edge" is almost definitely incorrect, even assuming "edge" is a good translation of よすが. The "unforgettable" thing here is the "green".
To add, よすがの緑 is also a visual play on words. よすが can be represented by the kanji 縁 (although it's nonstandard), so the phrase then becomes 縁の緑.
To then talk about "edge", The context of the Earth's atmosphere is also likely incorrect. The "edge" usage of 縁 in the way you're referring to is rather へり or ふち, and refers more to physical edges (like of a stair step) than a more abstract use like we might think of for "edge". よすが is quite different and refers to like, uh, "a thing you depend on" in a pretty general sense, since it can mean a person to rely on, or like a clue (to rely on) for something, or a means (to rely on) to do something. Hence why some got "connection", since that's more like a personal connection, which incidentally is probably not what the song title's aiming for either.
Aaaanyways about that, the "green" here seems to refer to the green ground, as the song's description refers to the green earth (despite it joking about nori). ZUN often uses a seasonal theme for the music titles (esp. stage 1), and so I suspect that this title describes a summer's green grass/foliage. As such, while I'm not too sure if this is exactly right, but my conclusion for the time being is that the title is talking about a memory of the green earth, and the "green" is what that memory is founded on, since the vividness of that green is unforgettable.
That being said, I would agree with the explicit use of comma after "Unforgettable" (depending on how the rest works out) due to the conjugation of 忘れがた, which is a historical form for い-adjectives that is usually used today for poetic feel. Keeping the comma puts that feeling across well enough.
Drake Irving (talk) 11:33, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


We three have been on this wiki for quite a while now. We have all made edits that have had large effects on the Touhou community in the West. How do we benefit by causing stress to each other based on how we make these edits? This is a wiki, not a forum. We can all benefit by being as civil as possible to each other and by respecting each other's unique backgrounds. We cannot (or at least should not) dismiss others' contributions as simply spending a few seconds on a translator. That being said, I know the way that I structure my comments can look like I am mocking someone, but I am simply trying to make comments that are easily comparable to previous comments. This is for clarity's sake and because certain things already said are also true in a different context. I am a highly-concrete thinker (annoyingly so; it even annoys me). Also, I try to make suggestions, not commands. I love teaching and inspiring people. I want people to think for themselves so that they can make the best decisions and to consider all of the sides for every argument. After all, we are a shining beacon of knowledge for the Touhou community in the West. We need to be as careful and as accurate as possible.
I appreciate greatly both of your inputs on this title. We are all benefiting from your knowledge.
While it makes more sense to me to do a word reversal for "よすがの緑", we do not necessarily have to do that if you both are not comfortable with that, although it seems tough to me to convey the greenery being unforgettable if we do that. My research yielded that "縁" can be the edge of a geographical feature, though, which is what was throwing me off. If we want to go the "memento" and "greenery" route, though, then why not "Unforgettable, the Bond with the Greenery" or "Unforgettable, the Relationship with the Greenery", or is this still too related to "a personal connection"? Am I understanding your advice correctly?
Concerning "映して", it appears to be the conjunctive conjugation of "映す". This probably means that "The Lake Reflects the Cleansed Moonlight" is correct, now that I have thought a bit more on it. Granted, I do not have a strong grasp on the concept of conjunctive verbs, but at least I understand conjunctions and conjunctive adverbs. They are used to link ideas (technically clauses) together. (I am not saying these things because I think both of you do not understand them; the last thing I want to do is to insult either of your intelligences; I am merely refreshing their usage for everyone, including me.) At any rate, though, "is reflecting" carries a slightly-different meaning than "reflects". One is the present continuous, and the other is the simple present. You can compare "once a week, Tom cleans the house" to "right now, Tom is cleaning the house". Which seems stronger without the phrase before the comma? Which seems more accurate for each situation? You can decide for yourself in order to become the best writer you can be. Speaking of which, passive forms are a whole different beast altogether and greatly affect the forcefulness of a phrase or sentence. Code Slasher (talk) 00:30, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for your input, too. I'm really sorry for acting the way I did; I was really too quick to judge and I'll do my best not to make such assumptions about people's intentions in the future. :(
Re:よすがの緑; from what I can tell, it's that the greenery itself is what serves as a 'connection' (memento, reminder, etc.) to something, not that it's what's being connected to. So would something like "Unforgettable, the Nostalgic Greenery" sound okay? (Also, thank you both for your input on the poetic nature of the phrase; historical grammar like that is something I need to study more.)
Re:映して; yeah, I thought as much. One's a continuous action, and one's a single self-contained action, more or less? But (to my understanding,) without the phrase in front, "Tom cleans the house" can also be a general statement, right? A statement on his behavior in general, without being limited to a specific point in time. That general statement is what I was thinking of when I put "reflects" in the first place, so "is reflecting" conversely sounded less poetic, I guess. I'm sorry for not being clearer. Again, thank you very much for your input on the matter. Gilde (talk) 17:22, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

As long as you think that would not cause much confusion with "懐かしき東方の血" ("Nostalgic Blood of the East"), then let's use that! Well done! Anyone have any objections? Code Slasher (talk) 03:19, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

故郷の星が映る海

I'm sorry for being rude again in my edit comment; I truly don't have any excuse to offer.
I could certainly have explained myself better, but this sort of is one of the same problems we had with the Stage 1 theme. Japanese is just about exclusively head-final, as we explained last time. 海 is the last part of the phrase, so it's the subject, and the preceding parts are modifiers for it. If it was really "The Home Planet the Sea Reflected," it'd be "海に映る故郷の星". I don't believe there's much room for interpretation here. Gilde (talk) 21:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
The room for interpretation comes from the intransitive verb "映る", or at least it does to me. Intransitive verbs can be hard to wrap one's mind around, especially when translating from a different language, because not only do they not need an object, they flat-out do not allow them ("it is raining"). Now, here is the real challenge: how do you make "reflect" intransitive? I might have done it wrong, but it made sense to me to put it at the end in order to at least mimic the removal of transitivity. Nice work with "故郷の星が", by the way. That must have been tricky. Code Slasher (talk) 21:49, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
故郷の星 is actually commonly translated as "home planet", so that isn't too big of a deal. Anyways, I'm not sure if you've caught it, but 映す and 映る are slightly different due to in/transitivity, but they're mainly different in how they change grammar: it would be 故郷の星を映す or 故郷の星が映る and the を/が is what really makes the change. However, this difference does not change the title into what you suggest; what Gilde says still holds absolutely true. 海 is the subject: everything before it describes it. The difference between transitive/intransitive is, respectively, "reflects the home planet" (referring to the image reflecting) to "the home planet reflects" (referring to the projection of the reflection). Personally, I was thinking something like "The Sea in which One's Home Planet is Reflected", yet if we were to retranslate it after it would probably end up as 故郷の星が映されている海 so that's wrong too. "The Sea Where One's Home Planet Reflects" is probably the best we can get. Drake Irving (talk) 02:59, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
It is clear that "海" is the subject; the problem I have is adding "Where One's". We do not appear to have any Japanese characters that would allow us to add those words in, technically speaking. That being said, it seems like we need to pick our poison, so it is probably best to choose non-important words for the filler. I like your suggestion of "The Sea in which One's Home Planet is Reflected", because intransitive verbs seem to be the cousins of, if not the parents of, passive verbs, but I would change it to "The Sea Where the Home Planet is Reflected", unless someone can prove that there is possession going on here. (That might have sounded a little weird... hopefully you got the gist of what I was trying to say.) Code Slasher (talk) 05:11, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
"The" and "One's" are effectively equivalent here, especially since "home planet" necessitates a someone whose home it is... "One's" mainly just makes the title not sound weird. Even just saying "the home planet" begs "of X". Drake Irving (talk) 10:39, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
To me, "One" is far too strong and too specific of a word to be a filler here, but "the" allows for the title to be all-encompassing. Also, the Lunarians originally came from Earth, so this sea would effectively show the Earth, which is most of the characters' "home planet". "One's" makes it sound like (again, to me) an alien could see their home planet from the sea. Code Slasher (talk) 07:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
I'm with Drake here for the same reason that CS is against him. To me, the home planet sounds like one would be looking at any old aliens' planet, one's home planet makes it clear that it's the viewer's planet. --Wymar(⑨⑨) 11:07, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
Okay it's been like 3+ years and the majority of people on this discussion favored "The Sea Where One's Home Planet Reflects" yet it never changed? I too believe that is the most accurate and less-awkward-sounding translation. I'm gonna change it now, seeing as most people here accepted that.
Ennin (talk) 05:03, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
Instead of just changing it for the sake of changing it, could you please explain why you would do that when I presented my argument against changing it? Code Slasher (talk) 19:34, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
What explanation? The people in this discussion already gave you their reasoning and I simply agree with it. "The Sea Where the Home Planet is Reflected" is, simply put, a terribly awkward way to word the title. It sounds like an alien is saying it. Again, the majority of people here go with "The Sea Where One's Home Planet Reflects" and I agree with that as well. Please do not try to start and edit war, if you still have qualms then talk here and wait for other people to chime in.
Ennin (talk) 08:48, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see why you wouldn't make the change either. Your argument seems to me like just semantics, as I don't see how the meaning's all that much different if you make it "one's". Having a smooth title is preferable to a robotic, over-correct translation in my view. VasteelXolotl (talk) 21:26, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

ピエロ = Clown or Pierrot?

It seems a bit strange to me that ピエロ has been translated as 'Pierrot' in the title of Clownpiece's theme, yet has also been translated as 'Clown' in the music comment. I feel that it would be a better idea to change the translated title to 'The Clown of the Star-Spangled Banner' for the sake of consistency, and also because I think that this is the meaning ZUN intended. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Biggest Dreamer (talk) 07:51, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Originally, this is what I translated the title to, since we are dealing with Clownpiece. However, this is what Validon98 pointed out: "The title of Clownpiece's theme contains the word 'pierrot', which was a clown figure associated with lunacy and the moon. I believe it was ZUN's intention to reference the French Pierrot, so I switched the title back to the older translation." Code Slasher (talk) 07:22, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I can see the logic in that argument, but I'd like to add a bit more to the discussion since I think it's quite interesting.
Firstly, 'Pierrot' is primarily associated with the image of the 'sad clown' [see http://culturedarm.com/pierrot/]. 'Pierrot Lunaire' [the poem that Schoenberg's famous melodrama was based on, see http://www.da-capo.org/html/PierrotEnglish.html] seems to be the source of the association between the character and the moon/lunacy, but I think the 'sad clown' image has prevailed based on the description provided in the earlier resource.
Secondly, it raises an important question - is Clownpiece based on the lampad, or the 'Pierrot,' or both? It looks like ZUN hasn't mentioned 'Pierrot' in any media that discusses LoLK. For example, in his discussion of Clownpiece in Strange Creators of Outer World, ZUN only mentions the lampad when discussing her origins. Personally, I think it would be cool if Clownpiece as a character referenced the American flag, a lampad, and 'Pierrot,' as made famous by Schoenberg, but I think that might be too much of a leap to make. It also makes me wonder why ZUN didn't use other words for 'clown' in the music comment to distinguish 'Pierrot' from 'clown.' As it is, he's either using one word to refer to two separate things, or he's using the one word to refer to only one thing.
The final point that I'd like to raise is that 'Pierrot' refers specifically to a male character. Since Clownpiece is female, if it's decided that we should stick with 'Pierrot,' it might be a better idea to change it to 'Pierrette.'
I ended up writing a lot in response! Sorry >_< I know you presented someone else's argument, but I wanted to add my own contribution. Ultimately, I think it's too much of a logical leap to say that ZUN is referring specifically to the moon-struck 'Pierrot' made famous by Schoenberg when (to the best of my knowledge) he hasn't mentioned either before, and uses ピエロ in a more generic sense in the music comment. Biggest Dreamer (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)