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Talk:Imperishable Night/Music

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Translations by Eien Ni Hen as per RadicalR's request. Please do not duplicate without giving credit.

This will be endless. Please comment. - J5983 02:26, 27 May 2006 (PDT)
What license is this wiki under, anyway? You should probably put something on Touhou Wiki:Copyrights (although doing it this late is possibly a violation of contributors' rights.) -7HS 11:09, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

Okay, I've finished the translations. The only 2 parts I'm really not sure about are the "Genso/Gensokyo" line near the beginning and the last 2 or so lines of the Extended block. I think he's making some kind of pun, so maybe someone who knows the series a little better would have more luck with it. I translated these for RadicalR, purely because he asked me to and they were challenging, and so I don't mind if anyone wants to use my translations. I just feel that it's only polite to give me credit for the 3-4 hours I spent on all these funky little blocks of text.  ;)

-- Eien Ni Hen


Just wondering, why was "蓬莱人" translated as "Hourai victim"? Doesn't "人" simply mean "person"? - Winane 14:53, 12 December 2007 (PST)

came here to ask the same thing... what's the motivation behind this translation? Theultramage 14:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Well if you ask me, I don't think Mokou is very happy about permanently being under the curse of the Hourai elixir. Perhaps it was translated like that to indicate her suffering. While I'm here, what is Old World supposed to be nostalgic for? I assume it's a PC-98 song?--Selphos 07:36, December 10, 2009 (UTC)
Whatever the case, the original certainly didn't have the "victim" meaning. It is simply something like "Hourian" or "person of Hourai" or something like that.Tosiaki 22:24, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Eternal Night Vignette vs. Imperishable Night

"永夜抄" (Eiyashou), according to other translators on the wiki, means "Eternal Night Vignette". However, the current translation of "永夜抄" is "Imperishable Night". I'm assuming the logic is "永夜抄 is the game's title along with Imperishable Night, so the two are interchangeable". While this may pass for the English patch, the wiki should use the more correct translation which is "Eternal Night Vignette". Just addressing Masuo's point from long ago.

Additional long winded logic: 東方永夜抄 (romanized: Touhou Eiyashou, meaning Eternal Night Vignette from the East). 東方永夜抄 (romanized: Touhou Eiyashou, meaning Eternal Night Vignette from the East)

!8RstuPId2Y 22:23, April 28, 2010 (UTC)

竹取飛翔 ~ Lunatic Princess

First, I fail to see how "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" is a terrible translation. "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" and "Bamboo Cutter Flight" semantically mean the same thing (a bamboo cutter flying or a flight somehow relating to a bamboo cutter), so no change of translation is needed from that perspective. Order is not as important, and by itself I would not consider a strong reason to change it.

Second, consider 竹取飛翔 (taketori hishou) vs 竹取物語 (taketori monogatari). Taketori Monogatari is formally translated as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. To reword it as Bamboo Cutter Flight is actually worse as the reference to the title is lost.

For the record, [1] was cited to argue for the contrary. - Kiefmaster99 14:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

The title of the theme definitely does not mean that the old man "the bamboo cutter" flies. It was absolutely misleading, if you haven't read the reference I pointed to here. If it can be better, it could be "Taketori Flight." That is because 竹取 is not referring to the old man who cut the bamboo, but the actual story itself (therefore, having nothing to do with any bamboo cutter except to refer to the name of the story).--Tosiaki 17:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
"Bamboo Cutter Flight" is no better. It still can imply that the old man is flying in the same way that "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" does, only somewhat less so (only because in common English usage, "Flight of" almost always means the object itself is flying). The other usages of flight include "X Flight" (where X is the name of an aircraft, such as Challenger, or can be a common noun, such as "white (person)") or "X Flight ##" (where X is an airline company). "Flight of" can also be used in "First Flight of the World"; of course it's not referring to the world flying itself.
Arguing from a "reference to the original title" perspective, "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" is best, because it preserves the sentence structure to an established English translation "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". There's no point in using Taketori when an English TL already exists, and actually makes it worse for understanding. Rearranging it also destroys the relation to the original title, making it worse for understanding.
It is impossible in the English language to word it in such a way as to try to not imply that the man is flying. Pick your poison; both can imply that the man is flying, and both do not necessarily need to mean it so.
Even then, if we hold "referencing the original title" to be more important, then "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" takes priority, despite how misleading it does sound, as it's more important that readers know that it relates to "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". At most, I would stick a "The" in front of it, and add a TL note. - Kiefmaster99 18:08, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
If so, then perhaps simply "Flight in the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" would be best. Keeping a wrong name with an entirely incorrect meaning is definitely not a good idea, as you are suggesting. Either that, or "Taketori Flight" would simply be best. That is because as a title, it is not important to translate the name when it is already widely known as Taketori.--Tosiaki 18:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
As I said before, pick your poison. "Taketori Flight" also has an "entirely incorrect meaning", as you like to put it. Assuming that Taketori refers to the bamboo cutter itself, it's going to be interpreted as "bamboo cutter flight", which means that the bamboo cutter is flying (actually worded like this, sounds like it wants to mean a bunch of bamboo cutters fleeing). The former proposal is just plain wrong.
Additionally, keeping Taketori is akin to keeping "pour une infante défunte" or "Ki Yagyou". Why attempt to use taketori when an English TL exists? - Kiefmaster99 18:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, at least a name that might misleading imply something incorrect is better than any name that explicitly states the wrong thing.--Tosiaki 18:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
No, both are equally bad. See "First Flight of the World". - Kiefmaster99 19:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Maybe "Flight from the Bamboo Cutter." That would remove the idea that the bamboo cutter is flying.--Tosiaki 19:12, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
It would also match up with the reasonable interpretation that it means that "the basket was cut from bamboo, and from it, the dragon (Kaguya) flies."--Tosiaki 19:14, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
竹取飛翔 puts together "bamboo cutter" and "flight", can be read as "bamboo cutter flight", which has the same meaning as "flight of the bamboo cutter". The key is to word it such that it suggests that the flight is related to the bamboo cutter, without implying that "the bamboo cutter is flying". Flight is not much different from other verbs-turned-nouns such as "ride", or "kick" in that it implies that the user is doing the action.
My question is this: Does 竹取飛翔, in Japanese, at face value, leave room for interpretation that the old man is flying? If it needs to be spelled out that the old man himself isn't flying, then "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" is more acceptable because it suffers a similar problem. - Kiefmaster99 20:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
"Does 竹取飛翔, in Japanese, at face value, leave room for interpretation that the old man is flying?" Answer: no, there is no such interpretation. That is why I suggested, "Flight from the Bamboo Cutter" since it is definitely Kaguya who is flying, the same way "Kagome Kagome" was also definitely referring to Kaguya.--Tosiaki 20:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
At any rate, using "from" is preferable to the other TL alternatives you suggested because the references to "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" is destroyed in the alternatives. I still wonder if this is best though because the relation to the Tale is weaker. - Kiefmaster99 20:40, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
A single word "of" is not essential for referring to the story, so it should be alright.--Tosiaki 20:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Here's my suggestion: if Kaguya is doing the flying in the story, then why not "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter" (that is, unless Kaguya's title in this case is the Bamboo Cutter)?

Furthermore, it seem to me that http://tateito1.blog48.fc2.com/blog-entry-856.html actually demotes your argument for a change. Code Slasher 20:54, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure if you tried translating that page with an automatic translator, but the phrase いや、バンブーカッターが飛んでる訳じゃないでしょう。 reads, "iya, it doesn't mean that the bamboo cutter is flying, it seems." It was the only translation that elicited an "iya" response out of all of them, indicating that this was probably the worst translation. So, "Flight from the Bamboo Cutter" would seem to make the most sense as of now, since Kaguya was "cut from bamboo".--Tosiaki 21:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
"Flight from" is likely to be interpreted as "fleeing from". Morrolan 21:34, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
That is not inaccurate either, since Kaguya did indeed flee.--Tosiaki 21:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
While true, the Japanese defines the "fly", not "flee" definition. - Kiefmaster99 21:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I guess that's so. Perhaps Code Slasher's suggestion might be good then.--Tosiaki 00:42, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course, I do realize that "Bamboo Cutter Flight" is no good, so it should be changed to something better. So then, "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter," yes?--Tosiaki 05:39, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

"Flight in the Bamboo Cutter" sounds like you're riding in a robot, or something. For people who don't know the story, it's not any less prone to causing confusion than the other translations. The problem isn't with the connecting words(of, from, in) but with the fact that we can't easily express that 竹取 refers to a story. If we really wanted to make the translation fool-proof we should put "The Bamboo Cutter" in quotations to denote that it is referring to a story. Messing with the connecting word before it will not make it any better.Flan27 (talk) 02:23, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Prepositions in the English language increase the accuracy of the following words' meaning. In this case, "in" means "of, or pertaining to, within or inside something" and thus guarantees that there is a flight in The Bamboo Cutter. Code Slasher (talk) 08:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Even if we mean to use 'in' to say 'from the story', someone who just sees the title of the song would be more likely to assume that it means 'inside of an object', especially if they aren't knowledgeable about the story in the first place. The word 'in' can thus be misinterpreted just as easily as 'of'. In no way does 'in' make the title more accurate. If anything changing the title has made it more confusing and less accurate, since now it doesn't even follow the same structure as "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". There is no word that could go in the place of 'of' that will not also have room for misinterpretation. The best you could do to make it fool-proof is use quotation marks around "The Bamboo Cutter" or say something like "Flight such as that written of in The Bamboo Cutter" to denote that it is a story and not a person or an object.Flan27 (talk) 01:55, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I still prefer the original translation of "of the Bamboo Cutter", if only because the alternatives sound equally bad or worse. - Kiefmaster99 (talk) 03:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
The original translation sounds a lot better and is no more or less accurate than what it is now, so I'd agree with you. The fact that there is a possible misinterpretation means nothing if the alternatives don't fix that. I've given my opinion on what the translation should be if we decide we need to make it fool-proof, but in the end I think the simpler, original translation is best.Flan27 (talk) 05:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
We already dismissed the original translation with the discussion above, though. In addition, the flight is described "inside of an object", both physically (inside the book) and within the story itself. Code Slasher (talk) 05:44, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
The point isn't that 'in' can be interpreted correctly, but rather the point is that it could just as easily be interpreted incorrectly. In this way it is no different than 'of' or 'from'. No one who reads the title would naturally assume it means 'inside a book' or 'inside a spacecraft from the story', especially if they don't know the story to begin with. In place of these correct interpretations, they'll come up with their own interpretation; The thing that came to my mind was riding in a bamboo-cutting robot. The discussion above did indeed dismiss 'of' in favor of 'in', but that was in the assumption that 'in' made the title more accurate/less confusing. If you acknowledge the fact that it can be misinterpreted in the same way that 'of' can, then that is clearly not the case.Flan27 (talk) 14:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
This person is 100% correct about the quotations. That's how you mark titles in English, and that (or any similar method, like using italics) is what any attempt at correcting this should have started from. That was the problem, remember? Translation not conveying that the "Bamboo Cutter" part is referring to the story. It was never going to get fixed by playing with prepositions.
That aside: "flight in X" means you're flying inside X; "flight of X" means that X is flying. Even quotations don't fix that, as what's inside them can still be misconstrued as the proper name of a flying vehicle. In "flight from X", it can't, and therefore this seems to be the only acceptable choice out of the three. YouDoNotHavePermissionToEditOurSecretEliteWikiWithoutAnAccountHurr (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I second putting the "the Bamboo Cutter" part in quotations, or italics. Or capitalizing "the" to show that it's part of the title, at the very least? The current translation still doesn't look much like a story's title until you've been squinting at it for a while. Gilde (talk) 04:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Stylizing "the Bamboo Cutter" would create a style inconsistency, because the title would already be in quotes or italics in common usage. Also, many titles exist that use a courtesy "the" without capitalizing it. Code Slasher (talk) 05:57, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I think it would be possible to stylize it without making the title look too confusing. Just as an example, "Flight in 'the Bamboo Cutter' ~ Lunatic Princess" would look fine to me. ...but it might not look fine to other people, so if that's the case I'll concede that part.
There must be some way to make "the Bamboo Cutter" look unambiguously like a story's title, though. What the song title refers to is "the flight that takes place in the story, The Bamboo Cutter", but that's far from obvious from just looking at "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter".
Does something like "Flight in the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" or "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter's Tale" sound acceptable? It'd be a bit lengthier than what we have, but it would make the meaning entirely clear. Gilde (talk) 22:27, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Why not do it like Nitori's theme. Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's "Kappa" ~ Candid Friend ☢ Quwanti 23:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Hey, that is a good point. There's already precedent for quotes within titles anyway, since it's worked just fine for Candid Friend. (Unless you want to remove the quotes there, too?) Gilde (talk) 00:22, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
I can't support using italics, quotes, or the like because, unlike "Kappa", "The Bamboo Cutter" is not a full standalone title. The proper title of the work is "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". Besides that, ZUN most likely intended the "Bamboo Cutter" part to be a part of the song title, rather than specifically refer to the work itself. For example, "Weird Al" Yankovic named one of his songs "Perform This Way", based on Lady Gaga's "Born This Way". The former's song title is a clear reference to the latter, without the use of quotes. It would be awkward for Weird Al to name his song "Perform 'This Way'".
This reasoning is also why I still prefer the old TL, because despite semantic problems that exist (but which also exist in the alternatives), the reference is the most clear. - Kiefmaster99 (talk) 00:32, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I was going to ask if the "the" was a a courtesy "the" or not, but it looks like it is. Also, I edited my previous statement. How can I be a Touhou music lover and forget Nitori's theme -_-? Code Slasher (talk) 03:07, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

蠢々秋月 ~ Mooned Insect

I'm not sure if Stirring an Autumn Moon is a very good translation for 蠢々秋月. "蠢く" does mean "to stir," but it's "stirring" as in wriggling or rousing from sleep, which isn't immediately obvious upon looking at the English title. (It wasn't obvious for me, at least.) "蠢く" is currently translated as "wriggling" in Wriggle's character title and the song comments as well, so I think that for consistency, a word like "wriggling" would be better to use in the song title. The wording is kind of suspect, too; "Stirring an Autumn Moon" sounds like something (namely, stirring) is being done to an autumn moon, but "蠢々" certainly doesn't look like a verb. Gilde (talk) 04:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

If you are going to use the "waking from sleep" context, which would make more sense: "stirring" or "wriggling"? Code Slasher (talk) 06:00, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
"Stirring" would certainly make more sense for rousing from sleep. Perhaps I shouldn't have worded it quite like that. The same kanji is translated elsewhere as "wriggling" or "crawling," (eg. A Bug of Light Wriggling in the Dark) so I think having a similar translation for those similar terms would be good. I've also found that "蠢々" does have several meanings closer to "wriggling" than to "rousing," so I believe the former is more accurate. Gilde (talk) 15:25, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't know why this was dropped but the change is necessary. 蠢々 is clearly meant to mean wriggling like a bug in this case, kinda evident by Wriggle herself and the 虫 radicals in the kanji. Even reading the title you get the alliterative "Shun-shun Shugetsu". It's a really cute way to express insect squirming. "Stirring and Autumn Moon" doesn't even make sense. Waking up a moon? By the subtitle, "Mooned Insect", you can tell that the intention is that Wriggle symbolizes the moon (a firefly's light). So it really should be "A Wriggling Autumn Moon" as far as I see it.
Ennin (talk) 18:14, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
One could refer to the moon rising as the moon "waking up", but I will admit that that is more of a creative stretch and probably not very accurate in this particular instance. Code Slasher (talk) 02:36, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
why hasn't this change been made yet since it seems nobody is really against it? Like Ennin says above, "stirring an autumn moon" makes no sense. given the context of the stage (literally Wriggle Nightbug's stage) and how 蠢 is also translated as "wriggling" in Wriggle's character title (which appears at basically the same time as her theme's name), I don't really see why this theme isn't translated as "Wriggling Autumn Moon". I'm going to go ahead and make the change if nobody has any other objections. Kirby47 (talk) 07:46, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

竹取飛翔 ~ Lunatic Princess Revisited?

I hate to reopen a potential Pandora's Box, but I was reading through the discussion in this talk page about Kaguya's theme's translation and it appears to me that the change from "of" to "in" was made prematurely if not incorrectly. The discussion mentions the alternatives, including "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter" were no more helpful then the original using "of" and in my opinion the "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" translation was improperly dismissed from the discussion. There was no real agreement for the change (or any change actually) and the argument about preserving the reference and being semantically sound is pretty strong. I think we should reset the status quo and continue talking about this. As it is using "in," the general impression is that of flying inside the bamboo cutter. The argument for a change was that it seems the bamboo cutter itself is flying. However, changing a misconception with a misconception isn't really ideal and the translation with "of" is still technically correct and parallels the "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," which I also think is an important parallelism to maintain. --DTM (talk) 06:11, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I acknowledge your point of view, but I personally think it's important that we don't bind ourselves too strictly to the title of the "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" itself. To begin with, I think there are two possible interpretations of that title:
  • The tale (about the) bamboo cutter [which I think is the most common]
  • The tale (told by the) bamboo cutter [less common, but still possible]
As you can see, the bamboo cutter is emphasised in both. With that in mind, what do we get when we look at "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter"?
  • The bamboo cutter is flying [whether it's the person from the story or a bamboo-cutting robot]. In this case, it's interpreted the same way as "Flight of the Bumblebee."
And... that's pretty much it. I understand the need to preserve the reference to the original title, but I don't think it works here because "Flight" and "Tale" are too different to function in the same way.
From my end, I like the option that adds in specific quotation marks, like what we see in Nitori's theme. To that end, my initial position is in favour of Flight in "The Bamboo Cutter" or Flight Scene From "The Bamboo Cutter"
On that note, it looks like we were close to reaching a consensus on the above alternative last time, but the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Perform This Way" was used to argue against putting quotation marks in. I believe that this is a false comparison, and irrelevant to our discussion. In the case of "Born This Way," the word "Born" serves a necessary function in the original title, meaning that the title makes no sense without it.
In our case, as I demonstrated above, the main focus of the title is on the bamboo cutter. As long as "The Bamboo Cutter" remains there in its unaltered form, I believe the original reference is still preserved, and it is possible to maintain a parallelism between the two titles. In this case, a more accurate comparison can be made between "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" and some tales from the Arabian Nights, including "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp" and "Sinbad the Sailor". In both cases, it is common to shorten these titles by removing the extra words, leaving the names of the protagonists "Aladdin" and "Sinbad" respectively. If a theme was, hypothetically, called The Flying Carpet Scene from "Aladdin", would we need to put the full title in? I think Aladdin would be enough, and likewise The Bamboo Cutter is enough here. In short, I believe there is nothing stopping us from shortening "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" in a similar way, removing the extra words and leaving us with "The Bamboo Cutter". Still, it's worthy of further discussion. I ended up rambling a lot about my preferred alternative, but I think all of the options on the table are valid, so I'd love to her what others have to say. I appreciate that you've reopened the conversation - hopefully we can get lots of different opinions! Biggest Dreamer (talk) 10:46, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I also can't support italics or quotations because in addition to what has been said above about it not being a full standalone title, I also think that we shouldn't be putting punctuation that are not in the original. I think using quotes for Nitori's theme was a mistake as well, but it's too late to change that (unless we want to change that). The other option discussed was "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter" which is also problematic because this implies someone flying inside the bamboo cutter, like riding on a BC-9 rocket or something. I don't see any value of changing the translation into one of these alternatives as they all have problems on their own. Also, I think ZUN was trying to have the Bamboo Cutter be a part of the title rather than specifically and explicitly referring to the work. Despite semantic problems, I think "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" is still the best option going forward due to parallelism with the work and the semantic problems of the alternatives. --DTM (talk) 15:51, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I don't see the parallelism between your proposed alternative and the original title, though. After all, the original work is called The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and not Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. When you say 'parallelism,' it implies that the two should at the very least use the same amount of words.
What, in your opinion, makes the truly parallel title The Flight of the Bamboo Cutter less preferable to the unequal title Flight of the Bamboo Cutter? Unfortunately, I'm still not convinced by your argument. Biggest Dreamer (talk) 01:21, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm not arguing that the translation of "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" perfectly captures the intent and meaning of the Japanese title. What I am saying though is that there is no alternative to that translation that would be "better" than that translation that has been offered. Both "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter" and "Flight in the Bamboo Cutter" have problems in semantics. At least with the former however, it has "more" parallelism with the work than the latter and is the "status quo" in the fandom. Thus, I don't see a need to change the translation to an alternative if the original is accurate and the alternatives are no better with the problems discussed. --DTM (talk) 03:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)