Talk:Impurity

Conflict between Lunarian 'purity' and Junko's 'purity'

Junko's ability centers around refining and strengthening stuff-- "purifying" it, in the colloquial sense. Words like "pure" and "purifying" are probably the easiest translations for her related terms (純化, 純粋, etc.), which is supported by her theme, stage title and Spell Cards repeatedly using the word "pure" in English. It's easy to see how this could cause problems with our current translation of 清め as 'purity' and 穢れ as 'impurity'. Whether something has 穢れ or not is apparently unrelated to whether Junko has 'purified' it; Clownpiece's fairy posse is said to be "pure life force" in her profile, which (with our current translations) leads to the oxymoron of them being "purified" embodiments of impurity. I think it would be a good idea to change one or the other translation to avoid confusion, though that's just me.

It'd be nice if other translators could weigh in and/or provide some ideas for dealing with this? There should probably be some sort of discussion here, even if it's a short one. Gilde (talk) 04:57, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

There's always the option of un-translating kegare entirely due to it being a very specific term. I already tend to use "kegare" in conversation almost exclusively because when people don't realize there's a specific context to calling something "impure", and don't know kegare is a thing, you get misunderstandings. On top of this, you then have to explain it as "kegare" anyways, or otherwise "the Shinto concept of impurity". I dunno. Drake Irving (talk) 13:19, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I guess you could translate Junko's ability as "refinement" or "distillation" or something, though I'll echo Drake's comments on misunderstandings. A lot of people seem to interpret the Lunarian use of "impure beings" as a meaningless slur equivalent to "filthy barbarians", rather than "if we come into contact with them we'll die". When talking about Shinto in a non-Touhou context, I almost always leave the term untranslated. Though if we're going back and changing uses of impurity in CiLR and the like, maybe some of the instances of "purify" should be changed to "cleanse". For that matter, should someone do a new release of SSiB with updated translations? Prime32 (talk) 18:24, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Instead of changing translation, why not try to explain her ability in her character page and try to make a difference there between the two concepts? I know it sounds quite basic but sometimes it's the best solution, people will go to her character page and read her ability and understand that it's not the same thing. Just an idea. --Camilo113 (talk) 18:53, 15 August 2015 (UTC)