[Haruhi][Spoilers] The Insight of Haruhi Suzumiya

[Brian]

To touch on this very briefly for those who were not on IRC (there I am 'Fujiwara Masamichi' at work and 'Suou Kuyou' at home, Arakawa ;) (someone else claimed the 'brian' nick when I was offline for a year+)):

One of the major benefits of posting corrections and commentary in a public forum is that if you are incorrect, someone else can step in and make an interjection.  I could link an unspeakable number of posts to the FFML where I got something wrong and was corrected.  To err is human, and this is a forum where we're all looking to have those checked.  I personally like to think that this community 'safety net' is something to encourage more commentary, so I'm all for it. :)

In this case, I call 'no harm; no foul'. ;)

[Arakawa]

To touch on this very briefly for those who were not on IRC (there I am 'Fujiwara Masamichi' at work and 'Suou Kuyou' at home, Arakawa ;) (someone else claimed the 'brian' nick when I was offline for a year+)):

Is 'Fujisawa' a contraction of 'Fujiwara Masamichi', then? (Or is that a typo?)

(Particularly since I *think* I saw both nicks logged in at the same time. I presume you just keep an IRC window constantly open on your home computer even when you're physically at work...)

Also, was your decision to have those nicknames pre- or post- Novel 11? It seems a bit fitting given how we found out Fujiwara (um... if that really isn't a typo...) and Kuyou were collaborating a little closer than expected.

One of the major benefits of posting corrections and commentary in a public forum is that if you are incorrect, someone else can step in and make an interjection.  I could link an unspeakable number of posts to the FFML where I got something wrong and was corrected.  To err is human, and this is a forum where we're all looking to have those checked.  I personally like to think that this community 'safety net' is something to encourage more commentary, so I'm all for it. :)

No, I just found it sort of funny to see someone pontificate on the benefits of semicolons like that, then immediately go on to misuse them, even more funny that 'someone' turned out to be myself, and I hope people share some of that amusement.

In this case, I call 'no harm; no foul'. ;)

Exactly; we're not writing mission-critical software for hospitals, here.

[Brian]

Is 'Fujisawa' a contraction of 'Fujiwara Masamichi', then? (Or is that a typo?)

Nope.  Fujisawa Masamichi is a character from the anime El Hazard.  He is a teacher, a drunkard, a smoker, and his hobbies are mountain climbing, and always looking after the wellfare of his students.  His physical strength increases to super-human levels when he abstains from drinking or smoking, and doubly if he abstains from both.

I never thought he was a role model until I realized I had grown into him. ;)

(Particularly since I *think* I saw both nicks logged in at the same time. I presume you just keep an IRC window constantly open on your home computer even when you're physically at work...)

Also, was your decision to have those nicknames pre- or post- Novel 11? It seems a bit fitting given how we found out Fujiwara (um... if that really isn't a typo...) and Kuyou were collaborating a little closer than expected.

Yes on both counts, but I interpet Kuyou (the character I play on IRC) as per K:BDH; a benign presence that's just incredibly alien, not generically unfathomable evil out to kill Haruhi. <.<

I maintain a login at home for logging purposes; at some point in the future I'll stop using the work log-in and just VNC in from work.  I've just been exceptionally lax about setting that (and the VPN) up. >_>;;;

No, I just found it sort of funny to see someone pontificate on the benefits of semicolons like that, then immediately go on to misuse them, even more funny that 'someone' turned out to be myself, and I hope people share some of that amusement.

If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?

I do mean what I said about doing the same (or worse) countless times myself.  Consider: I didn't catch your correction when it was offered; instead I noticed it only at the last possible opportunity.

In this case, I call 'no harm; no foul'. ;)

Exactly; we're not writing mission-critical software for hospitals, here.

Oh, that was a stressful job. ;_;

[sarsaparilla]

I must say that the discussion is already at this point delving deeper into the finer points of writing than I had hoped to ever reach. It's a very good thing, and as I'm perhaps more interested in staying consistent through the story than in hitting some particular target of 'correctness' (well, I do try to use correct language as well, but the issue looks a bit fuzzy to me), I'm willing to revise these first chapters as many times as needed until they are within acceptable bounds for everybody, and then try to carry that particular style to the future chapters.

Basically, the fundamental issue seems to be: is it possible to separate the original author's personal style, overall Japanese (light novel) style, and any artifacts introduced in the translation process from each other, in order to achieve as accurate an imitation as possible, or if the answer is negative, which style would manage to capture the original intent? I have been aware of the question but I never thought that I'd get to a level where it becomes a major obstacle.

So, once again, I've incorporated all the suggestions and updated the attachment. Since the changes were minor, there shouldn't be a need for another full round of revisions. ^_^' *tempting fate*

Concerning my style, I don't leave things unexplained and vague with the intention to somehow tease the readers, I just want to leave room for personal interpretations and little details that can easily be overlooked, but which provide serendipitous surprises if somebody notices them. As an example, here's a detail that nobody has commented so far:

On the baseball field, instead of the match, Kyon uses some time to watch other students around the field, then suddenly decides that he isn't interested in the game any more, and goes back to the class. His first comment to Haruhi when he gets there? "Didn't see you around."

My version of Kyon has rather formidable powers of obfuscation, at least concerning certain issues, and it's only through small slips like this that his true thoughts can be inferred. ^_^ I absolutely don't mind if nobody notices these kinds of details, just writing them in pleases me greatly.

And, since it has caused much bewilderment, I feel obliged to tell a bit more about Haruhi's take on physics in this story. >_>

The base units of the SI system are various appendages. Meter is an arm, second is a leg and kilogram is a head (not mentioned in the passage but ampere would be a wing and kelvin a tentacle :p). Derived units are creatures made out of these basic building blocks, put above if multiplied and below if divided. There was some computer game where you could make arbitrary creatures out of such body parts, I think.

Because Haruhi likes energy, she equates it with the human shape. The unit of energy is kg m² / s² which in Haruhi-speak turns to "one head and two arms above, two legs below -- that's a human". The problem that Haruhi is using as the example gives mass and height (and implies gravitational acceleration) and asks for potential energy to be solved. Since the units must match on both sides of the equation, the problem turns into a task of making a 'human' shape out of the given parts that are arm-above-two-legs-below (acceleration), arm-above (height) and head-above (mass). The correct answer is just to put them together as they are, and thus the formula for potential energy is E = m g h You don't have to remember the formula because there's only one possible combination of mass, acceleration and height that has the same unit as energy, so it must the correct one.

To be quite honest, that is more or less the way I avoided learning anything in high school physics classes, though back then I wasn't aware that others didn't see things the way I did. I was just mystified why the teacher would want to waste hours on end trying to get us remember some arbitrary formulas through rote memorization and goofy mnemonics. >_>

[Arakawa]

Ah, so the stupid fancy word for that is dimensional analysis. (Though during my own education I wasn't ever asked to do it in terms of arms and legs.) What does Haruhi do for constant factors? (It took physicists way too long to figure out that to get energy to stay conserved they needed to write kinetic energy as E = 1/2 m v^2)

Does she have some notion that kinetic energy is only half as <some adjective> as potential energy?

[sarsaparilla]

Ah, so the stupid fancy word for that is dimensional analysis. (Though during my own education I wasn't ever asked to do it in terms of arms and legs.)

(goes to wiki) I see ... yes, that's the thing. It's a whole separate discipline? I wonder why it wasn't even mentioned in high school.

What does Haruhi do for constant factors? (It took physicists way too long to figure out that to get energy to stay conserved they needed to write kinetic energy as E = 1/2 m v^2)

Does she have some notion that kinetic energy is only half as <some adjective> as potential energy?

I didn't think it out that far other than realizing that there'd have to be a triangle somewhere.

This discussion is going to weird places....

[Arakawa]

(goes to wiki) I see ... yes, that's the thing. It's a whole separate discipline? I wonder why it wasn't even mentioned in high school.

I'm weirdly tempted to embark on a comprehensive comparison of Finnish and Canadian high school education... anyhow... as far as I remember, both systems rank ludicrously high on a worldwide scale. From what you said earlier it sounds like Finland has a definite advantage in terms of how they do language education, my experience with French class in Canada was... laughably bad (especially considering the fact that it does, after all, have official-language status and is therefore mandatory to teach) and it actually put me off from learning that language properly.

I didn't think it out that far other than realizing that there'd have to be a triangle somewhere.

*slaps forehead* it's bloody obvious. If energy is a person, then potential energy is Kyon, unless you kick his ass he doesn't go anywhere and he is therefore twice as dense as Haruhi, who always runs around getting things done on her own initiative, and can therefore be used to stand in for kinetic energy.

And since in Haruhi's experience most ordinary humans are lazy idiots like Kyon, regrettably he becomes the standard unit for measuring energy.

This discussion is going to weird places....

If a discussion of Haruhi's thought processes didn't go weird places, I'd say we weren't doing the job properly.

[Arakawa]

Also, after looking at the original Japanese version of the novels, I notice that blank lines in between paragraphs are used extremely sparingly. Mostly the dialogue-heavy scenes run together as follows:

「ねえ、昨日のドラマ見た？　九時からのやつ」
「見てない」
「えー？　なんでー？」
「知らない」
「いっぺん見てみなよ、あーでも途中《とちゅう》からじゃ解《わか》んないか。そうそう、だったら教えてあげようか、今までのあらすじ」
「うるさい」
　こんな感じ。

Formatting the above according to English conventions, of course, causes the scene to balloon to take up twice as much space on a page, and arguably changes the pacing. In my opinion this is one of the trickier obstacles to exactly recreating the tone of the original novels.

[sarsaparilla]

I interpet Kuyou (the character I play on IRC) as per K:BDH; a benign presence that's just incredibly alien, not generically unfathomable evil out to kill Haruhi.

Just noticed this one.

Actually, it is -- at least in principle -- possible to argue that canon!Kuyou has a case of extreme blue and orange morality. Specifically, she doesn't seem to get (among other things) the concept of individuality. Add to that the fact that data beings don't seem to share the view on death with humans either, so from her point of view what Fujiwara asked her to do might not differ from a situation where a human is asked to pour a quart of water to the pot while cooking. It's hard to say which way Kuyou will go in the canon but I'd be rather disappointed to see her turned into a simple 'evil' character. Asakura is similarly ... disruptive, and ax-crazy on top of that, and there's still a lot of mileage to get from that character.

[Muphrid]

Also, after looking at the original Japanese version of the novels, I notice that blank lines in between paragraphs are used extremely sparingly. Mostly the dialogue-heavy scenes run together as follows:

What is the significance of the lines with smaller or faded quotation marks?

Concerning my style, I don't leave things unexplained and vague with the intention to somehow tease the readers, I just want to leave room for personal interpretations and little details that can easily be overlooked, but which provide serendipitous surprises if somebody notices them. As an example, here's a detail that nobody has commented so far:

On the baseball field, instead of the match, Kyon uses some time to watch other students around the field, then suddenly decides that he isn't interested in the game any more, and goes back to the class. His first comment to Haruhi when he gets there? "Didn't see you around."

My version of Kyon has rather formidable powers of obfuscation, at least concerning certain issues, and it's only through small slips like this that his true thoughts can be inferred. ^_^ I absolutely don't mind if nobody notices these kinds of details, just writing them in pleases me greatly.

I think as long as you have a clear idea of the subtext you intend, these things will generally work out.  When you do it enough, people will pick up, though maybe not every single hint.


Regarding the physics and dimensional analysis, I must say I'd look forward to seeing how Haruhi treats electromagnetism.  Just what would be a coulomb? :P  But in all seriousness, at least here in the States there's some level of emphasis placed on dimensional analysis (or casually, just units);  My university mandates that almost all the undergraduates take two introductory physics courses--one in mechanics and another in electromagnetism.  On the exams, the instructors tell us as graders to take off as much as 40% for an incorrect answer with the wrong dimensions (and for treating vectors as scalars, among other things).

[Arakawa]

Also, after looking at the original Japanese version of the novels, I notice that blank lines in between paragraphs are used extremely sparingly. Mostly the dialogue-heavy scenes run together as follows:

What is the significance of the lines with smaller or faded quotation marks?

Let's see... it might display differently on your computer than mine, but I see two kinds of quotation marks:

「見てない」

These are the standard Japanese quotation marks used to indicate dialogue, of course;

途中《とちゅう》

And these are used in place of furigana. Since this is a light novel, there is a lot of furigana in it, even for embarrassingly simple stuff like "扉《とびら》", so it can be read by more or less anyone down to elementary school children.

Furigana are generally written above or beside the kanji which they're meant to elucidate (depending on writing direction), but since I have the novels in .txt format, that option is unavailable. When advanced typesetting is unavailable, special quotation marks are used instead as you can see here.

Is that what you were wondering about?

My university mandates that almost all the undergraduates take two introductory physics courses--one in mechanics and another in electromagnetism.  On the exams, the instructors tell us as graders to take off as much as 40% for an incorrect answer with the wrong dimensions (and for treating vectors as scalars, among other things).

Hmm... mandatory physics.. pretty advanced policy. 40% for wrong dimensions is about right if somehow the quantity of the answer is still correct, but unless it's obviously just a typo at the end , it generally indicates a failure to understand exactly what you're measuring, and would probably result in even more marks taken off.

Then again, my university was always famous for having resoundingly harsh grading policy.

[Muphrid]

Ah, I was referring to this:

「ねえ、昨日のドラマ見た？　九時からのやつ」
「見てない」

For some reason, when I quote these lines, initially all the quotation marks appear the same, but in the post and as soon as I start editing the field, the quotation marks on the first line look bigger and darker.  Maybe that's just some kind of encoding artifact, and they're all really meant to be the same.  If that's the case, then the scene just consists of alternating dialogue line by line?  I'm not sure I understand how this would make it balloon by comparison.

[Arakawa]

Ah... encoding difficulties, eh? Apologies for thinking you didn't know about inline furigana, then.

My point is that English dialogue puts a blank line every time a different person starts speaking, so instead of

「ねえ、昨日のドラマ見た？　九時からのやつ」
「見てない」
「えー？　なんでー？」
「知らない」
「いっぺん見てみなよ、あーでも途中《とちゅう》からじゃ解《わか》んないか。そうそう、だったら教えてあげようか、今までのあらすじ」
「うるさい」
　こんな感じ。

we get

「ねえ、昨日のドラマ見た？　九時からのやつ」

「見てない」

「えー？　なんでー？」

「知らない」

「いっぺん見てみなよ、あーでも途中《とちゅう》からじゃ解《わか》んないか。そうそう、だったら教えてあげようか、今までのあらすじ」

「うるさい」

　こんな感じ。

which feels much slower and/or much less descriptive. In general, seeing such a barren expanse of dialogue in English would prompt me to try to insert action in between the various phrases more or less as follows (sorry for mixing languages, by the way):

「ねえ、昨日のドラマ見た？　九時からのやつ」

「見てない」

「えー？　なんでー？」the foolish person would inevitably go on to ask.

  Haruhi would scowl to indicate to the one accosting her that they just weren't getting it.

「知らない」

「いっぺん見てみなよ、」some of the particularly audacious challengers might persist, although at this point it would be akin to trying to obtain the attention of a brick wall,「あーでも途中《とちゅう》からじゃ解《わか》んないか。そうそう、だったら教えてあげようか、今までのあらすじ」

「うるさい」

　こんな感じ。

to make it feel somewhat less opaque. But this is way outside the rules of translation. In general it's rare to see so much undecorated dialogue in a well-written English language fanfiction of this exact novel series... which makes for an inevitable style divergence.

It's even more pronounced when I load the full novel and skim back and forth through it - dialogue is tightly packed onto the screen, so the absence of frequent observations by the narrator isn't particularly noticeable, and a blank line becomes a pretty drastic way of indicating a major break in the action. In comparison, the translation I have sometimes starts to feel like it's sleepwalking a little.

[Muphrid]

I think those blank lines are conventional only on the internet, really.  I snagged an excerpt from the Brown website with a portion of the first novel.  Dialogue there is on separate lines, but there aren't any blank lines between, just an indent for a new paragraph like you'd expect.

[sarsaparilla]

I think those blank lines are conventional only on the internet, really.  I snagged an excerpt from the Brown website with a portion of the first novel.  Dialogue there is on separate lines, but there aren't any blank lines between, just an indent for a new paragraph like you'd expect.

It must be a matter of taste, but I found that excerpt almost unreadable. It felt like listening to some motormouth who speaks incessantly at 40 MPH so that after a while the text just sort of blurs into one huge block filling the entire page.

Actually, it is kind of counterproductive that we even have think about typographical issues. I would have expected to see a system where there is a separate tag for each element of prose, and then some program that creates the desired layout based on them....

...!

Actually, even I might be able to create something that converts from a custom markup set to HTML. I dug around a couple of days ago when the issue of formatting was first mentioned and found something called sed that can do automatic text substitution, but the syntax looked so arcane that I couldn't bother to even try.

But!

I know that there are computer-oriented people around. How much work would you estimate it to take to design a set of custom tags just for different elements of prose, and some contraption to translate them to HTML or some other viewable format? That would remove the entire headache of thinking about the layout while writing, if it's all in a single style file.