Guardian of Heaven and Earth - New Yogo Complete!

  Guardian of Heaven and Earth
-
New Yogo

(Book 10 of the Guardian of the Spirit Series)

Author: Uehashi Nahoko

Translator: Ainikki the Archivist

 

 Translator's Notes

 

This may not interest everyone, but with the main series complete and just gaiden and extras left to go, I figured I'd include some of my main observations, pet peeves, and preferences when it comes to the translation of this series. If that holds no interest to you whatsoever, feel free to skip this one and stay tuned for the extras that will be posted on the Discord server. ;)

 

 

What I Like to Translate

I tend to like the stuff that's easiest for me to translate: action/violence, scenes where characters are actively interacting with one another and their environment, and scenes of travel. Travel and tracking are fun for me to translate because I used to go hiking with friends all the time before quarantine...traveling in books isn't the same, but it's far better than nothing. I don't struggle much during scenes with lots of action and things going on, so they always feel very vivid and immediate when I start translating them.

I absolutely love deep character moments that reflect either sincere caring or pivotal change: the endings of Traveler of the Void, Return from the Hard Journey, and Traveler of the Blue Road hit particularly hard for me and stayed with me for days after I translated them. They also sucked me in so hard and so fast that I lost the language barrier and felt it just as much in Japanese as I would have if it had originally been written in English.  

Perspectives similar to or sympathetic to my own are also easier to translate: Balsa, Tanda, Chagum, Hugo and Ihan are easier to translate than Sufar, Adol, Raul or Rasugu.

What I Don't Like to Translate

Political speech is my #1 least favorite thing and is a big part of the reason Shuga is so low on my favorite list of character voices to translate (see below). The imperial family of New Yogo is referred to in god-like terms in somewhat antiquated keigo (敬語, exalted speech) which does not resemble ordinary speech in Japanese at all. Cathy Hirano mentions this stumbling block in her interviews as well. The general strategy used in untangling keigo is to find the verb (動詞), since that tends to indicate the general trend of the sentence. Sentences in keigo tend to be very polite and incredibly vague. You might notice that Chagum struggles to understand what Shuga's getting at sometimes and asks him for clarification; this is one method Uehashi uses to make his meaning clearer.

Social anthropology also tends to fly way over my head, but I've read a lot of Japanese history and historical fiction in Japanese, so I'm able to filter the information presented through that lens. My style in those sections leans harder toward historical than cultural because that's what I know, in both English and Japanese. 

Magic and magic weaving also tends to be pretty tough. I'm glad Cathy Hirano did that first and gave me a shared vocabulary to use, because sentences in Japanese don't need subjects to be complete and grammatically correct. Japanese also has no referent for "it, it's", which can make it incredibly difficult for me to tell what it is the author wants me to look at. Magic weaving and Nayugu are written in a high-minded ethereal style that doesn't translate perfectly well into English. There are different "triggers" that characters have before they see Nayugu (Chagum gets splitting head pain, Asra feels like she's been slapped by Noyuk, Surina feels Nayugul in the wind, etc.), but these tend to be individualized and don't form a clear pattern. Magic is mysterious, but English likes specificity. It's a constant tug-of-war between language conventions whenever I translate a magic weaving scene.

Favorite (and Least Favorite) Character Voices

These designations are based on the difficulty of translating the character and how much I like and respect them. It's a very subjective list, but in general it's ranked from easiest character for me to translate to hardest character for me to translate. I've confined the list to viewpoint characters, otherwise we'd be here all day.

Balsa - She's direct and always easy to understand. She doesn't mince words or hide her intentions and she's always honest about what she's feeling, at least to herself. She also provokes or otherwise plays an active role in many of the series' action scenes.

Tanda - He makes me wish English had a wider range of expression in terms of politeness registers. Tanda has a very quiet, friendly, relaxed way about him--all the time, even when he's tied up and imprisoned. He never stops being the Ned Flanders of the Guardian of the Spirit universe. But he has backbone as well. Tanda's not a coward and he's not emotionally constipated, which makes him an incredibly rewarding male voice to translate.

Shihana (Guardian of the God) - The queen bitch of the series, but she makes me laugh. Oh, how she makes me laugh. I'm not sure how much of that snarkiness really comes through in the translation, but I did try because I find her intriguing. 

 

Hugo - I never didn't like Hugo, and that's saying something, considering that the first thing we learn about him is that he's been sent to capture Chagum. Hugo is an odd mix of things; he has nostalgia and deep melancholia about his homeland, but he's also likely capable of beating Shihana at tarzu. If Shihana is Balsa's foil, then Hugo is Tanda's. He's shockingly sweet at times, but just as shockingly cruel. His brief scenes with Balsa are some of my favorites in the series.

Surina - Surina was one of the most sympathetic characters in Traveler of the Void; she was also one of the easiest to understand. Her spoken and narrative voices are very close to the Standard Japanese dialect, aside from a few Rassharou words and phrases. Her personal story was also deeply compelling. Most of her chapters were fairly easy for me to translate.

Chagum - ...would be higher on the list, except for the keigo nonsense. Chagum tends to speak more clearly than Shuga, but his role makes him use the exalted non-standard forms with more regularity than I'd like. If we were comparing character voices based solely on how strongly I like and identify with them, Chagum would take the #2 spot after Balsa, but that's not the only criterion I'm measuring here.

Tarsan - Easier to understand than Chagum, but just a little bit harder to like: Tarsan is brash and uber-masculine and impulsive, but he's also surprisingly sweet.

Asra and Chikisa - Just as easy to root for as Tarsan and Surina, but bogged down by cult vocabulary. Chikisa gets the unappealing role of telling us about his mother's cult from an outsider's perspective; Asra has the same reporting role, but from an insider's perspective.

Ihan - A grown-up Chagum, cured of idealism. Ihan is very much how I think Chagum would have turned out if he'd remained in Kosenkyo's palace until adulthood, only a bit more grounded and down-to-earth. He provokes many of the social/cultural/anthropology scenes in Guardian of the God, so while I like him lots his sections tend to be rough going.

Mark - I like hunting and tracking (and not killing things), so Mark and I had a little something in common from the start. Also, dude saves Balsa even though he's playing for the other side, and I respect that.

Sufar - Not as sympathetic as Mark, but not entirely unsympathetic. He does a lot of magic weaving and explains a lot of things about magic weaving to us, which makes his voice particularly challenging for me.

Shuga - See above re: keigo. If Shuga talked like a normal person, he'd be in my top five somewhere. I love his curiosity about the world and magic weaving and how much he changes from Chagum's influence, but he talks like a service robot in a Japanese convenience store.

Karina - The queen of mean, plots and counterplots. I don't feel for her and she uses a hyper-feminized version of the same kind of speech Shuga uses.

 

Adol - This list's resident dummy, and a traitorous one, at that. He's not actually too hard to translate; I just couldn't bring myself to care about him at all. He partially narrates the first chapter of Traveler of the Void and half-convinced me I wouldn't be able to translate the series when he lapsed into uber-polite court speech for a page or two.

Rasugu - I found Rasugu fascinating, but he's the only character on this list that I want Balsa to run her spear through and end forever. I hate this guy's guts, even though he told us loads about the Talsh and the culture of Old Yogo and whatnot. Hugo does a way better job there.

Raul - Raul is actually not difficult to translate in the slightest, but he has no self-awareness and it bothers me a lot. Unlike Rasugu, who owns his role, Raul is a master of self-deception (not unlike Shihana in that regard, anyway). I didn't absolutely hate his sections, but very little about him is revealed in how he thinks and acts.

Translator's Preferences

So, what was my favorite book to translate? That's pretty tough, because the easiest ones weren't always the most rewarding. My list is below.

1. Traveler of the Blue Road

2. Guardian of the God - God's Appearance

3. Traveler of the Void

4. Guardian of the God - Return from the Hard Journey

5. Guardian of Heaven and Earth - Kanbal

6. Guardian of Heaven and Earth - Rota

7.  Guardian of Heaven and Earth - New Yogo

 I loved how Traveler of the Blue Road opened up the world for us, even more than Traveler of the Void did, showing us new nations, cultures, and ways of thinking. I wish there was more follow-through on Traveler of the Void in the rest of the series, because I'd place it just below Guardian of the Darkness as a stand-alone novel. Guardian of the God is a mix of fantasy/horror that I really enjoyed for the most part, long digressions about sheep and bloodthirsty cults notwithstanding. 

Guardian of Heaven and Earth is one big pacing problem, though: all that happens in the first one is that Balsa finds Chagum, and all that happens in the second is that Chagum secures the alliances. The meat of the story is in the third volume, but we don't get to see the final battles or many of the events that will shape the characters' future. I'm not certain why the story would end that way.  I confess myself a little bummed at Guardian of Heaven and Earth-New Yogo's anticlimax. :) But I acknowledge that it's very difficult to end an epic fantasy series. 

Extras

I'll be posting print-ready files to the Discord server, so every fan who wants them can have the translations in book format (for an at-cost fee: something like $20 each). If you need a Discord invite, leave a comment and I'll post the link. I may also be posting a few more extras while I gear up for translating the gaiden.

Thanks for staying tuned, everyone! See you for The Wanderer!