Spring Waltz. Subtitles from Hell

I've been watching pivotal scenes the ones with Philip in them with decent subtitles and it is an entirely different experience. I finally know that hero's evil father did for sure sell heroine into slavery. Really. Because that's the sort of show this is.

You know, I really like the heroine. Apart from her unaccountable poor taste in preferring the hero over Daniel Henney Philip she is really quite lovely. Pity she has to go from bouncy and cheery in the first episodes to being downtrodden and angst-ridden in the final ones. Plus she is also super cute and she has a great best friend who lives with her and her adopted family and also when I watch with the good subtitles might have a sort of slashtastic relationship with her. Especially when she asks her not to give her heart to Philip because she a) wants his super goodlookingness for herself (though she'll give him up for heroine) and b) because it always belongs to the best friend. And they share a bed. I like the Best Friend and Adoptive Brother relationship too.

Pity heroine has a useless adoptive father who owes money to the mob. What is it about this show and useless or controlling fathers? There's three of them, which seems a tad excessive even by the standards of Kdramas. And Philip's dad doesn't seem that great either.

I haven't seen the last two episodes yet because I am debating whether I should watch them with the now almost entirely insane subtitles or obtain decent ones. I've gotten sort of used to not really knowing what anyone is saying and enjoying the sometimes interesting language that whoever did these uses. Maybe the bunny secret will finally be revealed? Or this will turn out to be some experimental drama in which very little of the dialogue makes any sense?

That is bunnies: the mystery is solved

By dint of going through various subtitle files for Spring Waltz on jdramas and then watching the episode again (episode 8 about 42.50 in, for anyone who cares) I have discovered what the subtitler meant by 'that is bunnies.' And it is (at least according to the amateur subtitles) 'they should become a couple now.' Of course, I have no idea how you go from one to the other except beyond thinking that the subtitler thought of 'love-bunnies' or something of that ilk.

This is, I should point out, the person who translated concealer as 'cake'. That's concealer as in make-up concealer. And told me that Philip apparently searched high and low for his mother's grave so he could confess he missed his dog (another mystery I sorted out with the help of less confused subtitles).

Despite the subtitler's best attempts, however, I finished the series. There was a certain amount of ffing through scenes by the end because of the introduction of young child who was being dragged around by hero's real evil father. I did not approve of this development, though I guess some might find it winsome. Then there was some more angst, Philip looked like he might have a chance with girl only to get his heart kicked around some more, heroine ran off with hero, hero got engaged (again!) to fake first love, mad parents did things, Philip angsted in an incredibly attractive way, then happy ending. Not for Philip, though. And there was very little angsty driving. But crying and saying 'oppa' made an appearance instead.

That, my friends, is bunnies. And, no, I still am not tired of saying that.

I guess now it's either 'My Girl' (which I already own) or 'My Lovely Sam Soon' which I would need to obtain by some means. Admittedly, the latter has Daniel Henney in it and he gets a girl, but I fear the subtitles I might end up with.

Translations and saying yes or no

Having recently suffered through some very interesting subtitles I was thinking about translation and how insane it gets if people try to do it literally. I was reading through a modern Irish comic book version of The Táin (the most famous Irish epic) with someone to help out with their Irish and we had some odd moments. Such as when they translated this phrase 'dar m’fhallaing' as 'by my dressing gown,' which I guess it literally does mean in modern Irish, but it's really a sort of very archaic mild oath. And then there was the whole issue of how Irish doesn't have a verb to say 'I have'; you have to say that something is 'at you' or 'on you.' Nor do we have an all purpose useful word like 'hello' which is annoying if you answer the phone a lot.

Irish doesn't also have a word for yes or no: you just say either the positive or negative form of the verb back at someone. I've always wondered how many other languages don't have a word just to say yes/no. Latin doesn't really (though I guess people always say you can use 'itaque' for 'yes' but it doesn't really work.

Um. That's it.

ETA: As an update on the bunny front, here's an Irish saying:

Is fearr greim de choinín ná dhá ghreim de chat

Literally it means 'one bite of a bunny is better than two of a cat' - in other words that it is better to eat a little bit of rabbit than a lot of cat, or quality is better than quantity. I don't know why people say this as I don't think cats were ever on the menu in Ireland. Maybe it's just that a huge amount of Irish sayings involve cats.