Translator’s Notes: Ginpachi Sensei Lesson 3

It only took two and a half years, but better late than never.

An explanation

Besides all the things that have happened in my life in the last three years, the main reason why it took me so long to get back to Ginpachi was that I felt utterly swamped by all the research it took just to understand references and terminology. This came to a head when I looked at lesson three, which concerned baseball, a sport that, as an uncultured brit who occasionally likes to watch cricket, I knew absolutely nothing about. There’s only one thing that baseball shares in common with cricket, and that’s an extensive list of bewildering jargon. This was confounded by the chapter constantly switching between wasei-eigo terms (English borrowed into Japanese) and Japanese terms for said jargon.

Being as unfamiliar with baseball as I was, my main objective with the chapter was to make sure that someone who didn’t know a thing about baseball could enjoy it. Wherever possible, I made an effort to explain what was happening in the game without resorting to jargon. An example of this is at the end of the match, where Katsura and Shinpachi are forced out. Literally, the line said that a double play (called “get two” in wasei-eigo) occurred via a force play. While I could have used those terms, it made more sense and felt less confusing to me to just say that both Katsura and Shinpachi were forced out. Another example is the line “After Hedoro’s heroics, the next three batters got retired in quick succession without even reaching base.” In Japanese, the term used is 三者凡退 which in the Jisho dictionary translates to “out in 1-2-3 order.” In English, this is called a 1-2-3 inning in which a pitcher only faces three batters and forces them out before they reach base, thereby ending the batting side’s inning.

I could turn this whole translation notes into an explainer on baseball jargon, but frankly I don’t feel like doing that, so here are the references that I found in the original novel.

The references

Yakyuken

The Japanese title for lesson three literally translates to something like “If you’re going to play baseball, then you shouldn’t play it like this.” This is an inversion of the first line of the yakyuken song which roughly goes “If you’re going to play baseball, then play like it this.” Although the song originated as a baseball chant, it is now more widely known as a stripping game version of rock-paper-scissors. There are several infamous games like this on the Sega Saturn that you can easily find walkthroughs on YouTube if you’re curious. Since this is a reference that few people are even going to get, I instead came up with “How Not to Play Baseball,” based on my experience of trying to understand baseball jargon. My aim for this retranslation was that by the end of it, I would at the very least know how not to play baseball.

Astro Kyudan

The line about Ginpachi liking the idea of pretending to own a baseball team was originally a reference to an old baseball manga called “Astro Kyudan” which in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1972 to 1976. The line was about Ginpachi cosplaying as if he was the owner of Astro Kyudan, which I took to mean as him liking the idea of owning a baseball team without any of the commitment or responsibility.

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

When the students were made to recite poems from the Man’yoshu, the Japanese makes a reference to the first two lines of one of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro’s short poems (called Tanka 短歌 たんか). The ancient and modern Japanese goes like this:

黒玉之
夜去来者
巻向之
川音高之母
荒足鴨疾

ぬはたまの
夜さり来れば
巻向の
川音高しも
嵐かも疾き

My original plan for this line was to find what official translations of the poem had been done, much like I’ve done for the quotes at the beginning of each of the lessons, but I soon found out that English translations of the Man’yoshu are not only expensive, but also not complete, meaning that even if I did buy an English edition, it might not contain the one poem I’m actually looking for (not to mention the lockdown that is going on as I write this). It is much less accessible to research than Chinese proverbs, that’s for sure. Another route I could have taken was to try and translate the line myself, but honestly, it made more sense for me to reference the Man’yoshu again since it has already been established in the previous lessons.

R.B.I. Baseball

When the Shuei leadoff batter is first introduced in Japanese, he makes a reference to a long-running and popular baseball series Pro Baseball: Family Stadium, which is now more commonly known and even officially titled as Famista. When the original Famicom (NES) game was brought over to America, it was localized as R.B.I Baseball. From the second game onwards, R.B.I Baseball and Famista have remained separate series with different aesthetics and gameplay.

Conclusion

Although having to confront the mistakes of the past in lessons one and two was difficult enough, looking back at my rough draft for this lesson was by far the most difficult part of this whole retranslation project. I completed the rough draft about a year and a half ago, and looking back, it was painfully obvious to see how uninvested I was at that point, since I was more occupied with trying to find a job. Going through it, I felt like the editor equivalent of Gordon Ramsay, with every other line making me want to call past me a fucking donkey. Much more than lessons one and two, I would’ve been better off scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch, that’s how bad it was. However, I felt that I owed it to myself as a translator and proofreader to go through the whole thing and fix every little error I could find.

As I mentioned before in my lesson one translator’s notes, it was by fully retranslating the rough draft that I realised formatting the internal dialogue into italics was the best option given the sheer amount of it in this lesson specifically. This then led me to go back to lessons one and two and reformat the internal dialogue into italics, helping me to realise that even after going through them earlier this year, I still had much work to do to bring them up to standard. The process of going through the rough draft of lesson three and making absolutely sure I got my baseball jargon right ultimately helped me to bring up the quality of the other lessons, which is why I’m glad I didn’t start from scratch.

What’s going to be interesting now with lesson four is that I’m going to produce a rough draft at my current level of skill. Editing my rough draft of lesson four should be a much less painful experience than it has been for the last three lessons. The operative word being “should.” Once I’m done translating and editing lesson four, I’m considering going through the previous lessons again to make doubly sure that when I finish translating this novel, I feel like I can put a bow on the whole project and consider it done.

I hope you enjoy lesson four whenever it comes out.