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There is no pronunciation difference whatsoever; they are the exact same word that can mean both "per" and "winner". See here.
From that page:
So, the joke is more "Kevin thinks that he won a contest (due to homonym mistakes) and Satoko faints when he tells her this"? I haven't been able to find the source comic yet - is it even available in english? - so don't have the context to confirm.
BTW, ~Albert3105 your link leads me to a "The page you were looking for does not exist"
Chapter 63 "Ramune". First Kevin misinterprets the label, then Satoko reads what it actually says, then Satoko faints. I'll admit I'm not getting the humor well either.
Also I'd be cautious giving links to unofficial sources.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
^^ It is, but you have to pay for the official version from Seven Seas Entertainment, while the unofficial fan translation is, well, unofficial and can't be linked here.
Edited by homogenized
Puns in unfamiliar languages tend not to translate well in general. It seems like they fainted due to Kevin's stupidity.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I assume you're trying to determine whether the example goes under Faint in Shock.
It's a common anime trope to denote a punchline by having a character fall over (not faint, necessarily) from the sheer stupidity another character has just demonstrated. It's usually depicted via the artistic shorthand of a character's legs sticking in the air. Is that what this is referring to?
The kanji would offer a vital clue: "ケヴィンは当たりです。" with ""あ" or "あたり" as the 振り仮名 (furigana, ruby text over the kanji) for 当たり would mean "Kevin is a winner" or "a success" or "a hit." Compare "恵子のリストランテは4番街の辺りにある。" with ""あた" or "あたり" for the 振り仮名 for 辺り, saying that "Keiko's restaurant is near Fourth Avenue."
^^ I believe that's Face Plant.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
^^ i assume the joke here is that it's written with hiragana so the meaning is deliberately ambiguous. also Face Fault is another related trope
Yeah, probably, but underCoverSailsman can still use the kanji to explain the difference, e.g.,
^x5 That's why I was looking at it in the first place, but whatever trope is appropriate, I find the phrasing a bit ambiguous in terms of the sequence of events.
Without the context that the two words are homophones, the sentence structure implies that Kevin makes the reading mistake and that Satoko hears the mistaken word and comes to the conclusion that Kevin has won a contest. (At least to my upper-midwest-US trained ear.)
^ Having the proper Kanji for both words and stating that they are pronounced identically would probably help a lot here.
For those who actually have access to a copy, is Face Fault more appropriate here?
Edited by underCoverSailsman
From what I can see, I believe that Face Fault is more fitting as the moment seems to be a comedic "wordplay reaction" moment then something serious.
THE GOLDEN AGE WILL RETURN AGAIN!
Okay. Got a chance to digest this. Does this sound right?
See if I managed to copy the Kanji correctly:
- Face Fault: Sakoto, at a japanese language mistake made by Kevin. While reading a drink bottle, he mistakes "あたり" or "per" as its homophone "当たり" or "winner", and thinks he has won a contest.note Once Sakoto reads the bottle herself, she collapses at the "Doh" moment.
(Side-note, I just realized that this pronunciation also matches a certain video game company. I'm doing a bit of a Headdesk myself ATM...)
Edited by underCoverSailsman
here's how i'd write it:
- Alternate Character Reading: In Japanese, あたり (atari) can be read as both 当たり ("winner") and 辺り ("per", as in "calories per serving"). Kevin reads a drink bottle and interprets あたり as 当たり, causing him to think he's won a contest. Makoto reads the bottle and realizes it actually says あたり as in 辺り, causing her to Face Fault.
^ Thanks. That tropeing actually makes more sense. (And you apparently can understand the difference between the kanji and the... furigana?, which I did not catch)
If no one gives a counterpoint, I'll swap it in in a couple of hours, unless you want to do it yourself.
^^ That's not an example of Alternate Character Reading. The trope page explains why in detail, but for here, the work uses "あたり", characters that can only be read one way, but can mean different things because the characters (hiragana) are a way of writing native Japanese words phonetically.
Edited by homogenized
Okay. Thanks for the feedback. Is it clear from the comic that the bottle label uses the furigana, or is that only the version shown to the readers? (IE, he's reading kanji with the correct pronunciation, but mistaking the meaning.)
Would Face Fault be a good primary trope for the incident, then?
^^^ ah yeah, i guess that's an inversion of alternate character reading. Face Fault should be fine
So this is supposed to be a webcomic, but all I can find is Amazon listings for the volumes printed on paper. Or is it that the latest strips are on a website anyone can view, but the older ones are collected and printed up in books?
It's a Yonkoma published at twi4 website (which I believe owned by Seven Seas Entertainment and they select best works for physical release). And I don't see it necessarily relevant.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Thank you very much for that information, learned quite a few things.
It's relevant to me because I haven't seen the 4コマ漫画 for myself. I'm making a number of assumptions that may be incorrect.
And it may be pertinent to you to know what references I consulted. First I went to http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic entered "atari" under keyword and checked the "Search using romanized Japanese" box.
Does someone have a (legal) link the the original page on the Japanese site? I'd still like to see the actual sequence, if possible.
got it (publisher's Twitter, like comic strips they showcase strips by one at a time before compiling them).
Wow, danke molto, Amonimus! I've transcribed what the bottle says as
(romanized seihin ippon atari 80 Kirokarorii)
which Google Translate translates as "80 calories per product" but I'd translate as "80 calories per bottle" — I'd like to say because of the cylindrical object counter rather than because that's what's drawn, but to be honest I'm so rusty at Japanese I have pretty much forgotten all the counter words I was taught.
Anyway, note that Google Translate writes out 辺り in hiragana, and if you give it "ボトル辺り80カロリー" it asks if you meant "ボトルあたり80カロリー" instead.
Okay, so he's working from the phonetic spelling. Does this look right?
- Face Fault: Sakoto, at a japanese language mistake made by Kevin. While reading a drink bottle, he mistakes "あたり", the phonetic spelling of 辺り "per" for its homophone 当たり "winner", and thinks he has won a contest. Once Sakoto reads the bottle herself, she collapses at the "Doh" moment.
^Thanks for the transliteration. I was getting lost in the different fonts, and it would have taken me a while to tease that out.
Edited by underCoverSailsman
"D'oh" has an apostrophe, if I may nitpick.
^^ in the comic the girl's name is Satoko, not Sakoto. Also you can remove the first sentence since it just summarizes the rest of the paragraph. And this is not necessary but the drink bottle Kevin reads is specifically Ramune.
I also think you can explain the context of the "per" more. Something like:
Kevin thinks he has won a contest when he mistakes "あたり", the phonetic spelling of 辺り or "per," for its homophone 当たり or "winner" on the label of a bottle of the popular Japanese soft drink Ramune. Satoko then reads the bottle herself, realizes it just states that there are 80 kcal per bottle, and collapses to the ground at the "D'oh" moment.
Edited by amathieu13
I looked up "per" (English) on Jim Breen's WWWJDIC and now I'm confused, and not sure that "辺り" is right for "per." I guess I haven't progressed too much from the days I was eating restaurants (レスつトランを食べます) and writing on pencils (えんぴつに書きます)...
Huh. When I look up 辺り, I get definitions related to "In the Vicinity". 当たり in the Jim Breen dictionary includes both "Success, Hit" (pretty close to "win") and "Per, Each". This seems to contradict some of the other explanations of the panel.
- I speak/read no japanese, so I can't gauge the accuracy of the dictionary here.
Are Kevin's language skills so slight that he could be picking out just the single word?
Kevin might be like me years ago, overconfident in his understanding of Japanese: he recognizes that one word and thinks he knows what the whole sentence means. And maybe I'm still overconfident, having jumped to the conclusion that two disparate meanings of one word would get significantly different kanji...
I'll transcribe the word balloons later, for my own benefit even if it turns out to not be relevant to this discussion.
This query is getting long. I don't think ATT is suited for this type of thing. Maybe move this to the forums (not sure where)
Macron's notes
Would Webcomic.Satoko And Nada's discussion page work? As far as I'm concerned, the topic is just to give accurate context to a single example, it's not supposed to provide super literal translation to the text.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
ok I was def being lazy and just editing what was already written assuming people had already did that fact checking. But yes, 辺り = in the vicinity. 当たり can mean both hit/success and per. They are both phonetically pronounced the same as あたり. The example should therefore be written as:
Kevin thinks he has won a contest when he reads "あたり" as "winner" on the label of a bottle of the popular Japanese soft drink Ramune. However, "あたり" can also mean "per" depending on the context. When Satoko reads the bottle herself, she instantly realizes that Kevin made a mistake as the sentence he was reading just states that there are 80 kcal per bottle, and collapses to the ground at the "D'oh" moment.
Edited by amathieu13
Ask The Tropers isn't the right place for linguistics discussions. We have the On-Topic Conversations forum for that.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Satoko and Nada has this entry:
Presumably there is a pronunciation difference here, but the Romanizations do not reflect it. Can someone give me some pointers?