The English humanist Roger Ascham (1515-1568) prescribed for the learning of Latin his famous "double translation" method, whereby students would translate selected passages from Latin to English and then back into Latin. The idea was to inculcate a sense of idiomatic propriety in both languages, at a time when composition might have to be done in either. Of course, few write in Latin anymore, but I recalled the double translation method recently when thinking about this insane project of mine. I thought it might be nearly impossible to accomplish the same sort of feat when translating between Japanese and Early Modern English (not to mention Spenser's weird archaizing), given the range of generally incompatible knowledge that would be required to pull it off. The two languages--in grammar, morphology, and semantic structure--are just so different... how to acquire a sensitive enough instinct in both? I must admit: I may be reading and translating the Japanese, but I certainly couldn't say whether or not what I'm reading is beautiful. I just don't know what the criteria are, and they do not seem to be as transferable from English as they would be among Western languages. And so, with a resounding "Alas!" I move on to the third stanza (of 55). Five lines today!
Here is the full third stanza in Spenserian, followed by the first five lines in Japanese:
Vpon a great aduenture he was bond,
That greatest Gloriana to him gaue,
That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,
To winne him worship, and her grace to haue,
Which of all earthly things he most did craue;
And euer as he rode, his hart did earne
To proue his puissance in battell braue
Vpon his foe, and his new force to learne;
Vpon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearne.
騎士は、あのいとも偉大なグロリアーナ、
妖精の国のあのいとも偉大な栄光の女王から
命じられた大冒険に赴くところで、
これによって名誉をかち取り、女王の愛顧を得ること、
これがこの世で、この騎士の何よりの願いであった。
kishi wa, ano itomo idaina Guroriaana (Gloriana),
yousei no kuni no ano itomo idaina eikou no joou kara
meijirareta daibouken ni omomuku tokorode,
kore ni yotte meiyo o kachitori, joou no aiko o eru (uru) koto,
kore ga kono yo de, kono kishi no nani yori no negai de atta.
騎士は、あのいとも偉大なグロリアーナ、
kishi wa, ano itomo idaina Guroriaana (Gloriana),
This phrase begins with our old standby 騎士 kishi (knight) and the topic particle. The phrase あのいとも偉大なグロリアーナ ano itomo idaina Guroriaana means "that extremely great Gloriana" which, I suppose, is an attempt to translate the superlative. Helpfully (?), the text provides a note on Gloriana:
エリザベス女王を指す。赤十字の騎士は妖精の女王の便命を受けて竜退治に出かける。
This says (umm): "Indicates Queen Elizabeth. The Redcrosse Knight, receiving a mission from the Faerie Queene, set out to do some dragon slaying." 便命 does not appear in my dictionary, but is comprised of the kanji for "convenient" and "fate" which sound like "mission" to me. 竜退治 is also a hell of a compound I can't find, but is something like "dragon-expel-subdue" so we can draw our own conclusions. The verb 受ける ukeru means "to receive." We use it in aikido, too. To be an "uke" means to "receive" a throw. To practice "ukemi" means to practice being thrown.
妖精の国のあのいとも偉大な栄光の女王から
yousei no kuni no ano itomo idaina eikou no joou kara
Easy. We know most of those words already: 妖精の国 is "Faerie land" (cute), we just saw the "extremely great" construction, here paired with 栄光 eikou "glorious" queen. So, with line one, we get: "The knight from that extremely great glorious queen of Faerie land, that extremely great Gloriana."
命じられた大冒険に赴くところで、
meijirareta daibouken ni omomuku tokorode,
命じられた meijirareta is the passive past tense form of the verb "to command" so "...was commanded." 大冒険 daibouken is my favorite word of this stanza; it means "great adventure." There's a white trashy theme park in New Jersey called Great Adventure, where I spent many fine summer days in my youth. I wonder if Japanese travel guides refer to it as 大冒険. Here, it is an indirect object (dative of purpose?). 赴くomomuku is a simple little verb that means "to go" or "to proceed" and ところで tokorode is a funny choice here--it means, even in casual conversation, "by the way" or "incidentally." So, this line reads "incidentally was commanded to proceed on a great adventure" or something like that. The main verb has yet to appear!
これによって名誉をかち取り、女王の愛顧を得ること、
kore ni yotte meiyo o kachitori, joou no aiko o eru (uru) koto,
For by means of this (kore ni yotte) honor (meiyo) to take victory? (kachitori), the fact of obtaining (eru koto) the queen's favor (joou no aiko). かち取り is tricky, because かち could be a number of things, but 取り is definitely "to take." The kanji 取 is comprised of 又 and 耳. The second one means ear ("mimi"), and I read in one of my kanji books that 又 was originally a knife or sword so 取, the common verb "to take," is, visually, a knife cutting off an ear. 得ること is a nominalized verb. 得る is either eru or uru. How do you decide which one to use? F* if I know.
これがこの世で、この騎士の何よりの願いであった。
kore ga kono yo de, kono kishi no nani yori no negai de atta.
This looks hard. The second clause is "by means of/in the location of the greatest desire (願いで negai de) of this knight... was." あった (atta) is the past tense of the common verb aru which is something like "to be" or "to exist." It's usually used with inanimate objects, though, so it must not be referring to the knight. The first clause seems to be along the lines of "as for this, by means of this era" or, more likely, "in this world" so maybe the whole thing is "this was in this world... where the desires of this knight were concerned... the greatest." These purpose clauses are trick-ay!
I'll have to put the whole thing together again:
騎士は、あのいとも偉大なグロリアーナ、
妖精の国のあのいとも偉大な栄光の女王から
命じられた大冒険に赴くところで、
これによって名誉をかち取り、女王の愛顧を得ること、
これがこの世で、この騎士の何よりの願いであった。
As for the knight, from that extremely great glorious queen of Faerie Land,
that extremely great Gloriana
he was commanded to proceed on a great adventure by the by,
because this winning of honor, the obtaining of the favor of the queen--
these were in this world, among the desires of this knight the greatest.
Here, again, are the original lines. You be the judge:
Vpon a great aduenture he was bond,
That greatest Gloriana to him gaue,
That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,
To winne him worship, and her grace to haue,
Which of all earthly things he most did craue;
2.08.2009
1.28.2009
Judge Ydrad: FQ 1.1.2.7-9 and a bit of art commentary
I was listening to the soundtrack, by Philip Glass, to the Paul Schrader film Mishima for inspiration while preparing this bit. I went to see a newly remastered (or whatever) cut at Film Forum several weeks ago and was quite moved by the stage-piece mise en scène as well as the score, which I promptly downloaded. Apparently, this film, done in Japanese with an all-Japanese cast, was never released in Japan due to a conflict with the Mishima estate (he was a writer with extreme views) and the virulently right-wing political establishment with which he is identified. Schrader himself was there to answer questions. Although Glass did the score, he said, they couldn't pay him for it, so the Candyman end titles composer retained the rights to it instead, subsequently sold it to whoever was buying, and now you've probably heard it before.
I am going to do things a little differently this time. Since I have a "readership" with different levels of Japanese, I want to figure out a way to make my posts as user-friendly as possible to all. For those who don't know the language, I want to continue to assure you that the grammar is not difficult. My canned explanations should give you enough information to muddle your way through the kanji I transcribe. I can't stress enough that it's this transcription that takes the greatest amount of my time when I'm typing up these posts. The translation itself is relatively straightforward, but looking up unfamiliar kanji in the dictionary is laborious. But that's, of course, why I'm doing this--to enhance my literacy over time.
Here are the final three lines, 7-9, of the second stanza of the first canto of the first book:
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
顔つきは厳し過ぎると見えたが、
恐れるものを知らず、常に人から恐れられていた。
And the romaji transliteration:
genkou* domo ni seigi, seijitsu, sana no hito nagara,
kaotsuki wa genshi sugiru to mieta ga,
osoreru mono o shirazu, tsuneni hito kara osorerareteita.
*note: I should have mentioned this earlier, but the transliteration of the Japanese long o ("oh") into romaji is usually written "ou" when macrons are not available (or, in this case, tedious to employ) and should not be pronounced as it is in English or French ("oo" or "ew") but as a regular English or Romance long o (always rounded, never open).
And the original:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
Now I will try a literal disposition in English of the Japanese parts of speech:
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
言行 (genkou) is a compound comprised of 言, which can mean either "words," or "speaking" when used as a verb; and 行, which has a few distinct uses, but typically appears as the common verb meaning "to go" (pronounced "iku" so "Tokyo e iku" means "I am going to Tokyo"). Genkou means "speech and behavior."
共 (domo) is an uncommon, and I suppose archaic pronoun of, it seems, any applicable person. Ususally, the Japanese word for "I" is "watashi" (among others), but in the olden days, "domo" might be used by an inferior speaking to a superior or by a superior to refer to an inferior. I had to look up this word by stroke count, because I couldn't figure out the radicals, and I happened to discover the kanji 卍 (manji), which means "swastika." I had no idea! Please note that the Nazi variety goes the other way. 共に can also mean "both; alike; together; along with" as I am sure it does here.
正義 (seigi) means "justice; righteousness; right" as you might expect any word containing 正 (right, correct, etc.) to mean. This kanji, interestingly, is also used by the Japanese when counting things up, like scores--it is their version of the Western way of counting in fives by drawing four straight lines and then slashing through them with the fifth. About 義, all I can say is try writing it!
誠実 (seijitsu) means "sincere; honest; faithful."
真実 (sana) means "truth; reality." Remember 真, used with the archaic pronounciation "makoto" before? Guess how 誠 is pronounced--makoto. It means "truth." 実 means truth. 真 also means "truth." 誠 also contains the radical 言 (look on the left side). Are these puns? Certainly they are attempts to vary the language.
の (no) is a possessive particle followed by
人 (hito) "person" and
ながら (nagara) which is a suffix adding the meaning "while" (or "both" or "as" or being "in" a certain condition). So--
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
Literally, from the Japanese, we get, in reverse order "a person of truth, honesty, righteousness in both speech and behavior." That's my best guess, the "nagara" being used in the sense of "in the state of" rather than "while," which doesn't seem to fit.
That was a bit laborious, so I'll be more terse with the next phrase:
顔つきは厳し過ぎると見えたが、
顔つき (kaotsuki) "countenance" は (wa) topic particle 厳し過ぎる (genshi sugiru) a verbalization of the noun "rigidity; severity" followed by a common verb, "sugiru," to add the sense of "too much" so "[is] too strict" と (to) "and" or a particle used, as likely in this case, in indirect speech 見えた (mieta) "seemed" が (ga) probably "but" though it's more typically the subject particle.
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Once again, literally, back to front, as we must do: "but his countenance seemed too severe." That was an easy one. In Japanese order, this phrase looks like "countenance being severe too much seemed but."
Finally:
恐れるものを知らず、常に人から恐れられていた。
恐れる (osoreru) "be afraid of" a word, when pronounced "kowai" in an annoying, high-pitched voice, is a common interjection used, mostly by young females, to mean "I'm afraid!" They seemed to me to be afraid of everything. もの (mono) is added after verbs to make them into things or to create a relative clause, so with "osoreru" we get "something to be afraid of" を (o) direct object particle 知らず (shirazu) "unaffected by" in this case, I imagine, though 知る (shiru) is the common verb "to know" 常に (tsuneni) "always; constantly" 人 (hito) "person" から (kara) a suffix adding the sense "from" either causally ("because") or directionally 恐れられていた (osorerareteita) an amazing, and I think invented, verb that turns the first verb of this phrase, 恐れる, which is already in a passive form (I cannot find an active form, which is typical in many languages for this sort of self-reflexive deponent), into a double passive, also in past progressive (or imperfect) tense, so "was being feared." Seriously, try pronouncing it: o-so-re-ra-re-te-i-ta.
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
More poetic in English than can perhaps be translated, literally the Japanese reads: "He was unaffected by things to be feared (the present verb here takes on the past tense of the main verb), "always by people was feared." I translated 人から (hito kara) "by people" but it does confuse me. The words don't appear in the English, but I suppose it adds emphasis to the verb "was being feared." I suppose it could also make the phrase mean "because he never feared anything, he was feared."
Altogether:
a person of truth, honesty, righteousness in both speech and behavior
but his countenance seemed too severe.
He was unaffected by things to be feared always by people was feared.
Let me try to clean that up:
In speech and bearing, a righteous, true, and honest person was,
Although his visage did seem too severe,
Frightful matters moved him not at all, since always he himself was feared withal.
I could not resist using "withal."
Here is the whole stanza, 1.1.2:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
盾にも、主の加護を仰ぎたいとの
至高の望みから、同じ印が刻まれていた。
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
顔つきは厳し過ぎると見えたが、
恐れるものを知らず、常に人から恐れられていた。
daga kishi no munea ni wa, shu no junan no toutoi (?) katami no
chi no juujika ga tsukete ari, kono shu no tame ni
kono kagayaku kishou o mi ni tsuke, nakunarareta shu o
ikiteorareru mono toshite agameteita.
tate ni mo, shu no kago o aogitai to no
shikou no nozomi kara, onaji shirushi ga kizamareteita.
genkou domo ni seigi, seijitsu, sana no hito nagara,
kaotsuki wa genshi sugiru to mieta ga,
osoreru mono o shirazu, tsuneni hito kara osorerareteita.
My translation:
But as for the breastplate of the knight, there a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord,
a crucifix of blood, has been affixed, for the sake of this Lord
this glittering badge on his person he wears and dead Jesus--
just as for the reason He continues to live--has been revering.
Into his shield as well, from a supreme hope for the protection of the Lord
which he wanted to depend on, the same mark was carved.
In speech and bearing, a righteous, true, and honest person was,
Although his visage did seem too severe,
Frightful matters moved him not at all, since always he himself was feared withal.
The original:
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
Finally, and this is an irrelevant bonus, I was reading an early modern philosophical treatise for a course in aesthetics I am auditing, and I came across an alarming sentence. I was about to put an exclamation point next to it to indicate my knowing bemusement, but, even more amusingly, I found one already there, faintly carried over onto my photocopy. I have captioned it, below, where I thought it appropriate:
But never were any so extravagant as to affect such figures as are made by the casual spilling of liquid colours.
I am going to do things a little differently this time. Since I have a "readership" with different levels of Japanese, I want to figure out a way to make my posts as user-friendly as possible to all. For those who don't know the language, I want to continue to assure you that the grammar is not difficult. My canned explanations should give you enough information to muddle your way through the kanji I transcribe. I can't stress enough that it's this transcription that takes the greatest amount of my time when I'm typing up these posts. The translation itself is relatively straightforward, but looking up unfamiliar kanji in the dictionary is laborious. But that's, of course, why I'm doing this--to enhance my literacy over time.
Here are the final three lines, 7-9, of the second stanza of the first canto of the first book:
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
顔つきは厳し過ぎると見えたが、
恐れるものを知らず、常に人から恐れられていた。
And the romaji transliteration:
genkou* domo ni seigi, seijitsu, sana no hito nagara,
kaotsuki wa genshi sugiru to mieta ga,
osoreru mono o shirazu, tsuneni hito kara osorerareteita.
*note: I should have mentioned this earlier, but the transliteration of the Japanese long o ("oh") into romaji is usually written "ou" when macrons are not available (or, in this case, tedious to employ) and should not be pronounced as it is in English or French ("oo" or "ew") but as a regular English or Romance long o (always rounded, never open).
And the original:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
Now I will try a literal disposition in English of the Japanese parts of speech:
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
言行 (genkou) is a compound comprised of 言, which can mean either "words," or "speaking" when used as a verb; and 行, which has a few distinct uses, but typically appears as the common verb meaning "to go" (pronounced "iku" so "Tokyo e iku" means "I am going to Tokyo"). Genkou means "speech and behavior."
共 (domo) is an uncommon, and I suppose archaic pronoun of, it seems, any applicable person. Ususally, the Japanese word for "I" is "watashi" (among others), but in the olden days, "domo" might be used by an inferior speaking to a superior or by a superior to refer to an inferior. I had to look up this word by stroke count, because I couldn't figure out the radicals, and I happened to discover the kanji 卍 (manji), which means "swastika." I had no idea! Please note that the Nazi variety goes the other way. 共に can also mean "both; alike; together; along with" as I am sure it does here.
正義 (seigi) means "justice; righteousness; right" as you might expect any word containing 正 (right, correct, etc.) to mean. This kanji, interestingly, is also used by the Japanese when counting things up, like scores--it is their version of the Western way of counting in fives by drawing four straight lines and then slashing through them with the fifth. About 義, all I can say is try writing it!
誠実 (seijitsu) means "sincere; honest; faithful."
真実 (sana) means "truth; reality." Remember 真, used with the archaic pronounciation "makoto" before? Guess how 誠 is pronounced--makoto. It means "truth." 実 means truth. 真 also means "truth." 誠 also contains the radical 言 (look on the left side). Are these puns? Certainly they are attempts to vary the language.
の (no) is a possessive particle followed by
人 (hito) "person" and
ながら (nagara) which is a suffix adding the meaning "while" (or "both" or "as" or being "in" a certain condition). So--
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
Literally, from the Japanese, we get, in reverse order "a person of truth, honesty, righteousness in both speech and behavior." That's my best guess, the "nagara" being used in the sense of "in the state of" rather than "while," which doesn't seem to fit.
That was a bit laborious, so I'll be more terse with the next phrase:
顔つきは厳し過ぎると見えたが、
顔つき (kaotsuki) "countenance" は (wa) topic particle 厳し過ぎる (genshi sugiru) a verbalization of the noun "rigidity; severity" followed by a common verb, "sugiru," to add the sense of "too much" so "[is] too strict" と (to) "and" or a particle used, as likely in this case, in indirect speech 見えた (mieta) "seemed" が (ga) probably "but" though it's more typically the subject particle.
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Once again, literally, back to front, as we must do: "but his countenance seemed too severe." That was an easy one. In Japanese order, this phrase looks like "countenance being severe too much seemed but."
Finally:
恐れるものを知らず、常に人から恐れられていた。
恐れる (osoreru) "be afraid of" a word, when pronounced "kowai" in an annoying, high-pitched voice, is a common interjection used, mostly by young females, to mean "I'm afraid!" They seemed to me to be afraid of everything. もの (mono) is added after verbs to make them into things or to create a relative clause, so with "osoreru" we get "something to be afraid of" を (o) direct object particle 知らず (shirazu) "unaffected by" in this case, I imagine, though 知る (shiru) is the common verb "to know" 常に (tsuneni) "always; constantly" 人 (hito) "person" から (kara) a suffix adding the sense "from" either causally ("because") or directionally 恐れられていた (osorerareteita) an amazing, and I think invented, verb that turns the first verb of this phrase, 恐れる, which is already in a passive form (I cannot find an active form, which is typical in many languages for this sort of self-reflexive deponent), into a double passive, also in past progressive (or imperfect) tense, so "was being feared." Seriously, try pronouncing it: o-so-re-ra-re-te-i-ta.
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
More poetic in English than can perhaps be translated, literally the Japanese reads: "He was unaffected by things to be feared (the present verb here takes on the past tense of the main verb), "always by people was feared." I translated 人から (hito kara) "by people" but it does confuse me. The words don't appear in the English, but I suppose it adds emphasis to the verb "was being feared." I suppose it could also make the phrase mean "because he never feared anything, he was feared."
Altogether:
a person of truth, honesty, righteousness in both speech and behavior
but his countenance seemed too severe.
He was unaffected by things to be feared always by people was feared.
Let me try to clean that up:
In speech and bearing, a righteous, true, and honest person was,
Although his visage did seem too severe,
Frightful matters moved him not at all, since always he himself was feared withal.
I could not resist using "withal."
Here is the whole stanza, 1.1.2:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
盾にも、主の加護を仰ぎたいとの
至高の望みから、同じ印が刻まれていた。
言行共に正義、誠実、真実の人ながら、
顔つきは厳し過ぎると見えたが、
恐れるものを知らず、常に人から恐れられていた。
daga kishi no munea ni wa, shu no junan no toutoi (?) katami no
chi no juujika ga tsukete ari, kono shu no tame ni
kono kagayaku kishou o mi ni tsuke, nakunarareta shu o
ikiteorareru mono toshite agameteita.
tate ni mo, shu no kago o aogitai to no
shikou no nozomi kara, onaji shirushi ga kizamareteita.
genkou domo ni seigi, seijitsu, sana no hito nagara,
kaotsuki wa genshi sugiru to mieta ga,
osoreru mono o shirazu, tsuneni hito kara osorerareteita.
My translation:
But as for the breastplate of the knight, there a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord,
a crucifix of blood, has been affixed, for the sake of this Lord
this glittering badge on his person he wears and dead Jesus--
just as for the reason He continues to live--has been revering.
Into his shield as well, from a supreme hope for the protection of the Lord
which he wanted to depend on, the same mark was carved.
In speech and bearing, a righteous, true, and honest person was,
Although his visage did seem too severe,
Frightful matters moved him not at all, since always he himself was feared withal.
The original:
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.
Finally, and this is an irrelevant bonus, I was reading an early modern philosophical treatise for a course in aesthetics I am auditing, and I came across an alarming sentence. I was about to put an exclamation point next to it to indicate my knowing bemusement, but, even more amusingly, I found one already there, faintly carried over onto my photocopy. I have captioned it, below, where I thought it appropriate:
But never were any so extravagant as to affect such figures as are made by the casual spilling of liquid colours.-- Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design (1725)
(Did anyone get my Judge Dredd joke?)
1.20.2009
FQ 1.1.2.5-6
I'm back from Belize and the Mayan pyramids of Tikal. While climbing one of them, a (clearly) Japanese guy dropped his sunglasses. I brought them to him and got to say "dou itashimashite" (you're welcome) when he said thank you. The Japanese word for pyramid is 角錐 ("kakusui"). Please add it to your list.
And back to the Faerie Queene:
盾にも、主の加護を仰ぎたいとの
至高の望みから、同じ印が刻まれていた。
tate ni mo, shu no kago o aogitai to no
shikou no nozomi kara, onaji shirushi ga kizamareteita.
盾 - tate we have seen before: shield; tate ni mo is "also on the shield"
主の加護 - shu ("the Lord") is also familiar, but kago means "divine protection" so this expression means "divine protection of the Lord"
を - it's a direct object! always my favorite part of speech since it's easy to identify in every language I've ever learned (even Latin)
仰ぎたいとの - today's first pain in the arse, aogitai (from 仰ぐaogu) must mean "want to revere" but the tono is confusing me for the moment (update: the "to" must be putting the previous phrase into quotation marks, as it were, as a relative clause, hard for me to pick up on, because the "no" following still confuses me, but I guess I'm learning as much as I had hoped!).
至高 - shikou, with the second kanji a common one that means "high," is supremacy
望みから - I like this kanji, comprised of a sound unit 亡 that means "death," and two familiar meaning elements (I presume), 月 "moon" and 王 "king." Parse that as you will, but this verb, from 望む nozomu, means "to desire or wish for." Nozomi, however, is probably just a noun (wish, deisre, hope, whatever) and is also the name of the fastest of the famous "bullet trains" in Japan. I think it goes directly from Tokyo to Osaka. A quick trip to Wikipedia at least confirms that the kanji is the same. I had a student with this name when I taught English in Japan, and we shared quite a few train jokes together (actually I made a train joke every time I saw her, and she put up with it).
から - from (from a desire...)
同じ - the same (very common word)
印 - this character appears in bazillions of little circles on Japanese documents and indicates where you should press your inkan/hanko stamp, your official signature seal. A written signature means nothing there. As technologically-advanced as you may think Japan is, for some reason they haven't gotten away from paperwork in paper form, and legions among any given chain of command must inkan any number of documents, in person, on hard copy, before any decision can be made, before any action will be approved. That said, I love my hanko--the best souvenir I have. In this case, "shirushi" is the pronounciation (as indicated by a helpful gloss, no doubt provided so readers won't ink up their Faerie Queene) and means "mark, symbol, evidence." The が is the subject particle, which leads us to...
刻まれていた - the verb! 刻む kizamu means, according to jisho.org: to mince; carve; engrave; cut fine; chop up; hash (?); chisel; notch. Pretty good range there. I choose notch. We can tell this is our FQ translators' favorite past tense ending from the "-teita" at the end. The "-mare-" bit in the middle indicates to me that this is probably some sort of intransitive, passive form.
I will attempt a translation:
盾にも、主の加護を仰ぎたいとの
至高の望みから、同じ印が刻まれていた。
Into his shield as well, for the protection of the Lord which he wanted to revere
from a supreme hope, the same mark was carved.
...or...
Into his shield as well, from a supreme hope for the protection of the Lord
which he wanted to depend on, the same mark was carved.
The original has an entirely different word order, naturally:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Even the English here might seem convoluted, and translating helps to construe it: "The same thing was engraved onto his shield, for the great hope he had of receiving help from the Lord."
All that for just two lines more!
And back to the Faerie Queene:
盾にも、主の加護を仰ぎたいとの
至高の望みから、同じ印が刻まれていた。
tate ni mo, shu no kago o aogitai to no
shikou no nozomi kara, onaji shirushi ga kizamareteita.
盾 - tate we have seen before: shield; tate ni mo is "also on the shield"
主の加護 - shu ("the Lord") is also familiar, but kago means "divine protection" so this expression means "divine protection of the Lord"
を - it's a direct object! always my favorite part of speech since it's easy to identify in every language I've ever learned (even Latin)
仰ぎたいとの - today's first pain in the arse, aogitai (from 仰ぐaogu) must mean "want to revere" but the tono is confusing me for the moment (update: the "to" must be putting the previous phrase into quotation marks, as it were, as a relative clause, hard for me to pick up on, because the "no" following still confuses me, but I guess I'm learning as much as I had hoped!).
至高 - shikou, with the second kanji a common one that means "high," is supremacy
望みから - I like this kanji, comprised of a sound unit 亡 that means "death," and two familiar meaning elements (I presume), 月 "moon" and 王 "king." Parse that as you will, but this verb, from 望む nozomu, means "to desire or wish for." Nozomi, however, is probably just a noun (wish, deisre, hope, whatever) and is also the name of the fastest of the famous "bullet trains" in Japan. I think it goes directly from Tokyo to Osaka. A quick trip to Wikipedia at least confirms that the kanji is the same. I had a student with this name when I taught English in Japan, and we shared quite a few train jokes together (actually I made a train joke every time I saw her, and she put up with it).
から - from (from a desire...)
同じ - the same (very common word)
印 - this character appears in bazillions of little circles on Japanese documents and indicates where you should press your inkan/hanko stamp, your official signature seal. A written signature means nothing there. As technologically-advanced as you may think Japan is, for some reason they haven't gotten away from paperwork in paper form, and legions among any given chain of command must inkan any number of documents, in person, on hard copy, before any decision can be made, before any action will be approved. That said, I love my hanko--the best souvenir I have. In this case, "shirushi" is the pronounciation (as indicated by a helpful gloss, no doubt provided so readers won't ink up their Faerie Queene) and means "mark, symbol, evidence." The が is the subject particle, which leads us to...
刻まれていた - the verb! 刻む kizamu means, according to jisho.org: to mince; carve; engrave; cut fine; chop up; hash (?); chisel; notch. Pretty good range there. I choose notch. We can tell this is our FQ translators' favorite past tense ending from the "-teita" at the end. The "-mare-" bit in the middle indicates to me that this is probably some sort of intransitive, passive form.
I will attempt a translation:
盾にも、主の加護を仰ぎたいとの
至高の望みから、同じ印が刻まれていた。
Into his shield as well, for the protection of the Lord which he wanted to revere
from a supreme hope, the same mark was carved.
...or...
Into his shield as well, from a supreme hope for the protection of the Lord
which he wanted to depend on, the same mark was carved.
The original has an entirely different word order, naturally:
Vpon his shield the like was also scor'd,
For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Even the English here might seem convoluted, and translating helps to construe it: "The same thing was engraved onto his shield, for the great hope he had of receiving help from the Lord."
All that for just two lines more!
1.06.2009
A better look at the original
I just got a new toy, my first ever digital camera (Japanese, of course). So I thought I'd take the opportunity to photograph the pages I'm translating right now, in case anyone wants a closer look at the original I'm working off of:
(click photo to enlarge)
Generally, I copy the original Japanese, vertically, into a graph paper notebook before doing the translation kanji by kanji. In its literary form (not in newspapers), Japanese reads top-to-bottom, right-to-left. Although reading "backwards" is a strange feeling at first, I like the appearance on the page of the vertical lines. They're like noodles or rain or perhaps dripping paint. More beautiful metaphors are welcome. This volume is only Book 1 of the Faerie Queene, which I've never seen sold in single book editions before. Like everything else in Japan, the books are also much smaller than we're used to. This one volume cost ¥1500, which is more than $15 these days--pricey! You can probably buy the whole thing in English from Amazon.com for a few dollars in a cheap Penguin Classics edition. Thanks to my friend and former student Haru for giving it to me as a going away present.
I'm off to Belize and Guatemala for a week, and then the new semester begins shortly thereafter. I will do my best to finish the second stanza by the end of January. Honestly, I'm getting faster! If only someone had gotten me that Casio EX-Word...
Here's a rare kanji, in the meantime, for vocab junkies:
I saw this beautiful kanji beautifully drawn on my Aikido sensei's rank certificate, and, since it was the largest one, I wondered what it means. It took me almost an hour to find the defintion, because it's not commonly used (it's a variant of 証). I almost gave up before turning to the "kanji by radicals" search function on jisho.org. It's pronounced "akashi" or "shou" in compounds and means "certificate." I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I guess something cooler than that, like "Golden Warrior Excellence" or "Supreme Thunder Force." But that's what I get for being curious: a certificate marked boldly with a gorgeous character that means "certificate." So Japanese, in a way.
(click photo to enlarge)Generally, I copy the original Japanese, vertically, into a graph paper notebook before doing the translation kanji by kanji. In its literary form (not in newspapers), Japanese reads top-to-bottom, right-to-left. Although reading "backwards" is a strange feeling at first, I like the appearance on the page of the vertical lines. They're like noodles or rain or perhaps dripping paint. More beautiful metaphors are welcome. This volume is only Book 1 of the Faerie Queene, which I've never seen sold in single book editions before. Like everything else in Japan, the books are also much smaller than we're used to. This one volume cost ¥1500, which is more than $15 these days--pricey! You can probably buy the whole thing in English from Amazon.com for a few dollars in a cheap Penguin Classics edition. Thanks to my friend and former student Haru for giving it to me as a going away present.
I'm off to Belize and Guatemala for a week, and then the new semester begins shortly thereafter. I will do my best to finish the second stanza by the end of January. Honestly, I'm getting faster! If only someone had gotten me that Casio EX-Word...
Here's a rare kanji, in the meantime, for vocab junkies:
證
I saw this beautiful kanji beautifully drawn on my Aikido sensei's rank certificate, and, since it was the largest one, I wondered what it means. It took me almost an hour to find the defintion, because it's not commonly used (it's a variant of 証). I almost gave up before turning to the "kanji by radicals" search function on jisho.org. It's pronounced "akashi" or "shou" in compounds and means "certificate." I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I guess something cooler than that, like "Golden Warrior Excellence" or "Supreme Thunder Force." But that's what I get for being curious: a certificate marked boldly with a gorgeous character that means "certificate." So Japanese, in a way.
1.04.2009
Moving right along... (1.1.2.3-4)
Here is a recap of 1.2.1-2 of Book 1:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
But as for on the breastplate of the knight, a crucifix of blood of a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord has been affixed, for this Lord...
And here are lines 3-4:
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
I like the Japanese period: 。It's called a "maru" which means "circle" as does 円 which also means "yen" which the Japanese pronounce "en" (they certainly can't say "ye" as my unflagging but ultimately fruitless efforts to get even one of my students to pronounce "year" correctly attest). The yen is, obviously, the Japanese currency (currently at 90-92 to the dollar, whereas it was on average 119 when I lived there, and I am annoyed about this). This non-sequitur is going somewhere now.
The word "yen" is clearly (I think?) derived from the Chinese pronunciation of this character, which is "yuan" (the Koreans call it "won"). Money was historically circular, so... QED. Today, the Chinese use 元 when listing their outrageously elevated prices. I don't know why. This character is pronounced "gen" in Japanese and also "yuan" in Chinese and means "origin, source, base, foundation" (when pronounced "moto") or "Chinese money" ("gen") in Japanese.
I don't think, for my non-specialist readers, I ever bothered discussing how to read Japanese kanji. Briefly, there are two types of reading: om-yomi and kun-yomi ("yomi" means "reading"). The om-yomi is the so-called Chinese reading of the character. As in Chinese itself, there is usually only one of these, though there are often multiple, related variants, sometimes for the sake of euphony (i.e., a character might be pronounced with an initial velar, fricative, or sibilant that is voiced when in the middle of a word, such as 山 "san" "mountain" which is occasionally pronounced "zan" as in English "civilization," the 'z' actually an Americanization of the 's' in British "civilisation," since the rules of linguistics demand that sibilant fricatives be voiced when not in initial position, or something like that). That's not complicated.
The kun-yomi is the Japanese reading, of which there may be many, since Chinese characters were only ever awkwardly adapted to the very different and unrelated Japanese language. The Koreans had the same problem and ditched "hanja" long ago in favor of the elegant Hangul syllabary. The Japanese have their own native scripts, hiragana and katakana, both adapted from kanji, but they are cumbersome to read in long chunks and, without the kanji to clarify meaning, ambiguous (though the Tale of Genji was originally written entirely in hiragana). I, for one, hate reading the katakana menus that proliferate in Japan today. Katakana syllables are blocky and all look the same: アイウエオカキクケコナニヌネノ... Kanji, by contrast, are easy to read (if you know them--which is why this may seem counter-intuitive), because you can just look at them and "grab" the meaning (this is the exact word many of my Japanese acquaintances used to describe the idea). I think this is applicable to all languages to some extent, but there is no arguing that you either know what 薔薇 means, whether or not you can "read" it, or you don't. Being able to read the word "rose" doesn't mean you understand that by any other name it would smell as sweet. Likewise, you may hear the word "hana" spoken in Japanese, but without knowing which "hana" is being referred to, 鼻 or 華, you can't know for sure, without context clues, whether the intended meaning is "nose" or "flower." This is why many Japanese TV shows and movies are subtitled... in Japanese! I may not be able to read 狂犬病, but the meaning of the kanji are "crazy-dog-disease" which I might construe as "rabies" (I learned this when I had to get the vaccine in Japan and found the literal meaning--probably a Chinese scientific construction along the lines of similar Greek and Latin learned terms in English--very funny). This sort of thing was often helpful when I was traveling in China. I couldn't read anything, but I could often figure out meanings.
Anyway...
When defining a kanji, the om-yomi is given in katakata, typically used for foreign words (though the om-yomi are not identical to real Chinese pronunciation, since Japanese is not a tonal language), and the kun-yomi are given in hiragana. For the most part, the om-yomi is used in compound words made up of multiple kanji, while the kun-yomi is used when the kanji is stand-alone or used as a verb. Example:
火山 is pronounced "kazan" and means "volcano"
火 on its own has either the "ka" om-yomi or "hi" kun-yomi and means "fire"
山 is "san/zan" (om-yomi) or "yama" (kun-yomi) and means "mountain"
Mt. Fuji is a "kazan" and is called "Fuji-san" by the Japanese.
Here is a sample definition (the real one has more readings) for yen:
円 -- エン, まる (en, maru): money, circle, round
In addition to all these readings, when the kanji are used in names, they often have altogether different pronunciations: tsubura, nobu, madoka, and mitsu in the case of 円. You can bet the Japanese like to make things difficult!
Note: thank God for Unicode.
That was a longer digression than I intended. Let's try this post again:
Here is a recap of 1.2.1-2 of Book 1:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
But as for on the breastplate of the knight, a crucifix of blood of a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord has been affixed, for this Lord...
And here are lines 3-4:
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
kono kagayaku kishou o mi ni tsuke, nakunarareta shu o
ikiteorareru mono toshite agameteita.
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
There's the original, of course, at the end there. I have to get ready for a one week trip to Belize, so I don't feel like doing tons of guesswork today. But I will still parse a bit:
この - this
輝く - to shine, glitter, sparkle
記章 - medal, badge, insignia
を - direct object particle
身 - body, oneself
に - indirect object particle
つけ、- hmm.. not sure... maybe "fixed" or from 着ける "to wear" (among other meanings)
亡くなられた - some sort of passive or potential past tense conjugation of "to die"
主 - Jesus!
を
生きておられる - some sort of honorific passive or potential progressive conjugation of "to live"
もの - thing? or a postpositional "thingy" that creates the sense "by reason of"
として - could be a postpositional "as"
崇めていた。- "was being revered"
There is an interesting-looking note after 亡くなられた主を生きておられるものとして:
「黙示録」一‧一ハ「...一度は死んだが、見よ、世々限りなく生きて...」への言及。
Those 「」 symbols are Japanese quotation marks. I like them. The raised dot (‧) between the numbers is like a colon or semicolon. Without bothering to transliterate, this seems to say "Revelations 1:18 '...once he who died -- look! -- is forever and ever living...' to which this is an allusion." The usage of "e no" at the end of this apparently unpredicated phrase has me baffled. Literally, it might mean "allusion of toward Revelations 1:18." Well, it's all clear enough.
By way of comparison, here is the King James Version:
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen
And just for fun, here is the original Greek:
καὶ ὁ ζῶν, καὶ ἐγενόμην νεκρὸς, καὶ ἰδοὺ ζῶν εἰμι εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων
Guess what? I can read Greek, too. Sort of. This says "and [I am] the living, and I was dead, but look I am living for eternities of eternities." No Amen that I can see.
What the hell. Here's the Latin Vulgate:
et vivus et fui mortuus et ecce sum vivens in saecula saeculorum
And I am living but I was dead and behold I am living into generations of generations.
Oddly, I found a Hebrew version, too:
When was this written in Hebrew? Why was it written in Hebrew? For the Israelis? It's the New Testament! Can't read it... yet.
OK, one more time:
Here is a recap of 1.2.1-2 of Book 1:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
But as for on the breastplate of the knight, a crucifix of blood of a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord has been affixed, for this Lord...
And here are lines 3-4:
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
This glittering badge on his person fixed, dead Jesus--
inasmuch for his living's sake--he has been revering.
My version is not exactly "poetry," but this is the closest I can render the Japanese sense. And this was a hard one (perhaps why I kept avoiding it?). I don't envy the English-Japanese translators at all.
So all at once:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
But as for the breastplate of the knight, there a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord,
a crucifix of blood, has been affixed, for the sake of this Lord
this glittering badge on his person he wears and dead Jesus--
just as for the reason He continues to live--has been revering.
Although I find the phrase "dead Jesus" pretty hysterical, that's what it says. Dead Jesus. I think that allusion to the Book of Revelations makes sense now!
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
But as for on the breastplate of the knight, a crucifix of blood of a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord has been affixed, for this Lord...
And here are lines 3-4:
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
I like the Japanese period: 。It's called a "maru" which means "circle" as does 円 which also means "yen" which the Japanese pronounce "en" (they certainly can't say "ye" as my unflagging but ultimately fruitless efforts to get even one of my students to pronounce "year" correctly attest). The yen is, obviously, the Japanese currency (currently at 90-92 to the dollar, whereas it was on average 119 when I lived there, and I am annoyed about this). This non-sequitur is going somewhere now.
The word "yen" is clearly (I think?) derived from the Chinese pronunciation of this character, which is "yuan" (the Koreans call it "won"). Money was historically circular, so... QED. Today, the Chinese use 元 when listing their outrageously elevated prices. I don't know why. This character is pronounced "gen" in Japanese and also "yuan" in Chinese and means "origin, source, base, foundation" (when pronounced "moto") or "Chinese money" ("gen") in Japanese.
I don't think, for my non-specialist readers, I ever bothered discussing how to read Japanese kanji. Briefly, there are two types of reading: om-yomi and kun-yomi ("yomi" means "reading"). The om-yomi is the so-called Chinese reading of the character. As in Chinese itself, there is usually only one of these, though there are often multiple, related variants, sometimes for the sake of euphony (i.e., a character might be pronounced with an initial velar, fricative, or sibilant that is voiced when in the middle of a word, such as 山 "san" "mountain" which is occasionally pronounced "zan" as in English "civilization," the 'z' actually an Americanization of the 's' in British "civilisation," since the rules of linguistics demand that sibilant fricatives be voiced when not in initial position, or something like that). That's not complicated.
The kun-yomi is the Japanese reading, of which there may be many, since Chinese characters were only ever awkwardly adapted to the very different and unrelated Japanese language. The Koreans had the same problem and ditched "hanja" long ago in favor of the elegant Hangul syllabary. The Japanese have their own native scripts, hiragana and katakana, both adapted from kanji, but they are cumbersome to read in long chunks and, without the kanji to clarify meaning, ambiguous (though the Tale of Genji was originally written entirely in hiragana). I, for one, hate reading the katakana menus that proliferate in Japan today. Katakana syllables are blocky and all look the same: アイウエオカキクケコナニヌネノ... Kanji, by contrast, are easy to read (if you know them--which is why this may seem counter-intuitive), because you can just look at them and "grab" the meaning (this is the exact word many of my Japanese acquaintances used to describe the idea). I think this is applicable to all languages to some extent, but there is no arguing that you either know what 薔薇 means, whether or not you can "read" it, or you don't. Being able to read the word "rose" doesn't mean you understand that by any other name it would smell as sweet. Likewise, you may hear the word "hana" spoken in Japanese, but without knowing which "hana" is being referred to, 鼻 or 華, you can't know for sure, without context clues, whether the intended meaning is "nose" or "flower." This is why many Japanese TV shows and movies are subtitled... in Japanese! I may not be able to read 狂犬病, but the meaning of the kanji are "crazy-dog-disease" which I might construe as "rabies" (I learned this when I had to get the vaccine in Japan and found the literal meaning--probably a Chinese scientific construction along the lines of similar Greek and Latin learned terms in English--very funny). This sort of thing was often helpful when I was traveling in China. I couldn't read anything, but I could often figure out meanings.
Anyway...
When defining a kanji, the om-yomi is given in katakata, typically used for foreign words (though the om-yomi are not identical to real Chinese pronunciation, since Japanese is not a tonal language), and the kun-yomi are given in hiragana. For the most part, the om-yomi is used in compound words made up of multiple kanji, while the kun-yomi is used when the kanji is stand-alone or used as a verb. Example:
火山 is pronounced "kazan" and means "volcano"
火 on its own has either the "ka" om-yomi or "hi" kun-yomi and means "fire"
山 is "san/zan" (om-yomi) or "yama" (kun-yomi) and means "mountain"
Mt. Fuji is a "kazan" and is called "Fuji-san" by the Japanese.
Here is a sample definition (the real one has more readings) for yen:
円 -- エン, まる (en, maru): money, circle, round
In addition to all these readings, when the kanji are used in names, they often have altogether different pronunciations: tsubura, nobu, madoka, and mitsu in the case of 円. You can bet the Japanese like to make things difficult!
Note: thank God for Unicode.
That was a longer digression than I intended. Let's try this post again:
Here is a recap of 1.2.1-2 of Book 1:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
But as for on the breastplate of the knight, a crucifix of blood of a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord has been affixed, for this Lord...
And here are lines 3-4:
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
kono kagayaku kishou o mi ni tsuke, nakunarareta shu o
ikiteorareru mono toshite agameteita.
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as liuing euer him ador'd:
There's the original, of course, at the end there. I have to get ready for a one week trip to Belize, so I don't feel like doing tons of guesswork today. But I will still parse a bit:
この - this
輝く - to shine, glitter, sparkle
記章 - medal, badge, insignia
を - direct object particle
身 - body, oneself
に - indirect object particle
つけ、- hmm.. not sure... maybe "fixed" or from 着ける "to wear" (among other meanings)
亡くなられた - some sort of passive or potential past tense conjugation of "to die"
主 - Jesus!
を
生きておられる - some sort of honorific passive or potential progressive conjugation of "to live"
もの - thing? or a postpositional "thingy" that creates the sense "by reason of"
として - could be a postpositional "as"
崇めていた。- "was being revered"
There is an interesting-looking note after 亡くなられた主を生きておられるものとして:
「黙示録」一‧一ハ「...一度は死んだが、見よ、世々限りなく生きて...」への言及。
Those 「」 symbols are Japanese quotation marks. I like them. The raised dot (‧) between the numbers is like a colon or semicolon. Without bothering to transliterate, this seems to say "Revelations 1:18 '...once he who died -- look! -- is forever and ever living...' to which this is an allusion." The usage of "e no" at the end of this apparently unpredicated phrase has me baffled. Literally, it might mean "allusion of toward Revelations 1:18." Well, it's all clear enough.
By way of comparison, here is the King James Version:
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen
And just for fun, here is the original Greek:
καὶ ὁ ζῶν, καὶ ἐγενόμην νεκρὸς, καὶ ἰδοὺ ζῶν εἰμι εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων
Guess what? I can read Greek, too. Sort of. This says "and [I am] the living, and I was dead, but look I am living for eternities of eternities." No Amen that I can see.
What the hell. Here's the Latin Vulgate:
et vivus et fui mortuus et ecce sum vivens in saecula saeculorum
And I am living but I was dead and behold I am living into generations of generations.
Oddly, I found a Hebrew version, too:
ואהי מת והנני חי לעולמי עולמים אמן ובידי
מפתחות שאול ומות׃
מפתחות שאול ומות׃
When was this written in Hebrew? Why was it written in Hebrew? For the Israelis? It's the New Testament! Can't read it... yet.
OK, one more time:
Here is a recap of 1.2.1-2 of Book 1:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
But as for on the breastplate of the knight, a crucifix of blood of a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord has been affixed, for this Lord...
And here are lines 3-4:
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
This glittering badge on his person fixed, dead Jesus--
inasmuch for his living's sake--he has been revering.
My version is not exactly "poetry," but this is the closest I can render the Japanese sense. And this was a hard one (perhaps why I kept avoiding it?). I don't envy the English-Japanese translators at all.
So all at once:
だが騎士の胸当には、主の受難の尊い形見の
血の十字架がつけてあり、この主のために
この輝く記章を身につけ、亡くなられた主を
生きておられるものとして崇めていた。
But as for the breastplate of the knight, there a holy reminder of the suffering of the Lord,
a crucifix of blood, has been affixed, for the sake of this Lord
this glittering badge on his person he wears and dead Jesus--
just as for the reason He continues to live--has been revering.
Although I find the phrase "dead Jesus" pretty hysterical, that's what it says. Dead Jesus. I think that allusion to the Book of Revelations makes sense now!
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