Utena Fansub Ep 30 Translation Notes

Revolutionary Girl Utena Episode 30 The Barefoot Girl.mkv

This episode was a really tough one. There were quite a few difficult lines that I ended up superficially rephrasing in the translation. But I think these rephrasings actually convey the meaning behind the words more effectively.

だって、デートは二人っきりでするもんです。

Literally translated, this would be “Because! Dates are something two people do by themselves!” and this is what I had in my first draft. The problem with this translation is that it’s not quite how an English speaker would phrase it. There’s something intangible. It’s not the way the line reads, but the way it doesn’t read — this phrasing feels off not because it sounds strange itself, but because there’s that nagging feeling that there is a phrasing that would sound better that isn’t being used instead. I felt like the problem of this line was to figure out how an English speaker would naturally phrase it, and I think I ended up finding it with this:

Because! It wouldn’t be a date if it wasn’t just the two of us.

さては焼いてるなーお主。

You’re jealous aren’t you, kid?

This was tricky because neither Anya or I could think of the right word (kid) that had the correct amount of condescension and playful teasing. I started with “little one” as a placeholder, but that really didn’t sound right. I had the urge to change it to “young padawan” but didn’t. Hilariously, and completely unprompted, in the editing notes Anya mentioned the first thing that came to mind for them was “young padawan”. It was tempting, but I knew there had to be a better solution. I stared at this line for ages working on the second draft before coming up with “kid”.

なんか理事長らしくないというか、ちょっと、いけないひとみたい。

It’s just, you’re not very chairman-like. You’re like… You’re like the kind of person grown-ups would warn me about.

Another doozy of a line. The direct translation of this would be “It’s just, you’re not very chairman like. You’re like a bad* person.” Big asterisk next to “bad” because Utena isn’t saying “bad person” like we use that two word phrase in English (to mean “a person who is selfish and does harm to others”). いけない in this context is similar to “not to be done”, “not allowed”, “forbidden” (as in “you are forbidden from staying at your boyfriend’s place overnight”, but not really “forbidden” as in “the forbidden fruit”), or “bad” as in “the bad boy”. A lot of subtlties to get across for just one word out of the sentence, which is why this translation has blown out so much. The short noun phrase いけない人みたい has been translated into the lengthy “You’re like the kind of person grown-ups would warn me about”. Despite the length, I do like this translation a lot and I think it captures Utena’s immaturity and internal conflict well.

Thank you as always to my editor @dontbe-lasanya! This project and this episode in particular wouldn’t be possible without you!

Follow the blog to see new episodes as they’re released. As an aside, I’ve finally gotten around to posting the raw subtitle files on the google drive, so check that out if you’re interested in encoding some video yourself. You can find that and all the episodes released so far here:

Haru Dipthong’s Utena Fansub - Google Drive

Rose divider taken from this post.