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I'm one of those people who watch the Japanese dub of shows originally in English just because that option is available; sometimes it's because there's a Japanese voice actor I like, sometimes I just like the Japanese version better [1]. This is doubly silly for me since I don't speak Japanese -- I know some words and occasionally I can parse simple enough sentences, but I definitely need the English subtitles when I'm watching Japanese shows. All the same, I enjoy listening for interesting words then looking them up in dictionaries like Jisho.org; learning the different nuances of the words is fun, especially when they're used in puns.
Case in point: in an episode of The Legend of Vox Machina season 2, Vox Machina's cleric uses the word seishokusha (聖職者), which translates to "clergy," to describe herself. I didn't know how it was spelled in Japanese, so I searched for the Romaji equivalent (ie, seishokusha) on Jisho.org and got a couple of matches. The first one is the aforementioned 聖職者; the second one, labeled as a pun on the first, is 性職者, which is pronounced the same but translates to "sex worker." The first "sei," 聖, refers to holy people like priests; the second, 性, refers to sex and gender. It's basically a pun on how "holy worker" and "sex worker" sound exactly the same in Japanese but are spelled a bit differently.
This one puzzled me a bit since I couldn't tell if the translator was aware of the pun; the cleric who used the word isn't the flirty type (that role is reserved for the party's bard), and no one comments on her choice of words [2]. I guess it was more like an unintentional Easter egg than anything else. ^^;; Anyway it was fun to learn a new bit of trivia, and I'm likely to remember both of these words for a long time.
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[1] This is a personal preference that doesn't always make sense, even to me; Japanese dubs of English shows have the same difficulty with translating certain phrases as English dubs of Japanese shows, and sometimes it's sad when the constraints of brevity and matching the character's mouth movements make for some lackluster substitutions. For instance, "resting bitch face" in The Legend of Vox Machina season 2 gets translated into something like "my scary face is scarier than that" -- not the best, but I guess it works, more or less. Speaking of Vox Machina, I actually like the English version, and I've seen one of Critical Role's original campaign episodes on Youtube (they're fun to watch); I just like the Japanese dub better, partly because it has one of my favorite voice actors playing my favorite character (Sawashiro Chiharu as the gnome bard).
[2] In season 1, the Japanese dub managed to do a decent translation of a joke related to misheard words: in one scene, the bard is running away from a horde of undead when he runs into the rest of his party. Out of breath, he tries to say "horde" (translated as mure, 群れ, which refers to groups or crowds) but is only able to say "hor"; one of his party mates says she doesn't want to hear any of the bard's whorehouse stories (translated as muramurashita hanashi, ムラムラした話, literally "horny story"). Another party mate realizes what the bard is talking about when the undead show up shortly after.
Case in point: in an episode of The Legend of Vox Machina season 2, Vox Machina's cleric uses the word seishokusha (聖職者), which translates to "clergy," to describe herself. I didn't know how it was spelled in Japanese, so I searched for the Romaji equivalent (ie, seishokusha) on Jisho.org and got a couple of matches. The first one is the aforementioned 聖職者; the second one, labeled as a pun on the first, is 性職者, which is pronounced the same but translates to "sex worker." The first "sei," 聖, refers to holy people like priests; the second, 性, refers to sex and gender. It's basically a pun on how "holy worker" and "sex worker" sound exactly the same in Japanese but are spelled a bit differently.
This one puzzled me a bit since I couldn't tell if the translator was aware of the pun; the cleric who used the word isn't the flirty type (that role is reserved for the party's bard), and no one comments on her choice of words [2]. I guess it was more like an unintentional Easter egg than anything else. ^^;; Anyway it was fun to learn a new bit of trivia, and I'm likely to remember both of these words for a long time.
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[1] This is a personal preference that doesn't always make sense, even to me; Japanese dubs of English shows have the same difficulty with translating certain phrases as English dubs of Japanese shows, and sometimes it's sad when the constraints of brevity and matching the character's mouth movements make for some lackluster substitutions. For instance, "resting bitch face" in The Legend of Vox Machina season 2 gets translated into something like "my scary face is scarier than that" -- not the best, but I guess it works, more or less. Speaking of Vox Machina, I actually like the English version, and I've seen one of Critical Role's original campaign episodes on Youtube (they're fun to watch); I just like the Japanese dub better, partly because it has one of my favorite voice actors playing my favorite character (Sawashiro Chiharu as the gnome bard).
[2] In season 1, the Japanese dub managed to do a decent translation of a joke related to misheard words: in one scene, the bard is running away from a horde of undead when he runs into the rest of his party. Out of breath, he tries to say "horde" (translated as mure, 群れ, which refers to groups or crowds) but is only able to say "hor"; one of his party mates says she doesn't want to hear any of the bard's whorehouse stories (translated as muramurashita hanashi, ムラムラした話, literally "horny story"). Another party mate realizes what the bard is talking about when the undead show up shortly after.
