Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Raven of the Inner Palace
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poltroon
Posts: 105 |
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Still loving this anime, and also loving it's beautiful ED. Now that we know the story of the Winter King and the Summer King, the lyrics and themes of the song (Natsu no Yuki) resonate even better.
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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In the feature topic there was someone commenting on a possible mistranslation in episode 8 in one of the emperor's scenes, but when I went back to reply it wasn't there anymore (why?). So I'm saying it here - I just watched the episode with subs this time, and yes, there's absolutely a mistranslation in episode 8 in one of the emperor's scenes, a quite baffling one, too.
Toward the end, the emperor says that the young eunuch's further fate is the Raven Consort's responsibility, since she caused his master to let him go. He likens the situation with her and Ishiha to him taking Eisei (again, sorry, can't get used to the Chinese names) from his master and making him his attendant. Except - for some reason the subs go on to say: "That said, he's been quite a handful, so I'm not sure if it was worth it" to which Eisei replies "I've caused no trouble at all!" Which is quite shocking, considering that we've come to know the emperor as a generous and good-hearted person. Why would he say something like this? The answer is of course that this is not what he says, he actually says "That said, I caused him a lot of hardships, so I'm not sure if it was for the better..." and Eisei protests with "You caused no hardships at all!" Which is yet again an obvious case of a translator doing a rush job in a complete "write only mode", not stopping to read and process the scene. If they had done so, they would have realized the mistake, I mean even if they don't immediately get how the grammar/context/etc. work here, it's obvious from the flow of the scene and the characterization that something is wrong with what they wrote. (Just checking the emperor's scenes, there's a pretty funny, clunky translation earlier: when the Raven Consort says she doesn't really know what a "friend" is like, he answers he doesn't know it either, and so "We'll simply have to blindly feel around for the answer", which is, in this context... yeah.  Especially considering that they're supposed to have romantic tension. What he says is more along the lines of "We have no choice but to learn how to be friends on our own", after which he makes his own step of friendship in gifting her some sweets.)
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 514 Location: Poland |
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Thanks for that, I just watched this episode and was also somewhat surprised by that sentence in subtitles, and your version makes so much more sense, considering their relationship and how it was portrayed so far. |
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Bluuumeee
Posts: 41 |
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Thank you for the alert. My friends and I were puzzled over the same thing. Has anybody brought the mistranslation to Crunchyroll's attention? They can probably amend it (if not immediately, at least for the physical release). I have a lot of sympathy for translators- they work under tight deadlines. That said, the difference caused by that particular error was... jarring, to say the least. I don't get any romantic tension out of the Raven Consort's interactions with the emperor, though.They're both too formal (which makes sense given the historical setting and their positions, but still...). How old is the emperor, anyway? I had him pegged for 21-23. We know the Raven Consort's 16. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Not sure how Crunchyroll can be informed about something like this... I've never tried, I always assumed there was no point. Then again, I remember an egregious mistake in another show where the translator didn't realize that when a character said she felt "like Heinrich" she was referring to Albert Heinrich from Cyborg 009 and not Heinrich Himmler (wtf! dear god...), and I heard later that it had been corrected, so maybe there's a chance. I also have sympathy for the translators, and also even the best translators can make mistakes. But also, as someone with ample experience in translation and media translation (including subtitling and dubbing anime) and who also works in the industry, I think it's a translator's responsibility to be aware of what they translate under any circumstances, especially if they're getting paid for it. Because for most of the people who then consume the translated work, the translation will be the only version of the story they'll ever know, and I think that's a huge responsibility - even in case of obscure fantasy anime. So a translator should be able to do at least minimal QA on everything they do. (All the more so if the client clearly doesn't do any QA on their own... which is their responsibility.) (In this particular case it's clear that the translator had a brain fart, which happens to everyone of course, but the problem is that if they had only re-read what they wrote they would have probably caught the mistake, since it's so jarring. This is why I always suggest to dub writers to read aloud as they write, to catch such mistakes, as well as clunky, unnatural-sounding lines.) /translation rant
I don't feel the romantic tension either, but I think it's not for lack of trying on the show's part. Fortunately they're not pushing it very hard, but also I think we're supposed to root for them to get together one way or another.
I'd been wondering about this, too, so I did a bit of research, and apparently he was 18 when he claimed the throne and had the empress dowager executed shortly after that. The show's timeline is not quite clear to me though, how much time passed between that and the start of the show... In the show everything seems to be peaceful, so clearly it didn't happen very recently, but I remember him saying something about the ghosts of the emperor's mother and guardian appearing a few months(? I think) before, which I assume would be right after the death of the empress dowager, considering that she cursed him... |
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Gina Szanboti
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I've heard of several corrections to CR subs over time, so it's not hopeless. You could try submitting the correction here: http://www.crunchyroll.com/help?topic=contact and let them take it from there. As for any physical release, not sure how that's handled since all the mergers, but if they license that to Sentai as they have sometimes done in the past, they do their own TL so it would probably be corrected then. I sent them a correction of a very obscure and minor point (misspelling of a real person's name) that few would have the background to know, let alone even notice, in hopes it might be corrected for the BD release, and was astonished to not only get a reply but some thank you disks! Anyway, it's your call, nothing to lose but time. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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Some delicious ear candy in this episode, spoiler[Kugimiya Rie] doing a great double role! :O OK, it's mainly one role and spoiler[considering the reveal it makes sense that it's the same seiyuu], but it's pretty great regardless.
By the way if anyone is thinking of buying the Japanese Blu-rays, apparently if you buy all of them from Aniplex, you get a special mamezara set, one plate with each volume. The Blu-rays also come with the illustrations featured in the tweet, they're quite pretty. The anime art is nothing to write home about, but the illustrations for the LNs, and these special ones, are really nice. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11431 |
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I knew something was up when Shouxue's bird alarm failed to go off when the lady-in-waiting showed up. What I'm not sure I get is why she appeared healthy and plump in Shouxue's chambers, but sickly and starving at the lake.
My understanding was that the owl wasn't the one who trapped her in the lake - that was Shouxue's solution for a soul unready to move on yet. The owl was the one who set her free from Shouxue's seal.
Not to mention greener.  There's also the lack of pupils in his eyes, which usually denotes some sort of deadness of mind, body, or soul. As for what's in the bucket, I'm getting Se7en vibes. >.>
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Bluuumeee
Posts: 41 |
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There's one thing about episode 10 I think a lot of people missed.
The elderly chancellor who was offering his youngest granddaughter to the emperor as a potential consort and talking about rumours surrounding the Raven Consort already has a granddaughter in the Emperor's inner palace- and we've met that granddaughter before. The older granddaughter is Huaniang (or Kajou if you prefer the Japanese reading)- the Duck Consort/Flower Princess. She was introduced in episode 3, and together with her dead lover, was the focal point of episode 3's mystery. Her blood relation to the Chancellor (the subs for ep 3 translated his title as prime minister, but I think either could work) was mentioned in passing by the Raven Consort's attendant, who also said that the Duck Consort and the emperor were old friends. At the end of episode 3, the Raven Consort asked the emperor why Huaniang joined the inner palace (presumably because it was evident to her that the Duck Consort was still very much in love with a deceased man). The emperor replied that he offered her the title of consort as means of support/protection, because she was still being pressured to marry after her lover died and was refusing to do tie the knot with anybody. Fast forward to episode 10, and we're being told that Huaniang's marriage to the emperor was done for political reasons- to keep her clan in check by preventing her from producing a heir. It had me wondering for minute if what the Emperor told the Raven Consort in episode 3 was a lie. I concluded that he did want to genuinely help her (it was pretty evident early on that the emperor was a genuinely good-hearted man), but given his post, political considerations were inevitable. I don't think he'd make stuff up like that to the Raven Consort (even early on in their relationship, especially given that he and Duck Consort still seem respectful to each other as adults and the topic involved someone dear to her), but I wouldn't put it past him to omit information he deemed unpleasant- and court politics is rarely simple or clean. I think the Raven Consort realised that fully at the end of the episode. Given her backstory, I don't think the Duck Consort is interested in producing an heir (later episodes may prove me wrong). Her grandfather doesn't seem to realize that and thinks it's the emperor who's not interested in producing an heir with her (he's probably not wrong on that, but still). I kinda wish we'd got some sort of callback to episode 3 for continuity's sake, but time constraints are a pain, I guess (and I wouldn't know where to put it, so I'm one to talk). As much as I love this series, a recurring gripe for me is that the one-episode stories generally need a little more time than the standard to resolve themselves comfortably (5-10 minutes, not a whole second episode)- the only episode to avoid this complaint is episode 9. Man, this show is dense. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2619 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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I thought it might be her image of herself (plump and healthy) versus her reality, which was harder to hide near the source of her trauma. It does seem to go against the story's own ghost lore, though.
Right, that's what I meant.  You weren't kidding about the voice-to-text spelling stuff; between the names in this show and my computer's issues with my New England accent, I got distracted!
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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If that's what the subs said in episode 3 it must have been a mistranslation - what the emperor said was simply that he took her as consort because, not wanting to marry anyone after her lover's death, she had nowhere to go. And in episode 10 the Raven Consort correctly guesses that the greater context is that with this the emperor helped her clan save face (not having her bring shame on the family) and also moved her in a position of huge rank while also preventing them from exploiting this by not producing a child with her. So yes, as you say it was partly out of support for her as an old friend of his, but also out of political considerations: a favor for her clan and a power move. Except the clan is understandably keen to have a crown prince from the family, so they keep pressuring the emperor to take on yet another of their daughters as consort so that she could give him a son - which, as the Raven Consort correctly guesses again, really grates on him. So I don't think we're supposed to think that he lied in episode 3, it's just that he wasn't sharing the whole story with her, mostly because he had no reason to do so, but also because he seems genuinely fond of the Duck Consort and for him it's simply more important that he helped a friend. |
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Bluuumeee
Posts: 41 |
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Went and checked the ep 3 Subs. The subs are like this: Emperor: After Xuanyou's death, Huaniang had nowhere to go. Since her lover was dead, she had no choice but to marry into another family. But she refused to consider it, so I granted her this position. Seems like they actually translated that bit faithfully-the error was entirely mine for misremembering (probably conflating it with something else in my head) and dramatising without checking. Sorry for the misrepresentation. Thanks for explaining clearly the political angle. I thought something was flying over my head- I'm slow with regard to things like that. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11431 |
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Never mind.
Last edited by Gina Szanboti on Sun Dec 11, 2022 3:05 am; edited 1 time in total |
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minamikaze
Posts: 222 |
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Sorry, but what made you think that she was only 26 years old? The old man in the Ministry of Work, who as we have seen, was the previous Raven Consort's contemporary, said that she was chosen to become the Raven Consort when she was 14 and became it 8 years later when her predecessor died. Koushun/Gaoju said that Jusetu/Shouxue was chosen when she was only 6 years old and became the Raven Consort 8 years later when the previous Raven Consort died. While Koushun/Gaojun comments that both previous Raven Consorts died 8 years after their successor was chosen, how old they actually were when that happened was not said. In both cases only the age of the successor was stated. So while they don't say how old the previous Raven Consort was when Jusetu/Shouxue was chosen, considering she was a contemporary of the old man in the Ministry of Work, it seems likely she that she had served as the Raven Consort for several decades before Jusetu/Shouxue was chosen. As the picture you posted shows, she has been depicted as being at least past middle aged. Last edited by minamikaze on Sun Dec 11, 2022 2:03 am; edited 4 times in total |
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Bluuumeee
Posts: 41 |
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I watched the dubbed version of episode 8.... the translation error SHD pointed out made its way there as well. Dangit. I'm gonna have to make a note to remind myself of the error.
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