Tag Discussion: Coppice Destroyer Hime

BUR #3086 has been approved by @evazion.

mass update coppice_destroyer_hime -> destroyer_forest_hime

See debate here:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/4006390#comment_2028669

tl;dr 駆逐林棲姫 is the Abyssal version of the Matsu-class nameship. The 林 in 駆逐林棲姫 is currently translated as "coppice". 林 is an abbreviation of 雑木林, which is a reference to the naming scheme of the Matsu-class destroyers. The KanColle wiki translation team and I preferred to capture these meanings with "mixed forest" and "Destroyer Forest Hime", but this is not unanimous. Paracite prefers thicket or wood.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3086 (forum #169837) has been approved by @evazion.

I also prefer Thicket

Wait a second, why are we translating "forest" and "destroyer" into English but not "hime"? Shouldn't this be either a raw transliteration (駆逐林棲姫 -> kuchikurinsei-hime?) or a full translation (destroyer forest princess)? Translating everything but "hime" feels like a "Just according to keikaku" translation.

Yes, I know we use *_hime for other abyssal shipgirls. The question is, why are we only half translating these names? The KanColle wiki translates hime to princess for these characters ([1], [2]), so if we really want to be consistent with them, we'd have to do the same.

For that matter, as long as we're translating character names into English, we should translate shinkaisei-kan (abyssal ship) into English too. We don't call the Abyssal Admiral the Shinkai Teitoku, after all.

[1]: https://kancolle.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Enemy_Vessel
[2]: https://en.kancollewiki.net/Enemy_Vessel

It's not like we have to be 1:1 to a wiki, really.

I suspect hime is left as hime because oni is left as oni (to maintain the 'japanese at the end' thing, maybe?)... though 棲姫 is seiki not hime.　Shinkaiseikan is literally abyssal(深海)-dewlling(棲)-ship(艦), so the hime's there are basically Class[abyssal]dewlling-princess, viz. 戦艦（深海）棲姫. It becomes seiki because it's a compound (not a normal one), talking about them as 姫, not 棲姫.

I already put my thoughts on the Matsu thing in those comments, but in short, I think 'forest' is too broad to really be a contraction of 雑木林, as it implies a large monoculture-y area of trees (i.e. a 森 not a 林), not a mixed one.

Yeah, we don't have to be 1:1. If the danbooru community is against it then that's fine. Incidentally, I did just find that searching "thicket" turns up "A thicket is a very dense stand of trees or tall shrubs, often dominated by only one or a few species, to the exclusion of all others" which is also the wrong nuance ...

I always did find it strange that hime and shinkaisei-kan were left as is here, but danbooru tends to be more conservative and literal about translations so I chalked it up to that.

I always assumed shinkaisei-kan was that way for the same reasons other proper names are left as is, like Aoshidan school uniform, even though it's the equivalent of an American school being named Northwest high school. Though I have noticed the preference for Aoshidan over Blue Division in translations isn't universal. Abyssal Admiral isn't an official thing, so it's exempt from that policy, I suppose.

As a native English speaker I'd find Copse the most natural word. Thicket sounds more like rough scrub.

If one says one's pig is lost in the thicket, certainly doesn't evoke trees; Coppice sounds more like a few standing trees; but would do.

.

Plus in old fictions, the mingling of corpse and copse seemed irresistible: "T' old squire's lying dead in t'copse ! Some villain shot him in t'back whilst 'e was ferreting !"

Copse is definitely right.

Claverhouse said:
Thicket sounds more like rough scrub.

Also true.

Plus in old fictions, the mingling of corpse and copse seemed irresistible: "T' old squire's lying dead in t'copse ! Some villain shot him in t'back whilst 'e was ferreting !"

If anything this highlights that the word is archaic - we should translate for modern speech unless the character/dialogue comes from an earlier era. There's also no need to relate the princess to "corpse".

It's apparent we're seeing some regional differences though. In my very unscientific sampling, Americans (+ one Australian) are broadly unfamiliar with "coppice" or "copse". One did bring up Huntsman's Copse from Dark Souls II...

LuceatEis said:

If anything this highlights that the word is archaic - we should translate for modern speech unless the character/dialogue comes from an earlier era. There's also no need to relate the princess to "corpse".

Copse is not some dead word from a bygone era, it's still used regularly in media. Translating based on casual everyday speech is a terrible road to go down, imo, not every word is intended for everyday use. It took me five seconds look up coppice and I was already familiar with copse (I'm American if that matters), so any concerns that people aren't familiar with a word seem moot when all the world's knowledge is at your fingertips.

Not to say it's the best word to use here, but it doesn't seem like any of the options are very good.

blindVigil said:

Translating based on casual everyday speech is a terrible road to go down
any concerns that people aren't familiar with a word seem moot when all the world's knowledge is at your fingertips.

Translating is (1) contextual and (2) meant for our modern everyday readers. If characters were speaking casually, then casual, everyday speech is perfect. Neither does everyone having access to Google give me free reign to use arbitrary words in the thesaurus (boscage?) in every context. Of course, this is a name, of a boss character, so I am not advocating slang either.

I'm American if that matters

It does, I appreciate you speaking out.

Language issues aside, "coppice" simply doesn't convey the actual symbolism behind the name, as I have argued.

Wikipedia said:

Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeatedly cut down to near ground level, resulting in a stool. New growth emerges, and after a number of years, the coppiced tree is harvested, and the cycle begins anew.

Jarman, R., Kofman, P.D. (2017). Coppice in Brief. COST Action FP1301 Reports. Freiburg, Germany: Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg:

Most coppice woodlands have been intensively managed over several centuries to achieve a high density of stools and a few selected species. Typical coppices are monocultures of hazel, oak, lime, sweet chestnut, or black locust, which are specially selected to meet industrial needs such as bark for tanning, wood for charcoal, poles for fencing and building.

To summarize my views:

• The Matsu-class destroyers were given a nickname that describes them as a collection of trees of many species. This is referenced in an abbreviated form in her Abyssal (shinkaiseikan) representation. Abbreviated references are common in Abyssal boss names.
• Coppices are a traditional form of lumber harvesting. They are typically monocultures for commercial efficiency.
• "A thicket is a very dense stand of trees or tall shrubs, often dominated by only one or a few species, to the exclusion of all others" (Wikipedia)
• "Forests sometimes contain many tree species within a small area (as in tropical rain and temperate deciduous forests), or relatively few species over large areas (e.g., taiga and arid montane coniferous forests)." (Wikipedia) Imperfect, but forest can catch the right nuance.

The bulk update request #3086 (forum #169837) has been approved by @evazion.

This seems like one of those cases where it's impossible to translate something perfectly accurately without it sounding stilted. Feel free to explain all this stuff in the wiki if it bothers you.

And I really think we shouldn't be using *_hime and *_oni for these characters. We should use either full Japanese or full English for these characters. Right now we're just using weeb-speak. Especially considering that apparently it should be written as seiki, not hime.

BUR #3165 has been approved by @evazion.

Needs a double check for these to make sure I didn't accidentally add characters from other copyrights (I checked them one by one but you never know).

Also changed broken english like the following to match the KC wikia.

update southern_battleship_new_hime -> new_southern_battleship_princess	

For _oni, should we be going for the wikia's "demon" term?

EDIT: This bulk update request is pending automatic rejection in 5 days.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3165 (forum #170567) has been approved by @evazion.

BUR #3166 has been approved by @evazion.

create alias shinkaisei-kan -> abyssal_ship

Separating this as it may rustle some feathers.

EDIT: The bulk update request #3166 (forum #170569) has been approved by @evazion.

nonamethanks said:

update southern_battleship_new_hime -> new_southern_battleship_princess

Technically, this is wrong. The new in all of them attaches to the princess part, not the whole word (i.e. ○○新棲姫 not 新○○棲姫）. It is indeed '[whatever] new princess' and not 'new [whatever] princess'. It does sound a bit odd though.

I'm against changing oni to demon, since oni is a well-understood word; at this point you could say that it's basically been taken into English to refer to that type of monster anyway. Demon is a very broad term, after all.

Paracite said:

Technically, this is wrong. The new in all of them attaches to the princess part, not the whole word (i.e. ○○新棲姫 not 新○○棲姫）. It is, indeed '[whatever] new princess' and not 'new [whatever] princess'. It does sound a bit odd though.

I'm aware that the literal translation is like that, but it doesn't make much sense to keep it like that for our purpose, since in English the correct form (new X princess) carries the same implied meaning as the Japanese version does, and it'd just look jarring to keep the Engrish form when all the other sources move the word position.

Again, technically 'New Southern Battleship Princess' means both 'the Princess of the [New Southern Battleship]' and 'the new [Southern Battleship Princess]'. I'm not saying it's wrong to make it read more naturally, it's just less accurate.

nonamethanks said:

For _oni, should we be going for the wikia's "demon" term?

I'm in favour of just leaving those as is. Oni and oni horns are something we tag distinctly to demon and demon horns. A lot of the abyssal designs include oni horns, so I think throwing "demon" into the mix here has the potential to add confusion and lead to mistagging for no practical benefit.

nonamethanks said:

BUR #3166 has been approved by @evazion.

create alias shinkaisei-kan -> abyssal_ship

My preference would be to drop "ship". Maybe abyssal (kantai collection) if just abyssal is too ambiguous. The reason being is we make a point not to tag any Kantai Collection posts with ship unless there is an actual ship present, so it feels odd to include it here, even as a suffix. A more minor point is that many of the abyssal characters are based on installations, and aren't ships per se.

evazion said:

This seems like one of those cases where it's impossible to translate something perfectly accurately without it sounding stilted. Feel free to explain all this stuff in the wiki if it bothers you.

Planned to do regardless of the conclusion, will do.

Especially considering that apparently it should be written as seiki, not hime.

To be clear, some princesses have seiki, some have just hime (the second character). abyssal_sun_hime does have seiki so it's blatantly wrong.

The 棲, which is also in "shinkai seikan", has been ignored for as long as I can remember. I can't say for sure what the original translators thought, but I believe it is meant to be implicit. It means to "dwell" or be at, essentially.

Blue_Trident said:

I'm in favour of just leaving those as is. Oni and oni horns are something we tag distinctly to demon and demon horns. A lot of the abyssal designs include oni horns, so I think throwing "demon" into the mix here has the potential to add confusion and lead to mistagging for no practical benefit.

Yeah, never questioned those translations because I figured things like that would come up on Danbooru...

*_new_hime

With regard to New_X_Hime versus X_New_Hime discussion, the problem is adjective and noun phrase modifier ordering doesn't matter as much in Japanese as it does in English. So it's not always going to be clear what the devs intended by the name order. They stick to the format:

[Location]-[Ship/Installation Class/"Abyssal"]-[Modifier Kanji]-["Oni"/"Seiki"/"Hime"]

where the modifier can be almost anything. We've seen Old, German, Water, Sun...
But the order affects how English readers build their semantic tree. "Forest Destroyer Princess" or "Water Destroyer Princess" can be read to mean Princesses who destroy forests and water. So I think we need to handle these on a case-by-case basis.

In the case of new, when I hear "New Japanese show", the New applies to "Japanese show", not "Japanese" alone. We're fine putting New first, in current cases. We can relitigate if we ever get something like New Forest Princess.

I'd like to add I'm not actually a huge fan of all previous name decisions on the wikis either (e.g. "Isolated" instead of "Remote", "Ancient" instead of "old"). As Paracite said, don't necessarily accept names just because the wikis use them.

LuceatEis said:

With regard to New_X_Hime versus X_New_Hime discussion, the problem is adjective and noun phrase modifier ordering doesn't matter as much in Japanese as it does in English.

It does, though. You cannot cross phrase unit boundaries in Japanese like you can in English. (i.e. everything is nested, you cannot 'cross the streams', viz. if you diagrammed out the sentence, none of the lines from the phrases would ever touch one another.). It's not something that comes up at lot unless you're constructing phrases for teaching purposes, but it's certainly a thing.