My brain....
April 22nd, 2007 08:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skeren"I was the chosen one."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6fRHixLS6A
That line is in the subtitles of that AMV. The AMV is heartwrenching Zack/Cloudness based around Last Order.
Unfortunately I have this really bad habit of reading subtitles in AMVs. The one in that AMV?
That is not the widely circulated Shinsen one.
That uses slightly different phrasing, though almost the same. I even went and watched the one I saw the first time again to make sure.
In the widely circulated one, it's "I am the chosen one."
Was is past tense. Am is present tense. Considering the line, the distinction is hugely important, right?
I mean, if he said he was then that means that he wasn't the chosen anymore, or at least had a twinge that said he wasn't, doesn't it? Makes you wonder if he knew it was going to fail, on some level. That it was a lost cause even as he crooned to Jenova. He corrects it in the next line in that scene clip they used for the vid but... that's a rather large mistake so certain of his place in things, isn't it?
I know there's a widely used translation, but this has me wondering if there might not be small inaccuracies even in this most accurate one. I don't know Japanese well enough to say, myself, so it's something that has me both curious and interested. A friend of mine who knows it better listened to it and pointed out that technically, no tense was assigned to it at all in that particular sentence. The one after it stymied her to, since it can apparently go either way with just on listening to it, but they both say present tense in those translations, though different phrasing was apparently used in the two.
So, essentially, I'm hung up on the simple thing that there's a word difference in a very very important place. It may seem like a small quibble, but my brain is pointing out all the ways that one little word could be damn important.
So really, my muses just took a split. Those who were in the 'I am the chosen one' camp, and those in the 'I was the chosen one' camp.
Anyone know if they ever did an official translation for the damn thing, and if the word is 'am' or 'was'?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6fRHixLS6A
That line is in the subtitles of that AMV. The AMV is heartwrenching Zack/Cloudness based around Last Order.
Unfortunately I have this really bad habit of reading subtitles in AMVs. The one in that AMV?
That is not the widely circulated Shinsen one.
That uses slightly different phrasing, though almost the same. I even went and watched the one I saw the first time again to make sure.
In the widely circulated one, it's "I am the chosen one."
Was is past tense. Am is present tense. Considering the line, the distinction is hugely important, right?
I mean, if he said he was then that means that he wasn't the chosen anymore, or at least had a twinge that said he wasn't, doesn't it? Makes you wonder if he knew it was going to fail, on some level. That it was a lost cause even as he crooned to Jenova. He corrects it in the next line in that scene clip they used for the vid but... that's a rather large mistake so certain of his place in things, isn't it?
I know there's a widely used translation, but this has me wondering if there might not be small inaccuracies even in this most accurate one. I don't know Japanese well enough to say, myself, so it's something that has me both curious and interested. A friend of mine who knows it better listened to it and pointed out that technically, no tense was assigned to it at all in that particular sentence. The one after it stymied her to, since it can apparently go either way with just on listening to it, but they both say present tense in those translations, though different phrasing was apparently used in the two.
So, essentially, I'm hung up on the simple thing that there's a word difference in a very very important place. It may seem like a small quibble, but my brain is pointing out all the ways that one little word could be damn important.
So really, my muses just took a split. Those who were in the 'I am the chosen one' camp, and those in the 'I was the chosen one' camp.
Anyone know if they ever did an official translation for the damn thing, and if the word is 'am' or 'was'?