the name ugetsu

Watched today Ugetsu Monogatari at uni for a class, and came out thinking about what does it mean that Ugetsu Murata from Given has that name. The film is pretty phamtasmagoric and the title is translated literally to something like “Tales of Moonlight and Rain”, which listening to my teacher is meant to refer to the ilusory and fragile world that’s experienced when those elements came together and makes up what the atmosphere around what the four main charas end up experiencing; ambiguous supernatural elements + a comment on war and men and how it affects their families(their wifes especifically in this case). Is also the loose adaptation of two or three tales of a collection by the same name written by author Ueda in 1776, and the title is no coincidence…

Right so it seems Ugetsu has the connotations of mistery and magic, as in, nights where anything could happen. Back already in the sXVIII. So, I like the name, both what it means and the way it sounds outloud but I wonder, uh. Why the chara in Given has that name. He does give a bit of pseudo-gothic/haunted vibes at the start… if not by the supernatural.

translations eng vs espa for 2ha

Contemplating the fact that my chinese isn’t good enough yet to read webnovels (most of all because I’m into the fantasy xianxia kind and the historical ones and wuxia, and like, the vocabulary there is not cotidiane and more specialised) and pondering which translations of 2HA I could read: two in English, of dubious quality both, and the one in Latin American Spanish, which I think takes from the English one and translates very literally and is overall weird to me as a Spaniard. Because it seems like it’s badly translated when half the time it’s just it’s using common latam wording, and the other half akward chinese phrase structure. 

And still, I read the first two books in English, the third in the Spanish translation; and although overall the Spanish one was more difficult to me because of my familiarity with my native tongue, when I switched back to English bc I was tired of reading and rewording words in my head, I went to reread the last part I was in the Spanish version, and it was very emotional and I had tears in my eyes in it, and in the English one it didn’t process. The emotion wasn’t there. At all.

I felt very weirded out?? That the reasonance wasn’t there…. No that I didn’t cry again; it usually just impacts me the first one or two times and then I just feel very deeply but not cry. But there wasn’t deep feeling on my chest or anything. I commented to my mother in it and she said it made sense because English feels very cold and it has no poetry in comparison with other languages (her opinion people, which I happen to partially agree with. i think that to us, spanish speakers, it seems so bc we aren’t english lol) and I went mmm. Maybe??

But I read fics and books in English and cried lots? Over two years ago I went into the Silm fandom and the amount of tears I cried could fill an ocean, so overwhelmed I was by the writting. And ok, the quality there is super high, so maybe it isn’t fair, but compared to other people I know I get really into the stories I like and cry easily. In Spanish, in English, in Japanese…

So I suppose is the Chinese translation into English what wasn’t working for me there?? And now I’m super frustrated, bc its left me with no option but to go back to the, for me, incredibly frustrating Spanish version bc it may tire me, and make me want to like, break something, but at least there I get a sense of the depth of emotion of the original.

What I am sure is the moment I get the fluency in Chinese I’ll be rereading 2HA in the original language it was written in.