Talk:Trivia

The meaning of Konoko

The page for Konoko offers the interpretation of her name ("this child") that I most prefer. However, I think it's important to note here, for those who aren't familiar with the way Japanese works, that one must always be careful when interpreting names based on a breakdown into syllables. The actual meaning of a name must be determined by the kanji with which it is written. Simply hearing a word or seeing it written in Roman letters like "Konoko", you don't know what kanji make it up, or even how many kanji. Therefore, you cannot know the real meaning of the name. If a person only knew the syllables, they could just as easily break down "konoko" as "ko no ko", meaning "child of child", "child of sin", "price of sin", etc., but none of these are likely to be correct if you consider Konoko to be a "proper" Japanese name that is based in kanji. To my knowledge, there is no official representation of Konoko's name in the form of kanji.

Stepping out of the world of the game, one could ask, Well, what did the creators intend Konoko to mean? There is evidence that they were not just randomly slapping Japanese syllables together, as "Mukade" likely refers to the insect (again, we can't know this without kanji, but this is a case where the word "mukade" has a traditional usage in Japanese myths (and real-life, if you are unfortunate enough to have them in your house), so we can make a reasonable assumption as to the meaning). However, the notion that Bungie West had a meaning in mind for "Konoko" is pretty much blown out of the water by this interview. Stepping back into the game's world, we can still pretend that it means "this child", or whatever we want it to mean, when plotting an Oni 2, or trying to be clever in an Added value section. Just don't make the mistake of asserting your opinion as if it's fact.

Here's what we can state as fact based on the sounds in Konoko's name:
Hiragana (used for personal names): このこ
Katakana (used for sounding out kanji):コノコ

But again, that's of limited value because name meanings do not come from the kana.

Occurrences of Oni names in the "Real World"

Do the quotes on "real world" seem strangely disdainful of reality as we know it? Oops. Oh well. Here is a place for listing actual places where names and places from Oni show up. Again, it's not a matter of whether these occurrences have any significance, but just for the sake of showing that we found something weird/interesting. If it's not self-evidently weird or interesting, explain why you find it so.

• Konoko No Nanatsuno Oiwaini. Can also be written as "Konoko no nanatsu no Oiwai ni", which is easier to parse.

You can find a mention of this phrase here and here. IMDb gives the literal translation as "For My Daughter's Seventh Birthday". My limited understanding of the language tells me that, out of the three significant words in that phrase, "nanatsu" is "seven" or "seventh", and "oiwai" is probably "birthday", leaving "konoko" to mean "daughter" or "my daughter". This is quite interesting. Once again I am astounded at the beneficial coincidence that "Konoko" can mean something significant even though Brent Pease, in the interview linked to above, claims it 'just popped into my [non-Japanese-knowing] head'. I would really like to know whether the "konoko" in the title means "daughter" or "my daughter", but I'm guessing it's just plain "daughter".

That still doesn't tell me why on earth a Japanese video game has a song by that title, but hey, why start trying to understand the Japanese now?

• "Shounen A" Konoko wo Unde

http://www.sasugabooks.com/product_info.php?products_id=30417 is a book with an interesting title that I can't translate. I know "Shounen A" is "Kid A", which is pretty amusing for fellow Radiohead fans out there.

• Konoko wa wagamama...

At this page are the lyrics to a song ["Hato ni naritai"] by the band AIKO that has the line “Konoko wa wagamama nandakara amayakashi chadame yo”. It's actually in quotes, set apart from the other lyrics as if someone in the song is speaking it. To the right are the original Japanese characters, ｢この子は我が儘なんだから甘やかしちゃだめよ｣ (notice the quote marks there too). Presumably the "この子" would have to be "konoko" but then why are the first and last syllables different? You'd expect them to be the same. I am also unable to find that 子 symbol in either the katakana or hiragana scripts. There's also no translation of the lyrics. Babelfish provides this, surprisingly enough: "Therefore as for this child selfish what you pamper, ちゃ useless." That's actually pretty good for Babelfish. It actually recognized the "this child" in there somehow (especially dubious trivia: "wagamama" is "selfish", so "konoko wa wagamama" is "this selfish child").

another try of translation

Ko  no  ko  wa  wa ga  mama  na  n   da  ka  ra  ama ya  ka  shi  cha  da  me  yo
こ  の  子   は  我 が  儘    な   ん  だ   か  ら  甘  や   か  し   ちゃ  だ  め  よ

wa is also often used by females at the end of the sentence to establish an emotional connection.

waga = my/our

mama also written まま = the existing status ("bestehender Zustand"; taken from Langenscheidt Japanese-German dictionary)

wagamama = selfishness (taken from babelfish)

nandakara = therefore (taken from babelfish) // nan also written 何 = what; dakara = so ("deswegen"; taken from Langenscheidt Japanese-German dictionary)

amayakashi = pamper (no wiki entries)

cha alone means tea

dame alone means no good; useless; hopeless

anyway, combinations can create a new meaning and this case isn't documented on wikis so far. -- It means "you must not do" according to a pdf (here).

yo = sentence emphasis particle

Now let's put it into readable English.

You must not pamper this child therefore [its] selfishness!

Ah, thanks, paradox, that makes more sense. --Iritscen 15:33, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Er, I don't know about you, but I still don't understand what all this actually means: "You must not pamper this child therefore [its] selfishness!" Care to phrase that in German, perhaps? ^_^ --geyser 20:29, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

I think he's translating it to mean "You must not pamper this child so that selfishness [will result]." It looks like you could make a case for "nandakara" meaning "so that", or "in order that". --Iritscen 21:36, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Du darfst/solltest dieses Kind nicht verhätscheln und somit sein Egoismus.

Note that pamper refers to child and selfishness - a second verb was spared, so try to see it more as "stylistic device" (*).

If you mean "must not" ("darfst nicht"), ok, it might not be perfect here, "shouldn't" ("solltest nicht") would fit better. But there was no other references so it might be (a bit or totally) wrong in first place (but the document seems reliable)).

____

Edit after seeing Iritscen reply: I see, my English is still lacking like hell. -- How about this: "You must not pamper this child so that selfishness (*)(will result)!" ? --Paradox-01 22:14, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Yeah, that could be. But I had a second thought.

The straight (unreadable) translation is:

"Konoko wa wagamama nandakara amayakashi cha dame yo", and "wa" is just a topic marker and "yo" simply emphasizes what you just said. So we get:

"This child [topic marker] selfish therefore pamper don't [so there! :-)]"

And that could simply mean

"This child's selfish, so don't pamper him/her." Or "It's no good to pamper this selfish child." The other translation, "so that selfishness will result", inserts a verb. So I don't know if we should assume there's a missing verb. Oh well, I really have to go do other things now :-) --Iritscen 22:46, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Thanks Dox, your disambiguated translation is fine. I like the idea of the verb "pamper" being "distributed" onto both "this child" and "its selfishness". The idea would be: "Yo, don't pamper this cutie or you'll spoil her." But of course the original construct is more powerful: "If you nurse this cutie, you'll also be nursing her egoism. So don't. Yo." Anyway, quite random, just as that Kid A thing; not even close to "Konoko no nanatsuno oiwaini"... --geyser 00:16, 1 April 2008 (CEST)

• Konoko Philips

Who the heck is Konoko Philips, you ask? The love child of Konoko and Emo Philips, perhaps? No, it's not that frightening or interesting. From http://www.vor.ru/Exclusive/excl_next8884_eng.html (dead link):

The Lukoil transnational corporation expands its presence in Europe. The company, notably, buys on the European retail market a network of petrol
stations from its US partner Konoko Philips.[...]

Iritscen

Actually the company here is ConocoPhillips. The English article (http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=5473&p=18.12.2006, dead link) and the Russian one (http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=16166&p=21.12.2006, dead link) were apparently not written by the same team of highly trained monkeys. Sheesh.

geyser 22:48, 27 March 2008 (CET)

Oh! LOL. Everyone's heard of ConocoPhilips, but for some reason substituting Ks for Cs made it unrecognizable to me. --Iritscen 15:33, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Double L, dude, double L. --geyser 20:29, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Yeah, yeah. :p --Iritscen 22:46, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

• Konoko's Ovaries?!

This alarming note from a bonafide Japanese person, at http://www.spc.int/coastfish/news/BDM/19/BDM_19.pdf, page 3:

The ovaries are dried (called konoko), and the intestines are salt-fermented (called konowata).

She's talking about fish, by the way. And it's possible that the drying process is what's called konoko.

Iritscen

Actually, konoko are sun-dried gonads of sea cucumbers, and sea cucumbers aren't fish. A Google image search for "konoko" returns about as many pictures of this delicacy as of the Konoko we know.

geyser 22:48, 27 March 2008 (CET)

...Oh. But it says ovaries in the document, not gonads. Right? There's no way I can bear changing this section title to "Konoko's Gonads". :@ --Iritscen 22:46, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Well, just leave Konoko alone, why doncha? While we're at it, my main complaint was about "fish", not "ovaries": they're sea cucumbers, for sake's sake. And it's not like that kind of trivia deserves a whole section anyway, or at least not that kind of section (overcapitalized header, 100% fabricated "false alarm", and of course the unavoidable "bonafide"... ^_^ ). Wet-blanket rant over. --geyser 00:16, 1 April 2008 (CEST)

Duly noted. I was a little punchy when I started posting this on the Trivia page itself. I might have changed my mind the next day as to the relevance of some of this stuff. --Iritscen 15:19, 1 April 2008 (CEST)

Frankly, that kind of contribution looks more like a forum post than anything: the ephemeral satisfaction of stylishly formulating whatever's on your mind, no matter how random. Cheap thrills for everyone, and especially for the author ^_^ Personally I'd try to keep witticisms confined to edit summaries (or talk pages), so that they don't accumulate and interfere with the actual content; they're funny when you write them, and they might be funny to read once or twice, but after that they're just plain annoying (especially if at the core of the witticism there's unchecked stuff like "Konoko Philips" or "fish" ^_^ ). --geyser 09:17, 1 April 2008 (CEST)

Japanese Names

There aren't many (free) resources on the Web for translation. The only two I'm aware of at the moment are:

• http://www.freedict.com/onldict/jap.html
• http://babelfish.altavista.com/ [AltaVista and Babel Fish are dead, Jim --Iritscen]

The FreeDict is the only good choice when getting translations for romanized Japanese, because Babelfish apparently expects kanji/kana as input. But the FreeDict is quite limited. For instance, looking at the items above, if you wanted to know what "oiwai" or "unde" mean, you're out of luck. Also, Babelfish is the only tool that accepts whole phrases, whole web sites even. On the other hand, Babelfish is notoriously poor at syntactical interpretations, and its actual vocabulary is quite limited too.

If anyone out there reading this really knows their Nihongo, we'd welcome their input on translating any of the above Japanese.

Iritscen

There are actually tons of dictionaries out there that are way better that FreeDict. Just google for "japanese english".

geyser 17:18, 27 March 2008 (CET)

Still haven't found any, except for Wiktionary. --Iritscen 22:46, 31 March 2008 (CEST)