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Tokyo Babylon: A Save for Tokyo City Story Starring Subaru Sumeragi/Hokuto Sumeragi/Seishiro Sakurazuka Prologue Mesopotamia's ancient city. Eighteen centuries before the common era, following the ruler of the Babylonian kingdom, King Hammerabi, decreeing of it to be the capital, and thus, the city prospers: the political and cultural heart of the Orient. However. Vain through their prosperity, the people already wished to be as gods, and the tower that they erected to touch the heavens was called "Babel." The Absolute, heretofore sufficient as "God," could not forgive this affront, and thus, His punishment rained down upon those in the tower: Man's common tongue was lost. With this circumstance as an illustration, Man, thusly and commonly, repeats that he is human and therefore foolish. Alas, the catastrophe Babylon became! The city submerged by the wrath of God. |
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Do you hate Tokyo? |
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Japan's capital city. The
estimated population is 11,923,346 people. Roppongi
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Translator notes: The first part about Babylonia was pure, unadulterated, Translator Hell. I just wanted to share that with you. More seriously, though--There is a subtlety that really has no parallel in a romanized language, and I have attempted to reproduce via "fun with fonts." Japanese has three scripts that are all used alongside each other: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are both syllabaries. Hiragana is the more "cursive" script, and is used for words of Japanese or Chinese origin. Katakana is used for words of foreign origin, and often used for sound effects. Kanji are the Chinese characters that were imported into Japanese. Often, hiragana script is written overtop of kanji that the reader may not know. This is called furigana. The furigana does not always match the kanji--the furigana tells you how to pronounce something, so when a character is "speaking" they may "say" the location in kanji(ie, "CLAMP Gakuen") but the furigana is "koko" (here)--this indicates that there word they spoke was "koko" but "CLAMP Gakuen" was written to clarify for the reader where they were talking about. That said, I can come to why I'm playing "Fun with Fonts." The line "It is a city that never sleeps" is written in straight kanji. However, the furigana above it is not the pronunciation of the kanji, but "It is an unparalleled playground." I have tried to capture the flavor of this via shrinking and italicizing the text. |
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