Umseting - Confusion...I am sick and tired of it (Enskt)

Hi Ian

Impeccable English as usual

My Japanese no being up to scratch, I have called a poll

Bises
Tantine

Thanks, Tantine!
Yeah, that's what Kafetzou does too, and I think it's a good idea actually, because I sometimes get valuable feedback from other people who read Japanese too. (For example, maybe somebody has a better idea what that らんま/ranma might mean here...)
Thanks as always for your time and trouble!

I know this Ranma ¹/2.

Hmmm...

I guess this sentence is from comics "Ranma 1/2". If so, Ranma is the name of guy in this comics. Since I don't understand the language the person who asked this question uses (maybe Spanish?), I cannot see any background of this sentence....

If my guess is correct, simple transilation will be "Ranma... I'm tired of it" or "Ranma... I'm bored."

I think it's fair to say that, given the limited information on hand, it's a good translation.

Rie makes a good point though.

Hi Ian

They may have a point here, as the comments under the request read:

"Il testo in inglese è stato tradotto cosi: Viewing ま ...I grew tired. Non riesco a tradurre il simbolo ま"

Which as you have already fathomed out for yourself means:

"The text in English was translated thus: viewing ま ... I grew tired. I didn't manage to translat the symbol ま"

As Ranma is a manga comix and a video, I can only imagine that it is this same Ranma that is referred to.

What do you think Professor Megill san?

Bises
Tantine

Thanks Tantine-chan!
You know, I understand that a computer translation could have given Lil_Isabel the result she describes.
There is a character 覧 in Japanese, which is read "ran" and means "to view" or "to see/look at something." Unfortunately, as you know, computer programs are useless at guessing meaning from context, and tend to translate whatever is input into them word-for-word. This is a classic example of just such a problem. The computer broke up "ranma" into ""ran" ("see" ) and "ma" (ま, meaningless).
The problem is that the ideographic character 覧 (which can be written らん in the phonetic script, as is the case here) is never used by itself like this, and there certainly would never be a (meaningless) ま after it. So I am absolutely certain we can rule out the possibility of it meaning "viewま" or some such strange combination...
On the other hand, the whole "ranma" may indeed refer to the manga/anime character suggested above, but there is no way of knowing, because in Japanese, the phonetic script works like our alphabet script, in that it tells you how the word sounds, but not what it means (as the ideographic script does).
Points in favor of the anime interpretation are that the word "confusion" would usually be written in ideographic script (乱麻) and not in the phonetic script as in this text. The name of the anime character, on the other hand, seems to use the phonetic script...
Anyway, I have added a note to give the alternate "manga character" translation meaning in the remarks section, just in case!

Ian san

I've copy pasted this from the wikipedia link casper posted above:

Ranma ½ (らんま½ Ranma nibun-no-ichi)

The 3 phonetic japanese characters in the brackets are the same three that begin the source text.

Could it be that the text means (more or less)

"I've had my fill of らんま", meaning I'm sick of reading Ranma mangas, or had enough of seeing the video...

Bises`
Tantine chan

I voted "this translation is correct", but I think that the alternative translation is better.

Hi Tantine-chan!
Hmm...Well, it's certainly not impossible that the text means, as you say,
Ranma(the manga/anime)...I'm tired of it(Reading/watching it)
just as it could mean that in English too, i.e.
Ranma...I'm tired of it
but I wish it would have said so with proper grammar if this is the case (e.g. "I'm tired of watching Ranma" ) because it's very possible to say this perfectly clearly in Japanese too...
As I mentioned above, the way of writing らんま here (in the phonetic, not ideographic, characters) seems to hint that it may be talking about the manga/anime (or that a character in the manga/anime is talking to "Ranma" ) but it's not conclusive, because we can write any word in phonetic characters in Japanese. (Actually, books often do that here in Japan now, because more and more young people can't read the 2000+ ideographic characters anymore. It's a lot easier to read only the 50 phonetic ones...)

Hi Ian

I love reading your posts, they are always full of interesting and useful explanations .

As long as manga/anime explanation is also mentioned in the comments box, I can accept this.

Hands up who agrees?

Bises
Tantine

Whew...;;
Actually I was kinda worried: I think my posts are almost always longer than most anybody else's, and I was worried you might find me much more talkative than necessary...
I guess you can see how much I love language, anyway!

Hehe

I've been restraining myself since I came on cucumis. I write really lengthy, involved messages in general, if I send emails to people they take hours to upload lol

I love words. I guess I'm a wordsmith. I write poetry, prose. (I'm meant to be writing a book too). I like really hard, cryptic crosswords, and can cruciverb (don't know if that exists in English) in French and English alike.

I guess we are kind of spoiled, we two. Having two real linguistic references rocks (as casper would say).

Bises
Tantine

> Having two real linguistic references rocks
Yeah...
!

I love words. I guess I'm a wordsmith. I write poetry. Me too.

I'll be waiting for a copy of that book, Ruth. It would be great. then I send you mine.

Ranma is not chaos or confusion.

Hi Yoshimitsu san

Could you be more explicit? What does Ranma mean, in your opinion?

Thanks for helping

Bises
Tantine

Please yoshimitsu, take a look on Tantine's message above.

CC: yoshimitsu

Oi Casper

I would like to read some of your poetry

Some of mine is on my blog, but I have written quite a lot, so there are only a few on there.

As soon as I've finished writing my book I'll send you a copy. Now it can be an international best seller because I can get it translated on cucumis

Beijos
Tantine