Welcome back to 2017! It’s been a long time coming, but I swear Boxes 2 and 3 won’t take another year to come out.

I suppose I don’t really have a lot to say. This was really always going to be a bonus project (if you’ll recall, our actual Fall 2017 pickup was Kujisuna), but I think the time it ended up taking caught everybody by surprise. On the bright side, if you watched this back when it was airing, great time for a rewatch. If you didn’t, thanks for your patience.

SSR is a truly wonderful show, and we did our best to do our best with it. That said, even after a year in production, there might still be errors, and do let us know if you find any of those. There might be a patch or batch coming along at the end.

With that said, please enjoy!

Torrent | Magnet

Notes:

SSR is a show that’s a bit lighter on the notes, relatively, since a lot of the notes I produce are less about translation and more about culture (or whatever I happened to find interesting during my research). That said, I do of course have stuff to talk about. It is a little bit spoilery, so avoid these if you haven’t watched the whole show yet.

First, in broad strokes, there’s some terminology that I tried to keep consistent across all the episodes (having access to all of them at once, instead of going week by week, makes this a lot easier). The major ones are ‘stratum’ and ‘ancients’.

The decision to use ‘stratum’ over ‘level’ or something like that is mostly because it’s a bit more evocative. It also has a very useful adjectival form (‘stratified’; cf. ‘levelled’ which means something else), but moreover it’s clear that there are big divisions (strata) and small divisions (floors, levels?).

昔の人 is a phrase that shows up a lot verbatim, but it coexists with a different phrase, 古代人. As a result these need to be translated differently. The show suggests that 昔の人 refers to a generation much less removed from Chito and Yuuri’s than 古代人, and usually it’s translated as ‘people of the past’. Sometimes it’s just ‘people’ (as in, ‘people used to do this’) because it gets tiring to read the whole thing over and over (Japanese appears to care less about this than English does). 古代人, then, gets translated as ‘the ancients’ (a term already in use in English) and 古代 as ‘ancient’.

Less importantly, we have their vehicle thing. It’s a Kettenkrad (SdKfz 2), and I don’t know what that is. Is it a motorcycle (‘Kettenkrad’ is short for something like ‘tracked motorcycle’)? Is it a car? Is it a tank? A gun tractor? Ultimately it differs based on context. Sometimes it’s referred to as 車, in which case the natural choice is to follow that and call it a ‘car’ (you could, under some definitions, maybe call it an armoured car, or you could think of a car as being a very general term for a vehicle). Sometimes it’s called a 車両, where it might be ‘vehicle’ in broad terms. It isn’t ever called a 戦車, so it’s never called a ‘tank’. It’s also never called a ‘motorcycle’, because Kanazawa had one of those, and he called it a バイク, as expected. Anyway, if any of you military guys want to tell me what to do here, I’m all ears.

That wraps up broad terminology, but there are a couple specific cases in this box.

In Episode 4, there’s talk of the Western Paradise. The original Japanese is 極楽浄土, which literally translates to ‘Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss’ or something like that, which is a specific location in Buddhism. The Sanskrit name is Sukhavati (lit: ‘bliss’ or something like that, no Pure Land business), and there are a few English renderings, including ‘the Western Paradise’, ‘the Western Pure Land’, and just ‘the Pure Land’, corresponding to any number of its names in any number of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Vietnamese (it’s Amida’s paradise, and it lies to the West). The major factor here is that it runs into a thing from Episode 2 where Chi and Yuuri are in the bath talking about ‘Paradise’, which the Japanese just say upon entering baths (as Anglos might call something ‘heaven’ (though typically without the caps, which I put in for precisely this parallel)). Obviously nobody would say ‘Pure Land!’ upon entering a bath, so ‘Paradise’ ends up as the best option, though even that’s stretching it a little. ‘Sukhavati’ itself obviously can’t be comprehensibly decomposed in English, so that was out entirely. If Amida had been mentioned, I might have made it ‘Amida’s Paradise’ or something, but he wasn’t, so we’re good.

Also, in Short 2, there’s talk about biological classes. Pisces isn’t a real class anymore, since it’s been found to be paraphyletic, but, well, what else are you going to call the fish?

Finally, I spent a really long time translating the entirety of all three songs in this show (I recommend getting the CD and listening to them all!). I’m sure nobody asked for this, but I’m not letting it go to waste, so for now, take Ugoku, Ugoku.

Let’s head back, we got far enough today
Next time let’s go even farther out that way
Creaking on

Faint wonders we gaze upon
Many joys we stumble on
Our hopes that, gleaming, shine along
Moving on, moving on

Idle chitter-chatter all day long
Whether rain or shine, keeping on
Now, O loneliness, get thee gone
Moving on, moving on

Just like the weight solving a puzzle puts on your mind
It won’t be long that we’ll wait before we feel that feeling again

So now on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our shoes
Whether today, tomorrow, or yesterday, the same way I bet
Now then, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our shoes
And go against the way our spinning planet moves
That’s right, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our groove
Whether today, tomorrow, or yesterday, I want to forget
Now then, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move
I know that that’s for sure our a-a-a-answer-swer

This old wall, huge and grey and in our way
Still not sure exactly how we’ll get on through

Striding on

Though the road from here stretches on 
We’ll get through this marathon
Since the goal is still over yon
Moving on, moving on

And I know the joke you’re sitting on
Is a truly awful one
Just a little bit further on
Moving on, moving on

Patience that’s born from wanting coffee, warming and sweet
Now that its fruit has been borne, it’s time to pick it and take a bite

So now on ONE TWO THREE let’s laugh ’til we turn blue
Whether today, tomorrow, or yesterday, I want to forget
But still on ONE TWO THREE let’s laugh ’til we turn blue
Just like the way the colours all around us change
That’s right, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our groove
Whether today, tomorrow, or yesterday, I want to forget
Now then, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move
I know that that’s for sure our a-a-a-answer-swer

Our wonder world

Today again like the weight solving a puzzle puts on your mind
It won’t be long that we’ll wait before we feel this feeling again

So now on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our shoes
Whether today, tomorrow, or yesterday, I want to forget
Now then, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our shoes
And go against the way our spinning planet moves
That’s right, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get into our groove
Whether today, tomorrow, or yesterday, I want to forget
Now then, on ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move
I know that that’s for sure, deep in my core,
Our looked-for a-a-a-answer-swer

ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move
ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move
ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move
ONE TWO THREE let’s get ready to move