Friday, October 14, 2011

Ghastly Unadulterated Nomenclature Dislocating Autocidal Nimrods, aka A Meaningless Title Unless You Know What to Look For

Credits for picture to... um. Please tell me if you know.
Back when I was still a wee little kid who thought of dancing little jigs barefoot on hot concrete and climbing defenseless short trees as a passably fun activity, I wrote poetry. Now that may seem rather anti-climatic, or at least vaguely disjointed, I feel for you, but it is the truth, and so there's no going around it.

Anyway, I've started on it again. No, not the sole roasting or the tree hugging, but the poetry. I would never have done it, however, if not for  the incentive involved. Check out this link. To win the prize, I had to come up with some poetry, in the form of a Senryuu.

Senryuu can be viewed as a cousin of Haiku (Now that's like saying a dictionary is a distant relative of a phone directory, but let's just let that slide for the sake of convenience)- it's supposedly easier since it's less uptight, which suits me- the primary reason I'd abandoned writing poetry was that I was never satisfied with my rhyming.

Anyhow, for the contest I had to write a Senryuu about Gundam. Some of the contributions were rather charming (And I shall list my favorites shortly)- I noticed however, that all of them were in English. Not entirely trusting my rhyming prowess (Or perceived lack of it- or rather, arrangement of it), I decided to write mine in Japanese. It turned out surprisingly well- fun even.

Before moving on to mine, some of the submissions that caught my eye (At time of writing):
i- Red Slurpee is quick/Three times faster than the rest/Newtypes get brainfreeze by MilkyToast.
ii- You must be careful/Parts go flying/Never to be found by Dennis.
iii- I would transform with/My flexible inner frame/If I win Gunpla by Joe.

I liked these three for specific reasons- MilkyToast's because it managed to include a 7-11 product and Newtypes; Dennis' because it struck a chord with me- I hate it when tiny bits fall to the floor and I have to grope around to find them; and Joe's- well- hilarious if you visualize it, heh. A fair bunch of submissions turned me off, though- those that referred to sex, poop, and pee. I realize that when it comes to creativity, anything is fair game, but... ah well. My turn:

i- 西暦/アムロ/民間セクタ化?!
ii- アムロ、シャア探す/ファミリマートの社員
iii- ガンダム、広告?!/お前、ガンダムじゃない!

(i) translates to 'Anno Domini, Amuro is in the private sector?!' The joke's that the protagonist of the Gundam anime, in the current time-frame (A.D) is working for 7-11. I don't think you'll get the meaning of my Senryuu even if I translate them- go read a wiki.

(ii) translates to 'Amuro, looking for Char. Char works for Family Mart'. Yet another one impossible to understand without knowing some background info. Char's the main antagonist in Gundam, and he has a grudge to settle with the Zabi family. Secondly, 7-11's main competition in Japan is Family Mart- so it made sense to place Char in their employment (In the anime he works for the Zabi family, waiting to stab them in the back). You could always say he's in the market for a family... to kill one, that is.

Finally (iii) translates to 'Gundam, used for advertising?! You are no Gundam!' This one's a reference to a line often spouted by the character Setsuna F. Seiei in Gundam 00- the pilot with a Gundam-obsession. I imagine he wouldn't take kindly to the thought of a Gundam being used in such a way- painted in 7-11's colors, no less. Oh, that's right. I didn't include a picture of the prize- check out the link to the contest above if you haven't done so already.

Interestingly they don't sound as good once translated. I wonder if it's because Japanese poetry doesn't have that much emphasis on rhyming and word placement- to my limited understanding, as long as you get the number of kana (Loosely translated as syllables) right, anything goes. Anyway, there's still some time left till the contest expires- ah, why am I tempting more rivals to join in? I don't suppose you'd be kind enough to ignore this last paragraph, would you? Tsk. I thought not.

2 comments:

  1. @Chris: Thanks:) Writing/typing nonsense like that just cheers me up, heh.

    ReplyDelete