AKB48 Question & Answer

That's how producers are sometimes referred to in Japan, it's a shorthand for Akimoto-Producer.

 

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Thanks for the answer I thought that was his nickname or something.

 

Ehhm, Actually were Noro Kayo and Sato Natsuki which called him that way(Aki-P). If I don't remember wrong was in the "Braggarts AKB Girls" segment from the AKB 1ji:59fun first episode where it was aired that funny moment.

Edit: At least was there that I could notice for first time why people referred to him with that nick. Any other reference?.

 

No, it's just a generic industry term of Japanese referring to producers as XX-P.

It's really nothing unique, especially in addition to being a lyricist and head of idol groups, Akimoto was known as TV show producer first, working his way up as AD to script writer to be producers before expanding his works to be a lyricist.

 

It's not a "decision" though, it's part of a word conjunction phenomenon called rendaku. It's not a consistent phenomenon and even the best Japanese linguists have never figured out a pattern for when rendaku is used and when it isn't. But in many cases it's predictable as to when the sound will change and has to do with the sequence of voiced vs nonvoiced morae.

If we consider 10nenzakura to be a conjunction between juunen and sakura, the 'n' sound immediately preceeding sakura in 10nen causes it to change to the voiced version of the mora. There's really no choice in the matter. The same phenomenon can be seen in the conjunction 三千 (san + sen = sanzen).
Same with tsuyogari+tokei neccessarily being tsuyogaridokei.

This is the product of voicing in spoken language, it's true, but it's also written that way when written in kana. Like HRP said, it is a proper transliteration and not up to the whims of anyone.

If I'm misunderstanding what you meant though, my apologies. Still informational I guess

 

No, I understand what you're saying, but the translation between 'sakura' and 'zakura' in that case, to me, need to account for the fact that English carrying word has Sakura and not Zakura.

Of course it got complicated when you also involve the kanji in, considering that 桜 or 櫻 by itself is pronounced as sakura on it's own.

It's similar when translating Chinese to English. Usually when there are two or more words in succession that happen to have 3rd tone, the first character will change to a 2nd tone. But when you translates, you usually don't reflect that tone change.

The decision on those is as simple as that a non-fluent person could have problem identifying the word, after all the 2nd-tone pronunciation of those words is not even included in any Chinese dictionary. Just like if you try to look under 'zakura' it's meaningless.

I'm not saying it's wrong, everyone is entitled to how they want things translate.

But It is still a decision by translator to go be either pronunciation correct or contextually closer when romanizing the word.

In a word, it a decision between, faithful translation and semantic translation on the translation methods.

 

I understand what you're saying, that sakura may be more recognizable. But it's just technically not correct to use it in this instance, and anyone who is transliterating the song and making a decision to use "sakura" instead will be considering it as not a conjunction word and therefore not applying the rendaku.

The argument about whether Japanese-appropriated English words should be transliterated as english or japanese is a whole can of worms that belongs here even less, but going back to an example you stated:
you mentioned the difference between "heart gata virus" and "heart gata uirisu", but virus, in my mind, is fine in that case because it is an english word to begin with. Sakura is a native japanese word and so I think it should be treated by different rules. Ultimately I guess it comes down to preference and there's no "right way" just like some people prefer hepburn style romanization and some prefer another style, but everyone likes to think their way is correct

But that's just for transliteration, not for translation.

Though I did find "Sakura" on dictionary.com, I think most English speakers who know little/nothing about Japan will not recognize the word "Sakura" as "cherry tree". If we're talking about true recognizability, a "translation" for those who need one, imo it would be better to use "cherry tree" or "cherry blossoms" or something, depending on the context. I'm not sure how widely known "sakura" actually is but if any of my friends were to come into the fandom and see "sakura" instead of an English translation I'm sure they'd be scratching their heads. At least, I always prefer to translate sakura into English for those who might not know what it is, but I've seen others choose not to change it.

What you said about Chinese is interesting though. I've kind of been trying to learn Chinese (and not getting anywhere lol) so it's good to know that there is a similar phenomenon with the tones.

(This has totally turned into a linguistics discussion and not an AKB Q&A discussion though... XD)

 

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True, so I'm just adding one last bit.

In (s/z)akura's case, it's not just on the English side though. Like the Chinese translation I mentioned. Zaruka on it's own doesn't mean anything in Japanese either, unless you remove the rendaku and turn it back into sakura.

But, like you said, it's a preference more than anything. (which is my stand anyway)

Though I do agree that if we are to do a word-for-word translation, it should just be 10-Years Cherry Blossom.

Anyway, I was simply commenting on fan of AKB's confusion on why GM5 and 10-nen (S/Z)akura are part of sakura-themed songs.

I can see people got confused by GM5, but 10-nen? So, that was the only reason I can come up with, he didn't realize that sakura and zakura are the same word...

 

Yeah I might have missed that part

Carry on...

 

Haha. Sorry. I thought "sakura and zakura" words are different. I don't really know too much of Japanese words. It's confusing.

 

Well at least now you know all the dirty secrets behind the change

 

Is anyone of the 48 groups have relation to the filipinos? [aup]

 

what happened to 8th gen kenkyusei?

 

The answer I hear is that they were bad eggs.

 

Is any AKB48 members have relation to other country excluding filipino and Japanese?

 

If you wanna branch out from AKB itself, HKT's Murashige Anna (Aanya) is half Russian.

I know there is at least one other one but I don't know who.

 

Akimoto Sayaka is half filipino, and SKE's Kinoshita Yukiko is half spanish.

 

Does the romaji lyrics are all correct? [aup]


Since when I listen the song "Eien Yori Tsuzuku You Ni" and following the lyrics, there's some missing letters or word there to complete the whole lyrics.

 

Well, from what I see, most are translation from the lyric sheet, so they are the official lyrics and should be the same as what you hear in the CDs.

mind to share some examples?