It's not difficult at all, nor does it have anything that gets "lost in translation". All you really need is a short and simple set of direct translations:IAmTheMilkMan wrote:When Goku first visits Bulma at Capsule Corp in Metro West during the Red Ribbon Army arc, there is an exchange of dialog that seems somewhat difficult to translate between Goku, Bulma, and Bulma's Mother. It has to do with sake and alcohol.
From my understanding of it, "sake" has a slightly different meaning in Japanese than it does in English and that is where the confusion stems from. While we tend to think of "sake" as a specific kind of alcoholic beverage, in Japanese the word "sake" is more of an all-encompassing term for alcoholic beverages in general, much like the term "liquor" is for us. Am I correct?
酒 (which can be read as "sake") means "alcoholic beverage", and was, for obvious reasons, the word used for the only alcoholic beverage that really existed to the Japanese back then. It still is, but due to the fact that other alcoholic beverages exist now as well, that initial rice wine is referred to as 日本酒 ("Japanese alcoholic beverage") when you need to be specific about hat you're referring to. It's also referred to as 清酒 ("Refined alcoholic beverage").
The west didn't really have this problem, and just borrowed the word "sake" and used it to refer to that specific beverage, since there'd never be any confusion in other languages anyway.
Translation-wise, context makes it extremely clear which meaning is intended. Viz dropped the ball there. Even translating it as "beer" would be better.IAmTheMilkMan wrote:I think Viz does a better job with the translation, in this instance. While Funimation's subtitles aren't technically wrong, saying "have some alcohol" without referring to a specific beverage sounds like such an odd thing to say.
