Terez wrote:I had a long-ish response typed up and Kanzenshuu ate it. Anyway, this particular rite-of-passage event is not otherwise mentioned or observed in-story, so does the viewer really need to know about it? It's debatable, certainly.
I suppose that gets into the larger question of whether culturally specific elements should be washed away to reduce the risk of having to acquire outside knowledge to read a localization/translation. In the case of shifting "Shichigosan" to "Sunday school," the reader may get through the scene without questions -- just as the Japanese audience would -- but you've also completely removed reference to the Japanese rite of passage in the original.
I think it's worth noting that we wouldn't be having this conversation at all if
Dragon Ball took place in something even more remotely resembling real-world Japan. In that case, it wouldn't matter how tangential a cultural reference is to the meat of the story; it would stay.
In this scenario, while I can see the argument for changing it, I'd lean toward keeping it on the grounds that the reader is already interacting with a Japanese series -- one which retains other cultural elements and terminology, however light -- and changing the reference in question goes beyond simple translation.
This is a series in which a gang of rabbit-outfitted criminals wind up making mochi on the moon. The reader can handle looking up "Sichigosan" if unfamiliarity with it bothers them. Such is the nature of interacting with media from other cultures. I don't think a translation should do away with all those elements just for ease, if for no other reason than the fact it's going to end up making inconsistent and arbitrary choices about what cultural references stay and which are altered, as, while some may be limited to brief, tangential dialogue references, others will inevitably be part of the foregrounded story.
