This is a call-out post for @wordcubed. (Not really.)

I’m gonna make this first post about honorifics solely to start with, just in the interests of being concise and focused. Honorifics, in Japanese, are the suffixes that people use in addressing one another such as -san, -sempai, -kun, -sama, -dono, -chan, and so on.

Some Reasons Why Transliterating Japanese Honorifics Into Fanwork Based on Japanese Media is Good And You Should Totally Do It (At Least, If You Want To):

1. The information included in honorifics is almost always too central to the narrative to leave it out. Honorifics include information like this:

The politeness of the speaker



The education level of the speaker



The relationship between the speaker and the spoken to



The relationship between the speaker and the spoken to by contrast



Changes in all of these



Entirely leaving out all honorifics and not attempting to translate the information they contain leaves a big hole in the translated work. The more relationship-driven or hierarchical the original work is, the more leaving it out entirely is a bad translation choice.

2. Attempting to transmit that information through other language choices is really, really hard. Okay, so you’ve decided that yeah, honorifics give important information, and you want to transmit the information. But you don’t want to transliterate the honorifics. Ok. Let’s take a look at Team 7 in Naruto for an example of raw material.

Naruto uses no honorifics on his peers, however he does respect his teachers and direct superiors in using -sensei (teacher) and -taichou (captain). And yet for the highest rank, the Hokages, he uses an intensely familiar and childlike honorific jii-chan and baa-chan (grandpa and granny). And then there’s the one person in the world he addresses as -chan, his crush and beloved comrade, Sakura.



person in the world he addresses as -chan, his crush and beloved comrade, Sakura. Kakashi mostly doesn’t use honorifics on students, inferiors, and peers, but does occasionally, usually if it’s one he doesn’t know well (he calls Lee “Lee-kun” at one point). But he uses the most perfectly respectful honorifics with superiors and clients. Kakashi also attempts to discourage respectful honorifics on himself.



Sakura uses polite and expected honorifics with most people. She calls her crush -kun, but not Naruto.



Sasuke does not use honorifics on anyone , not even the Hokage or Orochimaru.



, not even the Hokage or Orochimaru. Sai has an entire character arc around his attempts to navigate honorifics and nicknames!!

Yamato’s use of -sempai on Kakashi and Kakashi telling him to knock it off: the running gag.

Okay. Tell me how you’re going to transmit all the important characterization information there without using honorifics. You could write Sasuke being rude as fuck to everyone, but since English doesn’t have politeness registers, you’d end up making him more aggressive than he really is, when typically he’s just indifferent. More importantly, Sasuke’s utter refusal to participate in the village social hierarchy from the beginning foreshadows his later choice to abandon the village.

Translating jii-chan and baa-chan as gramps and granny is a good translation that perfectly conveys the information and tone of the original, so that’s good! However, Naruto’s use of “Sakura-chan”, indicating his unique and explicit affection for her, is considerably harder to transmit without using honorifics. You could argue “well, that will be evident over time”–but the point is that in the source material it’s evident immediately.

And then of course Sai literally reads books about how to use nicknames and honorifics on panel and announces that he’s going to drop honorifics with his peers because the book suggested it. If you’re not using the honorifics, how do you handle this character development?

3. Reader awareness that they are reading about a difficult culture speaking a different language is a good thing. The Naruto world is heavily, deliberately Japanese in culture. It’s no more difficult or unreasonable to expect readers to learn about sempai vs kohai than it is for them to learn about kimono, kunai, and geta. Calling kimono “a robe”, kunai “daggers”, or geta simply “sandals” to avoid the use of the Japanese loan words is not only less evocative but potentially misleading.

4. Translation rather than transliteration of terms that do not cross cultures still makes it perfectly obvious the source isn’t English language and culture. In particular, let’s talk about -nii-san, -nee-san and the like. English speakers don’t say “Big Brother” or “Big Sister” to their actual older siblings, and English speaking kids definitely don’t say address adult strangers this way. As for “Bro” and “Sis”, in English culture this is an appeal to equality among peers, or even a way to position the speaker as a slight authority, rather than a way of being deferential.

5. -sama frequently doesn’t map well to English titles of respect. Are you going to go with “lord” or “lady”? Suddenly everybody is noble? And “lord” and “lady” are obviously gendered titles; what do you do about somebody like Katsuyu, who is neither male nor female in the source? An avoidance of -sama forces the choice “Lady Katsuyu”. Misleading!

6. And -sempai is even worse.

Yamato: I’m ready, Kakashi who is a person slightly older and senior to me in the hierarchical traditions of Japanese society.

Kakashi: Tenzou, how many times do I have to tell you, there is no need to call me person slightly older and senior to me in the hierarchical traditions of Japanese society.

Yamato: It’s Yamato now, person slightly older and senior to me in the hierarchical traditions of Japanese society!

Or else:

Yamato: I’m ready Kakashi sir. By the way, by “sir,” I actually mean to reinforce our bond. By no means am I using sir as a social distancing word or a word associated with military command.

Kakashi: Please don’t call me sir. By asking you not to call me sir, I am not actually telling you to be less polite or formal, even though in English that would be the case. You are not actually being formal in that sense; rather, I feel unworthy of being looked up to by you or anyone.

Yamato: I’m going to insist on calling you sir, because our bond as higher and lower is incredibly meaningful to me in a way that is not at all associated with the English word sir, yet we must persist with this farce because our writer doesn’t want to be a weeb.

Just. Just use -sempai. Please. English doesn’t have a word for it because the concept doesn’t exist in English culture, so you know what English traditionally does when it encounters foreign concepts of this kind? Loan words, which is what transliteration is! Like the word “ninja” or “kimono” or “tofu” or any thousands of others.

7. Fanfic readers are more familiar with Japanese culture than even a typical casual anime fan. They know these terms already! There is no reason not to use terms that the reader doesn’t already understand, when this is the most concise, precise, and accurate way to communicate.

8. Using honorifics that don’t translate well is not equivalent to using Japanese loan words for no reason. Just making characters say “arigatou” or “nani” randomly is bad because good translations exist; transliteration of the original is not necessary. There are some grey area words that I can see going either way. I personally don’t mind if someone writes “Okaasan” or translates it to Mom instead, or if they include verbal tics like “dattebayo” or change them into things like “believe it” and “y’know”. Going back to point 3, I tend to use more transliteration because I like the overt reminder that we are in a different language and culture.

Now all that said. Do you have to use honorifics? No. In particular, if you doubt your command of the differences between the honorifics, it might be better to leave them all out. Experimenting with different levels of transliteration vs translation is also a great thing, especially in fanfiction, which ought to be more free and low stress than professional fiction. The purpose of this post is to stridently deny any assertion that using honorifics in Japanese media fanfiction is amateurish, lazy, or worst of all, “cringy”. Concise and accurate communication is not cringy.