Post by sleepyscholar on Oct 18, 2020 11:13:13 GMT
What cover is it that these translations come from? Is there some pic in thealmightymudworm 's post that isn't showing up for me for some reason?
I can tell you that the authors of FF books do not have ateji (that's the use of kanji to provide sound rather than meaning) in Japanese, but are rendered in katakana. I don't see how one of the readings of a pair of kanji being 'iyasu' proves that it's phonetic, either, but I'd have to see the image to tell one way or another.
If a book does use Chinese characters for Jackson & Livingstone's names then it is almost certainly Chinese.
Sorry, it's an embedded Ian Livingstone tweet. I should know by now that Proboard's system for handling that doesn't work for everyone.
Does this show through?
The tweet text was:
"When Steve Jackson and I went on a [at]fightingfantasy
publicity tour of Japan in 1986, our publisher Shakaishiso Sha presented us with stamps of our names registered in Kanji. Ink still good! Could our Japanese friends please let me know what the literal translation of mine is?"
(Several people have replied.)
It reads (left to right, top to bottom: i.e. Western-style) I-an Seiseki (the latter could also be read in a myriad other ways, such as Ikiishi, Shoshaku etc, but none of them are remotely like 'Livingstone'). Seiseiki is a literal translation of 'living stone'. I-an is meaningless, but is obviously there for the pronunciation.
The one peculiarity is that it is square, which indicates that it is a company hanko, rather than the round version of an individual. I have a number of hanko myself, but I'm not going to reproduce them here because I actually use them, and they have legal significance (in Japan they are used in place of signatures).