Danny

Translation Tuesday – Rilakkuma 4kuma, ‘Greetings!’

I recently bought a Rilakkuma 4panel comic book with the intention of translating it loosely for the blog, I figured it would be a good way for me to learn some Japanese while also putting some extra Rilakkuma content online for all of the Rilakkuma fans around the world!

The 4kuma books aren’t easy books for beginners though, some of the kanji used is a little complex and there are some annoying things in there (such as Kiiroitori only ever speaking in katakana regardless of what it is he is saying) which makes it difficult to translate perfectly, some of the humour references are also completely lost of me but I’m going to do my best to loosely translate as many of the pages as possible.

Here in the first page, ‘greetings’ we are introduced to Rilakkuma and learn a little bit more about him, it’s cute and mischievous so lets take a look at some of the Japanese:

耳 (mimi) – is the Japanese word for ear.
できる (dekiru) – this can mean to be ready, complete, or up to the task however it can also mean ‘to be made’ or ‘to be built’ which is the translation I chose in this instance.
カステラ (kasutera) – this was tricky, the word is written in katakana so is a foreign word however I’d never really heard of castella before. It is however a type of Japanese sponge cake (originally from Portugal) with colouring similar to Rilakkuma’s ears.
嘘 (uso) – this kanji means lie.

Korillakuma and Kiiroitori immediately try to ear Rilakkuma’s ears once he says they are made from cake, the characters in the third panel are just sound effects for them trying to eat his sponge cake ears – eventually he has to admit that he lied and his ears are all crumpled from where they tried to take a bite. So cute!

  • Love
  • Save
    Add a blog to Bloglovin’
    Enter the full blog address (e.g. https://www.fashionsquad.com)
    We're working on your request. This will take just a minute...