okay but for those of us with interests in both the murderbot and the daomu biji fandoms this is kinda hilarious
(english-side-only really, i get that the kanji and hanzi are completely different)
our good (air)ship murderbot! thanks google
I love reading about these kind of translation decisions.
I’ve only ever seen 弊 used to refer to one’s company: 弊社, as the article says.
I’ve been told 弊 is used to refer to one’s own something, and it has a very humble nuance.
So 弊機 translates to something like “I, your humble machine” or “I, who am but a mere machine”.
Japanese is great that it can say so much with simple pronouns.
Romance language translator: well we don’t have a gender neutral pronoun so I guess we’ll flip a coin for male or female
Japanese language translator, an intellectual: none of Japanese’s 30-something plus personal pronoun options have the perfect vibes so I’ll create a new one to bring that special somethin’
What I found to be particularly clever about the coining of this very unique first person pronoun 弊機 (heiki) is that it’s a homophone of 兵器(heiki), meaning ‘weapon’
