Talk:Bear-in-the-hole castle

Name change?

I've been meaning to discuss this for a long time, but I think we should change the title of the entry. First, while 穴熊 does appear to refer to a bear hiding in a hole, it also means "badger", literally meaning "hole bear." Secondly, and most importantly, why do we need to translate the names of the castles to English? This is the same thing with Yagura and Gangi, which are translated as fortress and snow-roof, translations which are also inaccurate, by the way. Why not keeping the original word? They're not that hard to pronounce, to begin with. I wonder if anyone really uses this weird-sounding translations.

Severian79 (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi.

(1)

Sure, Bear-in-the-hole is a literal morpheme-by-morpheme translation whereas Badger would be a more 'accurate' translation in a certain sense. Basically, the reason I chose Bear-in-the-hole castle is that that is what the first translation of 穴熊 was in the 1970s (by a native speaker of British English and professional translator of Japanese, John Fairbairn). So, it's as simple as that. He was first, he is a professional, and for decades was the only translator for shogi-related material. For fun, we can discuss more about this. When translating a Japanese text that is discussing actual badger animals, it would be best to translate the Japanese term as badger. I think everyone would agree with that. Now, here, we are in the topic of shogi, and the term 穴熊 is being used metaphorically – it's a rather abstract relation between an animal and an arrangement of pieces in this game. So, in this topic, a translator can wonder what is the best way communicate this idea in a new language. Actually, there was a very short article on this exact translation in the British shogi magazine in the 1970s. A reader of the magazine (who obviously knew some Japanese) also questioned why they used Bear-in-the-hole instead of Badger and wrote to the magazine editor about it. The magazine's reply was that the editor thought that the term Bear-in-the-hole best characterized what a player is doing when they more or less bury their king into the corner of the board and surround it by this silver+gold configuration. In other words, it's like the king is being holed up down in a military bunker where it will take a lot of warfare to attack the king directly. If one used the term badger, then this visual metaphor is no longer as obvious. I think it's mostly by using the word hole that you get the reader to focus on the bunkered-up characteristic. And, the magazine apparently thought that this was the best thing to do for translation. If you want, I can look up what the magazine said exactly, but I think my memory is basically right.

(2)

Why translate at all? Because it gives the reader access to the meanings that the native speaker of the source language has in their head. If there's no translation, then less meaning travels across.

Why do people in general need to translate castle names? They don't, I guess. People can do whatever they feel is best.

Is translating terms a good idea? I don't know. Here's some speculation: when learning shogi theory as invented in Japan, a person needs to learn the concepts (with castles, multiple piece configurations). Since it's useful to have names for things to communicate with other people, the person would need to learn names for the concepts. It might be easier or faster to learn an English name that corresponds to a particular concept than it is to learn a non-English name (which would otherwise come across as an arbitrary sequence of sounds). Relatedly, if the English name gives the person a metaphorical mental image, the mental image may make it easier to remember the concept. If there's no translation, then the mental image of a non-Japanese player would only be the concept itself. A Japanese player would have that in their mental image but also sometimes the mental image might include the metaphorical object as well. I kind of doubt it matters when the player has a lot of experience, but it may matter when the player is a beginner. But, whether it really is harder or easier to use English names when learning and whether a mental image associated with the concept makes memory recall better just sound like research questions (in the education field or psychology) to me. I don't know about any experimental evidence either way.

Why does Wikipedia need to translate castle names? We need to follow published sources. Pretty much all Japanese shogi terms in published material have been translated. There are some exceptions. Some terms don't have a one word translation, so they aren't translated. (In particular, sabaki comes to mind. Sabaki is an abstract and complicated concept that can't easily be translated into a single word – you have to explain it with a paragraph and ideally with some examples showing what it is as well.) Some other terms are inconsistently translated. This includes Yagura/Fortress and Gangi/Snowroof. For the first one, I usually see the term Fortress in the original British sources whereas the later international shogi promoter, Hidetchi, usually used Yagura. Here I opted for Fortress for the reasons above (first priority, professional, native speaker). I did originally use Yagura though – because I looked at Hidetchi's material first before I became aware of the earlier material. Gangi is more problematic since the 1970s–1980s material actually uses both Gangi and Snowroof. By source material, I think could use either term. I chose Snowroof since it makes Wikipedia more consistent (that is, translation here, then translation everywhere) – otherwise, it's arbitrary. In the cases where there is no published translations of terms, then it's more of an open question, isn't it? I think editors could argue their position for whatever they wanted.

Accuracy of Yagura & Gangi translations. Well, you may know more than me. I understand a yagura to be a type of tower formation that is a part of particular Japanese-style military structures. Is that wrong? But, it's clear that a yagura is not a tower because I think an English speaker will reject that it looks very tower-like. It's not very much like a European-style fortress either. Maybe it recalls what are called fortresses in China, so that's why it was chosen? For Gangi, I don't know. Maybe it was mistranslated? Or, maybe it was explained incorrectly by a Japanese person to Fairbairn in the first place?

Does anyone use these 'weird-sounding translations?'  Yes, the original sources. These include Fairbairn and his colleagues in the 1970s–1980s, Hidetchi and his colleagues in the 2000s, and various online stuff like the Shogi Wars app. Not every castle on this page has a sourced translation though. Again, as mentioned above, in these cases with no translation, we have a question as what to do.

I hope that explained my thought process. Of course, we can discuss if my thoughts are bad ones. – ishwar  (speak) 02:25, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: do you have any thoughts? @OneWeirdDude: do you have any thoughts? (Are there any other shogi editors...?)