"Ranker"

Dec 21, 2024 12:00 PM

Offline

Jul 2023

No one else probably cares about this, but I'm sorry, I have to live my truth.

When they first used the term, I thought ランカー, which my subtitles translate as 'ranker', was just one of those wasei eigo things (Japanese-made English terms that don't really get used by native English speakers), like 'front glass' for 'windshield'. But while I was watching episode 12, I suddenly had a realization…

It doesn't come from 'ranker', it comes from an actual (I think American) fishing term: 'lunker'! That one actually shows up in English dictionaries, and it would make sense to katakana-fy it the exact same way (ランカー).

I did some googling, and I can find Japanese sources for either origin ('ranker' and 'lunker'). But no one in English uses 'ranker' for this, and it would seem like an awfully big coincidence for Japanese speakers to independently come up with a new term, in a field that borrows many terms directly from English, that also happens to transliterate the exact same way as the existing English term. So I'm inclined to think that 'lunker' is correct, and the other etymology is made up because people knew the word 'rank' and not the word 'lunker'.

I don't really know what to do with this information, maybe fansubbers can take it into account if they ever tackle this show. Hell, maybe I'll get into fansubbing just to fix this injustice. Mostly, I just felt the need to tell someone.

Thank you for listening.

Dec 21, 2024 12:08 PM

perseii

Online

Jul 2021

4101

Thanks for sharing.

I'm trying to pick up some Japanese while watching anime, and this kind of information is pretty interesting.

It also makes me appreciate how difficult subbing is. You'd have to know a bit about fishing in this case, or you'd have to do a ton of studying.

Dec 21, 2024 12:23 PM

jekfrumstotferm

Offline

Feb 2021

324

This is interesting. I felt like ranker made sense, since it refers to fish of impressive size, but I guess that would be my lack of fishing knowledge showing. Either way, language is cool.

Dec 21, 2024 12:32 PM

poisson

Offline

Feb 2009

Thank you for this post, very interesting.

Dec 21, 2024 2:54 PM

FutoiOtaku

Offline

Nov 2023

1861

It never occurred to me because I don’t fish, but your logic on the linguistics is sound.

Dec 21, 2024 5:23 PM

myrmidon_mamori

Offline

Sep 2013

148

Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense! I was wondering what the word ranker was (though I could tell from context it had to so woth the fish being big), but I hadn't considered that it was a mistranslation of lunker!

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"Ranker"

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