Translating Lupin Material (Shop Talk)

[Quill]

I've tried to read Lupin doujins and I've encountered an issue where Lupin speaks in what is kind of old-fashioned Japanese at this point, and with a lot of slang. It's practically incomprehensible to me overall. Have any of you run into this? Any cool things you'd like to say about it?

For example, I'm curious if the way characters in this series speak has been updated for the times or been kept consistent throughout the years. For instance, I've seen Lupin speak with the question ending -kai, rather than -ka, which is kind of an old-timey thing grandparents do, but I've been told it's also a thing that can be employed to seem extra gentle to kids. It can be employed condescendingly or with a sense of fake class, which he might have been doing at the time in this instance, I'm not really sure. Anybody familiar with translating noticed interesting stuff about these works--manga, doujin, anime, or otherwise?

 

[xxx]

For instance, I've seen Lupin speak with the question ending -kai, rather than -ka, which is kind of an old-timey thing grandparents do, but I've been told it's also a thing that can be employed to seem extra gentle to kids. It can be employed condescendingly or with a sense of fake class, which he might have been doing at the time in this instance, I'm not really sure.

Questions ending with "kai" or sentences ending with "daze" which we often hear more from Jigen than Lupin especially in pt.1 don't necessarily mean they are old-timey. It's more of being snobbish or classy. The ex CV for Jigen, Mr. Kiyoshi Kobayashi always wanted Jigen to have good old class so it might have had something to do with the way Jigen spoke.
(In case you don't know, I'm Japanese.)

 

[Quill]

Questions ending with "kai" or sentences ending with "daze" which we often hear more from Jigen than Lupin especially in pt.1 don't necessarily mean they are old-timey. It's more of being snobbish or classy. The ex CV for Jigen, Mr. Kiyoshi Kobayashi always wanted Jigen to have good old class so it might have had something to do with the way Jigen spoke.
(In case you don't know, I'm Japanese.)

Interesting! Thank you for explaining that.
I guess I figured it was old-fashioned because my host grandmother used to speak like that, and I was told it was common among older folks. I guess the reason why was not necessarily a language changing thing, but a generational thing!

 

[Tsushi]

I don't know too much about this myself because I am tragically monolingual but I would totally recommend checking out Oranges_Love's discord for Lupin translation talk and also VegetableSaute on twitter talks a lot about translating Lupin stuff