God I hate HSR English translation

[cashew]

I'm strapped for time, so just throwing this out there:

I don't know if it's the English translation or if it's the Anglosphere fandom, but why the fuck is Aventurine constantly calling Dr. Ratio "Doctor" when in the Chinese trailer he specifically refers to him as "Professor"?

I know this sounds like I'm nitpicking but "doctor" and "professor" are completely different titles and convey different meanings. Aventurine refers to Dr. Ratio as "professor" because he's playing up "I'm just an ignorant layman, please help me oh great educator" — aka, he's clearly working the "professor/student" kink angle. (If you listen to the Chinese dub, you can tell from the acting his definitely working this trope hard.)

Meanwhile, "doctor" is used in a professional setting, usually used to convey distance and collegial respect, often towards women. (I don't want to get into the politics of academia here, just let it be known that in academia, most women have to insist on being called "Doctor" to fight back against the sexism.)

My point is, stop having Aventurine call Dr. Ratio "Doctor" and use the actual word "Professor" instead. FFS.

---

Edit to add: OK, so another thing that really annoys me is the way Dr. Ratio is written. This is actually an extension of my annoyance with popular media's horribly inaccurate portrayal of academia. I'm seriously tired of "smart" academic people talking like a fucking science paper. Do you have any idea how much work goes into editing the paper to make it sound "science-y"? That's literally the majority of the paper writing process. Copy-pasting the statistical program's output into a table and reporting p-values? That shit's easy. It's writing sentences that doesn't involve "so that's what I think nyah nyah nyah STFU your arguments suck" that consume the majority of the paper writing process. (Source: personally have edited too many scientific papers.)

Most people write scientists as if they've never stepped into a science department. We do not sound like robots reporting numbers and shit, OK? We're usually using double negatives, shortening words, and using "the thingy" liberally because most scientists blank on their professional jargons at the worst fucking times. Honestly, the most realistic characterization I've seen of a scientist in popular culture was Matt Damon's portrayal in The Martian. Newsflash, scientists talk like normal people. We curse, we swear, we forget words and stutter, and often resort to "how much solution do we have?" when we actually meant to ask "how many liters of buffer solution do we have left?" And we almost never use the full name of measurments, it's always "mL" or "mils" or "cc's" or "micros". Who the fuck have time to say the whole thing when you can just read off the letters?

The fact that Dr. Ratio rejected Genius Society and proclaims "ignorance is an ailment" and it is his duty as a scholar to cure the universe of it, says to me that Dr. Ratio is actually interested in being a professor and teaching students, more so than showing off his "intelligence". (An attitude I applaude him for, as I could not stand teaching and hated every minute of it.) Sure, he might be harsh with his grading, but he genuinely seem to enjoy teaching and of all the professors I've known who actually enjoyed the teaching process (rather than tolerate it as something they have to do because universities won't let you get away with only doing research), all of them heavily studied communication methodology and tried to figure out how to phrase complicated concepts into easy to digest examples using commonplace language. In fact, learning how to parse down jargon is a skill we had to learn in graduate school.

So, fandom, please, stop writing Dr. Ratio like he's some kind of weird android robot and give him normal, human speech patterns. Gah.

Also, this ends my brief foray into Aventurine/Ratio ship. I would much rather put up with horrible OOC failed faux-period drama with Jing Yuan than read another fic where Dr. Ratio can't talk like a normal human being.

Comments

[cashew]

Clarification: I'm talking about fanfic. In-game (at least in CN version), he sounds like a normal if harsh teacher.

Cuz most of the fanfic I've read hasn't dug too deeply into the pure academic side of Ratio's character [...]

Yeah, that's the problem. Fanfic seems to keep forgetting he's a professor and make him sound like some weird android robot. Even in normal discussion he speaks super formally, which is makes no sense because most academics I know don't actually speak like that outside of giving a pre-scripted lecture. Hell, most of them don't even speak like that during a lecture.

Like, this line in the first fic sorted by kudos for Aventurine/Dr. Ratio in the first frickin' chapter:

“You have my verbal confirmation.” He sighed. “I will see this task through.”

Who the fuck talks like this? What kind of normal human being speaks like this?

[tanithryudo]

Yeah... some fics may be a little OOC. This is the guy who responded to our MC's sudden group chat about a (fake) bomb threat with a simple "k" and then leaving the chatroom. (He still helped the IPC folks search tho.) XD

I am wondering if ENG fics may be affected by the way the ENG VA over-delivers on his lines, making him *seem* pompous even if his words aren't really pompous if you read them in a normal tone.

Might be better in CN fics, maybe?

[cashew]

I find in CN fics people talk more like normal people overall. Even in the pseudo-period drama stuff...but then again, that could just be due to that style of talking is so normalized in period drama that it just sounds normal while being distinctly not modern.

I have no idea what's contributing to EN language weirdness in fic-dom. Maybe because despite the Westernized setting, the writers are still writing with a Chinese mindset and translations are just gonna sound awkward and weird.

Another thing that might contribute to the weirdness is that in Chinese there's a stronger delineation between casual speech, workplace speech, and formal speech. As in, the grammar changes naturally to reflect a person's lower social status when talking to a higher ranked individual. Unlike in the Anglosphere where there's less strong of a grammatical shift and it's more reliant on vocabulary and tone of voice, not to mention the social class differences matters less in western societies and "speaking appropriate of one's station" isn't even a concept that exists anymore in US/CAN/AUS. Only the English still have a sense of class exclusionary language, but even there the class distinction has been dampened a lot under parliamentary rule.

So all that adds up to something sounding perfectly normal in Chinese but sounding extremely unnatural when repeated in English. Where Ratio sounds like he's just talking to someone of a higher rank and observing the appropriate social graces in Chinese, when translated to English makes him sound like a malfunctioning android. Thus leading to the EN fics making him sound weird. I don't know, I'm just guessing. I'd have to actually compare the EN dub to CN dub to verify this and I'm not up for that right now.