Japanese translation (?) question

[telophase]

I just started reading the scanlations of Silver Spoon, the current manga by the Fullmetal Alchemist mangaka. It's about an academically gifted young man who goes to an agricultural high school far, far away to get the hell away from his family and the relentless academic grind, and discovers that it's not exactly the walk in the park that he was expecting. :)

Anyway, he's at the horse races (the girl he's crushing on says she owns horses that are racing) and they're talking about a certain kind of horse and race, ban'ei, in which a breed of Japanese draft horses pulls sledges over a course.

On this page, one of the characters explains "Ban'ei races are the only ones in the world where the horses pull something." Which is patently false, as I've been to the track in Louisville, Kentucky, and bet on* witnessed harness racing, where they pull a two-wheeled cart.

I don't currently have a copy of the page in the original Japanese, nor could I read it if I did, so the question is: is it translated accurately, and the mangaka doesn't know (or doesn't care) that harness racing exists, or is there a semantic difference involved, with the original term used making a distinction between the actions of "pulling" and "dragging"? I think that if I were rewriting that sentence, I'd use "drag," to indicate the action is different than pulling a cart, but it's entirely possible the translator had no idea that harness racing exists and chose the wrong word for the circumstances.




* During a high school trip, no less! The teacher took us to the track! And said those of us who were 18 could bet if we wanted! I made a series of $2 bets, winning some and losing some, and lost about $15 total over the course of the evening, which was a good amount of money to spend for the entertainment value.

Comments

[lnhammer]

How I have failed to not notice this for over 80 chapters? HOW?!

INTERNETS. YOU HAVE *YET* *AGAIN* FAILED ME. I AM MOST DISAPPOINTED.

---L.

[telophase]

:D

And thinking on it more, maybe "hauling" would be a better term than "dragging." Hm.

[batwrangler]

I can't help you with the Japanese but I'm with you on the distinction probably being racing while pulling a weighted sled. There must be sled racing elsewhere in the world, and, of course, there are horse-pulls where the weight and distance are what counts, but multiple horses competing simultaneously to pull weighted sleds on a ramped course certainly sounds unique!

[torachan]

The Japanese says banei is the only draughthorse racing in the world. The word for draughthorse is "hikiuma", which literally means "pulling horse", so the translator probably just didn't realise it meant a type of horse and thought it meant any horse pulling something.

Looking at pics of the harness racing, it seems they use regular racehorses and the wikipedia article on banei says that the horses used are different from other racehorses, so I think it's just a bad translation muddying the waters.

[green_knight]

Ooh, interesting.

However, there exists in the Black Forest in Germany a small place called St. Märgen where the local draft breed ('Schwarzwälder Fuchs') is used exclusively in sled races, so both the draft horse and the pulling requirements are fulfilled.

(Then again, both sides of the equation are so obscure that I'm not surprised that the character didn't know it, even if she's horsemad: I hadn't known about ban'ei.)

[rirakuma.livejournal.com]

Ban'ei racing is a bit different to normal harness racing. In the translation, when it says the horses pull something, it's referring to weight of the sled they have to pull.

There's a Ban'ei article on wikipedia:
"Ban'ei (輓曳 or ばんえい) is a form of horse racing, unique to the Tokachi area of Hokkaido, Japan. Powerfully-built horses compete by pulling heavily-weighted sleds up sand ramps while being urged on by jockeys sitting on top of the sleds."

[telophase.livejournal.com]

EDIT: I posted this before I saw your edit clarifying the 'pull' terminology! Thanks, you answered my question!

-------

Thanks! I did read the Wikipedia entry before posting this.

I was more interested in the original Japanese terminology and the translation in the scanlations I'm reading. Because "pull" in English can be used to refer to both the sort of pulling involved in dragging heavy sledges, as in Ban'ei racing, and in pulling carriages, as in harness racing, so to translate it in the manga as "It's the only racing where horses pull things!" is a misleading translation, and I wanted to know if the original terms used in the manga distinguished between pulling sledges and pulling carriages.

There's more discussion on this in the comments over on the Dreamwidth crosspost (http://telophase.dreamwidth.org/2366609.html).