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“Shut Up and Eat” yakiniku omake — original Japanese dialogue analysis and translation

The 3rd installment of the four-part yakiniku omake series in Mob Psycho 100 involves a bit of clever wordplay to make Mob’s slurring make sense, which means that the translation had to play around with the words a little bit to make it work in English. So, what did Mob actually say in Japanese?

I got the raws from the Manga One app in the Japanese iTunes app store.

I would like to preface this by saying that the most popular translated version, where Mob says the infamous “Shut up and eat” line, is the best translated version in my opinion, because Mob actually slurring that is a totally feasible thing. I’ll explain more about that in the translation notes below, but this version I translated isn’t reworked to match the syllables and make the slurring believable, but rather to try and represent the Japanese meaning.

Reigen: モブ。— Mob.

それもう焼けてるぞ。— It’s about to burn!

Mob: ………

Reigen: モブ… —Mob…

それもう焼けてるぞ。(二回目) — It’s about to burn. (A second time)

なぁ… — Hey…

Mob: このくらい…よく火を通した方が好きなんで。— It’s good like this. I like the heat to spread evenly throughout.

Reigen: 焼き過ぎだ。それだと肉本来の味が消えてしまう。—It’s cooking too much. It’s going to completely lose the original flavor.

Mob: いや、おいしいです。— No, it’s tasty.

Reigen: いや、それはベストのおいしさではない。— No, that’s not the best taste.

焼き過ぎな上にタレも付け過ぎだ。タレの味しかしないだろう。— It’s overcooked and you put too much sauce on top.

Mob: いや、おいしいです。— No, it’s tasty.

Reigen: また！それも焼き過ぎだぞ。— Again! That one’s also cooking too much.

ちょっと焦げてんじゃねーか。— It’s a bit scorched, isn’t it?

あ、ほらそっちの肉もあと4秒くらいで… — Ah, look—that piece of meat, in about four seconds…

「師匠は肉にうるさいなぁ…」と言おうとしたが、口に入れた肉が予想以上に熱くて舌が上手くまわらず… — “Shishou is picky about meat, huh…” is what Mob tried to say, but when he put the meat in his mouth, it was hotter than expected and his tongue couldn’t articulate well.

Mob: チッ… うるせぇな。— Tch… Shut the hell up.

Reigen: ………..

霊幻は静かに肉を焼いた。— Reigen cooked his meat in silence.

——————————

Notes:

- Mob: このくらい…よく火を通した方が好きなんで。— It’s good like this. I like the heat to spread evenly throughout.

「このくらい…」　actually directly translates to “This much…” (in regards to how much he’s cooking the meat over the grill). It employs the Japanese technique of “only say half the sentence and let the rest be unspoken”, but that wouldn’t make a lot of sense in English and kind of sticks out translated strictly like that. So I just finished the sentence.

- Mob: チッ… うるせぇな。— Tch… Shut the hell up.

So, this whole thing is a joke about the many uses of the word 「うるさい」　(urusai). 「うるさい 」　can be used to mean “loud/noisy”, “annoying/bothersome”, “picky/fussy/particular”, and “shut up!” when shouted as an interjection. I’ve been in a class in Tokyo where we were all yelled at for talking by our professor, who kept saying 「うるさいだよ！」. In Mob’s originally-intended sentence—「師匠は肉にうるさいなぁ…」—he was using うるさい to mean “picky/fussy”, since Reigen truly would not relax and leave him alone over that meat. But because the meat burned his mouth, he ended up clicking his tongue and slurring 「うるせぇな。」　He dropped the “Shishou” and “about meat” parts entirely, his hurt tongue not moving fast enough and holding out an “e” vowel throughout the latter half of the word instead of raising up into an “ai” sound. This… makes the word very rude. And since all other parts of the sentence were dropped, it also makes it an interjection— a rude and harsh version of “Shut up!”, which I’ve chosen to represent by making Mob curse. (Turning rude conjugation forms into English cursing is a pretty common practice in Japanese translation, as they have more expressive conjugation forms than us and we have no other real way to express that inherent hostility/brashness.)

In the most popularized English translation of this scene, the translators did something very clever to make Mob’s slurring possible, since we don’t have “rude” verb forms in English. What Mob originally wanted to say was, “Shishou sure likes to talk about meat…”, which gets slurred into “Shut up and eat.” The syllables specifically from “shishou” and “about meat” can be slurred into something phonetically resembling “shut up and eat”. I think this is extremely clever and fantastic translation work.

Anyway. Reigen deserved that.

me and Jack finished season two it was fun

луігі май беловд

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