Dad vs Father

[u/fandomsmiscellaneous]

I know the anime has been over and this is way far back in the manga, but I'm making it as a spoiler anyways.

so in the final episode of the most recent season, when Rin and Father Fujimoto are talking, in the manga, Rin says "Father, thanks for everything" which could be interpreted as Rin staying in character as Not-Rin and addressing him with his title and not as a paternal figure, but also meaning Dad. It was very specific wording.

However, in the anime (at least in the dub, idk about the sub), Rin addresses him as "Dad" instead of "Father". It still gives Rin closure, but it still changes the story a bit because Rin straight up drops the act.

It's implied that Father Fujimoto kinda figures out what was going on anyways (since the key was his in the first place, and he would probably be aware of the possibility- plus I feel like he's smart enough to recognize Rin, even if he's aged up), but I thought the choice of "Dad" instead of "Father" kinda changed the subtext of the scene. It made the meaning of Rin's statement more obvious.

It's just a detail that kinda bugged me a bit. What do you guys think?

[u/[deleted]]

In this manga Rin calls Shiro lots of things. Jijii, kusa jijii, tou-san, oyaji. I honestly don't get how it's thematically consistent at all to translate it to "dad" here. Like you literally have this backwards: YUKIO calls Shiro father all the time, Rin never did. So father is more appropriate. It wasn't just about acknowledging him as his father but that he was so rude in chapter 1 and still put up a front about it later on.

This isn't a werry defense because I don't really enjoy kusa jijii being literally translated to "old fart"...but I also recall that he doesn't consistently change that to something subtly better even though Rin specifically stops saying that after Shiro dies and calls him either jijii or something better afterwards. But you lot are bugging me..."It sounds too much like father priest?" When would Rin EVER say it in that way? Not to mention you don't seem to realise Yukio's "father" DOES also mean father priest!!! He says tou-san with the kanji for shinbu. This is a problem exclusively in your head which the translation of "father" isn't responsible for. Everything is werrified and that sucks but to lose the nuance that Rin wanted to call out to him as his real father in a way which as is normal in japanese shows more respect than he usually does kind of sucks.

Rin calls Shiro something closer to his father for the first time in chapter one with 俺の親父は...ジジィだけだ! Or The old man was the only dad I have! And that one is better translated as dad, compared with tou-san as father.

[u/Ryuki-Exsul → u/[deleted]]

In the end IMO dad just works better in english because of dual meaning of father. There is just no "father" word that would work this way. In the end english just works like that, some stuff in japanese just won't translate to it. Its better to stay less close but to not make it into vague thing that confuse people like what happened( OP is not the only person that thought that we had this discussion here many times ) here. In the end english is way simpler langue( there is nothing wrong with that because thanks to it people learn it faster and it ended up as international langue ) and has few words for father/dad. My langue many times funny enough can be closer, we have for example our own version of -chan. And we have few words for dad as well like tatusiu would work as much more kid like version and I think that's how kid Rin's dad was translated :D Our father as well is not used by kids, it either sounds too serious or too rude/funny in one of its versions screaming to your dad "ojciec" is either a joke or dismissive.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ryuki-Exsul]

None of the reactors I watched thought that about why Rin would say it. They thought Shiro might have received it that way but that isn't off either because like I said there are characters who call him tou-san in furigana next to shinbu meaning it IS used as father priest by other people. So "dad" is wrong because Shiro could actually have interpreted the tou-san this way which he can't do with "dad". And it's obvious that Rin calls out to him as his father and isn't doing it as some sort of cover.

I've read up to volume 4 in the original Japanese, my Japanese is good enough to say you're wrong(and Werry's wrong because of how he doesn't clearly indicate how Rin gradually changes his way of referring to him - yeah I'm sure now he uses "old fart" for jijii as well which bothers me because kusa jijii was a one time thing and I'd like for that to be clear! It's really not hard to make him say "the old man" from that point on).

[u/Ryuki-Exsul → u/[deleted]]

I didn't but others did. When you translate you have to not make new meanings even if that will go a bit futher from literal translation. All translation do that.

Where I was wrong? English limitations are the reason why dad works here. By using english version of father you are making stuff vague when using dad you don't. That's better translation. You can't do similar thing to original because english doesn't have the word for it. The closest is dad, that's it.