Talk:Kobutori Jiisan

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Mistranslation of the folk tale's title

This article stated the literal translation of the title, "Kobutori Jiisan", to be "Plump Old Man", but this is a mistranslation due to a homonym. "Kobutori"/「こぶとり」 can be written either as 小太り (which means "plump") or as 瘤取り (which means something like "lump-removing"). In this case, the correct translation would be "lump-removing", so I am changing the translation to "Lump-removing Old Man." Esjkc (talk) 03:28, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This mistake reminds me of someone years ago who read "小手" as shōshu. In those 8 bit or whatever days of game-playing, resolution was limited, so the kanji "籠手" could not be used and "小手" was used as shorthand. (BTW The correct reading was kote for "gauntlet").

Translating the word kobu 瘤 is tricky, but "lump" as a euphemism for "tumour" should do. I know kobu was translated "wen" in English in a specially issued booklet of Japanese commemorative stamps.--Kiyoweap (talk) 22:49, 11 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The second old man

The last line describes him as "selfish"; why exactly is this? Is there something earlier in the story that indicates him to be of a poor character (which would make sense given his "punishment" in the story)? Or is he "selfish" for wanting to experience the same good fortune- freedom from his disfigurement- as the other old man? This could do with some kind of explanation I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.2.112.54 (talk) 22:16, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If someone wrote "selfish" it was a poor choice of words.

The second old man's fault was not selfishness but envy, which is one of the homunculi in Full Metal Alchemist.. or rather, one of the Seven Deadly Sins even in Christian thought. --Kiyoweap (talk) 18:58, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tagging

The article's initially tag {{underlinked}} was replaced with {{Cleanup-reorganise}} by MatthewHoobin but I'm removing it as I am not seeing specific WP:LAYOUT issues such as reference section. If there is an issue, please clarify.

My diagnosis is that this is (was) just another WP:NOTPLOT violating page. There are a large number of them but I don't slap the {{primary}} etc. tag on them on sight. And in the case of this article I am revising it to more than plot-only. --Kiyoweap (talk) 00:51, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]