A while ago I got it into my head that I’d watch the Japanese dub of the first Matrix movie, and I found some pretty cool translation choices!
In particular, I really liked the way they’d translated this line from Agent Smith:
I’m gonna enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson
Agent Smith
The Japanese translation is as follows:
死ぬところを見せてもらおうか、アンダーソン君
(shinu tokoro wo misete moraou ka, andāson-kun)
エージェント・スミス / Ējento Sumisu
Here are links to the relevant part in English and Japanese for your viewing pleasure.
What I like about this he talks so much like a Japanese bad guy that it’s basically impossible to translate back again without losing most of what makes it sound cool!
Let’s Break It Down (Grammar Warning!)
For the benefit of those who don’t speak Japanese, I’ll break it down to and explain what it means. It also happens to contain a lot of things I find really neat about the Japanese language.
If you don’t want to be exposed to high doses of grammar radiation, you might want to skip to the next section!
死ぬ (shinu / to die)
This means to die.
Of note here is that we’re not saying who is going to die, because Japanese often omits such information when it’s obvious. Mr Anderson isn’t likely to think that Smith is talking about his own death here, nor about that of some unrelated third party.
ところ (tokoro / place)
Here it starts getting interesting. While tokoro literally means “place” it can refer to a point in time as well as space. In this case it’s the latter!
In Japanese, we can also just slap an entire sentence before a word to describe it, so putting this together with “to die” we get “to-die-place (in time)” or “the moment when you die”.
を (wo / object marker)
This goes after the object. We’ll have a verb later and this lets us know what the verb is actually working on.
見せて (misete / show)
Here comes that verb.
Something is being shown. What? The thing that came before を (wo) namely the moment when poor Mr Anderson dies.
This is a way to write 見せる (miseru / show) such that it connects to what comes next…
もらおう (moraou)
…which is where it gets really cool in my opinion!
You see, in Japanese you can not only give and receive things, you can give and receive actions as well.
もらう (morau) means “to recieve” and in this case what’s being received is the aforementioned showing.
What he actually says though is もらおう(moraou), note the extra o. This turns it into a sort of “let’s do this” imperative.
か (ka / question particle)
In Japanese you can turn a sentence into a question by just adding “ka” to the end.
アンダーソン (Andāson)
This is just the name Anderson. Words are always written phonetically in Japanese and this is the closest approximation allowed by the sounds available!
君 (kun)
This is an odd one. This is a suffix used when politely addressing either your employees or co-workers/classmates that aren’t your superiors. It’s also often used when politely addressing young boys.
Why Smith chooses this over, say, さん (san) which more closely resembles “Mr/Ms/Mrs” isn’t really clear to me. Maybe it’s to add a bit of a derogatory tone, matching the faux-politeness of his English-language self.
When googling this I also found some Japanese netizen speculating that it’s because he’d heard Mr Anderson’s boss address him as such before they met.
Let’s Put It Together Again!
OK, so putting all of this together we get this masterpiece of an attempt at a literal translation!
I’m exaggerating a bit, but I hope it at least gets the point across that the phrase is Japanese to the point of near untranslatability.
Forcefully Receiving Favors
One of the things I like about Japanese is this giving and receiving of actions. You can for instance say that someone “understand-gave” you, meaning that they understood you and that you view that understanding as a favor.
What gives this translation such a Japanese villain-esque flair is this usage of receive in reference to a “favor” they know won’t be given willingly, in this case being shown their opponent’s death!
Giving Unwanted Favors
There’s a flip side to this as well, often utilizing the word やる (yaru) meaning “to give”, only specifically to an inferior (such as a child, employee or perhaps a pet). This means that just the usage of this word implies that you view the recipient of said favor as inferior to you.
Add to this that the favor you’re offering might in fact be very unlikely to actually be appreciated, such as 殺す (korosu / to kill) and you get phrases such as this:
殺してやる！(koroshite yaru!), basically “I will give you (who is inferior to me) the favor of killing you”.
Use this in the unlikely event that you want to kill someone while simultaneously sounding like a cartoon character.
Adventures in Language Self-Study 
Neat. c:
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