Transfer-San is a short (10-15 minutes) Renpy videogame made as a class project made by Grifflon and myself. The game is a very simple science-fiction story that uses the framing device of a school-age visual novel set in a Japanese school to talk about the untranslateable nature of honorifics in Japanese and the ambiguity they can introduce in communication with non-Japanese speakers.
The game is free, and you can download it here:
Citations
- Tokunaga, Misato. “Dichotomy in the Structures of Honorifics of Japanese.” PRAG Pragmatics Pragmatics Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 2.2 (1992): 127-40. Web.
- Vincent, Lloyd. “Saying “You” in Japanese.” Nihonshock. N.p., 3 July 2012. Web. 26 Oct. 2015.
- Xidnaf. “Untranslatability and Japanese Pragmatics.” YouTube. YouTube, 25 June 2015. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
Unicorn Dispatches 
Reblogged this on Digital Asia.