@gundam-screencaps is offline for a few hours while people do things to the electricity at our house, so in the meantime here's a gundam screencap chosen by me completely randomly
Transcript
Emma and Kamille are floating down a hallway. Emma has her hand on Kamille's shoulder, Kamille has turned his head to look at her.
Emma: "I met him over at Cheyenne during a trip with my girlfriend in a gas-powered car."
when me and my friend @janeyshivers watched this scene for the first time a few months ago we had to replay that line like, twice just to make sure we heard it right, and then for good measure turned on the subbed version just to make sure it wasn't just a weird quirk of the dub's translation
anyway Emma Sheen best Zeta character and a lesbian imo
yeah, I'm absolutely keeping this, Emma Sheen is a lesbian
more extended musings on translation below the cut:
so yeah – I don't think "girlfriend" as we use it now is the actual connotation of what she's saying, at least not that unambiguously. but I'm not sure I have an alternative translation for this line that flows well while preserving whatever ambiguity is there – Emma isn't just calling this other woman a friend either.
the line is 「女同士で、ガソリン車のドライブ旅行をした時」 – "during a girl-girl roadtrip in a gas-powered car" is the most direct translation I can come up with? like, when I search now for that phrase 女同士 "onnadōshi" that I'm translating as "girl-girl", the results are in fact pretty damn gay! heck, in the Japanese title of A Yuri Story About a Girl Who Insists "It's Impossible for Two Girls to Get Together" Completely Falling Within 100 Days, the phrase that's translated as "It's Impossible for Two Girls To Get Together" is essentially "onnadōshi is just impossible, right?"
honestly, this is running up against the limits of my cultural knowledge about how phrases like this are used in practice in Japan, especially in the 80s vs today. in a way, "just say 'girlfriend', and let the viewer decide how much ambiguity they feel like injecting" really is the best translation decision I can think of for this line.