did allen said that he loves lenalee?

[LiMugetsu]

i'm wondering if allen said that he loves lenalee as a special someone, or he only mean that he loves lenalee as a friend including the other members of Black Order.?

[Sinamon]

i'm wondering if allen said that he loves lenalee as a special someone, or he only mean that he loves lenalee as a friend including the other members of Black Order.?

I'll clear it up for anyone who reads this thread. the translator for the scanlation that was made available online for chapter 205 said that he played up the drama a little bit in those last several pages between allen and lenalee and he changed the sentence structure around.

i think he did a huge disservice to the fans by doing such a thing. he should have just translated it straight, literally, changing as little as possible, no matter what his interpretation of the meaning was. so, here is the LITERAL translation of that now infamous sentence:

ALLEN: I LOVE....THE ORDER...WHERE LENALEE AND EVERYBODY ARE

THAT is what he actually said. he did NOT say "I love...you, and everyone else at the order" which brings up so many other connotations and interpretations. it's a slight difference but it's very big in its meaning. seems the translator really wanted to stir up some drama even though he says that he is not partial to any pairings and doesn't care if allen gets with anyone.

so, to answer your question, no...allen did not tell lenalee that he loved her. he told her that he loved the order, which then means he indirectly loves those who are there but not in any romantic way. he also used the word "dai suki" which is typically used for a very strong like or love of an thing or place etc (but not necessarily romantic love toward a person). if he said "aishitteru", that might have changed something. ai is a very deep love (either familial or romantic toward a person).

i am looking forward to the official english translation manga release so we can get the actual translation in print.

that being said, i don't doubt that allen does have deep, personal fieelings for lenalee. he did hug her and caress her face, after all. he doesn't actively hug anyone so the importance of his actions can be measured by what he normally doesn't do and he never hugs anyone or gingerly touch someone's face...except lenalee. this being a shounen manga, i don't know that we'll ever hear a love confession from the main protagonist...but i do think that he and lenalee share something special.

[kalla]

リナリーや　みんなのいる　きょうだんが　大好きだよ。　僕のホム。　(rinarii ya minna no iru kyoudan ga daisuki da yo. boku no homu.) Literally: Lenalee and also everyone existing (or possibly existence) religious order (I) love, (I'm telling you--yo is a statement that he is telling her so she now knows.) My home.

While 愛している　(aishitteiru) is a little more specific, 大好き (daisuki) is often used and translated as love--even romantic love. The former is the state of "loving" while the latter is loving or very strong liking. (I am in love with you vs. I love you.) One is just more specific and less ambiguous. You love many people, but you are usually only in love with your partner or would be in the state of loving someone very close to you like family. 大好き (daisuki) can just be taken in many ways. That said, I think the ambiguity was on purpose and I don't know that I would even feel it was in character for Allen to say the former. I do however, feel the only way to translate it is "love" for two reasons: 1. the 大 (dai) often tends to make it translated as love regardless of subject, and 2. it makes more sense; Allen is talking about people not things. He loves Lenalee and the people who live in the Order, not the Order itself as I read it--although I do understand why Sinamon read it that way and that is one way to look at it. (He is specifying which "everyone" or what part of the order.) If it was an object I'd be more inclined to say like, but in this case you typically love those you care about not just like. In other words it's showing the relationship he has to everyone, which I think is the point of the statement. When he says "my home" that solidifies his meaning...you just wouldn't say I like you, you guys are my home. No, you love your family. Context is very important to translating, especially when looking at something like casual speech as half the sentence is omitted and can be read ambiguously even to a Japanese person. (Which is why a translator should focus on translating not creating or changing.)

The problem is while yes he is including her with them, he is specifically singling her out which adds to the ambiguity and does put a slight emphasis on her, especially with the use of "yo" as he is trying to press home a point to her. True she is the one there, but he is wanting her to understand. He could easily have just stated everyone and left it at that, but he did not. What was misleading in the translation was the order in which the words appeared because it put the emphasis on only Lenalee, but in Japanese a statement like this, at least with how he said it, is ambiguous. It's important to remember when you read even official translations that some things 1. don't translate well if at all and 2. Japanese to English often has a lot of issues. For example, that bit alone has four particles--things we don't have in English and one of which is sometimes ambiguous itself, and tells me the speaker is extremely likely male and on very friendly terms with whomever he is speaking. And that's before I look at content, grammar, or context. You don't include all of that in the translation or you lose the reader. This is why good translations are not usually literal. It is the job of the translator to truly translate--go beyond the literal and encompass the meaning in another language--but you must also stay true to the original. If you look at my literal translation it implies Allen loves the Order, which in Japanese is not necessarily the case and could imply the opposite. The statement is ambiguous and Allen's point is not to profess love but to first comfort Lenalee and second to establish his connection and loyalty to the people he loves.

It is certain this was not a declaration of his undying love for her but the arrow doesn't directly point the other way either. There's just not a way to tell from what he said; too much ambiguity and not enough to point to his true feelings for her specifically. The translator had no business trying to do anything other than translate and decipher what was in the original Japanese...and I would very much agree that is a disservice to fans. If you can't decipher it either don't translate it, or butcher the translation and show the literal one so people can decide for themselves. (Like when they try to make cutesy names in translations --some things don't translate. Just leave them as they are and the rest of us can read it and decide.)

Also...why is this in this forum?

[D.GrayAllen]

The one i read was translated as "I love you and everyone else at the order"

[shin5]

リナリーや　みんなのいる　きょうだんが　大好きだよ。　僕のホム。　(rinarii ya minna no iru kyoudan ga daisuki da yo. boku no homu.)

i asked my teacher about this. and she answered just like sinamon's

ALLEN: I LOVE....THE ORDER...WHERE LENALEE AND EVERYBODY ARE

"minna no iru kyoudan" is impolite statement of "minna no iru no kyoudan" (the order where everybody are)
if it's "kyoudan no minna" then it would be "everyone at the order" or "order people"

also, it makes sense because allen said "boku no homu" (my home) after that.
after all allen said that short of thing because he is going to leave the order and not be able to comeback for a while.

CMIIW

[Luis Rendón]

I read the raws and the translation, and Sinamon has it right. The literal translation is "I love the order where Lenalee and everyone else is". The ambiguity is definately on purpose. Hoshino doesn't want a literal confession (at least not until the end of the manga is a lot closer). Hoshino is an artist at keeping us teetering on the "do they/don't they" line. There are many places where the same wordplay has left pairing fans arguing for months due to the ambiguity. However, there is one thing that can't be directly translated in this case and that is you have to look at it from the Japanese social standpoint. In this particular situation, giving a direct confession to Lenalee "aishteriu" or "skidesu" would be inapropriate, in which case she could lose face by being seen as accepting pity. In this case, an inderect confession "I love the order and those who live there" can be understood as a way to confess his love while letting her save face. Sometimes its hard for some Americans to understand the more subtle references of the Japanese culture and the way to say things without saying them directly. So literally, he does NOT say "I love you". Inderectly, its a possibility, but not a certainty.

[Sinamon]

I read the raws and the translation, and Sinamon has it right. The literal translation is "I love the order where Lenalee and everyone else is". The ambiguity is definately on purpose. Hoshino doesn't want a literal confession (at least not until the end of the manga is a lot closer). Hoshino is an artist at keeping us teetering on the "do they/don't they" line. There are many places where the same wordplay has left pairing fans arguing for months due to the ambiguity. However, there is one thing that can't be directly translated in this case and that is you have to look at it from the Japanese social standpoint. In this particular situation, giving a direct confession to Lenalee "aishteriu" or "skidesu" would be inapropriate, in which case she could lose face by being seen as accepting pity. In this case, an inderect confession "I love the order and those who live there" can be understood as a way to confess his love while letting her save face. Sometimes its hard for some Americans to understand the more subtle references of the Japanese culture and the way to say things without saying them directly. So literally, he does NOT say "I love you". Inderectly, its a possibility, but not a certainty.

all of the above is true. in the sentence, "the order" is the object. "kyoudan (order)" is immediately followed by "ga" which is the particle that indicates the object in the sentence. japanese and korean share very similar sentence structure and, in the korean translation, the structure is exactly the same; the order is the object of allen's (the subject) action (his love/like). lenalee and the other exorcists are included as indirect objects. however, i do agree with kalla in that allen didn't have to single lenalee out. he could have just said "min'na" and have been done with it because she is included in the implication. but he (rather, hoshino) decided to call her out, most likely because she was right in front of him. but i also think he wanted to reassure her, personally.

so no, he does not say, "i love you....and everyone else at the order" as the scanlation says. lenalee was not the direct object in the sentence no matter how much i would wish it so, lol. but the manner in which the japanese express their love in situations like these should also be heavily considerde (as luis noted above). he has never been affectionate with anyone as he was with lenalee that night. he has matured a lot since that night in krory's castle where the boy practically freaked out when lenalee hugged him. he was the one who initiated this time and shocked lenalee. and the last panels show the same growing affection they had when lenalee awakened to see allen for the first time in edo. i thought it was well done in that it expressed just enough and left me wanting more.