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In episode 3 of Chargeman Ken, a Juralian speaks to some of the flesh-eating butterflies that have been plaguing Japan (and perhaps, elsewhere):

Oh, my lovelies. The Earthlings are in a panic over you. According to the Earthlings, you went extinct 50 years ago. My lovelies, until that day comes, be my power!

Nobody knows that I saved you 50 years ago, and that I improved you to eat human cells and multiply! All so that you would destroy the Earth!

[Text taken from Crunchyroll subtitles; paragraph breaks are my own.] What does the Juralian mean by until that day comes? Normally, it would seem to refer to the day 50 years ago when the Earthlings thought that species of butterfly extinct. However, this is not a good reading, since the Juralian indicates that this day has not come yet.

Does it perhaps refer to the day when that species of butterfly does in fact become extinct, or to the day when the Earth will be destroyed?

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Maroon
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From what I pick out of the Japanese dialog, it seems that translation is quite word-for-word literal. What's interesting though is in the Japanese he uses the words "sono toki" instead of "ano toki" to refer to "that time" and I think that makes all the difference.

By Japanese 101 definitions, when referring to objects, you use "ano," meaning "that", to refer to an object far away from both the speaker and the listener. "Sono," also meaning "that", is used when the object is far from the speaker, but close to the listener. Mind you, beware of Japanese 101 definitions of words because they hardly ever give the entire context to the word.

Throw in the context that you constantly hear in anime, when the speaker is trying to be vague and mysterious, they will say, for instance "ano hito," (literally meaning "that person" or you could just translate it as HIM, meaning that person we all know because he's that important, but I'm not going to name) often referring to some mysterious big bad who has yet make an appearance, and wasn't mentioned before in the conversation.

The use of "sono" then feels significant, likely implying that he's referring to the time he was just talking about (their extinction), rather than some other time that they all know about but aren't naming.

I also lean to this interpretation over the time when Earth is destroyed, as the subject of Earth being destroyed hasn't come up yet in his speech either. Japanese is a very contextual language. You generally will say a thing once to establish the current topic of conversation, then leave out the topic in following sentences until the topic changes.

Kai
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"That day" means the day when they will go extinct.

Pulling together the two sentences: "My lovelies, until the day you go extinct comes, be my power"

It would probably be much more obvious if it said "until that day ACTUALLY comes"

But it's Crunchy, they aren't really the best translators, even though they improved a lot during the lase few years.

Gorzius
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  • note that it's entirely possible the subject of the sentence is omitted entirely, leaving viewers (and translators) to guess what is actually being referred to. my guess is that either the character is being intentionally vague (which seems to be a somewhat common literary device in manga/anime), or the writers assumed most people could pick up on the meaning from context. – HotelCalifornia Oct 17 '18 at 18:02