The shift from vous to tu in the 'your soul is a beautiful thing to give' exchange maybe makes me think that Erik is slipping up momentarily, not quite maintaining complete control over his Angel act and reflecting his desire to be close to Christine in the way he addresses her. That might be why he also says 'my child' right after that- like 'oops I slipped up with tu- got to say something to reinforce that I'm supposed to be this heavenly authority figure who's formal and above her'.
Rereading the passage, I was thinking 'he is definitely going for a priestly aura there'; a priest would normally be addressed as mon père, 'my father', and address a member of his congregation as ma fille (my daughter). Then looked at the post and saw I'd already suggested that ;-)
But what I mean is that it comes across not so much that he uses 'mon enfant' to cover up for having used 'tu', but more that it follows naturally on from it with similar implications.
what it immediately reminds me of is the sort of subtle displays of relationship and changing dynamics between characters in what honorific suffixes they use when referring to each other by name, like -san, -kun, -chan, etc
I don't know much about anime, but from what I've gathered it's exactly the same sort of thing (and an equal problem in translation). You also get the same problem of characters calling each other things like "Little Brother" which *can* be translated, but don't sound natural in English conversation...
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2020-12-04 11:28 pm (UTC)Rereading the passage, I was thinking 'he is definitely going for a priestly aura there'; a priest would normally be addressed as mon père, 'my father', and address a member of his congregation as ma fille (my daughter).
Then looked at the post and saw I'd already suggested that ;-)
But what I mean is that it comes across not so much that he uses 'mon enfant' to cover up for having used 'tu', but more that it follows naturally on from it with similar implications.
I don't know much about anime, but from what I've gathered it's exactly the same sort of thing (and an equal problem in translation). You also get the same problem of characters calling each other things like "Little Brother" which *can* be translated, but don't sound natural in English conversation...