When I was little, I remember watching a Brazilian Portuguese subbed version
of Rurouni Kenshin (here more widely known as Samurai X) and catching one of
the main characters Saito frequently saying the phrase:

> Justice. Here. Now.

Which is a veeery loose translation of _Aku Soku Zan_ , which is frequently
translated as "Slay Evil Immediately".

Given the Portuguese version "Justice. Here. Now" is considerably far from the
English "Slay Evil Immediately" in meaning, I wonder how this phrase "Justice.
Here. Now" motto would be best represented in Japanese. Maybe it indeed maps
into something similar to "Aku Soku Zan" even though the difference between
both translations in English is so big?
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2020-03-18T12:31:26.390
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translation
Translating back "悪即斬" from the portuguese adaptation "Justice. Here. Now"
> I wonder how this phrase "Justice. Here. Now" motto would be best
> represented in Japanese.

Translating this into a regular Japanese sentence is easy; something like
今ここに正義を為す should work (今 = now, ここに = here, 正義 = justice, 為す =
perform/execute). However, this completely ignores the rhythmical or aesthetic
quality of the original phrase 悪即斬.

Note that the original phrase is not a regular Japanese sentence but a made-up
three-kanji jukugo, or "idiomatic compound". And it's extremely challenging to
translate "Justice. Here. Now." back into a three-kanji jukugo. Forming a
creative jukugo is not something ordinary people do, and there are lots of
constraints. It's more or less like asking for the best English single word
for "Justice. Here. Now." using only Latinate affixes.

"Justice. Here. Now." sounds a little peculiar as regular English, but it at
least respects the rhythm of the original phrase, and I think it's a nice
translation. And it's not very far from the original meaning, since 即 roughly
means "here and now".

(BTW, I don't know how 悪即斬 sounds to Chinese speakers, but that's not
important. Linguistically the two languages are very different except that
Japanese borrowed characters from Chinese.)
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answer