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In _Shikkoku no Sharnoth ~What a Beautiful Tomorrow~_ , some words like
Metacreature, Illuminati and Old One have 《 and 》 on either side. you can see
them on [Part
3-1](http://amaterasu.tindabox.net/webnovel/Sharnoth%20Webnovel%20Files/shar_novel0301.html)
of the Web Novel

> I feel like this black form is the same as those 《Metacreatures》.

and [here](http://amaterasu.tindabox.net/webnovel/shar_webnovel.html) on the
index page

> the 《Omnipotent》 man (his name is Leo)

now at first I thought this was a style choice by Amaterasu Translations since
_Hikari no Valusia ~What a Beautiful Hopes~_ hadn't been translated (and
Amaterasu Translations said they may do them one day) however it shows up in
_Aoishiro_ when words like 《Sword》, 《See》 and 《Power》 and it was translated by
Shijima. The 2 Visual Novels are also done by different groups.

Now I would get it if it was just name, however 《Power》 doesn't seem to be a
name as it's normally used to describe what a lot of the heroines are taking
from drinking Shouko's blood or what Yasuhime-sama receives from the trees she
planted.

So is the use of 《 and 》 a style thing for translators outside of Japan or is
there something in the Japanese language which calls for the use of these?


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question
japanese-language aoishiro shikkoku-no-sharnoth
Why would 《 and 》 be used in a translation?


It's the same way [in the
original](http://www.liar.co.jp/shar_novel0301.html). The line about
"Metacreatures" is:

> 黒い塊は、それら **《怪異》** と同じように思えた。

So in this case, it's probably just a matter of the translators using the
original punctuation (you will notice that they do the same thing with
dialogue, using 「」 as in the original rather than “”, which is standard in
English).

As for why the original itself uses 《》:
[Logan](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/15299/why-would-and-be-used-
in-a-translation#comment20020_15299) is right that these are not typically
used in Japanese:

> These are Guillemet marks, which are used as quotation marks in some
> languages like French and Greek (notably not typically in Japanese though,
> which uses 「．．．」, though they can be used sometimes and are referred to as
> either 二重山がた [ _ni-juu-yama-gata_ "double mountain-shaped [brackets]"] or
> 二重ギュメ [ _ni-juu-gyume_ "double guillemet"]).

《》 are basically used however the author wishes to use them (e.g. [this
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/14084/3437) on Japanese.SE shows
one way that 《》 is used in a Japanese dictionary). I'm not familiar with
Shikkoku no Sharnoth, but a quick skim of the web novel suggests that the
author is using 《》 to surround proper nouns with a specific in-universe
meaning, like 怪異 ("Metacreature"?) and 大消失 ("Vanishing"). Kind of like how we
would (and the translators do) use capital letters to identify proper nouns in
English. Japanese doesn't have capital letters, so the 《》 is an alternate way
of achieving the same effect.


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