Manga translation vocabulary crap.

[snarp]

I need a mean word for a socially and/or economically upwardly-mobile person. The text calls this "群民上がり". (That is stupid.)

This can be, like, a ridiculous-sounding Victorian word. It's being used in the context of one of those obviously-doomed anime societies where everyone's kind of albino-looking and wears winter colors.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Has thoughts above their station? (Though I don't know if there's a single word for that.)

[snarp]

It'll have to be a noun of some kind, unfortunately.

[azurelunatic]

Alas!

I've heard "ambitious" being used as a slur, but it requires the right tone of voice.

[lilacsigil]

Social climber?

[enemyofperfect]

Plugging lilacsigil's suggestion into my favorite online thesaurus produced an array of additional possibilities. Upstart, parvenu, and arriviste are the ones that leap out at me, but there's some awesome slang in there, too. Tufthunter!

[(Anonymous)]

How about "nouveau riche"? From wikipedia: "The term nouveau riche (French: “new rich”), describes rich people who acquired their wealth within their own generations; the equivalent English term is (the) new rich or new money (in contrast with "old money"). Sociologically, nouveau riche describes the man or woman who previously had belonged to a lower social class and economic stratum (rank) within that class; and that the new money — which constitutes his or her wealth — allowed upward social mobility and provided the means for conspicuous consumption, the buying of goods and services that signal membership in an upper class. As a pejorative term, nouveau riche effects distinctions of type, the given stratum within a social class; hence, among the rich people of a social class, nouveau riche describes the vulgarity and ostentation of the new-rich man and woman who lack the worldly experience and the system of values of Old Money, of inherited wealth, such as the patriciate and the gentry."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_riche

[jinian]

That's what I was thinking, though people without a background in historical novels might think it sounded French, thus sophisticated, thus positive. Same problem with parvenu, I guess. I like upstart, though.

[(Anonymous)]

"new money" or "nouveau riche"