誰も信じるな dare mo shinjiru na Trust No One
誰も信じるな (dare mo shinjiru na), trust no one, is the caption The X-Files put in place of The truth is out there at the end of certain episodes, first in 1994. The Japanese rests on its final な, the prohibitive; without it the sentence would say trust everyone.
Abstract
誰も信じるな, trust no one, renders a caption The X-Files substituted for its usual The truth is out there at the end of certain episodes, first in The Erlenmeyer Flask (1994). The Japanese is a plain prohibition, in no book to 1946 in the National Diet Library, and the Japanese encyclopedia gives the regular caption's Japanese and none for this one.
Overview
The sense. A prohibition, trust no one, in Japanese with no Japanese page behind it.
The words. The words are ordinary. 誰も with a negative is no one, and な is the prohibitive, so that without it the sentence would say trust everyone.
The text in English. The English is the caption itself.
The historical record
1993 and 1994. Trust no one. Trust no one is one of the captions The X-Files substituted for its usual The truth is out there at the end of certain episodes, first in The Erlenmeyer Flask (1994); the series' pilot aired 10 September 1993 and Japanese broadcast began 22 November 1995 [1]. The Japanese encyclopedia gives the regular caption's Japanese, 真実はそこにある, and none for this one [2]. 誰も信じるな is in no book to 1946 in the National Diet Library, nor its older form 誰も信ずるな [3].
What is not a source. The line has no Japanese source; it is an English line put into Japanese.
Today. What a rendering must keep is the prohibitive な, without which the caption inverts.
A reading
A television caption put into plain Japanese, and honest about it. Everything rests on the final な: take it away and the sentence says the opposite.
References
- "The X-Files" and "Pilot (The X-Files)", English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_(The_X-Files)
- 「Xファイル」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xファイル
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 誰も信じるな and 誰も信ずるな, 0 books each to 1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/