Alice, Dokomademo
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Rhis is pretty lit, i hope this continues being traslated
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I'm losing my mind they're so different.
Edit: I looked at the Japanese a bit myself. It's casual language, so way beyond my knowledge and ability, but only 1 of the 3, Overthink Scans, didn't change Mahjong to Poker on Page 10/6/9, so I'm just gonna stick with them. I hate hate hate that kind of localization. And conveniently, they've also already done Chapter 2, so I don't have to wait if I was so inclined. I can't vouch for the rest of their translation—this may be the only point where they're better—but oh well. They're also the only ones translating from the volume release. Not sure how that and the various handlings of the onomatopoeias effects the Bayesians. Also this'll probably get licensed at some point given it's success so then we'll have a 4th translation to compare it too.
Edit 2: Oh on that same page, the one girl proscribes “half” and prescribes “mix(ed)”, and none of the translations handle it to my satisfaction: Big Body Scans changed it to “mixed race” & “multiethnic”, which is so bizarre, so they are easily the worst of the 3 just from that page. boson__ went with “halfie” and “mixed race”, and Overthink Scans went with “half” and also “mixed race”.
I get why the former went with “halfie”, tho I prefer “half”, but both added “race” to the “mix(ed)” when it wasn't there in the Japanese or at all necessary! The following joke even works better without it! Regardless, my previous pick of Overthink Scans was still the least bad of the 3.
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Fed-Kun's army
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Like it's lowkey bothering me.. When the classmates were talking about that guy going to public school in one of the translations a girl complains he's going to attend the same school as her while the other translation has it as the school near the one she's going to(and in one the boy is answering the questions while the others have the classmates talking between themselves) In one the boy straight up says "you're an idiot" to Alice, while the other it's something like "how moronic/stupid" which comes across more as him saying that about the whole situation rather than her.. There were so many differences like that throughout from what I glanced and none of the translations clearly stood out as the best imo which complicates things even more.. But yeah I think I'll do the same as you and stick with the one who did ch 2 too for now and then see
edit: reading this back I didn't mean for this to come off so negative/whiny lol, I really do appreciate the effort the translators put in and hope at least one of them will be consistent and stick with it, just wish I knew who was closest to the Author's vision
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Hey, translator of the Boson version here. We also translated from the volume release but the raws on the BCS website were higher quality so we went with that for typesetting. It also allowed us to show off Urino’s gorgeous color pages!
You have to be careful when translating katakana loan phrases. Just because it sounds one way when said out loud in Japanese doesn’t mean it’s taken the same way colloquially! While “mixed” is definitely an English word it carries a very different, more objectifying connotation from the more polite term “mixed race” which is what the girl in that scene is trying to convey. As for translating “hafu” as “halfie” I did that because there’s not necessarily an equivalent version of that in English and I wanted it to carry the underlying condescension that can accompany that term for some multinational people in Japan. Sometimes when you want to accurately convey the author’s tone, you have to go beyond what’s literally on the page and consider its roots and context.
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Yeah I was gonna mention the color pages but that was like a caveat to my already tangential Bayesians point so I forwent it. You didn't put the volume cover or TOC at the start, so are there any text changes such that translating from the volume but typesetting with the online magazine release would be different from just translating the online magazine release?
Yes I'm well aware but translationally I'm quite foreignizational so that pushes against this in some cases.
I simply don't agree with this understanding of ”mixed”'s connotation. Depending upon the year I'm pretty post-racial, but as a “mixed race” person myself, I've never thought of or seen such a distinction between “mixed race” and “mixed”. Of course, descriptivistly, I could simply be ignorant, but as a prescriptivist…
Yes this is just me being foreignizational. Not really bothered by “halfie”. I understood your thinking. The other point for it that I didn't address is that “halfie” is a noun like “ハーフ” whereas when using “half” naturally here it's an adjective (which is what Overthink Scans did). The part of speech matters too and I'm overruling that in this case. Definitely near the edge here. But as you say, there's no native equivalent English word, so that's why I'm fine importing it as just “half”. Basicly the same reason why I prefer “gal” to “gyaru”.
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Art wise, there are no revisions that I could spot as we compared the two versions. Outside of a handful of instances where key words were switched from hiragana to kanji (and vice versa) or retyped with different line breaks, there were three bubbles where the content was altered to further clarify a character's dialogue. Nothing that would change the way you would translate it funnily enough, but that's why we work from the volumes while also finding the best way to present the author's art.
I mean, I get where you're coming from but you got to remember that ミックス was appropriated as part of a broader reckoning with their terminology. You can't necessarily separate it from its global context and as counterintuitive as it might seem, to preserve the meaning of the Japanese it seemed appropriate to expand the term again.
I'll admit that maybe my original statement was a bit too unequivocal, but I've definitely seen a fair amount of discourse over the casual use of "mixed" in a fetishistic manner. I understand that it's theoretically a more neutral term but I was hesitant to give it any of that baggage. But that's besides the point, really. In this sense, the girl is essentially try to police the boy's language. It's only right that her correction be read as formal as she can make it.
I'll admit that I did consider just using "hafu" at one point since it can feasibly be recognized by an English reader (assuming they have an above average cultural knowledge of Japan), but I care a lot about conveying the tone of the situation so a reader can grasp it at a first glance. The kid's take great interest in Alice, but she's also very much othered by her unique situation. Like you said, it all comes down to our respective philosophies, lol.
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One thing to take into consideration here regarding the translation of ハーフ and ミックス is that the boy right afterwords makes a connection to ミックス豚玉天大盛り which is probably the main context he has seen the word "mixed" before, regarding to food. That is why I changed the terms, because making a joke on the word "mixed" being a word that is used mostly in other contexts doesn't work in English.
I thought my version that stuck to him making a joke based off a word sometimes used in the context of food a worked pretty well and was in the spirit of the dynamic and the basis of the joke. The simpler "Mixed Rice" is a different kind of joke, but works well too.
Also regarding the poker/mahjong translation, if you rather would have the black haired boy say "Now that's a real Yakuman!" and confuse most of the audience, then I just don't think we see eye to eye.
I thought my version that stuck to him making a joke based off a word sometimes used in the context of food a worked pretty well and was in the spirit of the dynamic and the basis of the joke. The simpler "Mixed Rice" is a different kind of joke, but works well too.
Also regarding the poker/mahjong translation, if you rather would have the black haired boy say "Now that's a real Yakuman!" and confuse most of the audience, then I just don't think we see eye to eye.
