Futei no Olympia - Ch. 9 - Ayase vs. The Wife, Kaori

[draxdeveloper]

I hate this chapter. This isn't misunderstanding. It's bad writing.

Unless there are some nuances to the Japanese language that we are losing in translation, then this is the dumbest and most infuriating chapters so far.

There is.
Japanese language is the kind of language that is easy to lead to misunderstanding for a lot of reasons, that's why a lot of their humor is language-related, they even have sketches that are based on two people talking about different things but having a full conversation anyway, sometimes the topics are REALLY different (like what happened here).
In this case, it's because they tend to omit a lot of things because they expect the other party to know the context (one thinks it's about workout, and the other part thinks it's about the job)
I mean, the translation did a good job to show what was being omitted, but probably felt unnatural, the omitted part never being mentioned, but it's natural (to Japanese people)

 

[junkhouser]

In Japanese, it’s common practice to drop entire grammar structures. Dropping the subject is especially very common. This is why Japanese is known as a “high context” language, because if you come into a conversation late (i.e. you don’t have the context) it can get very confusing very fast.

So a lot of manga jokes are based around issues with the Japanese language itself. If you ever think “wow manga makes it seem like Japanese people really suck at communication” this is the reason.

Japan also has a weirdly strong cultural focus on “being understood without needing to speak“ - especially inside of close relationships. This is one of the biggest reasons that romantic relationships between japanese people and westerners tend to break down. It’s also why it’s easy to get pissed off at manga characters when they are acting Japanese and not saying things that would be really easy and obvious to say. They are being japanese - communicating their true feelings immediately and clearly goes against their repressive social culture. That’s why it’s always a major plot event in anime and manga when a character’s true feelings come out into the open.

Although, this kind of thing is becoming less and less of a problem with younger generations as time goes on.

edit: basically, japanese writers - especially male writers - overly-romanticize being silent and emotionally reticent. It’s kinda toxic in its own way.

 

[Cirrius]

How far this thing will go lmao

 

[junkhouser]

Whole bunch of chapters just got sniped. Was it the TLer or did this get licensed?

 

[samkas]

Thanks for the translation, keep it up!!!!